in the chest. The kids, a boy and a girl around ten or twelve years old, were about forty feet away from him, standing in front of a building that leaned over at a severe angle. Bo couldn’t see them that well because of the uncertain light. He started toward them and said, “Hey. Hey, you kids—”
They disappeared.
With the thickening shadows it was hard to tell, but it seemed to Bo that the children were there one second and gone the next. But that was impossible, of course. He was too hardheaded to believe in ghosts. He loped forward, looking on both sides of the street for them.
But they were gone.
Bo wasn’t the sort of hombre who cussed very often. If he had been, he would have let out a few choice words right then. Instead he tucked the Winchester under his arm, fished a lucifer out of his pocket, and snapped it into life with his thumbnail. The glare from the match lit up the dirt as Bo lowered the flame toward the street. He was looking for footprints, proof that the two children he’d seen had really been there.
He didn’t find any.
Duster lived up to its name; the dust in the street was thick, and Bo didn’t see how anybody could have walked through it without leaving some sign. He grimaced as the flame reached his fingers. He dropped the match and ground it out with his boot heel.
“You kids come out,” he called softly. “Nobody’s going to hurt you, I promise.”
There was no sound except the soft whistling of the wind that had sprung up.
That was the explanation, he thought. The wind had wiped out any tracks the kids left. Sure, that had to be it. The children were small and wouldn’t leave deep prints in the dust. It wouldn’t take long for a stiff breeze like the one blowing now to blur them beyond recognition.
Bo wasn’t sure if he believed that or not, but it made a lot more sense than thinking those two youngsters were ghosts from the collapsed orphanage.
And yet, Reverend Ledbetter had insisted that the spirits of dead children came to him and tormented him. He seemed to believe it wholeheartedly. Bo had chalked that up to the guilt the old man felt, but what if—
No, he told himself. No what if. There were ghost towns scattered across the West, and Duster certainly qualified. But that didn’t mean they were populated by real ghosts, because there weren’t any such things.
Bo finished looking around the town, and by the time he got back to where he’d left Scratch and Ledbetter, night had settled down completely. “Find anything?” Scratch asked.
“Not a blessed thing,” Bo replied. He didn’t like lying to his partner, but he didn’t want Scratch to think he was losing his mind.
Ledbetter still slept. Bo and Scratch sat beside the fire and talked quietly for a while. The night was quiet except for the wind, which made the flames flicker and dance. Then a rumble sounded in the distance. Bo and Scratch both looked up, and Scratch said, “Thunder?”
“Sounded like it. Might come a little shower up in the mountains. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to flood down here again.”
Scratch looked around as the horses shifted nervously where they were tied with picket ropes to an old hitch rack about twenty feet away. “Somethin’s spooked those cayuses,” he said as he got to his feet with his Winchester. “I’ll take a look.”
“I saw a coyote earlier,” Bo said. “That’s probably what’s got them nervous. They must smell him.”
“Yeah.” Scratch walked toward the animals.
Before he got there he let out a startled yell and flung the rifle to his shoulder. He didn’t fire, though. Bo uncoiled from where he sat on the ground, drawing his Colt as he did so. “What is it?” he asked.
“I…I thought I saw somethin’,” Scratch said. “Over by the horses.”
“That coyote?”
“No.” Scratch hesitated. “It looked like…a couple of kids.”
Scratch’s shout had roused Ledbetter from sleep. The old man heard what Scratch said, and he shrieked, “They’re back! Oh, dear Lord, the children are back!”
There was no point in keeping anything from Scratch now. Bo told him what he’d seen earlier. “Yeah, a boy and a gal,” Scratch agreed. “No more’n twelve years old, either of ’em.”
Ledbetter moaned. “Those are the spirits that always appear to me. The girl’s name is Ruthie. The boy is Caleb. They died when the orphanage collapsed.”
“That don’t hardly seem possible,” Scratch insisted. “Folks don’t just get up and walk around when they’re dead. It ain’t natural.”
“Nothing is natural about this accursed town, my friend.” Ledbetter shuddered. “Nothing.”
A distant flicker of lightning to the north made Bo glance in that direction. Ledbetter noticed it too and whimpered, probably at the memories that sight must arouse. No doubt those were the first warning signs the inhabitants of Duster had had on that night months earlier: the rumble of thunder like the sound of distant drums, and fingers of light clawing their way across the ebony skies.
“God is about to visit His final judgment on Duster,” Ledbetter went on. His voice rose on a note of hysteria. “You should leave, my friends. Leave while you can still save your immortal souls!”
The ragged old preacher leaped to his feet and began dashing back and forth, howling like a madman. Scratch said, “Dadgummit!” and tried to grab him, but Ledbetter was too fast. Scratch missed. Bo moved to get in the old man’s way, but Ledbetter darted past him too—then tried to stop as a dark shape loomed around the corner of the building, blocking his path. Ledbetter bounced off of whatever it was, stumbled, shrieked, and fell to his knees.
This was no apparition, Bo knew. Ledbetter had run into something—or someone—solid. Bo reached for his gun, but the metallic ratcheting of a revolver being cocked made him freeze.
“Hold it, both of you hombres,” a deep, gravelly voice rasped. “Keep your hands away from them hoglegs.”
Several more men came around the building. Starlight glinted on the barrels of the guns they held. Bo couldn’t make out many details about them, but he felt the menacing undercurrent in the air.
“No need to go waving guns around,” Bo said in a calm, level voice. “We’re not looking for any trouble.”
Ledbetter lay huddled on the ground, whimpering. The first gunman jerked his Colt toward the preacher and asked, “What the hell’s wrong with this old coot?”
“He’s just scared,” Scratch said. “There ain’t no need to hurt him.”
“Scared o’ what?”
Ledbetter looked up and sobbed, “The Lord’s vengeance! Save yourselves! Flee while you can!”
One of the other armed men said, “He’s loco, Tarver. You’d be doin’ him a favor if you put a bullet in his head.”
The leader turned sharply
