Ghost Canyon (The John Decker Supernatural Thriller Series Book 7) Anthony Strong (popular romance novels .TXT) 📖

“I did not.” Decker stepped across the threshold. Carlton was no longer there. All that remained was his empty glass on the bar. Even the bottle of bourbon had disappeared.

“This is the town’s original saloon,” Robyn said, following Decker inside. “Almost everything except the furniture is period, including the bar. We found over fifty bullet holes in this room during restoration. You can still see most of them if you look closely enough.”

“Must’ve been a rough place,” Decker said.

“It was. The prospectors were a rowdy bunch, and they were not exactly what you’d call law-abiding. This was the frontier, and the town didn’t have a sheriff to keep the peace, so you can imagine the sort of shenanigans that went on. Local legend has it that six men got shot to death in this very room during the bar’s original run. We even found an old Colt six-shooter hidden in the bar back, behind a removable panel. It probably belonged to some Old West bartender, who kept it handy to break up disputes.”

“Interesting.” Decker looked around. “Where is it now?”

“In our museum.” Robyn beckoned for him to follow. “Don’t get your hopes up, it’s not exactly the Guggenheim. It’s just an old storeroom we’ve converted to display the strange odds and ends found around here over the years.”

“I’d love to see it.”

“Good. It’s our next stop,” Robyn said, leading Decker toward a second door on the side wall of the saloon, and a narrow corridor beyond. “It is also our last stop. The hotel isn’t large, and I figure you’d rather see the rest of the town in daylight.”

“Sure,” Decker replied, following Robyn into the corridor, which ran adjacent to the saloon bar. Apart from the door they had just stepped through, there were two others. One opposite, and another at the far end.

Robyn led him to the closer of the two. “This is the museum. The door at the end is my quarters. An old lean-to I converted.”

They stepped inside.

Decker looked around, fascinated. Glass-fronted cabinets lined the walls. They contained a variety of artifacts, ranging from arrowheads, lumps of ore, and a variety of prospector’s tools.

Robyn led him to a case on the far side of the room. “This is the Colt we found. It must’ve been a pretty expensive weapon back in the day. It has mother-of-pearl grips and an engraved barrel.”

“That’s a Colt Single Action Army revolver,” Decker said, leaning close to study the weapon. “44-40 caliber. Four and three-quarter inch barrel. Looks like it’s silver-plated. Probably manufactured in the late 1800s.”

“Wow.” Robyn sounded impressed. “You know your guns.”

“I come from a law-enforcement family,” Decker said. “It also helped that my father was a gun nut. He owned a couple of antique firearms. Nothing this interesting, though.”

“Really?” Robyn nodded thoughtfully. “I should write this down so we can make an information card. To me it’s just an old seized up revolver.”

“I take it your dad didn’t read Guns & Ammo to you before bed when you were young, then?”

“Not hardly.” Robyn shook her head.

“You don’t know how lucky you are.”

Robyn stared at him, mute.

Decker wondered if she thought he was joking about the gun magazine. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.

“What else have you got in here?” He asked, as much to change the subject as anything else. “Although I have to warn you, it’s going to be hard to top that Colt.”

“I might have something,” Robyn said. She led him to a floor-standing glass display case in the middle of the room. “How about this?”

Decker peered inside the case and was shocked to see the skeletal remains of a person. Tattered clothing clung to the bones, including the remains of an old duster. “Now, that’s pretty cool.”

“Isn’t it?” Robyn gazed down at the skeletal corpse. “We found him when we were blasting the mine entrance open. You can tell it’s a male because of the pelvis.”

“I realize that.” Decker leaned in to study the bones in more detail. “I took a couple of pathology classes when I was a cop.”

“Then you might be interested to know someone shot this unfortunate man in the back and dumped him over the side of the trail. We didn’t find the bullet, that’s long gone, but there’s a tell-tale nick in the T3 thoracic vertebrae. You can also see a fractured rib where the bullet ricocheted inside the body.”

“With the position of that wound, the bullet would’ve done a lot of damage, even if it missed the heart.” Decker wondered who the man was in life, and what he’d done to earn himself a bullet in the back. “At the very least, his lung would have been toast.”

“For sure,” Robyn agreed. “He most likely died pretty quickly. The body was up near the mine entrance, and I find it unlikely anyone would bother to drag it up there back in those days. Like I said, there was no law enforcement to worry about. He was probably murdered pretty close to where the body was dumped.”

“Makes sense. He would have bled out within ten minutes, maybe faster depending on what the bullet hit on the way through.” Decker stared at the body. There was no flesh left, but he could still see tufts of straight black hair clinging to the skull. He wondered if the man was Native American. He ran his eyes over the length of the skeletal remains, overcome by a sudden feeling that they were not quite right, but he couldn’t figure out why.

Then, while he was still pondering this, Robyn moved back toward the door. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve got a few things to do before bed.”

“No, not at all,” Decker straightened up and followed her.

“You can stay and look around some more if you want,” Robyn said as she stepped into the corridor. “It’s no trouble.”

“It’s fine,” said Decker. “I can always come back, and I hear my bed beckoning. I could use an