Other University of South Carolina Press Books
by Nancy Roberts
Civil War Ghost Stories and Legends
Ghosts of the Carolinas
Ghosts of the Southern Mountains and Appalachia
The Gold Seekers:
Gold, Ghosts, and Legends from Carolina to California
The Haunted South: Where Ghosts Still Roam
North Carolina Ghosts and Legends
South Carolina Ghosts:
From the Coast to the Mountains
2008 University of South Carolina
Cloth and paperback editions published
by the University of South Carolina Press, 2008
Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina,
by the University of South Carolina Press, 2012
www.sc.edu/uscpress
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print editions as follows:
Roberts, Nancy, 1924
Ghosts of the Wild West/Nancy Roberts; photographs by Bruce Roberts.
v. cm.
Enlarged edition including five never-before-published stories. Contents: The last homesteadersDeadwood, the wildest town in the WestThe ghost and the lost treasureThe gambler of CimarronThe Enchanted MesaWild Bill Hickok in AbileneThe phantom rider of the Butterfield stageThe lovely apparition of Fort DavisPancho Villa's treasure and the ghost catThe ghost of Cripple CreekThe rider wore a green habitIndians who won't stay deadThe ghost light of MarfaThe sacred earth at ChimayoThe haunted KiMo TheaterTombstone, Arizona, and its notorious gunfightersThe Enchanted Rock.
ISBN 978-1-57003-731-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-57003-732-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
[1. GhostsFiction. 2. Short stories. 3. West (U.S.)Fiction.]
I. Roberts, Bruce, 1930- ill. II. Title.
PZ7.R5442Gh 2008
[Fic]dc22 2007042742
ISBN 978-1-61117-123-5 (ebook)
PREFACE
How did you become interested in writing ghost stories? readers often ask. Most people want to know why an author has written a book, and they read the preface to find out. I write this for them.
It all began during a visit when my mother told me about the experience of Dr. John Allen McLean, a Presbyterian minister who was an old friend of hers. Dr. McLean was a graduate of Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, and a very serious minded person.
While attending a party in the beautiful antebellum home of the Slocumbs in Fayetteville, North Carolina, he saw a lovely girl descending the stairs. Enthralled by her beauty, he watched her. He saw her gaze around the reception room; then she returned to the first landing. As he stood staring, she vanished. Over the years she has appeared at intervals in the house and is seen by tenants, most often on the occasion of parties. These continuing accounts, and Dr. McLean's own integrity, led me to give ghost stories more credence than ever before.
Ghosts of the Wild West came about because of my love for the West and the encouragement of the renowned Chicago author Carl Sandburg. Mr. Sandburg read my early efforts and sent a message to me at my newspaper.
I like your stories and think they should be published in a book, he said.
Of course I agreed with his suggestion that they ought to be published in a book. At that time I was writing stories from and about the Carolinas, but the West had captured my imagination, and a few years later I began traveling out there.
I had always loved western ghost stories. They are not like the harsh stories of the convoluted Appalachians, nor do they have the romantic, magnolia redolent setting of the South. In the lawless open country of the West, the good and the bad actions of people seemed to loom larger than life. It was a perilous place with dangerous Indian tribes, precipitous mountains, treacherous canyons, life-threatening desertsall a danger to newcomers. Survival often depended on being fast on the draw.
As I drove through the western states, I could feel the excitement that drove many to leave the East to join the gold rush. I knew that I would have gone too! There is much unusual western history in these stories. It was out west that Doc Holliday made his reputation. He left his quiet life in Georgia and became one of the most famous names of the Westalthough not a good role model or a man with a happy life.
The first edition of this book was a finalist for the Great Western Writers Spur Award and contains some of my favorite western characters. In revising it, I found myself reliving the lives of men and women who came from magical places like Cimarron, Deadwood, Albuquerque, Fort Laramie, Tombstone, Cripple Creek, the Pecos, Fort Davis, and the Enchanted Rock. I hope you will enjoy reading about them.
And now, westward ho!
THE LAST HOMESTEADERS
T hey had been driving all day when the old Seth Thomas clock on the backseat began to tick. The clock was one of their prize wedding gifts, a family heirloom. The clock and the family homestead toward which they were heading, on the border of Colorado and Kansas, were two of the most unusual gifts a bride and groom ever received, as they would find out.
Joyce's mother had told her, It's a beautiful clock, but it's somewhat like a cat for it does just what it pleases. It runs when it wants to, sometimes forward, sometimes backward. The newlyweds had smiled.
Wichita was far behind them, and in a short time they would be nearing Dodge City. Archie was driving, Joyce was sleeping, and the clock was still ticking. Archie had taken a back road, figuring it would be a shortcut and would save him at least an hour, but the road was bleak, and in west Kansas where the rains are scarce, the land itself took on an eerie appearance toward dusk. Although the car continued to move, the land never seemed to change, always looking the same for mile after mile, almost hypnotic and as monotonous as the ticking of the clock.
It was some time after midnight when Archie noticed the highway seemed differentnot really changed, just narrower. It wasn't a two-lane road any more. It was a one-lane road. Then, imperceptibly, the pavement seemed to melt into hard-packed clay, almost as if the road he knew was fading away. There was no particular point at which you could say something happened. The road simply became fainter and fainter.
Finally, about two o'clock in the morning, Archie stopped the car. He stopped because there was no road leftjust the Kansas prairie stretching for miles in the moonlight. The only sound was the ticking of the clock. When the motion of the car ceased, Joyce woke up. She instinctively reached for the radio knob to turn on some music and said, Archie, do you want me to drive for you awhile? Archie didn't answer. Reason filtered through her senses as she awakened, and, aware that no sound came from the radio, she flipped the dial. Nothing happened, it was dead.
Then Archie's peculiar behavior caught her attention. He had gotten out of the car and was on his hands and knees in front of it, passing his hands over the ground. There seemed to be no road, and they were somewhere out on the prairie. Joyce got out of the car and looked around. Born and raised on the prairie, she was accustomed to the endless expanse of plains and sky, no towns, no farm homes lining the highway. She was unconcerned until she heard Archie repeating over and over under his breath, It's impossible. It's just impossible! The Kansas Highway Department can't do this to me. They've built a road to nowhere. I knew our government was run by idiots, but this is incredible. Joyce sat down beside him in front of the car and said, Archie, do you have any idea where we are?
