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    The Ghost Saloon and Other Stories
    The Ghost Saloon and Other Stories
    The Ghost Saloon and Other Stories
    Ebook88 pages1 hour

    The Ghost Saloon and Other Stories

    By Zach Neal

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    About this ebook

    From the Ghost Saloon, to gold in them thar hills, and mysterious happenings on Marshall Mike Baxter's beat, great stories for lovers of the western genre.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZach Neal
    Release dateJan 16, 2015
    ISBN9781927957592
    The Ghost Saloon and Other Stories
    Author

    Zach Neal

    Zach Neal has been writing ever since he can remember. A forestry management professional, he prefers the outdoors to the office. He lives in the Halton Hills overlooking the Greater Toronto Area. He studied at the University of Toronto. Zach’s a single father of two healthy and energetic children. Zach’s boys, Aaron and Jason, mean everything to him.

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      Book preview

      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 978-1-927957-59-2

      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.

      Table of Contents

      Switch Play

      A Lesson for Us All

      Ghost Saloon

      About the Author

      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

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