~ Old Murders Never Die ~

by

Marja McGraw

The cowboy’s piercing blue eyes looked deeply into my own blue eyes, watching me. I felt like a bug under a microscope, but I maintained my demeanor and stared right back. He appeared to be tall, but realistically, he was sitting astride a big black horse. His hands rested comfortably on the saddle horn. He was older, maybe in his early fifties, and had weathered skin—almost leathery looking. His hair was long and dark brown with some graying and in need of a good shampoo, and he wore a cowboy hat that had seen better days. His jeans and blue and black plaid shirt looked old and dirty. If I were to be fair, maybe they were just dusty from riding. My eyes wandered back down to the face of the horse, and along the way I noticed the cowboy was wearing a gun belt and gun—not an encouraging sight. I immediately shot my glance back to his face.

I could see he was studying my appearance, too, looking me up and down. I couldn’t help wondering what was going through his mind.

I swallowed hard, before I spoke. “Are you a ghost? Are you my imagination? No, you can’t be. And a ghost horse wouldn’t leave hoof prints. My imagination couldn’t disable our Jeep either.”

“No, it couldn’t.” I’d always figured that if Bubba could talk, his voice would be a deep baritone like this guy’s. His long bushy mustache quivered at the corner of his mouth.

Before anything else could happen, the cowboy pulled on the left rein on the horse and turned around to leave.

“Wait,” I called.

He didn’t acknowledge me, and the horse and rider walked away. He slapped the horse’s rear end and picked up speed. I could hear him laughing as he rode away. I was pretty sure he was probably laughing at my stupidity for asking if he was a ghost, and yet the laughter didn’t sound quite real. Or could the quality of the sound be my overactive imagination?

Where were Pete and Bubba? Shouldn’t they have tried to rescue me from the figure that was now disappearing in the distance? I watched until he was out of sight before turning back to the store. I didn’t want him to stop and turn to shoot me in the back, if that was his intent.

“Pete? Where are you?” He and Bubba had both disappeared, and they hadn’t left the store.

“Sandi! We’re stuck in here.”

Pete’s muffled voice came from the rear of the store.

“Pete?”

“I need you to push from that side of the door while I pull. The door is stuck. Your dumb mutt slammed it shut when he tried to beat me out of this room.”

I started to laugh. No wonder my heroes hadn’t come to help me. Of course, the cowboy hadn’t done anything. I guess I hadn’t really needed saving.

I pushed on the door with all my might. It wouldn’t budge. “Are you pulling?” I asked.

“Of course, I was.”

“Was?”

“The handle fell off on this side, so now I’m not sure what to do.”

“Are there any windows in there?”

“Oh. Yeah. I’ll meet you behind the building.”

I could hear him pounding on the boards that covered the window as I walked out the front door. By the time I reached the back of the building, Pete was saying words I hadn’t heard lately and climbing out of the opening. He was doing a lot of mumbling, too.

“How are we going to get Bubba out?” I asked. The window was too high for him to jump through.

“Don’t worry about that mutt. I piled some things in front of the window. He can climb out if he wants to.” Pete walked back around to the front of the store, not worrying in the least about my big canine cutie.

Pete and Bubba are somewhat territorial about me. It’s been like that since Bubba first showed up on my back porch one night. For the most part they get along, but every once in awhile they make me feel like I’m supposed to choose between them. That’s not going to happen. They’ll just have to keep doing their best to get along.

I followed Pete around to the front of the store when Bubba failed to climb out the window.

“You’re going to have to kick that door in.” I gave Pete my best no-nonsense look, which he knew meant I wasn’t budging on this one.

Giving first me, and then the door, a disgusted look, he tried to kick it in. The wood splintered and his leg went right through the door. Carefully pulling his leg out, he seemed to be aiming when he kicked the door right next to the latch, and it flew open.

Bubba was nowhere to be seen.

“Pete? Where could he be?”

Woof.

I turned to find the dog standing behind us, wagging his tail. Embarrassed that I hadn’t trusted Pete’s judgment about Bubba finding his way out of the room, I turned to apologize. Pete had already returned to the storeroom.

“Come in here, Sandi. This is kind of interesting.”

Walking in, I could see that at one time there had been food in the storeroom. Most of that was gone, of course, but there were still some household goods. There were old-fashioned kitchen utensils along with some pots and pans. A wood-burning stove sat in the corner, with a tea kettle still sitting on top. I picked up a wooden tray that held some vintage sewing needles and pins. They were rusted and would probably fall apart if I picked them up, but I could certainly see what they were.

An old-fashioned rotary washing machine sat in the other corner. Pieces of a wooden crate had fallen on the floor around it. Apparently someone in town had ordered it, but the general store had never delivered it. There were wooden crates and kegs scattered around the room, and I wondered if they contained nails or something like that. Pete picked up a rusted saw.

“This town is beginning to creep me out, Pete. Why did these people leave so suddenly? I wonder if we’ve wandered into a place where a disease like smallpox sent people running. I hope we’re not being exposed to something.”

“If anything was making the rounds here, it’s long gone. You don’t need to worry.”

“If you say so.” I sincerely hoped Pete was right. It was simply too weird that these people just up and walked away from town. It looked like everyone had left their things behind. It was kind of walking into an episode of the Twilight Zone.

That thought took me back to my recent visitor. I fished a chocolate candy bar out of my pocket and carefully peeled off the wrapper. I needed something to bolster me before telling Pete what happened. “Uh, Pete, I should tell you that I had an encounter with our friendly neighborhood ghost while you were stuck in here.” I quickly took a big bite and started letting the candy melt in my mouth.

His head whipped around so fast that I was afraid he’d hurt himself. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. I walked out to look at the next building, and the cowboy and his horse were standing outside, watching us. Or waiting for us—I don’t know what he was doing. He was actually kind of spooky, but he didn’t do or say anything threatening.” I crammed more of the sweet brown candy into my mouth.

“You seem to be taking this awfully casually, at least for you. Tell me exactly what happened.” Pete turned back to the kitchen items that he’d been examining. He was acting way too calm.

“Nothing actually happened, except I said he couldn’t be a ghost because a ghost couldn’t have disabled the Jeep, and he agreed with me.”

“He spoke to you?”

“All he did was agree with me. That was it. Then he turned the horse around and left.”

I could see Pete’s back stiffen. “I should have been with you. Maybe we could have gotten some answers if I’d been there.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he would have ridden off into the sunset at a faster pace.” I snagged two bites of chocolate at once.

“Sunset?” Pete glanced at his watch. “It’s only nine o’clock in the morning.”