Excerpt
John L. Cooper had closed Cooper Brothers Mercantile after a busy business day. He had given away dozens of lemon and ginger snaps to the children, while more adults than usual bought rifles and revolvers. After the murders of the federal marshals on the centennial, people feared for their safety. Wanted posters for Corwin Blake and a mysterious criminal called Heilong adorned walls all over town.
Marshal Bateman now had a posse looking for Blake and performing arrests, but illegal acts had spiked. The crimes included a train robbery between Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz and the murder of a ranch hand in Railroad Flats.
John's brother, Mayor William Cooper, frequently urged the U.S. Marshal Service to send replacements, but construction on the new federal post had just started. John himself figured that Blake had accomplished his goal in murdering Creed, then skipped town.
After closing the shop about an hour earlier, John Cooper cleaned up, putting items in their places, sweeping, and preparing the cash box for deposit at the bank the next day. Just as he locked the safe in the back office, he heard the front door rattle.
Cooper placed a hand on his rotund belly and considered bringing with him the gun in his desk. He almost decided against getting it, figuring someone simply forgot how late the store stayed open. Yet he felt the paranoia filling Santa Cruz as well, so he retrieved his Colt Peacemaker. He flipped a switch beside the safe to bring up the store lights. As he strode down an aisle with bolts of cloth and sewing supplies, he looked toward the front door. A thump came, then another. Someone out in the dark was knocking.
When he saw the stranger, he froze, chest aching as his heart drummed. Could it be a ghost?
Porch shadows obscured the man outside. He wore a beige shirt, dark gloves, and denim pants over boots. His cowboy hat kept his face in darkness while a whistling wind from the bay blew the fringes of his dark hair around his pale ears.
Cooper sighed with relief because this tall man clearly couldn't be Blake or Heilong. Who, then?
He held his revolver behind his back and stepped toward the door. The closer he came, the better he saw the stranger. Silver eyes gazed out from under the stranger's dark brim. He thought that couldn't be right. Surely the dark lent his eyes this alien quality.
On the left side of the man's shirt, Cooper spotted a dark stain. Was it blood? Did the man need help?
"There's a doctor's office, two blocks north, near the clock tower," he stammered.
The stranger propped one arm over his head against the door and stared. The proprietor stepped closer still. The man appeared unarmed, so Cooper asked, "Are you hurt?"
The stranger spoke up in a gravely, quiet voice that somehow still pierced the glass. "Open up, please."
"What do you want here?"
"Not to rob you. I'm a U.S. Marshal."
Cooper took in the man's build, the sharpness of his nose, the cut of his beard, and his height. It couldn't be! He grasped his chest as his dinner of bacon, biscuits, and coffee burned. That marshal had been killed, shot in the heart, buried. The stranger stepped back and crossed his arms.
With no idea what motivated him, Cooper tucked his Peacemaker into his belt then unlocked and opened the door.
As the man who claimed to be a marshal strode in, Cooper nearly tripped. This had to be a ghost. The stranger's skin was nearly white, his eyes the color of steel. He walked with the slow confidence of a gunfighter.
"Wait here," he said, and Cooper caught a whiff of his breath, dank and heavy, like that of a person just recovering from pneumonia.
Marshal James Creed had risen from the dead to haunt Santa Cruz.
Why, then, peruse the Mercantile?
The store contained anything the average citizen might need, and then some. As Cooper went to the counter and leaned over it, legs feeling weak, Creed strode over to the coats. He found a duster in midnight blue and tossed it over his shoulder. Next, he grabbed a large satchel with a strap and shoved into it more clothing: two vests to match the duster, shirts, black denim jeans, socks.
Though Cooper had never seen this spirit in life, Creed carried himself just as he imagined such a man would. Every move seemed full of purpose.
Creed came to the rows of guns and settled on the very best Cooper sold, a pair of new Austin Equalizer revolvers by Austin & Co., with attached blades.
He attached the guns, in their holsters, to his belt, then dropped his hands to the grips as though to see how they felt.
Next, Creed took two ammunition belts loaded with bullets, and wrapped them over each shoulder so they crossed over his torso, before donning the duster. He slipped the satchel strap over his left shoulder.
He then went back to the clothes and took several black bandannas, one of which he wrapped around the lower part of his face to cover mouth, nose, and chin.
Cooper no longer knew what to think. Though he didn't fear for his life, he feared what the encounter meant for his sanity. Perhaps he was dreaming.
Creed reached into his pants pocket as he approached the counter, and Cooper backed away. The marshal placed a handful of gold double eagle coins on the polished redwood, his metallic eyes gazing at the store owner. The marshal then left without a word, wind blowing across a dress in one display window.
Immediately, Cooper shut and locked the door, backed away, and leaned against the counter waiting for a wave of dizziness to stop. When it passed, he looked at the money.
Ten coins. Two hundred dollars. Enough to buy all Creed had taken, twice. What would he tell people about this? What would William think? He decided the best solution might be to keep his mouth shut.
