Tombstone by Walter Noble Burns — Read

Ghosts? Well, why not? But you don't believe in them? Then you are unfortunate and may miss some delicious thrills. If you believe in ghosts, Skeleton Canyon is haunted; if you don't, it's not. That's the way Ross Sloan seems to look at it. But, after all, that may be the wrong point of view, and Skeleton Canyon may have its ghosts, faith or no faith. Who knows?

Skeleton Canyon winds through the wildest part of the Peloncillo Mountains from the Animas Valley in New Mexico to the San Simon Valley in Arizona. The Animas Valley in the old days used to be a main place for outlaws. Curly Bill had a ranch there, and Old Man Clanton and Dick Gray and Billy Lang. Down in this farthest angle of the southeastern corner of New Mexico, jam-up against the Mexican border, still stand the old Cloverdale ranch house, the Roofless Dobe, the Double Dobe, and other old weather-beaten places of refuge famous in outlaw tales. Where Skeleton Canyon opens out into the San Simon Valley on the west stands Ross Sloan's ranch house with high hills of red rock towering above it and back of it, only a few miles, the main range of the Peloncillos. Across the valley loom the Chiricahuas, and you can see from Sloan's front door the far-off, shadowy mouth of Silver Creek Canyon that leads up to Paradise and Curly Bill's old haunts around Galeyville.