Death School (Herne the Hunter Western Book 14)

by John J. McLaglen

Herne shook his head. ‘Too many questions and no answers, Sheriff. Bunch of five kids. Ponies. Barefoot. What do you figure?’

  Abernathy didn’t answer. It was too far beyond him. The fire had been bad enough. Then the body. Followed by the realization it must be murder. Now this …

  Herne waited and then carried on. ‘Me, Sheriff, I’m the kind of man who tries to get two and two to make four. Trouble is with that … four just isn’t always the right answer. But I don’t see any possibility for this but white children. Must have been living rough for a whiles, which accounts for the feet. Gould be they’re all one family and their kin were killed or died of a fever. Kids took to looking after themselves.’

  ‘The ponies?’

  Jed nodded. ‘Yeah. That’s what makes the adding come out wrong. Where would five young kids get unshod ponies, ’cept from the Apaches ? So, they must have been taken and then slipped away. Make sense to you?’

  Abernathy was lost in admiration. It was so obvious. It fitted all the questions in his mind. And it didn’t leave but one loose end.

  ‘So where the Hell are the. …?’ He couldn’t decide now whether he hated these mysterious children or whether he ought to be feeling sorry for them.

  ‘Out there,’ answered Herne, sweeping his hand to the towering mountains that ranged about them. Great red giants that were now tipped with purple as the sun sank away out of sight.

  ‘Yeah.’ Abernathy wiped sweat from his forehead with a large spotted handkerchief. A present from his sister a year back. Bought, he recalled, from Sarah Hersham’s store. ‘Guess we might be headin’ back to town, Jed.’ He paused. ‘And I’m obliged to you for your aid.’

  As they rode back towards Tyler’s Crossing’s black square buildings, both men’s attention was held by the column of dust that came from the trail to the south. Herne’s eyes were keener than most and he was able to make out the fluttering guidon carried by one of the lead riders. It was a patrol of a dozen men of the US Cavalry.

  Had he not been so interested in the sight, Jed might have paused in the saddle to look back towards the grim hills. Where he might have caught the momentary flicker of light as the dying sun reflected off something shiny. Something like a mirror.

  Or maybe like the lens of a pair of binoculars.

  Something very much like that.

  The officer was a grizzled lieutenant. The sort of man all too common in the US Cavalry. He’d enlisted as a private soldier and worked his way over the long hard years through corporal on to sergeant. Finally becoming commissioned at the age of thirty-nine and faced with the certain knowledge that only a miracle would now raise him any higher.

  His name was Lieutenant Andrew Christian and he was forty-five years old. He hated niggers, Chinks, whores and Indians. All just about equal, though when he was out on patrol he tended to push Indians - and Apaches hi particular - clean to the top of the list.

  When Herne and Abernathy reached town, he was standing on the steps of the saloon, brushing his leather gauntlets together to clean some of the trail dust from them. He greeted the lawman with a curt nod and acknowledged Herne without any sign of having heard of him before.

  ‘Be obliged for a word in private, gentlemen. Your office, Sheriff, if you please.’

  While his men went to the Harvey Stanstead Livery Stable for food and bedding for their animals, and straw for themselves, Lieutenant Christian sat astride a wooden chair with a chipped seat, waiting while the lawman sank with a sigh of relief into his own chair. Jed propped himself against a wall, glancing at the line of fly-blown wanted posters with their catalogue of petty crime and small rewards. There was nothing there to catch his interest.

  Christian wasn’t a man to go beating around any bushes. ‘Had trouble, Abernathy?’ he asked, his mouth barely opening at the words, like a tight steel trap between his nose and his craggy jaw.

  ‘Little, Lieutenant. Store burned. But we … that is Mr. Herne and me … we …’

  ‘You’d be the killer they call Herne the Hunter.’ It was a simple statement and Jed said nothing. ‘Heard of you. Don’t like what I hear. My men do their job. Huntin’ down killers and Apaches. We don’t make a lot of money, Mr. Herne.’

  ‘Forty miles a day on beans and hay,’ replied Jed, rewarded with a flush of anger across the officer’s unshaven cheeks.

  ‘Yeah. Shootists like you can make a thousand dollars by putting a bullet in a man’s back at two hundred paces. Or shoot down some innocent and cut off the ears. Even the head. After a few days who’s to know whether he’s the man you get paid for?’

  Jed eased off the wall, and his right hand moved, almost of its own volition, to hover over the butt of the Colt. His eyes had gone colder than winter ice and his voice was flat and hard.

  ‘You hidin’ behind your pretty blue clothes, soldier, or you a man who backs up his stinkin’ yellow words with his gun?’

  Christian wasn’t impressed. He’d been around the frontier all his life and he knew what he could do and what he couldn’t do.

  ‘I don’t give a windy shit for you, Herne. And you don’t frighten me. I’m not a fool. Wouldn’t be here like this today if’n I was. You’d put six bullets through my chest before I could fart "Dixie". I know that. But I’m not fightin’ you.’

  ‘Then you’re a coward, Lieutenant. A blowhard coward who calls a man and then backs off.’

  Christian glanced up at him, seeing the chilling anger. ‘Maybe you’re different, Herne. Truth to tell, I heard some good about you over the years, to mix in with the bad.’

  Jed knew that it was the closest he was going to get to an apology and he nodded.

  ‘You haven’t told us what brings you here, Lieutenant? Indian trouble?’

  ‘Yeah. Nothing too big. But there’ve been three or four small trains gone missin’. Not more than five wagons each. Most from the south. We hear there are wagons comin’ and not a damned thing appears.’ He paused. ‘Wouldn’t have any good drinkin’ whiskey, would you?’

  ‘Sure.’ Abernathy slid open a drawer in his desk, bringing out a bottle, rummaging around and finally holding out three glasses. Pouring a generous shot into each and handing them round to Herne and the officer.

  ‘I’m obliged.’ He raised it. ‘Damnation to all our enemies and hot-blooded women for long nights.’

  ‘I’ll surely drink to that, Lieutenant,’ said the sheriff. Herne silently lifted his glass and sipped at the liquor. Waiting to hear what had brought a Cavalry patrol all this way. It had to be a little more than just a few wagons wiped off the earth by Apaches. Anyone fool enough to come through Arizona Territory in 1886 with only a handful of wagons deserved to disappear.

  ‘Senator’s daughter. Miss Susannah Jackson. On one of the trains.’

  ‘Any children missing?’ asked Abernathy, looking sideways at Herne with a half-wink that the shootist didn’t understand.

  ‘Yes. I’ve got me a list somewheres around. But the rest don’t signify. No reward on them. Nor on any children. Just Miss Susannah Jackson, heading west to meet up with her husband-to-be.’

  The sheriff rubbed his nose, pouring himself another glass. ‘Reward? There aren’t any clues?’

  ‘None. Has to be those red sons of fuckin’ bastards in the hills, Butcher the men. Keep the women and maybe the children. You got any ideas, Sheriff ?’

  That was when the wink became meaningful to Jed. The fat lawman knew that the raid on the store was a card up his sleeve. If it had been children escaped from Apache captors, like Herne had suggested, then they knew roughly where they’d gone. They could be tracked at first light. And they might know something about any other white captives of the Indians.

  ‘How much, Lieutenant?’ asked Jed.

  The veteran soldier turned to look at him. ‘Guess that’s the only question I’d expect from bounty-huntin’ … from someone like you, Herne. No concern for the folks. Just the dollars at the end of the day.’

  ‘How much?’ repeated Jed. Ignoring the con
tempt in the officer’s voice.

  ‘You ever married, Herne? Or had children? No, I guess you wouldn’t. Man like you. Whores and … Jesus!’

  He was the second man in Tyler’s Crossing in a half day to regret having picked on the wrong person to push his luck.

  Jedediah’s marriage had been one of the few really good things in a life not notable for its beauty and love. It had gone. Ended in a brutal death, and his hopes of children and a future had died with his wife. It was something that lay mostly beneath the surface, until the scar was raked by someone like Lieutenant Christian.

  He’d dropped the glass and drawn the pistol in a blur of speed, lips peeling back from his teeth like a cornered wolf. Before the officer could move the barrel of the Colt was jammed against the angle of the jaw, crunching into the cartilage. Forcing his head to one side, where he sat very still, fingers gripping the arms of the chair, knuckles white as snow.

  ‘You son of a bitch,’ said Herne quietly. ‘I could blow your damned head away.’

  ‘Easy, mister,’ whispered the soldier, his face grey with shock. Sheriff Abernathy had begun a slow and abortive move towards his own pistol, freezing when he saw he would be way too late.

  ‘Don’t fuckin’ tell me to go easy, blue-belly,’ Herne snarled. ‘You keep that tongue still in your mouth, soldier.’

  Christian knew that a man who is going to kill you doesn’t generally hold a gun on you and talk about it first But that didn’t give him the comfort he somehow felt it should. He’d met some hard guns in his time. Fast shootists, but never anyone as hair-trigger fast as this Herne the Hunter. He knew that his life had hung there for a moment on the edge of Herne’s flaring temper. Guessing that he’d accidentally probed at a nerve.

  ‘Jed …’ began the lawman, tentatively, not wanting to draw that bitter anger on himself.

  ‘It’s all right, Sheriff. I just want this bastard to know that. Hell!’ He allowed the hammer on the pistol to click forwards, easing it down with his thumb. Keeping the barrel of the Peacemaker jammed against Christian’s neck.

  The officer was sweating, fingers clenched so hard it was hurting. Wishing that he had a chance to get back at the bounty-hunter for humiliating him in this way. But knowing in his heart that Herne was a better and faster man. Fitter and stronger. That if he wanted him dead, Christian would have to do it himself and not risk a mistake. And he didn’t believe that he was quite good enough for that.

  ‘I asked about the money, Lieutenant,’ grated Jed. ‘And I don’t hear an answer.’

  ‘Five thousand back alive. Five hundred for positive proof of death.’

  ‘The others?’

  ‘Don’t waste your time, Herne,’ Christian swallowed, easing the dryness in his throat. ‘Not a cent for any of the rest. Not the men, the women nor even the little children that are gone.’

  ‘How long do we have?’ asked Abernathy. Herne noticed the ‘we’ but let it pass. For the time being.

  ‘Long as you want. Guess if you don’t find any trace within two … three weeks, then save your energy. Could you move your cannon, Herne? It’s givin’ me a hell of a pain in the neck.’

  ‘That’s not where you give me the pain, soldier,’ replied Herne, finally shifting the pistol, holstering it. But leaving the retaining cord free.

  ‘You two goin’ after the girl?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘You know where to go?’

  Before Abernathy could speak, Herne interrupted. ‘You know where to go, then you get yourself five thousand dollars, soldier. Ifn you don’t know, then you can just get your ass in your saddle at first light and be on your damned way.’

  For a moment the plump lawman thought that the officer was going to reach for his own pistol, but reason checked him. He stood slowly, facing the two men. Talking to them both, but really addressing his words only to Herne.

  ‘I’ll be goin’ at dawn. Guess I ought to wish you luck in this. But I don’t. And you, shootist, I hope to meet you again someday. Talk about this and that.’

  ‘You’ll be dead before that. Man like you. You’re too old, lieutenant. Too old. Too stupid. One day you’ll realize that. When you’re gut shot in the dirt, lookin’ up at the sky. Remember what I say.’

  ‘All right, smart-ass,’ sneered the officer, venomously. ‘You go chase that girl.’

  ‘It’s not her. I’m more interested in the children. They really interest me, Christian. And you can ponder on that.’

  When the soldier had gone. Herne turned to Abernathy, and grinned. ‘Yeah. We’ll follow those children.’

  Chapter Four

  It was going to be a fine day.

  The storm clouds of the previous afternoon had totally disappeared and there was nothing to mar the unbroken bowl of blue sky. The clusters of saguaro cactuses threw their elongated shadows across the scrub and dry soil beneath them. A gila woodpecker perched on top of one of them, watching the solitary pair of riders as they pressed their horses on, along the line of tracks that led out from the sheltered draw.

  Herne sat his black stallion, while Sheriff Ralph J. Abernathy was rammed into the saddle of a massive bay gelding.

  The cavalry patrol had been out and away from Tyler’s Crossing before dawn. Leaving in a jingle of harness and the muffled beating of horses’ hooves. No drums or bands or flags and salutes. Just another group of tired, dirty men going out on another nameless patrol against an enemy that they hardly ever saw. That some of them would probably die before seeing. Shot down from ambush by a young Apache buck.

  Despite the rain, the trail was still there, winding away south and west. Towards the mountains that ran clear through to Mexico.

  ‘No town out this way, Jed. Not a damned place,’ wheezed the lawman. Pulling out his neckerchief and wiping away the sweat.

  ‘That so?’ Herne was irritated by a memory. ‘I recall some place here.’

  ‘Oh. Guess you mean the old mine. Ghost town now. Called Houghton’s Bluff.’

  That was it. Herne immediately remembered, annoyed with himself that so recent a memory should have proved so elusive.

  ‘I was there. Three years ago. Maybe a mite less than that. And it’s gone now?’

  ‘Sure. Houghton died and his woman didn’t take to runnin’ the mine. Poor dirt there and when that folded up, the town died on its feet overnight.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Herne could picture the scene. There were townships and settlements like Houghton’s Bluff all over the place. One main street with three saloons and a half-built church. Once folks left, the land began to move back in. The wind tugged at loose shingles and planks. Windows broke and the rain warped the walls and doors. Dust piled up and pretty soon roofs started to tumble. Whole buildings would fall in the solitary stillness, scaring the coyotes and maybe sending a lone cougar skittering for cover. Tumbleweed rolled around corners and drifted lazily along the center of the single street. The noise and bustle died and the silence crept back in.

  Now Houghton’s Bluff was gone that same way. The memory flooded back to him as he and Abernathy rode on southwards, following the trail of the five unshod ponies, carrying the children that they believed to be killers. But killers who could lead Jed and the sheriff towards five thousand dollars.

  ‘Seems like you got some thoughts about that ghost town, Jed. Care to share ’em ?’

  Ralph J. Abernathy was a naturally curious man, and he’d never had the chance to spend some time in the company of a real shootist. Not some young kid with a greased Colt tied too low on his thigh and a one-way ticket to nowhere. There were plenty of them. Dime a dozen killers with no sand and plenty of gall.

  But Herne the Hunter was something very special.

  Normally Jed didn’t care to talk about the past. It was over and it wasn’t even worth forgetting. But the flare-up with the arrogant Lieutenant Christian had broken through his coyer. The bitter words had hurt him more than he’d been prepared for and only Jed knew how close he’d been
to pulling the narrow trigger of the Colt and spreading the soldier’s brains and blood all over the floor and walls and ceiling of Abernathy’s office.

  His wife’s death had been in March, in eighteen eighty-two. ‘Four years back. Long, lonely years.’

  The killings in Houghton’s Bluff had been back around eighty-three. As he talked about it, the scenes came back with a vivid memory.

  It had been a family.

  The Nelsons. Father and three boys. One a whole lot older than the others. What had their names been?

  The father had been Willy. The young boy had been Waylon. Jed couldn’t remember the name of the middle one of the sons. He’d been a shambling halfwit who had waved his arms and crowed like a rooster, trying to blast down Herne with a scattergun. And the oldest had been Walt. He’d been close to Jed’s own age, the son of old man Nelson by an earlier marriage.

  They’d been trying to run Houghton’s Bluff, living in a shack outside the settlement and taking a toll from anyone coming along the trail. It hadn’t been an ordinary bounty job for Herne. He’d just happened to be passing along and had run into them.

  The half-wit and the father had tried to stop him. Wouldn’t back off, and Jed had blown them away with his Colt. Using three bullets. One through the center of the elderly Willy. One through the shoulder of the idiot son, and the last one through his throat as he tried to pick up the fallen gun» still crowing and giggling.

  Jed didn’t know until he’d gotten into Houghton’s Bluff that there’d been two more sons. He’d found that out round about noon. He still remembered the shadows etched around his feet. Almost invisible with the sun so close to overhead.

  It had been like a dime novel he’d once seen, called something like: ‘Riders Of Owlhoot Gulch.’ That had been about two top gunfighters who had met in the middle of the main street to settle their differences. Something that Herne knew hardly ever happened. But that was what came on down in Houghton’s Bluff.

  ‘The two other sons came for me. I was crossing over to buy some shells. Then they called me.’ He stopped in the story and half-laughed, making Abernathy turn in the saddle and stare at him.