Population: Four…but always room for more, if you’re of the right frame of mind.
Yours faithfully,
O. A. Amlingmeyer
Logan, Utah
July 4, 1893
The Ghosts of Duster
William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone
“All I’m sayin’ is that I never promised to marry the gal. Hell, you know me better’n that, Bo! Do I look like the sort o’ fella who’d want to get himself tied down by apron strings?”
Bo Creel glanced over at his best friend and said, “You look like a fella who’s damned lucky to be alive. That lady’s brother had a shotgun, you know.”
Scratch Morton grinned. “I know. For a minute I figured I’d be pickin’ buckshot outta my backside until next week.”
The two men rode along the base of a ridge in West Texas, being careful not to skylight themselves. They had lived long, eventful lives on the frontier and knew that although most of the hostiles were either on reservations or had gone south into Mexico, it was still possible to run across a band of renegade Apaches in this vast, rugged area west of the Pecos.
Bo and Scratch were of an age and had been best friends for decades, ever since they’d met as youngsters during Texas’s war for independence some forty-odd years earlier. They’d been on the drift for almost that long. They didn’t think of themselves as saddle tramps; they were just too restless by nature to stay in one place for too long. Although they had been just about everywhere in the West, they liked to wander back to their home state of Texas every now and then. Once a Texan, always a Texan—born, bred, and forever.
Scratch was a handsome, silver-haired dandy in a fringed buckskin jacket and cream-colored Stetson. The twin Remington revolvers on his hips had ivory handles. Bo, on the other hand, looked like a preacher in a sober black suit and flat-crowned black hat. His Colt had plain walnut grips.
The weapons were similar in one respect, though: they were well used. Bo and Scratch had a habit of running into trouble. Scratch was just a natural-born hell-raiser, and Bo couldn’t help but stick up for folks who were outnumbered and outgunned.
They were in El Paso when Scratch made the acquaintance of a comely maiden lady. One thing led to another, and although the lady was still comely, she wasn’t quite a maiden any longer. She hadn’t made any complaints about that change in her status, but her proddy, overly protective older brother did, so Bo and Scratch had left the border city rather hurriedly.
Since then they had spent a couple of days riding east and were still a long ways from getting anywhere. This part of Texas took awhile to ride across. Bo had done pretty well in a poker game before their hasty exit from El Paso, so they had enough money to buy supplies. The problem was finding a settlement where they could pick up some more provisions.
“If I remember right,” Bo mused, “there’s a little town not too far from here. Name of Duster, I think. We ought to be able to buy a few things there.”
“I hope so,” Scratch said. “Otherwise we’re gonna get mighty tired of eatin’ jackrabbit by the time we get to San Antonio.”
“Tired of it, maybe, but at least we won’t starve to death.”
The ridge was to the north, on their left hand. Beyond it rose a range of jagged mountains, the sort of peaks that jutted up out of the desert with little or no warning in this part of the country. To the south swept a vast, brown, semiarid plain that ran all the way to the Mexican border. A few waterholes were located along the base of the ridge, Bo recalled; otherwise this was mighty dry country.
They rode on, and as it became late afternoon, Scratch asked, “How far’d you say it was to this Duster place?”
“Ought to be there any time now,” Bo replied.
“Then shouldn’t we be seein’ smoke from the chimneys?”
Bo rubbed his jaw and frowned. “Yeah, you’d think so. Maybe no one’s cooking right now.”
“I was hopin’ for a nice hot supper, followed by a cold beer.”
“Well, don’t give up hope just yet. Maybe I’m wrong about how far it is. I’ve never been there, just heard hombres talking about the place.”
A few minutes later, though, the settlement came into view. Bo and Scratch reined their mounts to a halt and stared at it in surprise.
Or rather, at what was left of it.
Some sort of catastrophe had happened here, that much was obvious. A number of the buildings had been reduced to flattened, scattered piles of lumber and debris. Other structures leaned at crazy angles. Only a handful of buildings were upright and relatively intact. At the northern edge of town, nearest the ridge, was a huge mound of bricks and lumber. It looked like a large building had collapsed in on itself.
“Good Lord A’mighty,” Scratch said. “What in blazes happened here?”
Bo’s eyes narrowed as he studied the landscape both north and south of the ruined settlement. “Look yonder,” he said, pointing. “Below that notch in the ridge.”
The roughly V-shaped gap he indicated had a deep gully below it, running arrow-straight toward the town. Scratch frowned at it and then said, “That ain’t natural, is it?”
Bo shook his head. “I don’t think so. Looks to me like there must’ve been a mighty big thunderstorm in the mountains. The rain all washed down behind that ridge and busted through at a narrow place. That was like a dam breaking. The flood carved out that gully and came thundering down until it smashed right into the settlement.”
Stretch gave him a dubious glance. “You sayin’ it rained enough to do that, here in West Texas? Hell, this is one of the driest spots east of…well, east of hell.”
“Most of the time that’s true,” Bo agreed. “But every now and then it comes a big cloud. I’ve heard more than one story about folks drowning in the desert in flash floods.”
“Yeah, but only when they was dumb enough to make camp in an arroyo or some place like that.”
Bo pointed again. “When that ridgeline crumbled, the water formed an arroyo, and it was just like pointing a gun at Duster. I don’t know if everybody in town was killed in the flood. Seems unlikely. But the survivors must’ve packed up and left, because I sure don’t see anybody moving around.”
“No, the place looks to be deserted, all right,” Scratch admitted. He let out a groan. “So much for buyin’ supplies here.”
“Maybe we can find some the citizens left behind.”
“If we do, they’ll likely be rotted from bein’ water-logged. Folks probably took anything that was any good with them when they pulled up stakes.”
Bo knew that Scratch was probably right about that, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a look around. He said as much and jogged his horse into motion again toward the settlement.
Scratch rode alongside him and asked, “What do you reckon that pile o’ bricks was? Don’t see too many brick buildin’s out here. Mostly adobe and some lumber.”
“I don’t know, but it was a good-sized building. I’m surprised it collapsed. Looks like it should’ve been sturdy enough to stand up even to a flood.”
“Maybe a cyclone come along and flattened it later.”
“Maybe,” Bo said. “We’ll ride over and take a closer look after we—”
He stopped short and jerked back on the reins as a ragged scarecrow of a figure dashed out from behind one of the leaning buildings