The tracks were so fresh some had rainwater in the bottom. They came down off the mesa and went off across the wasteland, passing close to the charnel pit. Fargo averted his face and held his breath until he was well past it.
Save for the clink of the Ovaro’s hooves and the creak of Fargo’s saddle, silence reigned. Again and again he rose in the stirrups but he failed to spot his quarry.
The clouds broke apart and the sun shone steady, as hot as ever. Steam rose from the ground and the air shimmered to invisible waves. In no time the puddles had burned away and the land looked as parched and barren as ever.
So far off they were stick figures, Fargo spotted a man on a horse. He brought the Ovaro to a trot. Soon the distance narrowed. He slowed after a while to spare the stallion but he chafed at the need.
The wasteland gave way to forest. By Fargo’s reckoning he was ten to twelve miles west of Haven. He found the Ghoul’s tracks easily enough and was surprised to discover that the Ghoul had turned east. He’d figured the killer would stay away from human habitation but it appeared that the Ghoul was in fact making a beeline for town. At first it made no sense. Why would the Ghoul risk being lynched? Fargo wondered. Then it hit him. No one knew who the Ghoul was. The killer could mingle with the townsfolk with no one the wiser.
Fargo rode faster but it was several hours after sundown when he finally reached the outskirts. He lost the tracks in the jumble of prints in the main street, and swore.
Fargo doubted the posse had returned yet. Haven lay quiet and deceptively peaceful under the stars. Two men were talking in front of the livery and an older woman was enjoying the night air in a chair on her front porch. Those were the only people he saw.
Fargo went to the boardinghouse. He tied the Ovaro to the picket fence and walked up the steps to the front door. He didn’t knock. He was about to take the stairs to his room when he heard voices in the parlor. One was Helsa’s. Thinking she might be willing to fix him a meal, he walked down the hall and stopped in the doorway.
Helsa was in the rocking chair, her knitting in her lap. She had a strange expression on her face and appeared almost as white as her picket fence, as if all the blood had drained from her body. The skin under her eyes glistened with recently shed tears. On seeing him she gave a tiny shake of her head as if to suggest he was intruding.
“I thought I heard you talking to someone.”
“You did,” said a male voice, and a man rose from behind the rocking chair with a Spencer in his hands. He wore a black hat and a black jacket and was in need of a shave. “Permit me to introduce myself,” he said with exaggerated politeness. “Most everyone hereabouts calls me the Ghoul.”
19
Fargo made no move to draw his Colt. He would be shot dead before he cleared leather. He looked at Helsa and then at the Ghoul, trying to figure out why the Ghoul had come here, of all places, and then he noticed that the Ghoul was about her age and what women would call handsome and had piercing blue eyes.
“Oh, hell.”
Helsa coughed and said hoarsely, “Mr. Fargo, I’d like you to meet my husband, James Chatterly.”
“Your dead husband,” Fargo said.
“I thought he was,” Helsa said softly. “All this time I’ve been in misery, and it was a ruse.”
James Chatterly grinned. “A damned clever ruse, my dear, you’ll have to admit.” He stepped clear of the rocking chair, the muzzle of the Spencer fixed squarely on Fargo.
“You’ve been taking the young women,” Fargo said.
“I’ve been taking the younger women,” James Chatterly echoed.
“And others when you find them.”
“And others when I find them, yes. Once I started I couldn’t stop. It felt too good.”
Helsa cleared her throat. “What did?”
“Can’t you guess, my dear? What did we like to do more than anything else? What couldn’t I get enough of?”
“God, no.”
“God, yes,” James Chatterly said. “It started with Felicity. She was a little tart, that one. We were fooling around behind your back. When you went shopping she’d come over. It went on for over a year, until one day she came to me and said it had to stop.”
“I don’t want to hear this,” Helsa said.
Her husband ignored her. “I didn’t want it to. I liked making love to her. I liked it so much I was in a funk for weeks until it occurred to me how I could go on having her any hour of the day or night for as long as I cared to.”
“No, no, no,” Helsa said.
James turned to Fargo. “I used to hunt, you see. One day I came across the mesa and decided to explore. That’s when I found the cave. I remembered it when I had my brainstorm. It was perfect.”
Helsa bowed her head and tears flowed. She cried quietly, with only an occasional sniffle, as her husband went on.
“I couldn’t just disappear. Folks would have been suspicious. So I cut my arm and left blood on my saddle to give the idea I had been killed. I had another horse no one knew about, one I’d bought from a man passing through Haven, and I went off to the cave and spent the next several months satisfying myself with Felicity.” He paused. “Then a peculiar thing happened.”
“You lost interest in her,” Fargo guessed.
“How did you know?” James Chatterly nodded. “Maybe it was just that it was me and her and no one else for days and weeks on end. I wanted someone new. So I got rid of her and snuck close to town and helped myself to a new woman.”
Helsa choked down a sob. “How could you?” she forlornly asked.
“Now, now,” James said.
“How could you?” Helsa practically screamed. “All those years we were together, I wasn’t good enough for you? You secretly hankered after other women?”
“After younger ones, yes. After women who were like you were when we first met.”
“Oh, James.”
“Don’t.”
“What you did was wrong.”
“I saw it as setting myself free to do as I’d always longed to do. I could make love any hour of the day or night in any way I wanted and there was nothing they could do.” James chuckled. “For me it was heaven and then some.”
“Those poor girls,” Helsa said.
“Yes. Those girls. With their young, ripe bodies. With their lips and their breasts. I couldn’t get enough. I’d run my hands over their silky skin for hours at a time. I did more than make love to those girls. I worshipped them.”
“And chopped them up when you were tired of them,” Fargo mentioned.
“What?” Helsa said.
James Chatterly shrugged. “I had to dispose of the bodies somehow and the ground was too hard to dig graves. So I took my ax and gave them forty whacks and threw them in that pit I found.”
“You didn’t,” Helsa declared.
“It was no different from breaking the neck of a chicken or putting down a dying dog.”
Helsa’s moist eyes mirrored her horror. “To think I once loved you. To think I once thought you were the best man who ever lived.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
Grasping a knitting needle, Helsa started to rise out of the rocking chair but sat back down.
Fargo asked James Chatterly, “What are you doing here?”
“That’s your doing.”
“Mine?”
“I took a shot at you in the woods and tried to drop you at the pit but you got away. You tracked me down. You brought the posse to the cave and I was forced to run. Now I must go somewhere else and start all over again. But first I wanted to see my wife again.” James smiled at Helsa. “I wanted to say good-bye.”
“You vile, despicable brute.”
“No name-calling, if you please. It’s most unbecoming.”