Search for a short story

storker

Perhaps a slightly unusual request... I'm trying to trace a short ghost story set in the old west that I read many years ago.

From very sketchy memory: the narrator hides from hostile indians in a cave and finds himelf in the company of four other men who are doing likewise. The men introduce themselves by name and they converse for a while. Eventually he is alone again (can't remember how this comes about) and is able to leave the cave and reach a nearby town, where on telling his story he is told that some time before, four men took refuge in that cave, and without hope of escape, committed suicide. The names of those men were the same as those the narrator encountered.

Has anyone else come across this story? I had thought that it might be by Ambrose Bierce, or perhaps Louis l'Amour or Stephen Crane but my googling has been unsuccessful.

storker

Found it. "The Stranger", by Ambrose Bierce. My memory of the plot was inaccurate on a few points, but it has been many years since I read it. Here it is, for the curious...

http://www.ambrosebierce.org/stranger.htm