* * *
Winters and Piper Crane rode southwestward on Alkali Flat, lighted by a quarter-moon. Winters felt himself caught in a spell. A strange lure led him on—to what adventure he had no foretaste.
Piper drew a flute from beneath his cutaway. “Like a bit of music, Winters?”
Winters broke into a sweat. Music! On his last ride across Alkali Flat, he’d heard music. He swallowed hard. “Sure, let’s have music.”
Piper began to play.
A voice hailed them. “Ahoy, there! Who goes?”
Piper lowered his flute. “Servants of King Solomon.”
A rider swept toward them, a cloak flying out behind. Bugler Horn!
Winters wheeled his horse around to Piper’s left. Both men were in front of him then.
Bugler jolted up. “Officer Winters, you should ride before us.
“Of course,” said Piper. “As King Solomon’s messenger, you should ride ahead and announce our coming.”
“I’ll ride behind,” said Winters shaken by fear, but sustained by rising anger. “Being a lawman, I don’t turn my back on lunatics.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Bugler. “What have we here? This is mutiny.”
“This is discretion,” said Winters, fingers touching gun. Discretion warned him to draw and get it over with. Overwhelming curiosity restrained him.
“Officer Winters is to be commended,” Piper said craftily. “But time is running out. Follow us, Winters, to King Solomon’s throne. Ride hard, too, or we shall outdistance you.”
They dug with spurs, and their horses pounded away. Winters, cursing himself for a great fool, raced after them, determined to get under this crazy business.
Meanwhile, he was scared stiff. Sweat popped, and his face began to sting.
In fifteen minutes they arrived. King Solomon sat upon a rocky throne, a lantern on a ledge beside him, a corpse—Lightning Latimer—stretched at his feet, pointing south.
Death extended its cold hand toward Winters. It had never been closer.
“A new messenger, O Great One!” shouted Piper Crane, as their horses plowed up.
But immediately Piper and Bugler swung and headed back. Winters had wondered how it would come, but he had anticipated this maneuver. He was caught in a three-cornered squeeze. Piper and Bugler were lifting their guns, and Solomon was fitting an arrow to a vicious-looking bow.
But Winters regarded himself as no novice. He giggled savagely. His horse leaped, and bullets cut past where he’d been. Guns roared furiously then, and smoke and dust rolled across Alkali Flat.
* * * *
Doc Bogannon sat alone in his saloon. He’d heard distant gunfire, and it boded ill. He held a letter, left with him at midnight by a stage driver. A sense of horror gripped him. He drank, while sweat beaded. Chances were, he’d never see Winters again.
His batwings swung inward slowly.
“Winters!”
Doc rushed forward and helped Winters to a chair, and Winters slumped down, an arrow stuck through his back muscles, both ends protruding, like a needle segmented through a pincushion.
“A drink, Doc, and get that thing out of my back.”
Bogie brought whiskey. “Winters, I never expected to see you again. Why didn’t you listen to me?”
Winters drank slowly. “Now, Doc, cut off one end of that arrow, notch it good and tie cotton around it. Wet it with iodine and pull it through. I may yell, but don’t let that stop you.”
Bogie followed instructions. Winters didn’t scream, but he groaned until both he and Bogie were sick.
Bogie forced a drink into him, and Winters at last calmed.
“What happened, Winters?”
“They was spooks, Doc. That Piper and his buddy, and a loony they called King Solomon.”
Winters had another drink. He sleeved his face. “I was a fool, Doc, to let myself get caught on Alkali Flat, at night at that.”
Doc agreed with him. Then he remembered Winters’ letter. “That came at midnight, Winters. Brazerville stage.”
Winters looked at it, blinking, too dizzy to read. “Read it, Doc.”
Bogie opened it and read. Deputy Marshal Lee Winters, Forlorn Gap. Look out for three homicidal maniacs, escapees from Fincastle Tombs. Believed to be hiding in some ghost town. Hugo Landers, Marshal.
Bogie stared at Winters. “Scares me to think about it.”
“Yeah.” Winters grimaced from pain. “Nice of old Huggie to let us know, though.”
FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
Real Western, December 1952
Deputy Marshal Lee Winters had almost completed what he regarded as a good day; he’d collected bounty on a wanted bozo without having to shoot him. When a man felt as cheerful as Winters did right now, riding home by way of Alkali Flat wasn’t a bad prospect.
It was a haunted trail, but there was a bright moon—a natural handicap to ghosts. Lee figured that visibility was good for a quarter-mile, especially as to anything big enough to be dangerous. With that margin, and a fast, rangy horse like Cannon Ball, he could ride off and leave anything behind—except possibly a spook.
But he’d made only five miles when Winters wished he hadn’t come this way. At night, Alkali Flat was a weird place. By day, not so much as a horned toad could be seen there; alkali spread white and hot into a vast wasteland. But at night it had voices—wolf howls; keelings of owls, flat, staccato yaps of foxes, and most terrifying of all—mournful cries of humans.
This night, however, the wandering winds bore no voices. Yet that in itself was strange; a hush suggested that something of unusual character was abroad, that creatures which ordinarily made Alkali Flat ghostly with their plaints had stilled in curiosity, or fear. Then Winters saw what might have been an explanation. On his right, too distant for identification, but near enough to be clearly seen, moved a horse and its rider. They moved as if they’d been his own horse-and-rider shadow, no faster, no slower. He heard no hoof beats; their muffled sounds were carried away on a southwest wind. Appearance of another rider, Lee reasoned, should have been no more mysterious than his own presence there; but he was worried nevertheless. To keep a watchful eye, he turned sideways, right foot loose in its stirrups, left hand to saddlehorn.
Though he was scared, he was not so alert as he should have been; he realized that when an unearthly noise broke loose on his left and Cannon Ball leaped as a terrific spring triggered free.
Winters was flung backwards. He hung on by hom and strap, head down, with flying hoofs knocking alkali into his face.
Cannon
