Herne the Hunter 22

by John J. McLaglen

  ‘Why these two?’ Herne asked, nodding across the room.

  ‘They was here. Didn’t figure I could ride out myself. I offered ’em half.’

  ‘Half of how much?’ asked Herne, wondering how much he was worth dead to a man he’d never seen or heard of.

  ‘Two hundred dollars.’

  Herne jerked the bayonet loose and the man collapsed to the floor, grasping his shattered leg and moaning loudly.

  Herne went to the cashbox that had been knocked to the floor and turned the key, grabbing a handful of bills that likely came to close on a hundred dollars.

  On his way back across the room, he bent over the kid he’d been questioning before Silver-hair had made his move. The shot from the sawn-off had lifted him off his feet and thrown him clear across the room. Small holes peppered his face and chest and his faint line of moustache was tinged with red. He looked even younger than his sixteen years and he wouldn’t get any older.

  Herne took one final glance at the wreck of a man writhing in his own blood and mess in the middle of the room and pushed his way out into the warm air.

  There were a dozen or so people outside and they all backed off as Herne emerged and no one made a move to stop him leaving. The boy was waiting by the well, holding the reins of his horse. Herne dipped the scoop into the bucket of water that rested on the brick surround and drank deep. Then he took the reins and said thanks to the boy, hauling himself into the saddle. At the last moment, he swung down and reached out for the boy’s hand and when he pulled away there were close on a hundred dollar bills fluttering between the boy’s astonished fingers.

  Seven

  A small crowd stood around the liberty pole at the centre of Portsmouth Square, listening to a white-suited politician stomping his feet on the improvised rostrum, thumping his fist into his palm and demanding that the entire Chinese population of California be deported and that San Francisco’s Chinatown be burned to the ground forthwith.

  Apart from one youth with a wall-eye who fingered a length of timber nervously and yelled approval for the speaker’s more violent ideas, nobody seemed about to march off in search of burning brands.

  Near the edge of the crowd a Chinaman wearing a skintight black cap and loose-fitting black clothes walked slowly round selling food from a tray. He was apparently oblivious to the politician’s rhetoric, and the crowd seemed oblivious to him—except when it came to buying spring rolls.

  Herne stood some ten yards off from the small crowd, the ground beneath his feet more mud than grass. Half of the trees that had been planted inside the park railings had failed to grow and hardly outshone the wooden stakes which had been driven into the ground to support them; others had clearly been pulled up, perhaps by a mob fired more successfully than the present docile scattering.

  So far Herne had seen nothing of the gangs of young hoodlums who were rumored to live in the city, mostly around the docks, coming out into the streets at night and terrorizing anyone foolish enough to walk alone or insufficiently armed. The stories he had heard told of groups of as many as fifty, armed with clubs and knives, razors and occasionally guns; tales of rape and robbery, throats cut and bodies drifting in the bay.

  Again his mind went to Connors, trying to fit him into a pattern that seemed to be becoming increasingly difficult to contain.

  He took a few paces across the square. Immediately ahead of him was the McLaughlin Mail and Stage Office, connecting with Oakland, San Juan, Santa Cruz and Stockton, onto Sacramento. The road in front of it had been paved with irregular cobbles and a coach stood waiting for departure, one of the team thrusting its head over the park railings and eating the leaves from the beginnings of a tree.

  To his left was a sloping street of buildings that were mostly brick, all at least two stories high. John Piper, Dealer in Fruits; Lanszwtert’s Pharmacy and Chemical Laboratory; Lucas Fine: Gun Smith; the Plaza Bakery; the narrow building with a white awning to the right of the bakery had the name Ray Bellour painted in red script above the varnished door.

  Herne crossed the street and looked through the window. A painting of a woman holding a small bouquet of flowers was set on an easel at the centre; she was wearing a pale blue dress and there was something Spanish or Mexican about her, apart from the fact that her hair, pulled back and turned into a tight coil, was fair. Several smaller paintings, one of a soldier in uniform, the others of women and children, were arranged at either side. The side wall held a display of daguerreotypes, some of them family portraits, others women posed against a background of lace and ornate furniture.

  Herne went next door to the bakery and bought a sweet roll and ate it hungrily; he bought a second and, still licking the sweetness from his fingers, pushed the door open to Bellour’s store.

  A woman was sitting behind a desk towards the rear of the room, her back as straight as if someone had tied a poker to her spine before leaving her in place.

  The heels of Herne’s boots sank into the Indian carpet as he walked towards her.

  ‘You’d like to buy a painting, sir? Or maybe you’ve come to arrange for a sitting. The rates are—’

  ‘I want to see Bellour.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I said I want to see Bellour.’

  It was clear she wasn’t used to being talked to that way. Her back couldn’t get any straighter, but her neck arched steeply and her eyes became dark pin holes. She was wearing a black suit with a crisp white blouse, her hair was dark and pinned close to her head in a bun. There was deep red paint on her fingernails.

  ‘Mr. Bellour is …’

  The door in the wall behind her opened and a man’s head poked out. He was open-faced and sandy-haired and one of his front teeth was cracked across. He started to say something to the woman, saw Herne and thought better of it.

  Back of him, Herne could see that there were packages wrapped in brown paper and apparently ready to be moved. He could see daylight through an open back door and the outline of a small delivery wagon.

  The door in the wall slammed shut.

  The woman at the desk ground her teeth.

  ‘That Bellour?’ asked Herne, moving closer.

  ‘Mr. Bellour is not on the premises.’

  ‘Then who …?’

  ‘That was Mr. Bellour’s assistant.’

  ‘Then maybe I’d best speak to him.’

  Herne started to go round the desk and the woman pulled open the drawer by her right hand. There was a sharp intake of breath and Herne turned to find himself staring at a Remington-Eliot that sat snug in her hand, one red-nailed finger resting against the unguarded trigger.

  ‘You always treat callers this way?’ said Herne, watching the small, concentrated eyes behind the gun.

  There’s a law in this town against breaking into people’s property.’

  ‘I didn’t break in, I walked through the door like everyone else.’

  ‘But you intended to go through that door

  ‘Sure I did.’

  ‘And it would have been my duty to have stopped you. That door is private.’

  Herne shook his head wonderingly. ‘You’d have used that thing?’

  ‘Of course,’ she nodded primly.

  ‘Take them duties of yours seriously, don’t you?’

  ‘Mr. Bellour expects things to be taken care of in his absence.’

  ‘I’ll bet he does. Where is he anyway?’

  ‘Mr. Bellour is out of town.’

  ‘That’s awful convenient.’

  ‘If you came back tomorrow—’

  ‘He’ll be here tomorrow?’

  She almost smiled. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then there wouldn’t be a lot of point, would there?’

  She looked at him, the gun still in her hand, her hand resting on the edge of her polished desk. Somehow her back was still straight like a vice.

  ‘You wouldn’t care to tell me where Bellour is so’s I could find him?’

  The lips pursed and the head
moved from side to side like the pendulum of a slow-moving clock.

  ‘You goin’ to keep that gun in your hand all day. Liable to scare off custom.’

  ‘The gun stays as long as you do.’

  Herne shrugged and gave one final look beyond her to the door. Whatever had been going on back there was doubtless over and done with by now, but if it was nothing more than straight-forward delivery of orders, he couldn’t see that it took a gun to keep him away.

  He turned on his heels and pushed open the door; for a moment he paused, thinking there might be some final comment, but there was nothing. The door closed to a small ringing of the bell attached above it and when he looked back through the window the gun was out of sight.

  Around at the back the delivery wagon had gone and the rear door was locked and bolted, both things as he’d expected. He was turning back into Portsmouth Square when he noticed a carriage coming down the sloping street and pulling to a halt between Bellour’s store and the bakers. He didn’t recognize the yellow dress or the pale green hat but the turn of the head as the woman got down from the coach assured him that it was Cassie.

  She wasn’t going to buy sweet rolls.

  Herne saw that the carriage was going to wait for her, so he waited too, walking slowly close to the railings inside the park. When he was near enough opposite the store, he saw Cassie’s yellow dress before the desk, a glimpse of the woman seated behind it. Cassie seemed to be doing a lot of arm waving and gesticulating and he wondered if things were going to get serious enough again for the woman to get her lethal little toy out from the drawer.

  But Cassie turned with a toss of the head and even from that distance, Herne could read the fury on her face.

  The door slammed and the bell jangled and she stomped her little feet to the carriage, called up to the driver and climbed in.

  Herne set his hands on the railings, climbed swiftly over, dropped to his feet and caught up with the carriage in a few strides. He pulled open the door nearest to him and jumped in.

  Cassie gave a sharp little scream, flailed out with her hands and only recognized Herne after he’d seized her and held her arms fast.

  She leaned back against the upholstery and he let her go; her tongue, small and pointed, appeared between her lips and she rubbed at her wrists where he’d grabbed them.

  ‘If you’d wanted a ride you could have asked some other way.’

  ‘I wanted to talk.’

  ‘To me?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ The teeth did their thing with her lower lip again and she moved a few inches across the space between them; a few inches was all it needed.

  ‘What did you want to talk about?’

  ‘Bellour.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Don’t play games with me, Cassie.’

  Her leg pressed against him and her eyes made it clear that was exactly what she would have liked to do. He watched her eyes as her hand came to rest on his forearm.

  ‘You don’t like games?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Not now?’ she pouted, her fingers tensing in and out on his arm like a cat.

  ‘Right now I want to find out about Bellour.’

  ‘I don’t know any Bellour!’ she said angrily, tossing her head.

  ‘You just went into his store.’

  ‘Is that his? This Bellour you keep going on about. Bellour. Bellour. Bellour.’

  ‘You didn’t want to see him yourself?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You were looking pretty angry in there. Almost as angry as you look now.’

  ‘I bought a painting there. A week ago. They were supposed to deliver it and it hasn’t arrived. Of course I was angry.’

  ‘Just that, huh? A painting that wasn’t delivered?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And you don’t know Bellour?’

  ‘No, I’ve told you. No!’

  Herne removed her hand and set it back in her lap. ‘What do you do when you’re not lying, Cassie? If you know when that is, which I doubt.’

  She aimed a blow at his face and he deflected her arm high above her head and laughed. ‘You’d best keep that temper of yours for something that deserves it. You go on wastin’ all your energy like that, you’ll be wore out before you come of age.’

  He pushed down the handle on the carriage door and jumped out onto the street.

  Lucas wasn’t any more hospitable than on the previous occasions. He glowered at Herne and asked him what he wanted, seeming annoyed to have to answer that the major was well enough to receive callers.

  He led him, not to the billiard room, but the library beyond it. Leather-bound books lined three walls and the fourth held a portrait of the major in dress uniform, sabre drawn.

  Major Russell rolled his wheelchair painfully forward, a blanket covering his knees, the swelling around his knuckles larger and darker than before. His face looked drained, the cheeks suddenly sunken in and little more than a flicker of life about the eyes. He looked at the whisky and made a sign that Herne understood meant he should help himself.

  ‘One for you, Major?’

  ‘Not now, damn it! Wretched doctor reckons it does something to this heart of mine it shouldn’t, though anything that as much as makes it beat I should have thought a good thing.’

  ‘You’ve been bad?’

  ‘Bad!’ Russell snorted. ‘I shall soon be a barely breathing corpse rotting to death in this contraption as I roll around this room looking at books I haven’t the energy or the patience to read any longer.’

  He shook his head and the effort of that alone made him cough and forced him to wipe a line of dark spittle away from his mouth with his sleeve.

  ‘D’you know, Mr. Herne, every night of the war I read for half an hour, novels, poetry, getting some kind of peace for myself that blocked out the moaning and crying of the wounded and dying. Now I’m dying myself and I can’t find peace inside a book or a bottle of good Scotch whisky.’

  His hand lashed out and struck one of the empty glasses from the small table, smashing it against the wall. His head hung down and his eyes closed.

  Herne stood his ground, waited.

  Several moments later the old man’s head came up and the incident was forgotten.

  ‘You’ve news for me then?’

  ‘Some. I got to see Daniels and told him what you thought about his bits of paper.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem from the state of your head to have been a painless encounter—or was that something else?’

  ‘No, that was Daniels all right. Him and the couple of men he keeps with him. But I tore up the i.o.u.s and threw them back in his face. Told him there wasn’t any way he’s going to collect.’

  ‘You think he believed that?’ asked the major skeptically.

  ‘I think he believes I mean it now. I also don’t think he liked being talked to that way in front of his bodyguards. My guess is that he’ll make one more try to get his money and get his own back on me at the same time.’

  ‘You don’t know how?’

  ‘Not yet. It’s a matter of keeping my eyes open and waiting to see what breaks.’

  ‘My daughter says someone took a shot at you when you were out riding.’

  ‘Yeah. That looked like Daniels’ work, but I don’t think it was. I tracked down the fellers who tried to bushwack me and found out who’d paid them to do their dirty work. Seems it was a feller named Bellour—that mean anything to you?’

  ‘Bellour? No, can’t say it does. Why should he be interested in you?’

  ‘Right now I don’t have the least idea. But I’m working on finding out. One thing I do know, he seems to have some connection with your daughter.’

  ‘Veronica?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Cassie.’ The major’s mouth turned down. ‘If I wasn’t already dying, I swear that child would be the death of me.’

  Without knowing exactly why, Herne
said: ‘How did she get on with Connors?’

  The major looked startled, his knotted hands pushing down against the wheels of his chair. ‘Why d’you ask that now? What’s that got to do with this present affair?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing maybe.’

  ‘Connors is dead. It’s over. There’s nothing to be gained from going into it now.’

  ‘Then you don’t want me to find out who killed him?’

  ‘Killed him—of course I don’t. I never said a thing about it.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. But just about everyone else seems to think that’s what you brought me here to do.’

  He tasted the whisky and wondered if that was what Bellour had thought—and whether that had been reason enough for him to pay to have him killed.

  He finished his whisky and set the glass down.

  ‘I’ll be going, Major. You’re tired and I’ve told you all there is to know. Like I said, I’ll wait and see what Daniels is going to pull—and maybe try to find out why this Bellour reckoned it was worth a couple of hundred dollars to see me dead.’

  The old man nodded and began to raise his hand in farewell.

  Herne turned away fast, eager to be out of the room with a smell of old books and slow dying.

  Lucas was waiting in the hallway, right where Herne had expected to find him. He glared out from under his bald head and made it clear that if he ever got the opportunity there wouldn’t be anything he’d rather do than break Herne in two.

  ‘Miss Veronica.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’s in the parlor. She wants to see you before you go.’ His expression made it clear he thought it a serious lapse of taste on Veronica’s part, but Herne figured she’d had those before.

  She was half-sitting, half-lying on a chaise-longue which was covered in marmalade flowers. She was wearing a white silk dress that clung where it touched and didn’t touch most of her very long legs at all. Her hair was down and shone in the light from the fire.

  Herne wondered how long it had taken her to perfect her pose, how many rehearsals, how many men had been invited into her parlor to find her in just such a dress, just such a position. He remembered the taste of her mouth and the pressure of her agile tongue, the shape of her breast against his chest.