the Ghost Saloon and Other Stories Read online

  The Ghost Saloon

  and

  Other Stories

  Zach Neal

  The Ghost Saloon and Other Stories

  Zach Neal

  Copyright 2014 Long Cool One Books

  Design: J. Thornton

  ISBN 978-1500973377

  ISBN-10 1500973378

  The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. The author’s moral rights to the proceeds of this work have been asserted.

  Switch Play

  Plodding Along on the Old Grey

  Mike Baxter plodded along on the old grey.

  The spur line he followed and its accompanying line of telegraph poles cut across the barren and sparsely populated dry lands, and then, up and over the line of grey-green mountains to the west.

  On the other side of those mountains lay a town, and in that town was, in no particular order, a saloon, a bed, a bath, a barber, and at this point he would be glad to see it.

  Buzzards soared overhead, drifting on the wind and not looking too interested.

  Millie, not over-burdened by the load of man, rifle and blanket, six-gun, canteen and Stetson, and not much else but what he stood up in, had her head up and was stepping fine.

  His boots were all right and that was important, and the six-gun had been fired a time or two and surely would snap again when called.

  That was all that really mattered some days. It was all a man really had to worry about, some days. Sure was hot. The thought didn’t even bring a smile anymore. It was hot as hell—hotter, some said. It was still early in the morning.

  They might be in for a long day, but there was good water ahead, marked on a map and everything these days, and Millie would be able to graze in about three miles or so.

  When he saw the box sticking up out of the creosote bushes and light brush by the side of the railway tracks, he didn’t think much of it, at first.

  It was just another box, abandoned by the side of the tracks. It looked like the kind of small crate dynamite was shipped in.

  ***

  “Whoa, girl.” Millie stood content, looking back over her shoulder as Mike dismounted.

  He dropped the reins where she stood.

  She was a good old girl, that one. He patted her neck and she looked at Mike with love in her eyes.

  He poured water into his hat and gave it to her first, before doing any other thing. If a man must dismount in Comanche country, not that it was so much these days…well, he might as well take care of one or two things first. Putting his hat back on wet was a pleasant shock to his overheated scalp.

  Mike stood away from the horse and enjoyed the luxury of relieving himself thoroughly, This was something he’d learned to appreciate after one particularly long chase several years ago. If you didn’t go when you had the chance, you might have to wait for a while, and not always under the most pleasant of circumstances. In that particular instance, he’d been the chasee and not the chasseur, as the French would say. The pursuers, more of them as there were, might have taken time out for it, possibly going in turns. He really wouldn’t care to speculate.

  In sheer desperation, bladder about to burst, he’d taken refuge in a small side canyon, and somehow they’d missed him and rode right on past.

  In spite of a bad case of shy kidneys that day, the relief had been a blessed one.

  He spat, listened to the insects and tiny rattle of dead twigs in the wind, and watched a small and colourful bird stick its head out of a hole in a tall, three-armed cactus. A cactus had many arms but rarely had more than one leg, as someone had once said.

  The bird regarded him in a cheerful fashion. It came out of the hole, fluttered up and sat on a small branch of mesquite for a moment. It sized him up. Then it flitted away into the shadows of the underbrush, which was thick along this section. It was comfortable with the presence of man and horse. Which meant exactly nothing, he supposed.

  Mike approached the box, dropped to his knees, and saw that the thing was all in one piece. There were no recent tracks around it. The sand around the base of the bush was smooth, hard, and streaked by the prevailing winds, which were generally from the southwest in this locale.

  Not that the wind didn’t go around full circle, over the course of days and weeks.

  The lid was securely nailed on. It was made of something very dense and hard, possibly ash by the number of nails that had bent over and been hammered flat. It could be oak, but it seemed too light and finely-grained to Baxter.

  Bending, he put his hands, one on each side of the long ways, and tried to pull it up on out of there.

  “Jesus.”

  His hands had slipped off. The box hadn’t even budged. Dynamite wouldn’t weigh that much, it couldn’t possibly. Stepping in close, he reached in carefully. There were one or two outcrops of prickly pear in there amongst the taller stems.

  “Holy.” Whatever it was, it was heavy.

  With a good grip, trying hard not put his back out, cautiously avoiding the sharp needles, Mike hauled the box up and over and out onto the sand.

  ***

  Not unnaturally, Mike was sort of curious as to what was in that box, and the faint sound that came when it hit was highly-suggestive.

  He up-ended it, struggling to roll and drag it further away from the brush by the side of the tracks.

  It was enough to get his mental juices flowing.

  He dragged it well back, ten or twenty feet or so. It’s just that trains were loud and it was kind of nerve-wracking to stand too close. Also, they came off the rails with depressing frequency, to hear the company tell it, sometimes apparently for no reason at all.

  Not that he expected a train to go by anytime soon. He stood by Millie for a moment and took down his canteen.

  His turn for a drink.

  “I wonder what’s in that there box, old girl.” Mike didn’t have the tools.

  With all the sand and gravel in this area, plus the sheer weight of the thing, it would be harder than hell to break open. Dynamite would work, and work well…but he didn’t have any, and didn’t think there was any in the box either. His mind chewed on the problem from both ends. If there was anything of value in there, it would be kind of interesting to see what it was; an obvious consideration.

  Just leaving it there didn’t seem too reasonable.

  On the other hand, getting it up on Millie would require the dead lift of a heavy and ungainly object onto the back of a generally-willing horse, but one that might have other ideas. She could start at the last minute, the box might fall. It might break his leg, making him unable to mount the animal. This might lead to ultimate dissolution. Mike wasn’t stupid, neither was he lazy. He was just a thoughtful sort.

  Also, he would be walking and the box would be riding. There was that.

  What bothered him most was that there was really only one thing that could make a box that small so heavy—no more than eight inches high, a foot wide and maybe somewhat less than a foot and a half long.

  Millie nickered softly, bringing her head around and nudging her man on the upper arm with the side of her head. She smacked her lips and butted his shoulder with her nose.

  His right arm came up and encircled her. He tousled her ear with his fingers. He gave Millie a little kiss on the neck.

  He cleared his throat and spat.

  “I think you may be right, old girl.”

  Baxter looked around. There were black clouds in the southeast, and the wind was coming from the same direction. He could bury it, and in a couple of hours, no one would ever find it again…including him, on second thought.

  It was a pretty little problem, that danged box.

  If he couldn’t ride, and if she couldn’t carry the box and him, and if he couldn’t just leave it there…his boots were good, but they weren’t exactly made for walking.

  One thing he did have, and that was sand.

  Another thing he had was time, and the third thing he had was two good hands. Mike heaved a bit of a sigh, as this complicated matters somewhat. He got down on hands and knees as close to the offending box as he could get. He set out to dig the most absolute minimum hole that he could.

  “One place looks as good as another.” Even so, he took a good hard look around so as to have an even chance of finding it again.

  He wrote with the stub of a pencil on the nearest telegraph pole, but it was ten yards off his line.

  He took the trouble to walk up the tracks a ways afterwards, and then came back. He wanted to see what the place looked like from somewhere else. He would be returning from the west. He made a mark on the side of the rail nearest his hastily scuffed-over hole. There would be no mistaking it. He signed it with an M and a B entwined, as the cattlemen said. Eleven normal paces at right angles to the track. He should end up just to the left of the two rounded clumps of mesquite. One white stone, soft and oval, with the letter M on the bottom, lay directly on top of the sand above the hole.

  The horse blew softly. Her head came up and she nibbled at a solitary green leaf, but left it on the branch, wet and with dark teeth marks on it.

  “You’re right.”

  The horse’s head came around.

  “There’s no way in hell I’m ever going to find that again.”

  Which, perhaps, was just as well.

  ***


  They were following the railway line up and over the saddle in the mountains, close country up there, where he had to ride only feet from the tracks and pull into the scrub when they heard one coming. Luckily the pass was only three miles up and over. The town lay not far ahead.

  Tying the mare to the rail in front of the Marshall’s Office, Mike stumped up onto the porch and opened the door. He was grateful for the cool shade after days on the trail, out in the wide open all the time. Even at night, you could get a windburn out there under some conditions.

  “Good morning.” The sign on the desk said Marshall Burton. “My name is Mike Baxter.”

  The person sitting there was a tall, gangling man in his late thirties, smooth and urbane of countenance and dressed in a very good suit. His feet, clad in shiny black boots stitched in white, were up on the end of his desk and his arms were up behind his head. There was a nice grey hat, narrower of brim than usual, hanging on the rack by the door.

  A woman sat off to one side of the front of the desk, slightly sideways on a spindle chair, and looking at the newcomer in unfeigned interest. There was something about her finery, the hat, the lace, the elegant curve of the ankles in the button boots as she sat with crossed legs. The overwhelming scent of the woman alone would have given her trade away, taken in combination with the heavy paint and the false eyelashes.

  He gave her a quick look and then started in on it. There was more under there than met the eye.

  Mike briefly explained the problem, as the Marshall regarded him soberly, asking a professional question or two along the way.

  “So where did you say this, ah, box, was?” Marshall Burton looked at the lady with an engaging grin, and then came back to Mike. “How far out?”

  It was almost as if the Marshall didn’t believe him.

  While it might qualify as public business, in fact a very interesting business to the general public, Baxter found the continued presence of the lady a bit troubling. Not that they couldn’t be old and trusted friends, one might concede.

  For all he knew they were just friends. It had happened before.

  He told them eight or nine miles out.

  “Right along there, it’s actually two sets of tracks.”

  The Marshall nodded understanding. The light inside the room was growing colder. There was definitely different weather on the way, the sky outside was now lowering with dull white-topped and grey-bottomed clouds. It might even rain.

  “One train going east, a heavy freight, pulls onto the north siding. It sits there and waits as long as necessary until the Westbound Express, the passenger train, goes through. Then they switch out, and continue on their way.” This held true for trains going either east or west.

  “The brush grows closer to the tracks there, right along that side.”

  They had lay-bys on either side of the saddle, down on the plains and in the Basin.

  “I guess I know more or less where that is.” The Marshall nodded at the lady.

  “Ah, pardon me, Ma’am…”

  “Oh. I’m sorry, Mister Baxter. This is Madame Lucille Dufour, a local resident.”

  Mike, hat in hand, bowed his head to the lady, noting the fine, clear grey eyes, leaving no doubt as to the quality or the spirit of the person within.

  “Anyway, my point is that the train would have to have been switched off of the main track, and then back again. Otherwise the box would be just too visible. They picked their spot very nicely.” The train might even have been slowed or stopped deliberately, whether or not a westbound express train was actually scheduled along that line at that particular moment. The gold went east, but coins went west to pay all those hungry miners. Trains went up and down that line every day.

  “Yes, but…how do you know it’s really gold?”

  “I don’t. It might not be. In which case no harm has been done. Other than wasting a little bit of the Marshall’s time.”

  Gold bars, gold coins, it all had a different sort of sound, in his estimation. Mike stood there politely, noting some professional honours, a diploma on the wall behind the man’s head. He couldn’t really read it from there. The Marshall’s eyes went far away. Someone on the train, employed by the company. That much was clear. Proving it was another thing, especially without information or any real evidence.

  The Marshall gasped, as if having suddenly thought of something. His feet came off the end of the desk and his hand shot out to a pile of newspapers on the left front corner. He quickly flipped through, looking for yesterday’s. It was low down inside the first few pages…

  He unfolded and then refolded it.

  “Have a look at this, Mister Baxter.” He handed a bemused Mike Baxter the paper folded in half with the news story in question showing front and center.

  “Gold Missing From Train: Big Mystery, Officials Not Speaking.” The dateline was San Francisco. Two days ago.

  The plan was clearly one of misdirection. Where had the gold actually gotten lost? Either at one end, or the other—or somewhere in the middle. That covered a lot of ground from east to west and therein lay the problem.

  Where would the authorities even start? At the ends and work their way to the middle, in all probability—starting with the train’s crew.

  Mike looked up. He’d been on the trail for days. It was the first he’d heard of it.

  “Assuming that box—and also assuming that’s what it is—well, I mean…it didn’t just fall off the train.”

  Lucille Dufour spoke up for the first time, her voice predictably low and husky and oddly compelling for all of that.

  “So you’re saying it might have been pushed.”

  The two men’s eyes met and then as one they looked at her.

  “Something like that. Which also means, ah, Ma’am, that someone will be coming along very soon now, looking for that, or a similar box.”

  Marshall Burton sat there biting his lip, tapping his fingers on the desk.

  “Hmn.” He chewed some more. “Hmn.”

  He would have to do something, and in all theory, he should do it bloody quick.

  “I’ll tell you what, Mister Baxter. You look like you could use a drink and a hot meal. Why don’t you let me send a quick telegram or two? For all we know they might’ve found it by now. If so, I haven’t heard nothing about it so far. But, ah, I’ll round up a couple of trustworthy men and the proper equipment.” He looked at his watch in speculation. “We’ll leave here at one o’clock on the dot. How would that suit you?”

  Baxter nodded at the quick and easy sense of it. While there had to be an inside man on the job, there would just as inevitably have to be someone on the outside. They would recover the gold, lay low, and the accomplice would just have to trust that they could stay out of trouble long enough to evade round-the-clock surveillance, escape…assume another identity, locate their accomplices, and collect their share.

  There must be some trust there, he thought. All of the accomplices would want their share. It would be a matter of waiting out the authorities, knowing you were under suspicion. The gang would have to have some discipline.

  He could see the sense in that. The thing might be very well planned.

  No doubt the good Marshall thought so too, as he was dashing off short sentences on an official telegraph form.

  “Yeah.” Burton thought about it for a second, and licked the tip of his pencil. “Well, yeah, it would have to be something like that. One o’clock then.”

  The Marshall stood up, paper in hand, and the men shook hands.

  Mike took a quick look around the room, bid a polite goodbye to the lady, who also rose now, as if it was time she must be going.

  With a glance at his own watch, he stepped out onto the blazing hot street and took Millie’s reins in his hand.

  The girl didn’t come out immediately. He could only stand there looking around for so long.

  There was a diner two doors down on the opposite side, with fresh oil on the siding and cheerful gingham curtains on the heavily-leaded but large front windows. It was a very small town, as the Marshall had said, and it was as good a place as any.