Romance in a Ghost Town Read online

  Romance in a Ghost Town

  By Robert P. McAuley

  Published by

  Robert P. McAuley

  Smashwords edition

  Copyright 2013 by Robert P. McAuley on Smashwords

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which has been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  The Premise

  Can a young man from New York City live in a recently found, century old ghost town in the heart of the Nevada desert? Can he exchange the four seasons for the continuous heat of the area and trade the feel of City Street’s macadam for the gritty hot sand and can he find love, which has eluded him in the past?

  Table of Contents

  1 A Lost Ghost Town

  2 The New York Buyer

  3 Sharing His Secret

  4 Rattlesnake Haven

  5 The Purchase

  6 The Real Rattlesnake Haven

  7 Just A Congratulatory Drink

  8 The Visit

  9 The City Slicker Cowboy

  10 Samson and the Answer to the Puzzle

  11 The Storm

  12 The Town Never Really Died; It Was Just Sleeping

  13 Settling Down

  14 Rattlesnake Haven Jewelry & Linen

  15 Operation Snowball: The Planned Invasion of Rattlesnake Haven

  16 Just Another Coincidence?

  17 A Forced Vacation

  18 The Public Relations Invasion of Rattlesnake Haven

  19 Operation Snowball’s Meltdown

  20 A Ghost Town Wedding

  21 Then and Now

  1

  A Lost Ghost Town

  Soaring high above the desert floor, the buzzard looked like a black speck from the ground, its long up-turned wings gave it the look of the letter V. Its flight was effortless as it simply glided along. The heat that rose from the desert floor below gave off more than enough of the lift-making thermals for the bird to fly for hours without ever once flapping its wings. Out of the corner of its eye it spotted movement below and, as it had done thousands of times before, it tucked some of it’s feathers closer to it’s body and killed some lift, allowing it to drop for a closer look. When it was low enough to realize that it wasn’t a meal, the buzzard stretched out its wings as far as they could go, caught another thermal and climbed back up to resume its search for food.

  The object that the bird spotted going slowly along the desert floor was a black, 2006 Dodge SUV. The driver, Edward Pushkin, saw a movement at the top right section of his windshield and recognized the flight of the Turkey Buzzard. He grinned, as he admired how the large bird almost never flapped its wings, as it was more of a soaring bird that used its energy for flapping on takeoff and landings. If I came back as a bird, that’s the kind of bird I’d like ta be, he thought as he drove slowly along the hot, broken, hard packed sand. Yep! Nice and easy, no fuss-just get up high and cruise until you find something worth coming down for.

  The hot sand buildup on his windshield started to kill his forward vision and, as he was tired of stopping every ten minutes and brushing it off, Edward made a mistake: turning the windshield wiper one click to push aside the sand, he inadvertently activated the windshield washer. He quickly came to a halt as the hot sand mixed with the water on the hot glass making a thick mud that dried and instantly caked most of the windshield. Shaking his head, he stopped and stepped out of his SUV while looking around for something to dislodge the, now dry as adobe, mud. He picked up an old dried-out wooden spoke from a wagon wheel, leaned momentarily on the hot fender and almost fell as he leaped back dropping the spoke, “Aww,” he said as he grimaced and did a little dance while shaking his burned hand. His sunglasses slipped from his nose but he caught them before they hit the ground. “This sucks! This really sucks!”

  Edward put his dark glasses back on, opened the car door, took his Stetson hat from the passenger’s seat and put it on before doing anything else. For a moment he stood looking about him. Glancing back he saw that the path he had taken was nothing more than the least cluttered areas of the desert floor as he continuously swerved to avoid running over the various types of cactus and low-growing Mojave Prickly Pear plants or dropping a wheel into a crevice. Edward constantly returned to the direction that the GPS unit pointed to while evading the plants and ruts. Stooping, he retrieved the spoke and pushed it against the hard mud and almost lost his balance as it snapped in two.

  “Shoot!” he said tossing the dried spoke away. He opened the SUV’s rear door, but first made sure he pulled the sleeve of his sweat-stained, white shirt down over his hand. Still the searing heat came through the thin material and he was grateful that the air-conditioning had cooled down the tire iron he picked up. Back at the front of the car Edward made sure he didn’t use any part of it as leverage, and with the flat tip of the tire iron, pushed gently against the mud.

  “Just my luck to crack my windshield,” he murmured as he pushed easy, then harder and finally had to chip at it using the palm of his hand as a hammer.

  “If this breaks,” he said as sweat ran from his brow down into his eyes, “I’m gonna charge it to the company.” Finally a crack appeared in the hard substance, not unlike the cracks that seemed to run for miles in every direction he looked as the hot sun had baked any minuscule amount of water out of the earth. He picked out a small chunk and tossed it at a tall cactus standing a few feet away from the poor excuse of a road. “This is not how I’m supposed to spend my lunch hour,” he said as he pried out another, slightly larger chunk, “Jim and the boys are downing a cool one right now and I’m way out here in the boonies looking for a ghost town that died over one hundred years ago.” He stopped and caught himself, as he was about to rest against the side of his car. Edward removed his hat, took out his handkerchief and wiped his face with it before tying it around his neck. The reflection in the car’s tinted windows showed the contrast of his deeply tanned face against his matted down, blond hair. “Big deal!” he said as he put his hat back on. “That’s what Jim said, “This could be the big one that every real estate agent waits for. Go sell this place, Edward, and relax for a bit.” He grinned as he went back to removing what now looked like a child’s jigsaw puzzle minus a few pieces from his windshield.

  Finally finished, he moaned as he slid his six-foot two inch frame back into the car, removed his hat and let the air conditioning flow over his completely wet body as he reflected on how his day began.

  He had entered the Bensen Real Estate office at 8 a.m. and as he settled into his chair and powered up his PC, Jim Bensen came over and sat on the corner of his desk. That was something the boss never did and it alerted Edward who looked up with a smile.

  “Good morning, Jim. What’s up?”

  “Good morning, Edward,” the slim, tanned; dark haired man said with a smile as he caressed a manila envelope in both hands, “I think it’s going to be a great day! Bensen Realty has a unique opportunity to sell a large chunk of property that’s been owned by the company since it started way back in 1893. In fact, it may be the largest piece of property
ever sold in Bransville, Nevada.” He paused and looked up at the ceiling, something he did whenever he did a sales pitch on a prospective customer…it gave Edward a chill: something was coming his way, like it or not!

  Jim looked down at him with a glow in his dark brown eyes and went on. “I’m sure you’ve heard of Rattlesnake Haven?” He continued before Edward could even answer, “Well, I got a call from some guy in New York who wants to know if I know of a ghost town for sale.”

  “And is Rattlesnake Haven for sale?” asked a slightly interested Edward who had heard of the town but had never seen it.

  Jim looked at him and with a big smile, slapped him on his shoulder, stood and patted the manila envelope. “Yes it is! And I intend to sell it before another hundred years go by.”

  “Where is it located?”

  “Uh-well. Here’s the problem, buddy, I’m not sure! I’ve never been there. My great grandfather was a bit of a nut. He paid thirty-six thousand back in 1893…“

  Edward sat up straight in his chair, “Thirty-six grand? Wow, that was a lot of money back then.”

  Jim nodded, slightly embarrassed that he was related to his great grandfather. “Yeah, I know. And believe me, from the stories I’ve heard over the years, so did his wife and kids. It’s a wonder that Bensen Realty survived at all with him running the place.”

  Edward rubbed his chin, “Wonder why he paid such a high price?”

  “Because,” answered his boss with a scowl on his face showing that the family resentment still ran deep, “of the silver mine! That’s why! He thought that he’d go and dig tons of silver out of the mine that created the town. Problem was, the mine was played out. He got zilch, zero, nadda, nothing out of it and after he left the town, nobody ever went back again. Plus the state is forever trying to get me to pay back-taxes on the place.”

  Edward had to suppress a grin as he said, “There are taxes on the town even though nobody lives there?”

  Jim nodded, “Yeah. I pay them twenty-five hundred a year. They want me to pay five thousand, but I told them to go find it first and maybe then I’ll go for the five grand.”

  “So if you do sell it, the taxes become someone else’s problem. Right?”

  “You betcha it does!”

  Edward asked the question that had become second nature in the realty business, “Do we have a GPS location on it?”

  Jim grinned as he opened the manila envelope and very gently retrieved a dried-out and cracked map of the state of Nevada. “Well, they didn’t have GPS back then. All they had were state maps and most of the roads they show have disappeared over the years.”

  Edward raised an eyebrow as he asked, “And you want me to go and find the place using an old map?”

  “Yep! A map from 1921. That’s the year that my great grandfather decided to show the world where his silver mine and town was located.” He gently peeled the map open and placed it as flat as he could on Edward’s desk. They both watched as the overhead air conditioning unit blew at least ten miles of Nevada territory from his desktop. Jim pointed to a star drawn in pencil so many years ago. “That’s the spot great grandpa marked on the map.”

  Edward took a large, round magnifying glass from his desk drawer and looked at the star.

  “Problem is, Jim, the star your great grandfather drew actually covers about fifty miles, maybe more, maybe less.”

  “I know,” answered his boss bringing out another map, close to the same scale, and placed it next to the 1921 map. “I calculated as close as I could using both maps and came up with approximate GPS coordinates.” He looked at Edward and then at his watch, “This could be the big one, Edward.”

  “How much?”

  “Wha? How much money, you mean?”

  Edward shook his head affirmative and asked, “Yes. How much do you plan to sell a ghost town that has been lost for over one hundred years?”

  “You mean,” Jim asked with a knowing grin, “how much is your commission.”

  “Yeah, sure I do.”

  “Well, old buddy, I intend to ask 1.5 million. Of course I’ll come down if I have to but he is from New York and could be one of those rich eccentrics. You never know.”

  “And I get the usual 15 percent, right?”

  “Right. And if you leave now you could be there and back by closing time.”

  “And if I’m not back by then, you’ll get a recovery group out to find me, right?”

  “Of course. The usual scenario, you sit tight and we’ll find you. You know the drill: make sure you fill up your tank, bring some blankets, coffee, sandwiches and batteries for your flashlight.” Jim stood and fixed the crease in his slacks making sure it fell just to the top of his highly polished snakeskin boots, straightened his string tie and headed towards his office at the end of the room.

  “Good Luck, Ed. I have to run now. Breakfast with the town fathers over that proposed dump near the school. See you tonight, partner.”

  Edward took two fresh batteries from the office supply room along with the video camera and topped off at the gas station. His outside temperature gauge read 84 degrees and climbing. According to the map and the GPS coordinates he inputted into his dash-mounted GPS unit, after driving north on Route 95 at sixty miles an hour for twenty-minutes, he is to go off-road and head west into the forbidden ‘bad lands’. Problem is, he thought, for how long do I have to drive west? Oh well, this is what I get paid for.

  He pulled out of the gas station and drove up Route 95 at a steady sixty miles an hour. Edward looked at the GPS and saw that he still had ten miles to go on 95, but he knew that was only because that was the information he had loaded into it. In fact, the coordinates he entered were mostly hearsay and old unconfirmed stories from long-gone prospectors along with the hand-drawn star on an old map.

  After twenty-miles of driving on the black macadam, he looked for and found a road crew maintenance exit and, with a shake of his head, put the car in low gear and drove down the sloped side and onto the flat desert floor heading in the direction that the GPS dictated: due west.

  Thank Heavens for GPS, he thought as he occasionally flicked the wipers on for one or two passes without water. Because even though I grew up around here I never once went to Rattlesnake Haven and I don’t know of anyone else who did. This could be the big one, he mimicked Jim and grinned as he thought, one thing is for sure, Jim didn’t want to drive all the way out here alone. Well, at least the GPS will get me home.

  After close to four hours of driving he stopped on one of the, very rare, high spots in the area, picked up his binoculars and peered in the direction that the GPS said was the location of the ghost town he was looking for. Seeing nothing and getting the feeling that his car’s air-conditioning unit wasn’t up to the task of cooling the interior in the desert heat, he turned and looked at one of the six maps he had open on the front seat. “This is getting stupid,” he said as he used a high-powered magnifying glass to help locate the place. “Nothing! This old, yellowed and cracked map was printed in 1921 and the town was just skipped over by the local cartographers of the day.” He slumped back in defeat and thought, Well, Edward Pushkin, last looks. If I don’t see it, I’m outta here. He looked at his watch. 1:05 in the afternoon and this is what I’m doing for lunch.

  His last look started by settling his binoculars on a slightly darker section of desert about two miles away. “Could just be some cacti clumps or something,” he mumbled as he started to turn the SUV around for home. He got to the bottom of the rise and stopped, removed the still damp handkerchief from around his neck and said, “What the heck, maybe another couple of miles. I’ll give it a shot.” He drove around the rise and headed towards what he thought was another false alarm.

  One mile later he again peered through the glasses and made out an old wooden signpost shimmering from the heat rising from the desert floor and as he drove up a rise, the town suddenly appeared before him.

  A look of surprise was followed by a smile as he thought, Wow! All th
ese years this place has never been spotted and now I know why: It was settled in a valley! You can’t see the place unless you stumble upon it. He grinned as he continued his thoughts, oh well; I guess they built it as close to the mine as possible!

  As a young boy Edward and his friends all rode motor bikes and toured the known ghost towns in the area. They were a refuge from the watchful eyes of their parents and a great place to camp overnight and have a few beers. The ghost towns they visited were all north and east of Bransville and while they had heard of Rattlesnake Haven, they also heard that the town’s name came from the nests of rattlesnakes that infested the area and that took all the fun out of drinking beer in the dark desert nights with snakes around.

  Edward drove slowly as he spotted a slight gully on both side of the road and didn’t want to get stuck in one. Thank heavens the office knows where I am, he thought while driving with the sand-caked side windows down in order to see better, ‘cause there’s no cell phone service out here and if I get stuck I’m gonna have to wait a long time for them to find me.

  It took three times as long to cover the distance in the bouncing and rocking SUV and the closer he got, the clearer he saw the signpost. Finally at the end of the town’s limits stood an old, weather-beaten and bullet-holed sign and if he didn’t know the name of the town he would never had been able to make out the sun-faded words, Rattlesnake Haven on it. He leaned out the passenger’s window and took a picture of the sign, then started forward. Suddenly the town appeared and straight ahead was the main street. The little boy came out in him and, happy with himself, Edward forgot all about missing lunch in the cool bar and wiped his dark glasses before he drove slowly down the main street using his video camera to pan both sides.

  “Phew! This is fantastic!” he said to himself before remembering the video also had audio.” Although, he thought with a sly grin, it can’t hurt that the possible customer will hear the excitement in my voice. Ka-ching!