Ride the Ghost by Jackson Cole

Book Details

Ride the Ghost – Four stories about the exploits of Navajo Tom Raine as he hunts down outlaws in the Arizona Territory.

Ride the Ghost Down, Ranger (1948)
When land-looters scheme to make a clean sweep of the Horse Canyon Country, six-guns flame scarlet!
Chapter I – Death At Dawn!
Chapter II – Scotched Killers
Chapter III – Big Wind From Texas.
Chapter IV – A Proddy Sheriff
Chapter V – Flaming Guns

Boothill Bounty (1943)
A Killer’s “Front” of Camouflage Is No Protection Against the Ace of Arizona Rangers When a Battle for Justice Rages!
Chapter I – Lead Law
Chapter II – King Copper
Chapter III – Gun Call for Fighting Men
Chapter IV – Out of the Grave

Not By A Dam Site (1944)
A Fighting Ranger Takes Up the Battle of the Diablo Valley Folks When an Evil Genius Conspires to Bring Disaster!
Chapter I – Death at Diablo
Chapter II – Tragedy at the Diamond
Chapter III – Mob Fury
Chapter IV – Coppered Bet

Bullet Balance (1943)
An Arizona Ranger Gets Proddy When He Runs into a Racket That Calls for Swift Justice!
Chapter I – Gun Toll
Chapter II – Job for a Ranger
Chapter III – Outlaws of Hangtree
Chapter IV – The Dead Accuse
Chapter V – Killers Die Hard

Jackson Cole was a house pseudonym (active 1930s-1950s) used by Better Publications, Inc. in its Western imprints. At least twenty different writers used this pseudonym.

Ride the Ghost has 19 illustrations.

Files:

1. JCole-RideTheGhost.epub

Excerpt: Ride the Ghost Down, Ranger

Chapter I

Death At Dawn!

DAWN was touching the eastern horizon with faint gray banners when the six riders came. They were behind the farm home of Ben and Della Ashlock so suddenly “Navajo Tom” Raine, Arizona Territorial Ranger, wondered if his mind could be playing tricks on him.

He leaped up from where he had been sitting, sprinted to his magnificent blue roan horse, Wampum. He was in the saddle at a bound, heading down Horse Canyon toward the Ashlock farm when the dawn’s quiet was shattered by the high yowls of men, and the roar of guns!

Raine swung his racing mount hard to a break in the timber, and Wampum hesitated, crouched as if he meant to stop.

“Come on!” the Ranger croaked, and touched harder with the spurs.

Wampum shot forward in a powerful leap, snorting uneasily as he spurned the earth—and leaped off a tall bank! The Ranger groaned, for Wampum struck Candy Creek with a roaring splash, and plummeted down until Raine felt icy waves slap his own throat.

Wampum came up with a roar of breaking water. Raine gulped air, felt to make sure that his twin pistols were still in their holsters, then swung Wampum down the stream’s current for the ford, the only place where the steep banks sloped enough to allow stock to cross.

Raine was shaking from something besides the cold bath when Wampum’s hoofs touched bottom. He could hear guns popping off across the canyon, but a pinkish tinge coming up into the murky dawn told him that he would be late—much too late to help Ben and Della Ashlock.

“Come on, feller!” he called hoarsely. “Get me over there before that killers’ bunch can scatter!”

Raine saw a rifle open up from the ridge top behind the flaming farmstead, when he was still two hundred yards away. But the six men who had attacked the farm had suddenly panicked, were flitting like huge, evil bats through the light of the leaping flames. Two swung up the valley, two more fled south, ana two came straight toward the Ranger! One bulked big in the saddle, the other was smaller.

RAINE checked his running horse, and dived out of saddle. The two raiders were almost upon him, and his voice rang out in a roaring shout, ordering them to halt. He got the reply he expected—a hoarse yell of alarm from the two murderous raiders, followed promptly by whistling slugs.

The Ranger’s teeth bared, and his own guns were suddenly bucking against his palms.

“Tally one!” he whooped, when the bigger raider became a tumbling black shadow that flung out of the saddle.

Raine sent the last two slugs in each weapon after the scrawny raider, who was headed for the timber. He heard a high, thin yell, yet the raider was still in the saddle when his running mount crashed into the thickets along Candy Creek.

Raine jammed fresh loads into his guns, ran out to the man lying sprawled on the grass. He held a cocked six-shooter in his right hand, reached out his left hand, and laid it over the fallen raider’s heart.

“You won’t help kill anybody else, mister!” he muttered coldly.

Raine ran back to his horse, and sprang into saddle. He went on across the meadow toward the towering flames which were consuming all young Ben Ashlock and his pretty little wife possessed. He saw the white picket fence that had enclosed their yard, eyes frantically searching as he reined his horse to a skidding stop.

Raine groaned then, as he slid out of saddle, his long legs shaking as he hung his flat-crowned black Stetson over the saddle horn. He opened the gate and went to the two huddled figures in the yard.

“Ben!” he called, and the flames seemed to roar in ghoulish mockery.

Raine had started to kneel down beside the couple when a spur tinkled behind him, and he heard a gun being cocked.

“You, Injun!” a cold voice lashed out. “Don’t move, or I shoot. Yuh savvy, Injun?”

Navajo Tom Raine was like an image carved from stone as that hard-voiced man called him an Indian. And there was nothing so surprising in that, for there in the red light of the roaring fire, Raine certainly looked like a stalwart young Indian.

The Ranger’s hawkish features were burned to a mahogany color by the sun, and he wore his thick black hair Navajo Indian style—cropped just enough to keep the ends from brushing the tops of his big shoulders. His heavy gold and silver Spanish spurs were set with turquoise, the grips of the two matched .45s at his muscular thighs were set with the same and the black Stetson that hung over the horn of his saddle had a band of silver ornaments, each studded with a flawless turquoise.

“So yuh’re one of the raiders who help evil spirit of old Sam Parrish kill all the farmers in this valley, eh, Injun?” the voice asked mockingly.

The one thing about Navajo Tom Raine that would quickly dispel the illusion that he was an Indian was the color of his eyes. Those eyes were bright green, and suddenly they had fury in their chill depths as he caught the taunting note in the unseen man’s voice.

“I’m not an Indian, I’m not one of the sneakin’ cowards who killed the Ashlocks and fired this place, and I’m not stupid enough to believe that the ghost of Sam Parrish leads the raiders who have been rampagin’ in Hoss Canyon,” Raine said coldly.

“Yuh don’t sound like an Indian, at that!” the man behind the Ranger grunted.

“Raine remembered the rifleman who had scattered those raiders, and wondered if this man could have been using that long gun.

“I’m Tom Raine, Arizona Territorial Ranger,” Raine said evenly.

Raine turned casually, saw the man standing inside the gate, six-shooter leveled.

“Oh, it’s you, Parrish,” Raine forced his voice to sound calm.

The man was Glen Parrish, of the Star Ranch, by far the largest spread in this section. He was a strapping, muscular man in his early thirties. An expensive Stetson was shoved back on sleek, black hair, and he was watching Navajo Raine out of eyes that were as chill as steel.

“You’ve credentials, I presume?” Parrish asked.

THE RANGER nodded his head to indicate that he had such credentials, aware that Glen Parrish had dropped the range vernacular.

“I reckon I can’t blame yuh for bein’ a little cagey, Parrish, seeing that this is the fourth farm those cowardly raiders have struck here on your Star range within the past six months!” the Ranger declared.

“So?” Glen Parrish drawled, and Raine definitely did not like the man’s arrogance.

Raine stepped forward with the leather case he had pulled from his hip pccket.

“This case is soaked,” Parrish said sharply. “Your clothing looks wet, and I heard water in your boots when you moved.”

“I got a duckin’ in Candy Creek.” Raine shrugged. “But the papers in that folder are wrapped in oiled silk, so yuh’ll have no trouble makin’ ’em out.”

“You fit the description I’ve heard of Indian-raised Navajo Tom Raine, the Arizona Ranger,” Glen Parrish grunted. “I’ll not bother this junk.”

He gave the leather case a flip. It slapped Raine’s chest, tumbled to the ground before he could grab it. The Ranger’s temper boiled, but he locked his teeth on what he wanted to say. Parrish chuckled, and holstered the bone-gripped six-shooter.

“I’m glad yuh happened to come along, Parrish,” Raine said. “Mebbe yuh’ll help me cut for the sign of those raiders, soon as the light is a little stronger.”

“I didn’t just ‘happen’ along!” Parrish said airily. “I saw the flare of this fire from my ranch and rode over, knowing the raiders must have struck again. As for my poking around these mountains to look for the ghost of my illustrious uncle and his gunslinging firebugs, that’s out. Call on Sheriff Ike Overby, at Pine Hill, if you want help.”

“Oh, so yuh just saw the fire, and came over,” Raine said, staring at the roaring inferno.

But Navajo Raine was actually tense with excitement, and his green eyes were like polished jade. He had been in Horse Canyon a week, doing a lot of riding between sunset and sunup. He knew it was a good eight miles from this spot to the Star headquarters. The fire had been not more than twenty minutes old when Parrish had stepped into the gate. Glen Parrish had lied brazenly, for he could not have saddled a horse and ridden eight miles in twenty minutes!

“I hear riders comin’ up the canyon, Parrish,” Raine said suddenly. “That’ll likely mean Roy Gill and Luke Sutter, the only two farmers you’ve got left, have seen the fire and are coming to investigate. By the time I get things explained to ’em it will be light enough for me to follow the sign. Got a rifle I could borrow?”

“Rifle?” Glen Parrish fairly barked. “Raine, haven’t you got a rifle?”

Raine forced his face to remain wooden.

“If I had a rifle, I wouldn’t want yours, would I?” he countered.

Glen Parrish scowled, shuttled uneasy eyes toward the fire that was eating away house, barns, sheds and valuable stacks of meadow and alfalfa hay. Or he could have looked toward that crooked ridge behind the Ashlock’s vanishing home, Raine thought grimly.

“I’ve no rifle, Raine,” Parrish said, bringing his chill glance back to the Ranger.

“Then’ I’ll have to depend on my sixes,” Raine declared soberly.

“All you’ll need will be salve to rub on the blisters you’ll get, gallivanting around the country looking for those raiders,” Parrish grunted.

“I know who one of the cowardly, woman-killin’ dogs was, at least!” Raine said flatly.

“What do yuh mean?” Glen Parrish dropped into range vernacular again.

Excerpt From: Jackson Cole. “Ride the Ghost: Four Navajo Tom Raine Stories.”