Ghost Runner

A Reed Haddok Western

Tom Whatley

• Publisher: Sunstone Press
• Year: 2003
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781611394054
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Westerns
• Index: Literature

Ghost Runner

A REED HADDOK WESTERN

TOM WHATLEY

The events, people, and incidents in this story are the sole product of the author’s imagination. The story is fictional and any resemlance to individuals living or dead is purely coincidental.

Cover Illustration by Anna Salsman

For J.B., Olie, Buford, Big Neal, Rhett, and Hot Rod

1

The fire was burning low. The men of the village were involved in their nightly talk around the small blaze, wrapped in blankets to break the chill. They were unaware of the eyes that watched from the perimeter of the campfire.

The conversation ran from the corn patches planted a few weeks earlier to the irrigation that day when they opened a log gate allowing stream water to run down small ditches to the young corn. They talked of the trades with the Navajo’s to the north and the Apaches to the south. The men all shared their thoughts. They spoke of hunting and fishing. They also laid out plans to build a new stone house for a couple about to be married.

The eyes that watched were eager to move. The wisdom of the person behind them made no movement. He was careful. A lot was at stake. Suddenly the wind stirred and the trees began to speak their language. A stick fell into the fire sending up sparks. The men, startled at the sudden thud, jumped back and watched the sparks fly.

It was time for the eyes to move.

When their attention returned to the conversation, the watching eyes looked out from a blanket covering a small frame. The men laughed. One spoke, “Big Bear, your son has done it again.” They shook with laughter. Unnoticed, Ghost Runner had mysteriously appeared. This was a nightly ritual for the boy of ten summers.

2

Somewhere in Northern Arizona.

The constant ripple of the small stream made it difficult for the hunter to stay awake. He had walked most of the night to get to this place. This tree had become one of his favorite hunting places. He had been there since way before the rising of the sun. He sat on a large limb parallel with the ground, hidden by smaller limbs that splattered his hiding place with brush. The deer always used the small tributary to the main stream to drink because it was well concealed. The larger stream was about two hundred paces toward the mountains.

The brush country toward the sun’s resting place was where the deer always came from. It was the perfect place. The wind usually blew from the northwest. He was high enough for a good view and shot. He seldom failed to go home without meat from this place.

But the morning hours passed and there was no sign of deer. As the day wore on, he became drowsy. Realizing his best time for a kill would now be in the late part of the day, he decided to sleep. He clutched his bow to his chest with folded arms. Relaxing on the large limb, he started to drift off.

As the wind shifted a bit, he smelled the other hunter. It was why no deer had come. The deer smelled the other hunter too.

He breathed in the air and was certain. Raising himself to his knees, with his bow quietly rigged and ready, he looked in the direction the wind was blowing. He saw nothing. He spotted three likely hiding places and watched them carefully. Still nothing. He smiled a bit and thought, one of us could have slept this morning if we had known the other was here.

He broke the silence. “Go away. It is my day to hunt this place.” From one of the hiding places he saw a blur of brown and the unmistakable long tail.

He almost laughed out loud when he saw the cat leave. He sat back down on the limb and reclined to sleep.

With the cat fresh on his mind, his thoughts drifted back to when he was a boy. It was another day and another cat, but it was a day that he loved to remember.

He thought back on the time when he found the cave after many attempts to follow the cat. That was long before he made his plan to count coup on the long tailed cat. He worked hard to prepare for the day. Mustering the courage was the hardest part of the task. Now, he was inside the cave.

There was the slightest rustle of movement. He then heard the low growl as the big cat entered the cave. It really was not much of a cave. He had to crawl through a small opening to get inside. Once there, it opened to a space about as big as four horses. He had been inside three times before while the cat was away. Each time, after leaving, he waited to see if the cat became alarmed. It never showed any indication of scenting him.

This day was different. His plan was to stay inside until the cat returned and to stay the night in the cave. He was really counting on his medicine bag to make it work.

The bag was made from the skin of a cat he killed two years earlier. No other man had touched the bag. He only touched it after washing in the running water. He kept it away from wood smoke. It always hung from a limb hidden in the brush where the wind and earth smells washed it daily.

The bag’s contents were a mixture of things. He had carefully scooped up the droppings of the cat, wrapped it in leaves, and put it in the bag. He did this on numerous occasions. He did the same for leaves where the cat sprayed. He also added shed hair and stream water. The smell was pungent when the bag was opened.

Inside the cave on this day, he opened the bag enough to allow the smell to spread. He had wrapped the skin from the previously killed cat around his neck, stomach, arms and legs. He killed a rabbit shortly before entering the cave and rubbed blood and entrails on his hair, hands, and feet. Would his careful plan be enough?

He curled up facing away from the cave entrance. It was a submissive position he noticed cats taking when they interacted. The smell of the medicine bag filled the air. Then a growl, low and near, caused the hunter to tense. His knife, held tightly inside the curl of his body, was ready. He waited. The chances were good that he would not make it out alive.

The growl ceased and the silence was loud. The hunter emitted a short low growl from deep in his throat. He had

practiced it for months. More silence. He heard the cat move. It was more sensing it than hearing it. He felt the warm breath of the cat on his head. The wet nose barely grazed his skin as the cat smelled his head and then moved down his back to his feet. After a few tentative licks, the cat turned and lay down. It was soon purring and sound asleep.

The hunter used his discipline to remain motionless through the night. He spent the time thinking about this thrill of a lifetime. It was more exciting than his first deer kill. While not as dangerous, he had done almost the same thing with deer by spending a day in their bedding area with six deer sleeping all around him. He now knew his cat medicine bag worked like his deer medicine bag.

Hours later, the hunter judged that it was getting close to light when the cat stretched, stood and turned to smell his guest again. Then it left the cave. The hunter waited until light spilled into the opening of the cave before he left. Outside, he chose his own path and went to the place where he kept his cat medicine bag. He left the bag and skins there and went to the stream and washed.

Afterwards he found a sunny side of a ridge and stretched out to sleep. He was proud. He would tell no one about his night in the cave with the long tailed cat. Who would believe it of a boy of only fourteen summers anyway?

The hunter drifted off to sleep enjoying the memory of his victory over the long tailed cat. Suddenly, a sound startled him awake. He lay still and listened. He heard it again. Then he knew. This sound always brought trouble. It was man sound.

He came up to his knees on the big limb, totally alert. He heard them coming long before he saw them. He already had an arrow in place. He caught their first movement when they rode over a high bank that dropped down to the stream bed. He counted them. There were ten and it was obvious that some were hurt by the way they were hanging to their saddles.

They pulled up a short distance from his tree and dismounted. The men who were not hurt helped the wounded men down. Four of them appeared to be hurt bad. The hunter wondered what had happened. He remained motionless and listened. He knew enough of their language to understand their conversations.

“Let’s make camp here for the night. These boys can’t ride much more in the shape they’re in,” one of the men declared as if it were an order.

“Who put you in charge?” another shot back. “I say we ride on and leave them. If Haddok and his bunch follows us, we’ll be in a mess.”

“If you had been hit, would you want us to leave you?” the first fellow spoke. “Mendoza is dead and I ain’t wanting to be no boss. I just know that I ain’t leaving these men. If you want to leave, then ride on. If you are staying with me, then help me get them down and see what we can do to help them. We need to get a fire going and heat up some water. One of you find a place where you can watch our back trail and somebody nee...

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