Ghost Towns

by Martin H. Greenberg, Russell Davis

Genres: Action & Adventure; Westerns

Synopsis

The sound of a crowded saloon . . . The cry of a train coming through the night. . . The pounding of horses ridden by friends or foe. . . From the searing sun to snow-steeped winters, towns called Sentinel, Iron Mountain and St. Elmo stood strong and fierce--before they finally died. Now, these ghost towns return to life under the spell of such great Western tale-tellers as Louis L'Amour, Elmer Kelton, William W. Johnstone, Bill Brooks, Loren D. Estleman, Johnny D. Boggs and New York Times bestseller Margaret Coel. From a soldier on the run from the fires of war. . . From a gambler who has long since played his last hand to a solitary, singing rifle man protecting a besieged town . . . With dreamers and schemers, with men and women of courage, conscience and faith, here is an unforgettable round-up of astounding adventures fueled by a passion for the West the way it really was--and the way it lives on forever. . .

Release date: June 24, 2010

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

My memory isn’t quite what it used to be, but I think the year was around 1977, perhaps 1978. My mother and father took me on a family vacation to Colorado and I have three very distinct memories from that particular journey. The first is of my father pushing my mother into the hotel swimming pool with all her clothes on. The second is of discovering mica—a type of sheet mineral that can slide apart in paper thin pieces and has the ability to cut like a razor. And the third…the third is of taking a Jeep tour of several ghost town sites.

The tour itself was pretty neat, but what made it truly memorable was how many things went wrong just as we were trying to reach that last ghost town. The “best one” the guide said. The Jeep broke down on a narrow, steep mountain track. It began to rain. And the rescue Jeep sent for us ran over the toes of my right foot. Nothing broken, but I suspect that was more luck (the road was soft, my feet were small) than it was anything else. We never did make it to the last ghost town. To the “best one.”

From my earliest exposure to the idea of ghost towns—especially western ghost towns—I’ve been hooked. As I’ve traveled throughout the West, I’ve visited many places that were once booming and are now empty places that often feel haunted to me. The idea for this anthology came from those visits and from suspecting—deep down, where I try not to look too often—that even places like Tombstone, Arizona, and Virginia City, Nevada, are haunted by the spirits of those people who lived (and died) there during those early days of westward expansion.

The invitation for the authors in this anthology was simple: write a story about a ghost town (real or fictional) and, if they so desired, the story could have elements of the supernatural. Most of them, to my surprise, decided to go with it and wrote tales of ghosts and other supernatural events. Being surprised is one of the great pleasures of putting together a project like this. And I don’t want to ruin the surprise for you, so I’ll let you travel these pages on your own, without too much forewarning of what you may find.

Some people say that the western is dying; I say it is changing and evolving, but still very much alive. In this book, you’ll find a story from Steve Hockensmith—who is best known for his western mystery series that began with Holmes on the Range, a tale from New York Times bestselling author Margaret Coel, and even a ghost story from Elmer Kelton, whose career has been a shining example of brilliance and originality in the western field. Most of the authors have won Spur Awards or Western Heritage Awards (or both); many have been on bestseller lists and have a great many readers who look forward to each new work with anticipation. It should come then, as no surprise to you, that the stories you are about to read are, as they say, “good ’uns.”

I believe that stories should be shared—some of these would make fine tales to be told around the campfire, preferably to young kids who’ve just tried to visit a ghost town and strange events kept them from ever seeing it. I believe that stories, especially stories about the West, are durable—like the men and women who first crossed into the frontier to discover that only the strong survive. And, finally, I believe that well-written stories take on a life of their own…that they leave the page and enter the imagination of the reader, almost like a ghost, whispering in the ear from the inside of the mind, rather than the outside.

As always, I suggest and hope that you share this anthology with your family and friends. Western literature in all its forms can and will survive, but only when the stories are shared, when they are durable, and when they take on a life of their own, reaching more people and, in particular, those who have yet to read a real western.

Some might say that because many of these tales contain an element of the fantastic, they aren’t real westerns. This is nonsense, of course. The American West is a place of the fantastic. It was tales of the fantastic and the unimaginable that drove people to reach out and attempt to tame the frontier. It was tales of the fantastic that led people on the search for gold, and tales of the fantastic that created so much fear about the native peoples of this land. And now, so many years after the first frontiersmen came here, the American West is still a place of the fantastic.

I know this to be true because I live here…and I’ve seen wild mustangs appear and disappear in the blink of an eye during the sunrise, walked the ruins of an abandoned mine and found the claim paper in an old coffee can tied to a post, and ventured through the graveyards that no one tends or even visits anymore, yet somehow the stones remain and the occasional bundle of flowers appears.

And so, I invite you to turn the pages and discover these stories and share them with anyone who might be willing to discover them too. Because, in the end, the Western story is about the fantastic, about discovery, and about places that still exist.

The West is not gone, nor even a ghost. It is still here, ghost towns and thriving places, working mines and abandoned claims, haunted saloons and taverns teeming with life. The West has changed in many ways, but if one looks—in the stories and in the places—the real American West remains and always will.

Northern Nevada, Autumn 2009

Mr. William Brackwell c/o The Sussex Land & Cattle Co. Somerset House London, England

Dear Mr. Brackwell:

 

I trust your journey back to Merry Old was a smooth one, and you met with fewer of the, shall we say, surprises that were so commonplace during your stay in Montana. (By “surprises,” of course, I mean dead folks.) I do hope you won’t let the carnage you witnessed at the Bar VR color your view of the American West. Such goings-on are hardly the norm, no matter what your experience (or the dime novels) might lead you to believe. I mean, here my brother and I are in Utah, and we haven’t witnessed a murder in minutes!

Not that our travels have been boring. Nope, that would hardly do it justice. Tedious—now that hits closer to the mark. Monotonous, wearying, and mind-numbing too.

Except for when it was bloodcurdlingly, hair-raisingly, pants-fillingly terrifying, that is. And for about twenty-four hours up in the Rocky Mountains, that’s exactly what it was.

When we parted ways a couple months back, you asked that I keep you apprised of whatever progress we might make toward my brother’s goal. But I didn’t bother writing before now, as there was no progress to report. And there’s still not. In lieu of news, though, let me present you with this: something you can trot out the next time you’re in need of a spook story to entertain your friends of a dark, stormy evening by the fire. You can tell them one of your American cowboy pals passed it on to you, and such men aren’t given to balderdash or exaggeration. Ever. Any of them. Why, the last time a drover was caught in a lie was 1876, and the scoundrel was immediately stripped of his spurs and sent east to become a banker.

Anyway—on to the yarn.

As you’ll recall, Old Red and I planned to hit the trail in search of jobs as Pinkertons. And we’ve succeeded! In hitting the trail in search of jobs as Pinkertons, that is. As for actually finding jobs as Pinks…there we’ve utterly failed. Believe it or not, when a couple dusty saddle-bums stumble into a Pinkerton office intent on joining the payroll, they are not received with open arms. (Though when one of said saddle-bums tries to explain that he’s actually a “top-rail deducifier” thanks to all the Sherlock Holmes stories he’s studied on, the pair is greeted warmly indeed—with gales of laughter.)

As if this wouldn’t be tiresome enough, it took us days and sometimes weeks to reach each fresh humiliation. Hailing from Kansas Grangers as we do, we were raised to view the Southern Pacific as Satan, the Union Pacific as Lucifer, and the Central Pacific as Beelzebub—different names for the same great evil—and my brother refused to bankroll the bastards with even a penny from our meager kitty.

Conscience rarely comes without a cost, though, and in this case it was paid mainly by our backsides. After leaving the Bar VR, we journeyed first west across Montana, then southeast through Idaho, all of it on horseback. By the time we were skirting around Bear Lake into Utah, my saddlewarmer was bruised black as an anvil.

Now, this wasn’t just Utah Territory we were riding into—it was Mormon territory. And given the clashes of years past, a couple drifting Gentiles like ourselves could hardly assume we’d be welcome…or even tolerated. So we kept to ourselves as we wound down through the Bear Lake Valley, steering clear of the main towns thereabouts.

I didn’t mind missing out on the saggy, smelly, lice-infested boardinghouse beds we’d have no doubt found in places like Pickleville and Fish Haven. Once you’ve been on a few cattle drives, camping out seems like a positive luxury when there’s no night herding to do and no belly cheater waking you at the crack of dawn banging a stew pot over your head. And the Bear Lake Valley made “roughing it” none-too-rough, what with its well-worn trails, ample trees for shade and tinder, and teeming cutthroat trout practically fighting each other for the honor of gracing your frying pan.

In short, the place was Eden without the serpent…or Eve. Or so it seemed.

Our first clue that all was not paradisical came as we rounded the southwestern corner of the lake. Just off the trail was a rotten, falling-down fence and, beyond it, what might have been a field of alfalfa before weeds and grass were allowed to overtake it. It wasn’t long before we spotted an abandoned farmhouse—and then another soon after with its own fields choked with wildflowers and thistle.

This was beautiful country, good for grazing cattle or raising crops either or, and it was a puzzlement to me that farming folk should ever give it up.

“There ain’t never been no Indian troubles up thisaway…have there?” I asked my brother, eyeing the tree line nervously.

Of course, the only “Indian troubles” these days are suffered by the Indians alone, and they run to starvation and disease rather than raiding and killing. Yet the bloodshed isn’t so far behind us that the thought of braves on the warpath can’t still chill the blood.

“Nothin’ but Shoshone and Ute ’round these parts…provided you could still find ’em. Friendly ones, they are.” Old Red leaned out from his saddle and spat. “Too friendly for their own good, I expect.”

“Well, then…where’d everybody go?”

“What you really mean is why’d they go. And you know what I say to that.”

I did indeed. I’d heard him say it often enough. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence”—my brother’s favorite quote from his hero, your famous countryman, Sherlock Holmes. Most drovers want to be Charles Goodnight or Buffalo Bill Cody if they have any ambition at all, but Old Red’s always been a contrarian (or just plain contrary, anyway). The Holmes of the Range—that’s what he’s set out to be.

We were to rendezvous with ol’ Holmes shortly, as it turned out…and be in need of his particular brand of wisdom, as well.

As we were passing our third deserted farm, the sun was sinking below the mountains behind us, and my brother made a most sensible (though not entirely welcome) decision. We would spend the night in the abandoned homestead visible just off the trail.

It felt a little like a violation, a desecration even, settling into someone else’s house. They hadn’t been gone long—no more than a couple years, Old Red judged by the cobwebs and dust and dry rot—and they’d left some of their furniture behind. A table and chairs hewn from local pine, a bed with a finely crafted headboard of mahogany, even a battered foot-pump organ. I half-expected the rightful occupants to barge in any minute, slack-jawed to find a couple presumptuous cowpokes lighting up kindling in their fireplace.

Yet I might actually have welcomed the intrusion, provided nobody felt the need to shoot us. Old Red’s far from the chattiest man around—very, very far—and whatever topics of conversation we had to chew over had been gnawed down to the bone weeks before. Fresh company would’ve been mightily appreciated. As it was, we had to rely on the old, dog-eared variety: my brother’s stack of Holmes stories.

Old Red requested a rereading of A Study in Scarlet, no doubt because it takes as its backdrop a bloody feud betwixt Utah Mormons. I obliged him, like I always do (my brother, you’ll recall, being unable to tell A from Z unless they’re in a cattle brand).

Round about the spot in the story where Doc Watson gets to writing about “The Country of the Saints,” my brother interrupted me—with his snores. So I put down the magazine I’d been orating from and closed my eyes myself.

Even stretched out there on the floor by the hearth (for the bed frame had no mattress) I was more warm and snug than I’d been any night in weeks. Yet sleep didn’t come. I still had that creepy feeling we didn’t belong there and that someone might come along to confirm it, loudly and forcefully, at any time.

After what seemed like hours, I finally drifted off to the Land of Nod—only to be yanked back to the Land of Here and Now by a noise outside.

Something was moving in the woods a stone’s throw from the front door. And not just moving in it. Crashing through it and tearing it down, by the sound of things.

“Hey,” I groaned groggily.

“I hear it,” my brother said, sounding so crisp and alert he might’ve been polishing off a pot of coffee at high noon.

We lay there a moment, listening to the creaking of tree limbs and the shush-shush of movement through the brush.

“Big,” I said.

“Yup.”

“Bear?”

“Maybe.” Old Red sat up, ear cocked. “Horses ain’t spooked.”

There was a snap outside, loud.

“Yet,” I said.

My brother reached down for the Winchester lying next to him on the floor.

“Better have us a look.”

Together, we crept to the nearest window and peeked outside warily, careful not to create silhouettes against the ember-glow from the fireplace. Mighty good targets, those would make. And if what we were hearing outside was horses—from a party of the faithful come to root out Gentile squatters, let’s say—targets we could well be.

Our own ponies were stabled in a dilapidated barn about a quarter mile off, and that’s where we directed our squints first. My brother and I were safe enough from bear, puma, or wolf long as we stayed inside, but we couldn’t just cower there while something big and hungry made a midnight snack of our mounts. We might yet have to venture out for a face-to-face with who-knew-what.

There was just enough moonlight to make out a shimmying in the trees near the barn, branches dancing in the half-darkness. The movement was high up—nine or ten feet off the ground. Beyond it, a single star flickered in the nighttime sky.

Only it couldn’t have been a star. It was too low on the horizon, not in the sky at all.

Then I saw the other star—another perfect pinprick of yellow light, right beside the first. And that’s when I knew what they were.

Glowing eyes, at least a foot apart. Eyes that were staring straight at us.

“Sweet Jesus,” I gasped. “If that’s a hoot owl, it’s got a wingspan as wide as Texas.”

“Ain’t no owl,” Old Red growled, and he moved to the door, threw it open, and stepped outside.

I came out behind him, Colt in hand, as he took aim.

The lights jerked downward, then disappeared entirely. There was another rustle of quick movement in the trees, and then…nothing. No eyes, no motion, no sound for the next two minutes.

“Well,” Old Red finally sighed, “we’d best pass the rest of the night out with the horses. Just in case.”

I looked back wistfully at our cozy spots by the fire.

“Can’t we bring ’em in here with us?”

My brother just went inside and started gathering up his bedroll.

We split the hours till dawn into watches, but we needn’t have bothered. You try sleeping with only a few planks of knotty, warped barn wood between you and some monstrous whatsis stalking around in the dark. Not that we ever heard the beast come back. But one visit was more than enough to keep me jumping at every cricket chirp all the way to daybreak.

“Well?” I said as my brother and I finally stepped out into the orange-yellow light of early morning.

“Well, what?”

Old Red moved off toward the trees, eyes down, scanning the ground.

“Well, what was that thing?”

“I have no earthly idea.”

“You got an unearthly one?”

My brother glanced back just long enough to shoot me a scowl. “You know I don’t believe in spooks.”

“Me neither…usually. And last night sure as hell wasn’t usual.”

Old Red knelt and picked a broken branch out of the underbrush. It was maybe three feet long and still studded with fresh, green pine needles. One end was splintered, and in the middle was a notched groove cut into the bark, as if the branch had been torn down by one powerful, clutching claw.

My brother looked up, then pointed at something above him.

A broken stub stuck out from a pine tree a dozen feet up.

“Spooks don’t tear down tree limbs.”

“All right, granted,” I said. “So what does?”

“‘It is a capital mistake to—’”

“Oh, for chrissakes!” I spat. “You wanna make a capital mistake? Quote Sherlock Holmes to me after I spent the night lyin’ around waitin’ to be eaten by the bogeyman.”

Old Red put down the branch and moved farther into the brush. “Ain’t no such thing as…hel-lo.”

He stopped cold.

“What is it?”

“Tracks.”

“What kind?” I asked, already feeling relieved. If it steps with paw, hoof, or foot, my brother’ll know what it is. I’ve seen him identify not just a cow’s breed but its age, weight, and brand from one long stare at the pies it left behind.

“Never seen the likes of this,” Old Red announced. He started off again, still crouching low. “Bogeyman tracks, maybe.”

“Har har. Thanks a lot,” I grumbled, following him into the forest to have a look for myself. I assumed he was guying me…till I laid eyes on those tracks.

There were two footprints pressed into the soft, mossy sod beneath the tree, right where we’d spotted those eyes shining in the night. They were side by side, a right and a left, plain as day. What wasn’t plain, though—not plain at all—was what could have made them.

Whatever it was, it had big pads and claws, like a bear. But there was something stretching from toe to toe, mashing the earth down into little humps. Webbing, it looked like, as one might see on a duck or frog or beaver—a water-critter.

“There’s more over thisaway,” Old Red said. “Coming and going.”

He stopped, but his gaze kept on moving along the forest floor, following a trail I was blind to. Soon he was staring straight into the sun streaming down through the trees.

To the east. Toward the lake.

Old Red started off again.

“Uhhh…shouldn’t we be movin’ along?” I called after him. “Salt Lake City ain’t gonna come to us, y’know.”

“Salt Lake City ain’t goin’ nowhere,” my brother muttered.

I sighed, then started after him—but only after dashing back to the barn to collect the Winchester.

It was a comfort having it at hand, for the deeper we went into the woods, the stronger the feeling grew that we weren’t alone. And we weren’t, of course: There were chipmunks and squirrels and songbirds all around us. But they went on about their business in their usual jumpy, oblivious way, whereas the presence I sensed was steady, quiet, watchful.

And purely imaginary…or so I tried to tell myself.

It wasn’t long before the lake came into view ahead of us. I hadn’t spied much more than the occasional dimple in the sod or trampled twig after the first set of prints, but that changed but good as we approached the shoreline. There were tracks in the bank so deep and well-defined even a bottom-rail, bat-blind sign-reader like myself couldn’t miss them.

One set led one-two, one-two straight into the water.

The other led out of the water.

“You know what I just realized?” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Whatever made them prints…it walk son two feet.”

Old Red shook his head sadly, as if—through my keen powers of observation and deducification—I’d just surmised that mud is brown and water wet.

“You don’t say,” he mumbled.

The tracks ran parallel to a big, rotten cottonwood that looked like it had toppled into the lake a half dozen years before, and my brother stepped up onto the trunk and walked along it, using it as a pier. The water was crystal clear back toward the bank, but the farther out Old Red went, the more it deepened and darkened until you couldn’t see what might be beneath the surface.

The tree dipped under my brother’s weight, tilting farther forward with his each step until the water was swirling over his feet.

“You wanna know what else I just realized?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I wanna get the hell outta here.”

“What are you still doing here, then?” a voice boomed out behind me.

I jumped so high I was wearing the sky for a hat.

“Easy,” the voice warned when my feet touched ground again. “Put the rifle down and turn around…slow.”

I did as I was told and found myself facing a big-boned, potbellied man of perhaps fifty-five years. He had a long, white, wild beard and even wilder eyes, which were glaring at me, incidentally, over the leveled barrels of a scattergun.

“You,” he said to Old Red. “Keep your hands where I can see ’em.”

“Ain’t got nothin’ to do with ’em anyways,” my brother said.

We’d left our gun belts back at the barn.

“Listen, mister—you wanna do us all a favor?” I said. “Point that cannon of yours at the water. Cuz you won’t be gettin’ any trouble out of me and my brother…but that there lake I ain’t so sure about.”

Rip Van Winkle didn’t oblige me. He was about thirty yards off—far enough that a shotgun blast might not kill me outright, but close enough that he couldn’t miss if he tried.

“Oh, ho. Seen something, have we?” he said, and for the first time I noticed a hint of brogue in his voice.

“We seen something, all right—something that come outta the lake, from the look of things.”

“You got a notion as to what our something mighta been?” Old Red asked. He was still balanced precariously on the end of that log with dark water lapping up around his ankles.

“At the moment, I’m more interested in who you are,” Rip told him.

“Amlingmeyer’s the name,” I said. “Otto and Gustav—Big Red and Old Red to our friends.” I grinned as genially as a preacher passing out how-do-you-dos at an ice cream social. “That could include you, provided you point your artillery some other direction.”

The old man tightened his grip on his shotgun. “Your kind and my kind can never be friends.”

“Now, now—let’s not be so hasty,” I said (hastily). “I’ve known cats and dogs that come to be bosom chums, by and by.”

“Which ‘kind’ is it you’re thinkin’ of, mister?” my brother asked.

“What do you think? Gentiles and Mormons.”

“Oh. Those kinds.” I did my best to look guileless. “And which might you be?”

Rip narrowed his eyes. “Which are you?”

Never in my schooling days (all five years of them) had I ever faced a quiz as weighty as this. Stand up and spell “danger” with a j, and the worst you’ll get is laughed at. But answer wrong now, and the punishment might be a bellyful of buckshot.

I peeked over at my brother, hoping he’d Holmesed out which faith it was Rip seemed to hold so dear. As you so well know, it’s amazing the things Old Red can tell about a fellow from little more than a quick glimpse and some careful cogitation. A man’s trade, his home life, his hopes and fears—my brother can see it all in a hangnail and a dirty collar. I’ve often told him he could clean up as a sideshow fortune teller if only he didn’t have his heart set on detectiving.

And yet all I got from him now was a shake of the head.

I couldn’t bullshit our way out of this. I’d have to gamble on honesty.

I hate when that happens.

“I suppose we’d be Gentiles, as Mormons reckon it. We was raised Lutheran, but ain’t neither of us seen the inside of a church in a coon’s age.” I looked heavenward, palms pressed together as in prayer. “Sorry ’bout that. No hard feelin’s…I hope.”

Apparently, He was in a forgiving mood: Rip lowered his scattergun and favored us with a grin wide e. . .