Death School (Herne the Hunter Western Book 14)

by John J. McLaglen

  Herne had been reluctant to ride along with Sheriff Abernathy in a foolhardy search for Senator Jackson’s daughter, who’d been captured by a ruthless Mescalero raiding party. But a $5000 reward helped change his mind. What he hadn’t reckoned on was meeting five savage white kids, fresh out of Death School. And that ghost from the past. A ghost that was hell-bent on revenge …

  DEATH SCHOOL

  HERNE THE HUNTER 14:

  By John J. McLaglen

  First Published by Transworld Publishers in 1980

  Copyright © 1980, 2016 by John J. McLaglen

  First Smashwords Edition: January 2016

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.

  Cover image © 2014 by Tony Masero

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Mike Stotter

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author.

  This is for Nick Austin. Even when he changes his job he still finds that he can’t get away from being my editor. And I’d be truly sorry if it was ever any other way.

  ‘Boys nowadays. No pride, no self-respect. Plenty of gall but no sand.’

  Joel McCrea to Randolph Scott in the marvelous Sam Peckinpah western Ride the High Country, sometimes called Guns in the Afternoon.

  Chapter One

  ‘Y’all have a nice day, now.’

  ‘Thank ya, ma’am. And the same to you.’

  The brightly polished bell over the door of the shop tinkled as the customer left, filling the room with silvery echoes.

  For a moment there had been a wave of heat breaking in from the dusty street outside and the sound of a horse and rig rattling by. Then, with the closing of the door, there was again the cool silence, the store seeming like a cavern, beneath the sea, shadowed and quiet.

  There was only one customer left. A middle-aged woman, peering at a printed catalogue, scratching her nose as she tried to make up her mind between one undergarment and another.

  ‘I declare, I do not know which one to choose between these two, Miss Hersham.’

  There was a flicker of movement among the shadows and the owner of the little store appeared, wiping dust from her fingers with a piece of linen rag.

  She was a short, stout woman, not more than five feet and an inch. Her body contained within her clothes so tightly that it appeared on the verge of bursting out of the dark green bombazine. Her capacious bosom was confined and thrust upwards so that it looked a hardship for her even to breathe, never mind walk and talk. Yet she contrived to manage all three functions quite admirably,

  ‘I suggest the item at two dollars and fourteen cents, Miss Stanstead,’ she suggested, pursing her lips.

  ‘It is the most expensive, Miss Hersham,’ exclaimed the other lady, doubtfully.

  ‘And because of that, much the better, my dear Eliza,’ she countered. ‘Of course …’ A measured pause, ‘if Mr. Stanstead is not able to spend so …’

  ‘No.’ Too hurriedly. ‘Of course not. Harvey has never stinted on money for my clothes.’

  ‘Particularly your underpinnings, I’ll warrant,’ smiled Sarah Hersham. She hadn’t been running the small general store in Tyler’s Crossing in the southern part of the Territory of Arizona for over thirty years without learning an awful lot about the people who lived in the township.

  Eliza Stanstead’s husband, Harvey, ran the livery stable and was the mayor of Tyler’s Crossing. And over those years his wife had come frequently to the store to order clothes from the Eastern catalogues. Sometimes bonnets or dresses, or high button boots. But most often it was underclothes.

  At first it had been the simple muslin drawers and corsets of good, serviceable quality. Five hooks for summer with sateen strips. Then the town had begun to grow a little as men pushed south and west, fighting the threats of the Apaches and the inhospitable climate. As Tyler’s Crossing flourished, so did the Stanstead Livery Stable. So did the quality of the unmentionables from Miss Hersham’s books improve. Expensive girdle corsets, thoroughly boned and beautifully finished with silk flossing and edged with embroidery. Two of them, in black and in white. And the drawers! French pattern in lawn. With four rows of Valenciennes insertion with a matching, highly raised edge. A double cluster of triple tucks in the drawers above the ruffle.

  Daring for New York and unthinkable for southern Arizona. So the buying was a close secret between the two women. And Eliza Stanstead found herself somewhat in the position of a victim in the hands of a blackmailer. Sarah Hersham would constantly smile at her and mention it was time to purchase some more clothes. And there was always the implied threat that if she didn’t . . . Well, then folks might know about the French lawn and die silk embroidery that caressed her flesh beneath the prim gowns.

  ‘Land O’Goshen, I declare that I just don’t know about this, Sarah.’

  ‘You go away and talk it over with dear Harvey and then come and tell me which you want tomorrow.’

  Knowing full well that she would come and that she would go for the most expensive item in the catalogue. There wasn’t any choice. What Eliza Stanstead didn’t know was that Sarah Hersham had another card up her sleeve. Perhaps on its way towards her sleeve would be more accurate. She had heard from an unmarried sister in New Jersey that there were firms who specialized in very unusual items for discriminating ladies. Garments that made Sarah’s mouth water with their extravagance and wickedness. Knowing that Harvey Stanstead would mortgage his soul to get his hands on them. One such catalogue was already in the mail on its way to her and then . . . then it would not take long for her to invite Eliza around to see it.

  Through the glass top to the door she watched the figure of her friend and best customer vanish in a whirl of dust. The wind was rising outside and the sky was darkening from the north. Perhaps she could close early. There was the bookkeeping to do.

  She sighed as she reached up to place the catalogue on one of the top shelves. Beginning to feel that nagging pain in the small of her back. Stretching round to rub at it.

  ‘Good day, ma’am.’

  The voice made her jump and she turned quickly round. Unable to prevent her eyes flickering to the secret hiding-place of her money. Sarah didn’t believe in banks or heavy iron safes. Her late husband, Morton, dead these thirty years, had always urged her to pick an unlikely hidey-hole for her accumulated store of dollars. And she had taken that advice. Neatly folding the roll of dollars and tying it with some mauve edging ribbon. Tucking it into the bottom of an old-fashioned pair of kid shoes. Shoes so hideous that she knew nobody would ever want to look at them. There was sixteen hundred and thirty-nine dollars in that roll. Enough to allow her to quit the dust and heat of Tyler’s Crossing in a year or so, and move to join her sister back East.

  But the glance towards the door reassured her. The small group of children standing there didn’t have the look of robbing desperadoes. Though they weren’t from any of the families in Tyler’s Crossing, Must be a train arrived in the area. Women looking for new clothes. Men too. And candy for their children. Cooking pots.

  All of this ran through her mind before she’d even opened her mouth. The scent of trade strong in her nostrils, clouding her thinking.

  Covering over that tiny shred of concern as to why the bell on the door hadn�
�t warned her of someone coming in.

  ‘Well, hello, children. It surely is a nice day, isn’t it?’

  ‘Praise the Lord, ma’am, but we thank him for his blessings to us.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ she smiled piously, immediately a little disappointed. If they were from one of those outside religious movements, then they were likely to be poor spenders.

  They stood in a silent row, looking at her. While she appraised them, trying to put a value on them and therefore on their families. Outside, the only sound was the wind, rattling at a loose shingle on the roof. The store was the last building on the trail of dust that they called ‘Main Street’.

  Five of them. Four boys and a girl. The one who had spoken looked to be about fifteen. Tallish, wearing shirt and blue trousers. Fair hair, longish. Too long for her tastes.

  The girl looked next oldest. Hair tied back from her face with a leather thong. A sun tanned face. Not what they’d find fashionable back in Boston and New York, but inevitable when you crossed the continent in a rattling wagon.

  Then two boys. Twins by the look of them. Around thirteen was Sarah Hersham’s guess. Black hair. She noticed then that all of them had long hair. Longer than most And none of them was very clean. She wrinkled her nose as she became aware that they also smelled. Not ordinary trail dirt smell. Lord knows, but that was a common enough smell in Arizona in summer, where water was sometimes worth a whole lot more than gold or silver. If you were dying of thirst then you couldn’t drink money. This was a different scent.

  A heavy, greasy sort of stench that she was sure she vaguely knew but couldn’t quite identify.

  ‘Could we please have some candy’ if’n it’s not too great a bother, ma’am?’

  ‘Land’s sakes, child,’ she smiled. The expression fading as she saw the speaker. The fifth of them. He’d been hiding in the shadows by a dressmaker’s dummy near the door and she hadn’t seen him properly. He was the youngest.

  Not more than eleven, and smallish for that age. In a set of torn overalls and bare-footed. In fact, all of them were …

  ‘Don’t none of you have any shoes?’ she exclaimed, momentarily distracted from the bizarre appearance of the smallest boy.

  ‘No, ma’am, but we surely hope that you can help us remedy that,’ said the girl quietly.

  ‘Of course.’

  This was looking better. Five pairs of boots or shoes. Perhaps two for the young lady. Not that she looked anything like a lady.

  ‘The candy, ma’am?’ Taking her attention back to the littlest

  Drawing in her breath once more, making her constricted bosom threaten to burst out of its confines. She had never seen a child like it. Frail and skinny, with the palest skin she had ever seen, making it look as though the boy had spent all of his life in a dark cellar away from the light of the sun.

  ‘Your …’ Sarah halted herself. Generally speaking she didn’t much care for children, but she had enough sense to know better than to make an obvious comment.

  But his hair ...

  It was white. Pure white. Not the speckled grey of a middle-aged man. But the dazzling silver white of the spray from a winter waterfall. Hanging like a veil to the lad’s shoulders.

  And his eyes! In the cool dimness of the store they seemed to the old woman to be red. But she knew that was impossible. Nobody had red «yes.

  ‘What kind of candy, young fellow?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know, ma’am.’

  ‘And then the shoes,’ murmured the oldest boy, walking cat-footed around the shop, looking at the range of items on sale. The rest of the little, group also splitting up and walking about. Sarah knew that some boys were less than honest and tried to watch them all, but it was hard and their ceaseless movements made her head spin.

  For the first time she felt a touch of unease at the group.

  ‘Where have you come from, children? Is there a train nearby?’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ replied the girl, trying on a cotton bonnet in front of a speckled mirror.

  ‘Your parents?’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ said one of the twin boys. ‘Our Mama and Papa are not here.’

  ‘Outside town?’ Sarah Hersham couldn’t understand what they meant. It was the simplest common sense that such a young collection of children must have someone close by looking after them. Responsible for them.

  Must have.

  ‘No, ma’am. We kind of look after ourselves, you might say.’ The oldest boy smiled at her. Polite and deferential. Reassuring.

  ‘I’ll get you some candy, children. I got me some mint and some fruit flavors. Which would you all like to try?’

  ‘How much, ma’am?’ asked the girl.

  ‘Well …’ she was calculating the value of free pieces of candy against the footwear. And some of their clothes looked filthy and torn. Then again, there was that strange smell.

  ‘You carry handguns, ma’am?’ asked the white-haired boy, almost out of sight behind the counter where she kept a selection of tools.

  ‘No. There’s a gun store up the street. Mr. Abernathy runs it and—’

  ‘We know that, ma’am.’

  ‘Anyway, young man, I don’t like to hear of God-fearin’ children talkin’ of shootin’ and the like. I’ll tell you what I’ll do … I’ll give each of you a free twist of mint candy. How will that be?’

  ‘Be right kind of you, ma’am, and we thank you for it,’ said the oldest boy, quietly. Standing near the door and stooping to look out across the deserted street, his figure almost filling the glass and darkening the store.

  They stood in total silence watching her as she walked to the side of the main counter, taking down the thick glass jar of sweets. Unscrewing the top and fetching out several chunks of the fragrant candy. Putting a few pieces into five twists of dark blue paper. Holding them out to the children. Each of them filing solemnly forward and taking the gifts with a bob of the head and a muttered word of thanks.

  The mysterious group were so deliberately polite that Sarah was reassured and put her hands on her hips and beamed at them.

  ‘You surely are in a state. You all been travelin’ far?’

  The girl answered. ‘I figure you could say that we have, ma’am.’

  ‘And your parents?’

  ‘We are all orphans, the victims of an Apache massacre, ma’am,’ said the tall boy.

  ‘Oh, no.’ For a moment Sarah’s eyes unaccountably filled with tears. It wasn’t that unusual to find orphans in that part of Arizona in 1886. But five of them all together?

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘That’s …’

  The oldest boy took a piece of the mint candy and popped it in his mouth, sucking on it ruminatively. Looking expressionlessly at the old lady. Sarah was puzzled by the way they didn’t talk to each other. No horseplay like she sometimes saw from some of the children around Tyler’s Grossing. It was such good behavior that it was a little unsettling.

  ‘Ma’am?’ said the leader of the group, standing very still in the centre of the store.

  ‘The shoes, young man?’

  ‘No. Not the shoes.’

  ‘Then …What can I …?’

  ‘This candy, ma’am.’

  ‘What about it ? You mean paying for it? Lord bless you, child. The day that Sarah Hersham charges a poor orphan for a little bag of sweet meats is the day I stop trading here.’

  ‘That’s not it, ma’am.’

  ‘Then what is it, boy?’

  ‘This candy …’ he spat it out of his mouth on the scrubbed boards. ‘It tastes like horse shit, ma’am.’

  ‘What did …?’ Two hectic spots of color leaped to the woman’s cheeks and she stood, eyes gaping, as if she had been slapped.

  ‘I said this is shit, ma’am. Just fuckin’ shit, and a stinkin’ whore like you ought not sell such stuff.’

  ‘I have never …’ Sarah’s voice failed her for a moment and she felt a fluttering in her chest as if his heart was as shocked as she was. ‘Y
ou had better leave this shop right now and wash out your mouth with soap and water. And you … you had—’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I will not! Wash your mouth out, you wretch and then go along to the church and fall to your knees and pray to your Savior that you be redeemed for your wickedness. It is hard being an orphan boy but that is by no means an excuse for …’

  He stepped towards her, dropping all the candy on the floor, his feet crunching it to splinters, his right fist clenching. Sarah noticed that all the children had thrown down their screws of paper, treading on them. So that the store filled with rich scent of mint. Even then any trembling there might have been of unease or fear were quite overwhelmed by a red anger.

  ‘When I tell—’

  The fist hit her in the mouth, cutting her lip and breaking her teeth. Snapping the false front set that had been her pride and joy and had been delivered all the way from Chicago. The force of the blow sent her spinning backwards, striking her ribs against a corner of the counter, toppling her over so that she fell to the floor, rolling so that she finished crumpled and still near a stack of brooms.

  ‘Close the place up,’ said the oldest boy, urgently. ‘Lower the blind and put up that sign.’

  Sarah Hersham struggled back to consciousness, choking on her own blood. Coughing and weeping, feeling with shaking fingers the swelling on her lip, and the warmth and wetness of the wound.

  She tried to get up but a kick in the ribs left her gasping where she was. It was darker than she remembered it, and she peered across the store, seeing the front door was now locked and bolted, with the canvas blind drawn to the bottom of the glass.

  The five children were standing in a half-circle, looking down at her. She noticed that none of them was showing the least sign of anger or interest in her plight. And that somehow frightened her even more.

  ‘You back with us, ma’am?’ asked the girl, with an icy politeness.

  ‘Why … Why do you do this? I haven’t harmed you in any way, have I?’

  ‘Not harmed us. No, ma’am. Why should you think such a thing?’