The Dead Town Read online

  He drank some more coffee. There was plenty left, if the other person wanted to come in and have another cup.

  He carried the cup outside and stood on the walk in front of the saloon. He looked up and down the street. He hadn’t been on his way to anywhere in particular when the storm hit. So he wasn’t in any hurry to get anywhere. He could have just mounted up and ridden out, but he was curious about the other person, who had obviously seen him leave the saloon and popped in to grab the last piece of bacon. Could have been watching him right at that moment.

  He took a sip of coffee slowly, swallowed it, licked his lips, and went back inside. He hefted the coffeepot. As he suspected, whoever grabbed the bacon had also poured another cup of coffee. He did the same. Whoever it was made good coffee.

  He walked around the saloon, again, looking for something, anything, that would give him a clue. When he found nothing, he decided to walk around town, carrying his cup of coffee with him.

  He still didn’t know what town he had stumbled into. Some of the storefronts still had names on them, but none of them were helpful until he got to the office of the newspaper.

  The Jasper Herald.

  He was in Jasper, Kansas.

  He’d never heard of it.

  He tried the front door and found it unlocked. Inside he found newspapers strewn all about the office. He checked a few of them, found them dated five years ago. The stories that he read were boring. Every page he picked up and read had nothing interesting on it.

  Jasper, Kansas, had been a boring town.

  He left the newspaper office and kept walking until he got to the sheriff’s office.

  As he walked in, he finished his last sip of coffee. He let the empty cup dangle from the index finger of his left hand. Furniture had been overturned, wanted fliers all over the floor. He checked the cell block. The cell doors were wide open. He walked to the desk, righted the desk chair, and sat down. Opened and closed the drawers, found nothing of interest.

  What the hell had happened to this town five years ago?

  The gun rack in the sheriff’s office was empty.

  The shelves in the hardware store and the general store mostly were empty. He did find two cans of peaches in the general store, so he put those in a burlap sack he found and took them with him.

  There was a dress shop but no dresses.

  A feed store but no feed.

  People didn’t just up and leave one day; they all moved out. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing.

  He went back to the saloon, saddled Eclipse, and walked him out. He continued to walk the town, this time with Eclipse in tow.

  Eventually, he came to the doctor’s office. It was on the second floor, over an empty store. He went into the store first—empty shelves, broken display cases. From the debris on the floor he thought it might have been an apothecary shop.

  He left the shop and walked around to the side of the building, to the stairway. He left Eclipse on his own, untied, and went up the stairs. The door was unlocked, so he walked in.

  Two rooms, a waiting room and an examining room. Whoever the doctor was—there was no shingle with a man’s name, just one that said “DOCTOR”—he had taken everything with him. Cleaned the place out. However, it still smelled like a doctor’s office.

  Alcohol.

  Sickness.

  Death.

  There was a desk, but all the drawers were empty. The doctor had moved out. Same time as everyone else? he wondered. Or before?

  He heard Eclipse stomping his feet and kicking up a fuss and hurried to the door. When he got outside, the horse was facing out. He had left him facing in. He came down the stairs and stood next to the animal.

  “What’d you see, boy?” he asked. “Or hear?”

  Eclipse shook his head.

  “There’s somebody else in this town,” Clint said. “Somebody who doesn’t want to see us, or be seen.”

  Ride out, he told himself. What’s the difference if it’s somebody passing through, or the last person to live here?

  Just ride out.

  But he didn’t.

  He walked farther north, past more run-down shops, an abandoned hotel, some homes that were falling down. He didn’t stop walking until he reached the far north end of town, where he stopped dead in his tracks.

  When he reached there, he stopped and stared. No homes, no stores, just one structure that had been so well built it was still standing strong.

  Leading Eclipse, he walked around the structure, looking at it closely. He thought the ugly thing could have been used today and it would still function.

  He finished examining it and walked Eclipse away from it.

  “Whatever happened here five years ago,” he said to Eclipse, “my bet is that this had a lot to do with it.”

  He turned and led Eclipse away from what was probably the strongest structure in the whole damned town—a gallows.

  FIVE

  He walked Eclipse the length of the town, which all in all was only about four or five blocks. There were some outlying buildings to the south, but they were mostly residences that had fallen into disrepair over the years. They didn’t look as if anyone had been near them for years. There were no footprints, man or beast.

  By the late afternoon he’d pretty much been through all the buildings. He’d found no sign of whoever had cooked the bacon and coffee.

  “Come on,” Clint said to Eclipse. “We’ve got to find a place for the night.”

  It wasn’t late, still plenty of daylight, but he wanted to use the daylight to find a place to spend the night—both of them. Come morning, he intended to ride out and forget about who had cooked the bacon and the coffee.

  Unless they turned up tonight. Maybe whoever it was would cook dinner, and he could track the cook by the smell. But someone doing that would need the frying pan and coffeepot.

  He walked Eclipse back to the saloon and inside. He wasn’t surprised to find the pan and the coffeepot gone.

  He decided to go upstairs and see if there was a room with a bed. If not, he’d have to go and find the hotel. There was bound to be one bed still left in town.

  Upstairs he found three rooms, all with a bed, so he took the room that overlooked the street. He was still nervous about leaving Eclipse downstairs alone, but he knew the horse would not let anyone come in without kicking up a fuss.

  He went back downstairs and closed the front doors, securing them as much as he could. Then he opened one of the cans with his knife, ate the peaches, and shared the water from his canteen with Eclipse. There were no new cooking smells in the air to tease him, so he was satisfied with the peaches.

  He decided to rub Eclipse down and give him some of the feed he’d found in the stable. Then he went upstairs to the room he’d picked as his. From the window he stared down at the street. Whoever was in town with him was well hidden, and had also cleverly hidden a horse, or had left.

  Unless this person didn’t have a horse.

  If that was the case, then whoever it was would have to try to steal Eclipse.

  Clint sighed. That meant no sleeping in this bed. He turned, grabbed the blanket from the bed and the pillow, and went back downstairs.

  “It’s you and me, buddy,” he said to Eclipse. “Room-mates.”

  He picked a corner, rolled himself up in his bedroll and the blanket, put his head down on the first pillow he’d seen in weeks, and went to sleep.

  Gloria Mundy wished she could risk cooking, but the man had already proven he could smell food cooking. Of course, she didn’t have to make anything as pungent as bacon or coffee, but that was really all she had left. Supplies in town had finally dried up. After all, she’d been using them for these past three years.

  She’d been lucky to stay ahead of the man as he made a search of the entire town. Now he was in the saloon, probably for the night. If she went south of town, to one of the falling-down homes, maybe she could make a fire and heat up the last can of beans without the man smelling i
t.

  Her stomach was growling, so she decided to take the chance.

  It was Eclipse who smelled it first.

  Clint woke to the horse pounding one hoof on the floor over and over again. He came awake immediately and grabbed his gun.

  “What is it, boy?”

  He got to his feet. The horse stopped pounding and stood still.

  Clint looked around. No one had tried to get in, so it was something else that had bothered the horse. Something he’d not seen but . . . heard? Or smelled?

  Smell.

  Clint sniffed the air.

  “What is that?”

  He walked to the front doors and opened them. The night was still, and smells carried on nights like this, especially cooking smells.

  He stepped through the batwing doors, stopped, and sniffed the air. Definitely something cooking. Not quite as strong as bacon or coffee, but something . . . and the very distinctive smell of a fire.

  People didn’t realize that a fire—whether a roaring blaze or simply a campfire—had a very strong, distinctive odor. The ability to smell someone’s campfire out on the trail was sometimes the difference between life and death, so it was a smell most traveling men knew well.

  SIX

  He decided to leave Eclipse where he was and follow his nose again. The big horse could take care of himself. Anyone trying to snatch him was liable to lose a few fingers.

  He stepped out into the street, sniffed the air, and picked south. The houses he hadn’t bothered going into. It had to be one of those.

  The closer he got, the more convinced he was that what he smelled was beans. It had been a long time since beans caused his mouth to water and his stomach to growl. He and Eclipse were also almost out of water. There was a horse trough near the livery, but that water had been there forever. It was filthy, brackish; he wouldn’t let Eclipse drink it. If things had become desperate, he would have taken some of that water and boiled it, but things weren’t that bad . . . yet.

  He reached the end of town and saw it immediately. Someone had taken the chance of building a fire inside one of the houses. He could see the flickering light. Whoever it was must have assumed that he was down for the night.

  In getting closer to the house, he passed one of the others. Something drew his eyes. He peered in a window and saw a horse. It was unsaddled, with a bucket of water and some feed nearby.

  He turned and headed for the other house.

  Gloria spooned some of the beans into a plate, grabbed a fork, sat back, and started eating. She was down to cans of beans, and that was it. She had enough for a week or so, but before that she’d be sick of them. She heard a board creak behind her and instinctively reached for her rifle, which was leaning against a wall.

  “Take it easy,” a man’s voice said. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

  She lowered her head and took a deep breath.

  “You smelled the beans?” she asked.

  “My horse did,” the man said.

  “Well,” she said, “there’s enough here. Help yourself. There’s an extra fork and plate in that burlap bag, over there.”

  “Shall we introduce ourselves first?” he asked. “My name is Clint Adams.”

  “Gloria,” she said.

  “No last name?”

  “It’s never been important.”

  Clint retrieved the fork and plate, helped himself to some beans.

  “That was your bacon this morning, right?” he asked.

  “And my coffee.”

  “Yes.”

  “Got any more coffee?”

  “I do,” she said. “I’ll put on a pot, since you’re already here.”

  He watched her. She had red hair, and the light from the fire made it appear as if it was ablaze. She was young, in her twenties, with a big, solid body beneath the man’s shirt and jeans she was wearing.

  When the coffeepot was on the fire, she went back to her beans.

  “You know,” he said, “if you put some bacon in the beans—”

  “I used the last of the bacon this morning. The bacon you stole.”

  “I stole two pieces,” he reminded her. “You got the last one.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Why were you hiding?” he asked.

  “I don’t know you,” she said.

  “Are you afraid of all strangers?”

  “I’m careful,” she said, “not afraid.”

  “Did the storm drive you here, like it did me?” he asked.

  “No” she said, “I live here.”

  “Here? In this ghost town? Alone?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you live here before? I mean, before everyone left?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you leave, too?”

  “This is my home,” she said. “Nobody’s drivin’ me out.”

  “So the people were driven out?”

  “Yes.”

  “By who?”

  “Why are you interested?”

  “I’ve been all over this town,” he said. “I’ve seen the newspaper office, the empty buildings. I’ve seen the gallows. Why is that still up? Most of the time they’re dismantled after the hanging.”

  “Nobody had time to take it down,” she said. “They were all in a hurry to get out.”

  “Get out? Why?”

  “They had to get away before they came.”

  “Before who came?”

  “The gang.”

  “What gang are we talking about?”

  The coffee was ready. She produced another cup, then poured for each of them.

  “Thank you,” he said, as she handed his to him. “Look, if it helps you, I’ll pay for what I eat.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Where do your supplies come from? The next town?” he asked.

  “They were left over,” she said. “I’ve been living on what was left all this time. It’s about gone now, though.”

  “So you’ll have to move on, or go and buy more supplies.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t want to leave here. I might miss—”

  She stopped short.

  “Miss what?”

  She looked across the fire at him.

  “Not what,” she said. “Who.”

  “All right,” he said, “who might you miss?”

  She shook her head.

  “It was all because of that hanging.”

  “Okay, then,” he said, “start at the hanging. I’m all ears.”

  SEVEN

  There wasn’t a lot to tell.

  A woman had been murdered in town, and there was only one stranger around, a man named Pettigrew.

  “The whole town decided he did it,” she said. “So they had a trial, and built the gallows.”

  “If they were going to lynch him,” Clint asked, “why not just pick out a tree?”

  “Oh, no, they said they were gonna do it nice and legal,” she said.

  “So they found him guilty?”

  She nodded. “And they hung him.”

  “Then what?”

  “They buried him in Potter’s Field and went on about their business.”

  “Until?”

  “Until a telegram arrived telling the sheriff that the murderer had been caught in El Paso, trying to get into Mexico.”

  “How did they know he was the killer?”

  “He confessed.”

  “So the town hung an innocent man.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How did they take it?”

  “At first they denied it,” she said, “but then the guilt began to seep in. Some folks couldn’t take the guilt, so they moved out.”

  “And the others?”

  “The law was still in denial, and so was the mayor. Then another telegram arrived.”

  “And what did this one say?”

  “That Pettigrew had some family, and they were headin’ here to take their revenge.”

  “Family, or w
as he part of the gang?” Clint asked.

  “It was the same thing,” she said. “There were a couple of brothers, some cousins, friends of theirs. They all rode in—shooting.”

  “They kill anyone?”

  She nodded.

  “Anyone they thought was trying to stand up to them, though not many did. They started with windows and street lamps, finally got around to killing people.”

  “And then what?”

  “They rode out.”

  “That was it?” Clint asked. “That was their revenge?”

  “No,” she said, “the leader promised that they were gonna ride in again the following week, and the week after that, and so on.”

  “And did they?”

  She nodded.

  “Like clockwork. Shot out windows, killed people, every time they came back. So, finally, people started to leave because no one could stop them.”

  “The town could have stood together and stopped them,” Clint said.

  “There wasn’t a man with guts among them,” she said in disgust.

  “What about your father?”

  “He was among the first to be killed.”

  “Why didn’t he go to the sheriff, stand with him, maybe?”

  She looked across the fire at Clint, who found the sadness in her pretty face heartbreaking.

  “My pa was the sheriff,” she said.

  EIGHT

  Clint didn’t know what to say to that, so he waited until they’d finished their meager meal before speaking again.

  Why didn’t you leave, Gloria?”

  “I have unfinished business,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m gonna get revenge.”

  “For the town?”

  “To hell with the town,” she said. “I’m gonna avenge my father.”

  “How do you intend to do that?”

  “I been practicing with his rifle and handgun,” she said.

  “How long have you been living here alone?”

  She shrugged and said, “About three years.”

  “And when was the hanging?”