Kate said, “Pay me now, Bill.
The last adventure cost me nine—
three for you, three for your horse,
and three to prove the horse was mine.”
Bill spread the wager on a crate:
One captive ghost, exhibited at dawn.
The saloon keeper watched their faces.
“No captive, no reward at dawn.”
“My fee is for the trying,” Kate said.
“Separate from his prize.”
The keeper paid her five in silver
and watched Bill’s widening eyes.
“You can have it back if we don’t go.”
She put the money in her vest.
Bill said he’d never failed a mission.
She named four. He named the rest.
The saddle came from a saddler
who kept a book behind his bench:
an old account of Jonah Reed,
a drowned man in a sudden trench.
Reed’s shade rode every windless night
from gulch to road and back again.
He could not sit a living saddle
till someone spoke his name.
“Invite him, and he must keep riding
while the inviter shares the seat.
He dismounts when the errand’s done;
abandon him, the round repeats.”
Bill read the first two lines aloud.
“A saddle that’ll hold a ghost!”
Kate read the bottom of the page
while Bill rehearsed his victor’s toast.
They reached the gulch at moonrise.
Their horses stayed above.
They carried down the empty saddle
and rope and Bill’s new gloves.
At a broken stump a man stood
with water running from his coat.
“I need a ride,” he said to Bill,
as gently as a passing note.
Bill said, “Jonah Reed, I challenge you
to ride with me till light.”
The dead man smiled, accepted
and mounted out of sight—
for there was no horse beneath them,
only a lifted stretch of air.
Bill scrambled up behind him.
Kate lost her grip and stood back there.
They shot along the old road’s course.
Kate heard Bill’s delighted yell:
“Bring a crowd! I’ll circle town!
I’ve got him under my spell!”
“The bell!” cried Reed. “I must reach—”
Bill shouted, “I’m in full command!”
The road ran out at the gulch mouth.
They plunged through empty sand.
Bill came round again at midnight,
green beneath his handsome hat.
“He won’t cross the creek to town,” he said.
Kate answered, “You have noticed that.”
Reed tugged his soaking collar.
“The ranch. The water’s coming fast.”
He’d died with that warning undelivered.
His first ride could not be his last.
Kate opened up the saddler’s book.
The account named Bellows Place:
the warning bell stood in the yard;
the road had crossed below the ranch;
the storm had swept that crossing out.
Reed couldn’t leave his fatal track.
Someone living had to ring the bell
before the ride would let him back.
“Stay with him,” she told Bill.
“I’ll cut up through the saddle ridge.
The bell still stands above the wash.
It needn’t be across a bridge.”
She took her rope and started climbing;
Bill rehearsed a jaunty yell.
“I will direct the operation.”
“Then direct yourself to listen well.”
On her first climb Kate missed the trail
where prickly brush had closed a turn.
She came down by a wagon crossing,
put her foot out, felt it churn.
The planks went sliding into darkness.
She caught a root and hauled back clear.
Bill whirled past below the broken span.
“I’m doing splendid!” she could hear.
Her lantern fell beyond the bank.
She stayed until her shaking stopped.
Then took the ridge by moonlit stones
instead of where the old road dropped.
At the rise she heard Bill shouting:
Bill had jumped from Jonah’s seat,
to catch the ghost with his new rope.
The dead man faded at his feet.
Kate saw him vanish from the road
below the house she’d almost reached.
The night began its loop again.
She shouted down. Bill shouted louder,
insisting ropes should work
on anybody wearing pants.
Jonah stood beside the stump
and asked him for another chance.
“Invite him again,” Kate called.
“And stay aboard until I ring!”
Bill looked up at the ridge, then down.
He put away his loop of string.
“Jonah Reed, I offer you
a ride,” he said, and mounted tight.
“Go on. I’ll hear your warning now.”
They disappeared into the night.
Kate found the bell rope rotted through.
She’d brought a line to bind their prize;
she tied its loop onto the tongue
with cold and clumsy fingers twice.
The first knot slipped. The second held.
She stepped beneath the open sky
and pulled until the rusty mouth
let out a harsh, astonished cry.
Below, the floating saddle stopped.
Reed turned toward the yard’s pale wall.
“They’ve heard,” he said. “They’ll leave the creek.”
He smiled as if that night still lay
before him, with time to get them clear.
He dismounted, scarcely there at all.
Bill landed sitting in the sand.
The saddle landed on his shin.
When Kate came down he asked her first
if he could call their business a win.
She asked if he could walk to town.
He tried, and said that he could limp.
They reached the saloon well after dawn.
The keeper called their evidence thin.
No shade stood waiting at the rail;
no prisoner shared their dusty bench.
Bill offered a tale of glorious riding.
Kate stretched her fingers on the bench.
The keeper paid one coin for the tale,
on condition Bill told it shorter.
Kate kept her five for the night of work
and bought them eggs and coffee after.
“Tomorrow,” Bill said, “something simple.
A whirlwind, say. Just you and me.”
Kate looked up from her eggs.
“Tomorrow,” she said, “I charge you three.”
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