“Whaddya mean?”Dean asked, curling up on the seat next to him in his garish tourist clothes and nodding up at Sully as if he were telling him a bedtime story.
“I’m glad you asked,” Sully beamed, lapsing into tour guide speak as the turnoff for Gravel Gulch appeared, the road sign faded, dented and marred by no less than a dozen bullet holes.Fitting, he thought, before taking his voice down two full octaves to weave the spooky tale.“Turns out, they’dalreadyrobbed the Gravel Gulch Savings & Loan the year before but, in their hot streak of madness and mayhem, forgot all about it.Forgot about the money they’d stolen from the good people of Gravel Gulch and, more importantly, the bank teller and two customers they’d killed during the shootout with local police afterward.
“The townsfolk hadn’t forgotten, though.When they heard from neighboring counties that the Carter Brothers were on their way into town, they set up an ambush.They were just civilians, like you said, miners and loggers and mill workers, but most were former soldiers and more than a few were successful bootleggers and, well, once those brothers stumbled into town thinking it’d be an easy score, were they in for a shock.
“Anyway, after a brief shootout, the boys were dragged to the town square and put in nooses, made just for them.The local preacher asked if they wanted to share any last words and, besides a string of cuss words the locals say you can still hear on windy afternoons to this day, Colton Carter refused but his older brother, Colson, hissed and spat out a curse on the whole town.Said as long as Gravel Gulch stood, no one who was there that day to ambush him and his brother would ever be safe again.Ever.”
“For real?”Dean asked, mouth slack, eyes wide and literally hanging on every word.
Sully nodded, gently turning off the paved road to the gravel lane that would take them to Gravel Gulch, once and for all.“No one took it seriously, of course.They all laughed, the hangman pulled the lever and, well, after a few twists and jerks, that was it for the Carter Boys.But days later, strange things started happening around town.First, an accident at the mill took the foreman’s life and two of his best men.Closed the mill for days.Tragic, but not quite curse-worthy.Yet.”
“Yet?”Dean asked, hugging himself as the ghost story portion of the tour finally took hold.
“Not yet.”Sully wagged a warning finger before continuing the tale, voice slowing to match his speed as the winding gravel road led them inevitably toward their final destination.“Then, a few weeks later, a strange illness spread through the school, killing the teacher and three of the students.Bad, but scientific.Medical.Heartbreaking, yes, but easily explained.But every week, it seemed, another tragedy befell poor little Gravel Gulch.The bank manager got trapped in the vault and suffocated.The midwife started delivering still births.After a cave-in at the mine cost six lives, folks had had enough: the townsfolk started moving out in droves.The ones left behind started hearing strange howls in the night, bloody red sunsets and tumbleweeds that chased them straight down the street!A year after they hanged the Carter brothers, the townsfolk of Gravel Gulch had all fled town, one by one, leaving it abandoned.The way you’ll see it today, glasses on the tables, dishes in the sink, clothes still drying on the lines, is the way the town’s last resident, Bertha Maplethorpe, left it after her husband got trampled by his own horse while hitching up their wagon to join the exodus straight out of town...”
As if on cue, a bend in the road brought the crooked, creaking, hanging by one rusty chain “Welcome to Gravel Gulch” sign into view.Dean sat up straight, well-worn sneakers barely touching the floor as he craned his neck for a better view as Sully pulled up just short of the locked gate.
“Hang on a sec,” he grunted, swinging open the truck door and sliding to the ground in his favorite cowboy boots.He wrangled the key at the end of a souvenir Gravel Gulch chain and undid the padlock, noting that after months spent idle, it would need a good greasing before tourist season picked up in the summer.Once unlocked, he swung the gate wide until it clicked into its hitch, smelling the fresh spring air in his nostrils and glad for the chance to be out of Pappy’s Pub for a whole twenty-four hours.
That is, if Dean took the bait.
He seemed like he might, smiling appreciatively as Sully eased himself back atop the bench seat of the old red truck.“That looked pretty sexy just now, cowboy.”
Sully teased his hat just a smidge higher in reply.“Yeah?”
Dean purred the way he had earlier that morning.Or was it night?“Very ranch hand like, swinging that gate open, like you were about to herd a head of cattle straight through to town.”
Sully chuckled for real, Dean’s eyes wide and rapt with the Wild West fantasies of old.“Come on, City Slicker,” he teased, sliding the idling truck back into drive for the rest of the short trip to Gravel Gulch.“Let’s get your tour started, once and for all.”
Chapter Thirteen
Dean
“It’s smaller than Ithought.”
Sully nodded, big cowboy boots kicking up dust in the middle of the wide, empty street.“Not much to it to start with, and even less every time the County Commission gets it in their heads to send someone out and do an inspection.”
