Read Of Grave Concern for Free Online

consciousness.”
    He thought for a moment.
    â€œTowner gives the best show and is a teetotaler, to boot, but he’s more concerned with having people think he’s smart than doing right by his clients,” he said. “Wilbert is good, but his wife died of the fever last winter and he’s been unenthusiastic about work and life ever since. So I’d say Potete is your best bet. It’s even money whether he’ll come to court drunk or sober, but hope for drunk. He’s a mean drunk, but one who swings with words, not his fists. He’s brilliant right up until he passes out.”
    I sighed.
    â€œPotete, then. Send word.”
    Tom turned to leave, then paused.
    â€œYou might want to save that paper.”
    Now it was my turn to give him a blank stare.
    â€œIn case the Montgomery Ward catalog is all used up.”
    â€œOf course,” I said. “Always good to plan ahead.”
    He left and I scooted around so my back was against the bars nearest the lamp. I unfolded all four pages of the Dodge City Times. It wasn’t the Chicago Tribune or the New York World, but at least it was something to read. There was a hyperbolic article on the front page that talked about how good the grass was this year, and I doubt if any big-city editor had ever waxed more purple:

    Never in the history of the prairies of Western Kansas has a season been more favorable to vegetation than the present. The rainfall has been greater and more regular, and the grass, which came earlier, is much healthier, and a thicker crop than ever was known before now covers the earth.

    There was a related story about the first herd from Texas having arrived, a herd of twelve hundred cattle from the Red River, and how the cowboys had some trouble with farmers in Comanche County at the quarantine line. Thousands more longhorns were expected in the days to come.
    I jumped over to a story about tramp jitters:

    Dodge City is just now especially favored by the tramp fraternity. It seems to be the jumping-off place for the Westward-bound tramp (they invariably travel toward the setting sun).

    Not a very Christian attitude, I mused.
    Then I turned the page and found the following:

    THE GHOST STILL WALKS!
    The ghost of the unidentified murdered girl found last month on the century meridian marker continues to walk with uncanny tread along the Santa Fe right-of-way. Police Judge Frost believes that an investigation will reveal some startling things.
    For over a week, supernatural manifestations near the railway depot have aroused the community, and the shacks in the vicinity of the ghostly perambulations have been vacated.
    On Friday night, Hoodoo Brown, thinking the story of the ghost was humbug, paid a midnight visit to the monument. He had not waited long, when a low plaintive wail assailed his ears, and almost simultaneously a figure clad in blue gingham materialized on the meridian marker. The ghost was the likeness of the beautiful but unknown girl, down to her long blond hair and the deep slash beneath her chin. At the same time, a light, resembling a calcium ray, shone down on the monument, and the girl rose from her deathly repose and began her nightly walk.
    Brown, a good Republican and Union Army veteran, buffalo hunter, and Indian fighter, said that he nearly fainted of fright and has been ill and not eaten well nor slept a whole night since.
    Police Judge Frost is considerably wrought-up over the appearance of the astral body. He adheres to the belief that the unknown girl will continue to haunt Dodge City until her killer is brought to justice. He also believes that the poor unknown may have been a victim of kidnap and worse, and that an investigation will reveal startling facts linking her murder to the recent advance of the tramp army into Dodge City.

    At least I wasn’t crazy. That was good to know, but it led to other troubling questions: Who was she? Who had killed her? And (especially) why had she