Herne the Hunter 22

by John J. McLaglen

  He looked at the dress falling open on either side of her legs: ‘Aren’t you afraid of catching cold?’

  ‘I didn’t think you were a prude, Jedediah. Although I guess all you cowboys are prudes at heart.’ She let a smile play on her face and laughed at him with her eyes. ‘You think all us city types are bathed in hell and damnation, don’t you?’

  ‘Way I see it, some of you get a mite too close to the fire for comfort.’

  ‘But by the fire’s where it’s warm, Jedediah?’ She patted the space in front of her legs. ‘Won’t you come and sit over here?’

  ‘I’ve already been shot at ridin’ with you, that’s enough danger for one day.’

  ‘The men that did it—did you find out who they were?’

  ‘I caught up with ’em.’

  ‘And did you …?’

  ‘They won’t be dry gulchin’ anyone no more.’

  ‘You killed them?’

  ‘What did you expect me to do? Slap ’em some and tell ’em not to do it again? Besides, they wasn’t about to give me a lot of choice.’

  ‘And do you know why they …?’

  ‘Not yet, but I will.’

  Veronica lifted the skirt of her dress back over one leg and tucked the other one closer to her body. ‘I just bet you will, cowboy.’

  ‘You know a feller name of Bellour?’

  She wrinkled her nose a shade as she thought; Herne thought it was the first thing he’d seen her do that suggested she might once have been a little girl.

  ‘I’ve heard of him. He takes pictures, paints portraits. Very expensive.’

  ‘But you don’t know him?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘And Cassie … you ever hear her mention him?’

  She thought for a minute before shaking her head; a strand of hair caught against her cheek and she freed it with her hand.

  ‘Is it important?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘I thought …‘

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I thought you might come to dinner with me tonight.’

  ‘So you can show off your tame cowboy to all your well-to-do friends—no, thanks. I’ve got as close as I want to the people you mix with, Daniels and his crowd, and it’s only the fact that I took your father’s money and made him a promise that keeps me around here any longer.’

  Her mouth opened and when the lips came back together they never quite touched. She stood up and the dress shimmered down about her like silver leaves trembled by some passing wind.

  ‘Nothing else to keep you around,’ she said softly, disbelievingly. ‘Is that the truth, Jedediah?’

  Her hand grazed his arm and the tips of her fingers brushed his cheek. He could smell that damn perfume again and the warmth of her body, too. Her eyes had a way of holding his gaze and not easily letting it go.

  ‘There’s men who’d do a lot to stay around me, Jedediah. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know what you have here?’

  She smiled and tightened her grip on his shoulder, his neck. She was tall enough to press her mouth to his without straining. Herne let her kiss him, kissed her back. He touched her back and was surprised at the knots of bone that stood so clearly through the flesh; his hand slid over the curve of her behind.

  She set her face against his. ‘I’m sorry about earlier.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘Good.’ Her skin was soft as the silk of her dress, softer. ‘The dining room at the Palace Hotel.’

  ‘Uh-uh.’ He disentangled her arms, stepped back. ‘I told you, I’ve got things to do. A job to finish. When your father paid me, it wasn’t to escort you to dinner ... or anywhere else.’

  Veronica’s face froze cold and expressionless: she moved back to the chaise longue and lit a cigarette. Smoke curled from the edges of her mouth as Herne closed the door on her and walked under Lucas’s disapproving stare to the front door.

  Eight

  The night was warm and the clouds slipped across the moon like they had places to go and little enough time to keep. The stars seemed to burn out of the velvet black. Herne had been watching the gang of kids congregating in the corner of the park, thirty of them by now, talking loudly, the occasional small fight breaking out between them to be cheered on and finally broken up. They had a small fire going and Herne could see the occasional flicker of a blade in its orange light, but mostly they seemed to be armed with pick handles and clubs, one or two carrying iron railings they’d yanked clear from the broken sections of the park fence.

  A couple of policemen appeared at the far side of the park, walked some way towards them before turning off by the liberty pole and minding their own business.

  A light burned in back of Bellour’s store and Herne stuck to the shadows and waited.

  A black cat with one ear and a high-arching back came and rubbed itself against his boot but Herne was unimpressed. After a few minutes the cat lost interest; inside the store the light stayed on. Three or four of the punk kids from the gang were wandering up and down the street outside the mail company office, banging their sticks on the railings and hollering at the tops of their voices.

  The smooth wood of the Colt’s butt was reassuring against Herne’s hand.

  The light went out.

  Herne’s breath clogged in his throat.

  The back door opened cautiously and he eased himself deeper back into the shadows.

  There wasn’t enough light to see the man’s face clearly, but Herne guessed that it was the same one he’d briefly seen earlier, poking round the door while he’d been speaking to the receptionist with the handy little gun and the winning smile.

  He waited to see which direction the man was heading after he’d locked the door. Carefully, he slid in behind him and followed some fifty yards behind on the opposite side of the street. There were quite a few people about now so he didn’t stick out. In any case, the man gave no indication that he thought he might be being followed.

  If Herne had been hoping the feller would have led him directly to Bellour he was mistaken. He went into a bar called the Pleasant Valley and sat down at a booth midway along. Herne could see the sandy hair clearly now, the open face and the cracked tooth as he asked the waitress for a beer.

  He hoped it wasn’t going to be a long wait.

  Three beers later, he wasn’t so sure. The man didn’t look like he was anxious to shift before either the bar closed or he was too drunk to ask for another. He was drinking with the determination of a man with something on his mind he was doing his best to rub out. Herne knew that if he waited too long, he wouldn’t get the information out of him he wanted—and that would only mean hanging around in San Francisco longer than he wished.

  He was figuring the best way to get inside and force the feller out when to his surprise, the man shook his head at the waitress, lurched to his feet, pulled some money from his pocket and dropped it down onto her tray and headed for the door.

  He walked faster now, like he’d made up his mind about something. The streets were narrower and there were less people about and Herne had trouble not being spotted.

  After ten minutes, the man turned into a three-storey building with a sign out front that advertised rooms by the week, the night or the hour.

  The lobby had a length of carpet whose pattern had long ago got lost in the scrapings of filthy boots and the scars of cigar butts. A smeared spittoon rested against the side of a worn-out settee, tired from overuse. Back of a small counter, a thin man whose head had bust through the straggle of his hair was pretending to read a newspaper.

  Herne glanced at the stairs, set one hand on the counter and asked which room the man who’d just come in had gone to.

  ‘I don’t know what …’

  Herne ripped the paper from his hands and grabbed hold of the clerk’s greasy shirt front. He’d spent enough time waiting around and he was getting impatient.

  The clerk should have understood this but he didn’t.

 
; He tried stalling Herne some more.

  Herne shifted hands on the shirt and showed the clerk the barrel of his Colt from close quarters.

  ‘Nineteen. Third floor.’ The clerk spluttered and tried not to look at the gun which was pressed against the bridge of his nose.

  ‘If you’re lyin’ …’

  ‘I ain’t lyin’. Honest, I ain’t.’ Herne pushed him back down into his chair and the chair skidded the short distance against the wall.

  By that time Herne was half way up the first flight of stairs. The higher he got the less light there was and the richer and more varied the smells grew. The carpet petered out after the first landing.

  Nineteen had the one missing but it was the room he was looking for. A lamp glowed dully at the end of the corridor and voices came from behind the door, a man and a woman. Herne wondered if the door was locked and what would happen if he charged in. He thought there was only one way to find out —if the handle didn’t do his work for him.

  It gave to his touch.

  Three quarters slow and quiet and then the last part fast, leaning his weight against the door and bringing up his Colt as he pushed forward.

  There was a bed with the covers pulled across midway, a table with a few glasses and a bottle of whisky, a sagging armchair and a couple of straight-backed chairs with burn marks liberally scattered over them, a scarred dresser and not a lot else. The window at the back was part open and the breeze was just managing to shift the cotton material that hung down across it.

  The sandy-haired man was half in, half out of the armchair, his hand reaching towards what might have been a gun in his coat pocket.

  The woman from the store was standing close by the window. Her mouth opened to a red gash and stared at Herne, at the gun in his hand. Her hair was still tight and precise, her clothes as perfectly arranged, the red on her fingernails was still as vivid and dark.

  ‘What the hell …?’ began the man.

  ‘Shut it!’ snapped Herne and moved the gun round to cover him.

  ‘You can’t come bustin’ in here.’

  ‘Jerry, he just did,’ said the woman with evident scorn.

  ‘That’s right, Jerry,’ said Herne, and kicked back with his boot, slamming the door shut. ‘Now move your hand real slow and lift out whatever you got stashed in that pocket of yours and set it down on the table real careful.’

  The eyes flickered hesitantly and the mouth formed words that never got spoken.

  ‘Do it!’ Herne said.

  The woman laughed, a short, bitter sound.

  Jerry removed a pistol from his pocket and laid it on the table.

  ‘He can’t use it anyway,’ the woman said sarcastically.

  ‘I’m surprised to find you in a place like this,’ said Herne, glancing round.

  ‘Not as surprised as I am myself. Except I have this habit of picking born losers who think they’re goin’ to be winners but never as much as get into the race.’

  ‘Shut up!’ called Jerry, flushed.

  ‘Shut up yourself!’ she snapped back with such force, he collapsed back into the sagging chair and looked like a six year old kid whose sarsaparilla had just been taken from him.

  ‘What do you want?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Same as before. I want to see Bellour.’

  ‘That all?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Evelyn, don’t—’ Jerry tried.

  ‘I told you to shut up and leave this to me. You already led him here, isn’t that enough for one night?’

  He scowled, but not so as she could see him. Herne wondered if she ever drove him so far he hit back, but doubted it.

  Evelyn came a few paces away from the window towards him and Herne realized she wasn’t unlike Veronica Russell—a shade shorter, perhaps, a slightly fuller figure, her face not quite as oval, but they seemed to have been cut from similar moulds. Maybe it was something living in San Francisco did to a woman. Maybe Cassie would get to look like that if she ever got out of playing at being an eight year old with a cute way of biting her lower lip.

  ‘If we tell you you’ll leave us alone?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And you won’t tell Bellour how you found out where he was.’

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  ‘All right. He’s got a place on Union Street, near Telegraph Hill. It’s a narrow wooden building painted white and black. You can’t miss it, it’s just above the intersection with Kearney.’

  ‘He’ll be there now?’

  ‘Now or later.’

  ‘And if he isn’t there?’

  ‘He’ll be gambling somewhere, that’s what he usually

  ‘Cord Daniel’s place?’

  Her eyes narrowed keenly. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I didn’t. I guessed.’

  She and Jerry exchanged glances that Herne couldn’t read.

  ‘One more thing,’ he began.

  ‘You said that was all.’

  ‘Never mind that. The girl who came in after me …’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘What did she want?’

  ‘The same as you.’

  ‘Bellour.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘The same thing. He wasn’t there.’

  ‘Did you tell her where she could find him?’

  Evelyn moved her head to one side and laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ asked Herne.

  ‘That little bitch has known where to find Bellour for long enough, that’s what’s funny.’

  ‘What’s between them?’

  She laughed again, the same brittle, bitter sound. ‘Not a lot, you can be sure of that.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Herne.

  She looked at him pityingly. ‘No, you don’t look as if you would. Strong, mainly silent type. Sleeps with his horse and keeps his little woman back on some ranch somewhere, getting up before dawn to milk cows but always waiting in her gingham apron around sundown, an apple pie warming on the stove, her silly little face turned towards the horizon just in case he rides out of the golden glow.’

  ‘Shut your mouth!’ shouted Herne, taking a stride towards her, wanting nothing as much as to drive the barrel of his Colt hard across her mocking face.

  His stride took him past the table and for a second he lost sight of what the man was doing.

  Jerry jumped quicker than Herne would have given him credit for and grabbed the gun. Herne turned a moment later and swung down with his right hand. Jerry’s finger jerked awkwardly against the trigger and the bullet went wide of Herne, wide of the woman and tore at the curtain, shattering the pane of glass and sending splinters down into the street below.

  The underside of the Colt came down hard on Jerry’s arm and he yelled and let go the gun.

  Herne stepped in fast and kicked it over towards the door. He lifted the Colt clear and punched Jerry’s jaw with his left hand.

  The blow sent him over onto his back, then groaning onto his side, curled up alongside the bed.

  Evelyn snorted in disgust and stared down at him like she was staring at all the other lost opportunities and broken promises her life had been made up of.

  Herne ignored Jerry and spoke to her. ‘What’s goin’ on with you an’ him an’ Bellour? You doin’ some double-dealin’ behind his back or what?’

  She snorted again. ‘That was another of his big ideas. A quick way to make money.’ She gestured round the room. ‘Look at this. I was fool enough to believe him. A feller who lives in a stinkin’ dump like this an’ he talks about making money the easy way!’

  ‘How were you going to make this money from Bellour? Just by holding back what he got for his paintings or what?’

  She laughed and shook her head. On the floor, Jerry was slowly sitting up, rubbing gingerly at his chin. ‘You got a lot to learn, mister.’

  There were shouts coming up from the street below and footsteps loud on the stairs outside. Her
ne glanced round at the door, back at Evelyn and made his move. When the door sprang open and an arm came in with a gun at the end of it, he chopped down hard and the gun fell towards the floor. Herne grasped the arm and yanked it into the room. A startled face came towards him and he sank the butt of the Colt into the middle of it and it disappeared from sight. There were two more men bulking outside the door, brandishing weapons. Herne didn’t know who they were and he didn’t have time to ask. There were questions he wanted to ask Evelyn, but there wasn’t time for those either. It was Bellour who held the answers and he wanted to get there fast. He swung the Colt round towards the landing and the two men backed off and dropped their guns to the floor, kicking them away when Herne told them.

  He had one more look round at Evelyn, looking sore as Hell over by the window, her loser sitting with his head in his hands nursing his jaw and what was left of his pride.

  Herne took the stairs three at a time and when he listened for the sound of men following him there was nothing.

  Nine

  The house was painted black on the ground floor, white above. A rounded bay window was covered with white shutters through which narrow lines of light filtered out onto the street. The sounds of a piano trickled out with them. Herne ignored the front door in favor of the rear. When it proved to be locked he drew the bayonet from his boot and forced the door open.

  There were no lights on the ground floor and the music was coming from above.

  He found the stairs and climbed them quiet as he could.

  The piano melody was tinkling, not quite in key, a sound like a child who hadn’t perfected the technique for the piece that was being played.

  The door to the room at the front of the house was closed, a filter of light showing through onto the dark carpet. Herne freed the hammer of the Colt and tried the door handle.

  The wood swished back, barely touching the covered floor.

  Immediately Herne was aware of a sickly-sweet smell that he guessed to be opium. The air inside the room was close and warm, but he pushed the door shut rather than risk being disturbed. He moved to the window and lifted the lower section, while leaving the shutters fastened.