Herne the Hunter 21

by John J. McLaglen

  ‘Liar!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You couldn’t never have done that. Not ridden that far and fast. You, mister, are talkin’ here to someone who knows all ’bout that sort of ridin’.’

  ‘With the Pony.’

  ‘That’s right.’ A note of suspicion came edging into the man’s voice. ‘How come you know my name? The Kid’s name? And, how…?’

  ‘Barkeep at Casper gave the names.’

  ‘Crippled little dog! But he didn’t know about me goin’ with the Pony Express.’

  ‘I rode with ’em, as well, Charley. Knew you, too. All those years back.’

  ‘I know you?’

  ‘Not now. You knew me twenty-eight years back. Green kid I was. Never laid an eye on you since then.’

  ‘You got a name, mister?’

  ‘Doesn’t signify.’

  ‘Sure it does. Be better to be hunted by a man. You must be in your forties. Young boys nowadays … they got plenty of gall but no sand. I’d surely take it kindly if’n you’d tell me your name.’

  ‘I’m Jedediah Herne.’

  Again the whistle. ‘Herne the Hunter. I’ll be … Herne the fuckin’ Hunter!’

  ‘You remember me. Charley?’

  ‘Sure I do, Jed. Sure. Why, it was round here we did our spells with the Pony. This very place. Hell! If that don’t beat all.’

  Howell sounded genuinely amused. He’d always had a great sense of humor, Herne recalled. Even the very first time that they’d met up, wherever it was, he’d pulled the jape with that mean-eyed stallion.

  ‘I should tell you, Charley, that this has to be finished. It’s a killing bounty.’

  ‘Yeah. Would be for that girl. Damn, but that’s a real shame. After all these … I heard about you, everywheres, Jed. You and that white-head boy, Coburn. I got me a whole load of free drinks from tellin’ tales ’bout you and me battlin’ the screamin’ Kiowa and Paiutes.’

  Herne stayed silent, wondering whether he dared risk a movement to try and pick the man off while he was still talking. But there wasn’t enough cover from the top of the bluff.

  ‘Remember that son of a bitch? Set off the Cheyenne. What was his…?’

  ‘Ethan Corleon.’

  ‘That was him. Sure is sad you and me can’t sit round that fire and talk ’bout all them good old days.’

  ‘Good old days? Yeah, what happened to all them faces in the old daguerreotypes? Mostly dead.’

  ‘They was good old days, Jed, weren’t they?’

  ‘They was just a lot of folks, Charley, doin’ the best they could. That was all.’

  ‘Is there nothin’ to be done with this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I got some money stashed away.’

  Herne could catch the note of pleading. And fear. It made him feel a little better.

  ‘No, Charley. Some things a man can’t ride around. This is one of ’em.’

  ‘Best come take me, then.’

  ‘I didn’t get to be forty goin’ into a cave after a wounded grizzly, Charley.’

  ‘Always had a way with words, Jed. Always did. And always will.’

  ‘I’ll get you at sun-up, Charley.’

  ‘I recall you owe me, Jed. Owe me from them days back then.’

  ‘Owe you?’

  ‘Ethan Corleon, Jed, I helped you and you owe me.’

  Herne remembered it. It was something that had laid there in a back room of his mind for near forty years. Very slowly he allowed his finger to relax off the trigger of the big Sharps, letting his memory drift slowly back.

  Back.

  Four

  Gothenburg was a small hamlet in Nebraska Territory, between North Platte and Lexington. It was a scorching hot morning, a little before eleven. The nineteenth day of August, 1860.

  ~*~

  Jedediah Travis Herne was a growing youth of sixteen and a half years, with long black hair, that hung untrimmed and uncombed over his shoulders. Shoulders that seemed out of proportion to his slim build. He wore a battered Colt Navy on his right hip, stuck into what looked like, and was, a home-made holster.

  ‘$50 (fifty dollars) each and every month of your service. Are you a stout-heart, who wishes for glory and for excitement? Are you less than 120 (one hundred and twenty) pounds and able to turn a mustang on a nickel? Board and keep also paid to likely lads eager for fame and fortune.’

  It was a large poster, printed in a variety of typefaces, in differing hues. The lower third was left blank to allow for the individual places that the poster would be used. On that, there was further information written in ink in a fine, bold hand.

  ‘Those interested in riding for the Pony Express should foregather at the corral before the T.W. Livery Stables between the hours of eleven and noon on the nineteenth” day of August. There they will be tried for positions as express mail riders. Hiring on the spot.’

  There was an illegible signature. Printed beneath that was the name of the company. The Central Overland, California And Pike’s Peak Express Company.

  And at the very bottom, in neat type that one had to stoop to make out, was the name of Benjamin Ficklin, the field manager of the C.O.C. & P.P.

  The word around Gothenburg was that there had been several of these hiring sessions, the biggest and grandest of them taking place some weeks before in Sacramento, in the street before the illustrious Saint George Hotel. And Mormon boys had been selected after a session in Salt Lake City itself. But the wastage in the early days of the Pony Express was high as many of the young men hired originally found the going harder than they’d believed possible. So, more were needed.

  Jed Herne wanted to be one of those boys.

  ~*~

  His mother had been Elizabeth Julia Herne, married to the cartographer Albert Jedediah Herne. One of the great mapmakers of his time and an associate of the famous explorer, J.C. Fremont.

  Both of his parents were with the expedition under Fremont that surveyed part of the Sierras in the early part of 1844. Unusually severe weather trapped them in Carson Pass. The plan had been for Elizabeth to have their first child after the expedition in the safety and relative comfort of a town. Instead she was forced to give birth in a rough campsite. The baby was eventually born, after an arduous and difficult labor, in the early hours of February 29th.

  It was a boy, bonny and healthy.

  The mother died.

  Albert Herne never recovered from the shock and virtually abandoned the baby, leaving it in the care of his unmarried sister, Rosemary, in a house just off Beacon Hill in Boston. The sole heritage for the baby was sufficient money for his raising and his name, Jedediah (after his father) Travis (after the defender of the Alamo) Herne.

  At the time of his trying to join the Pony Express Jed had never even seen his father. Albert Herne was believed to be dead, having vanished into Indian country in the early fall of 1844.

  Rosemary Herne was a gentle, religious lady, whose public works were a little marred by her private drinking. In Jed’s memory she was always shrouded in a delicate mixture of eau de cologne and brandy. Rosemary was never drunk. Never. Then again, it must be admitted that she was also never entirely sober.

  As the boy grew towards his teens she found him an increasingly fiery brand to handle and eventually Jed was virtually allowed to run wild and free. He began to hang around with older men in bars, sometimes vanishing into the backcountry of Vermont and New Hampshire with trappers and hunters. The local school gave Jedediah up for lost by his eleventh birthday, even though he’d proved himself a bright enough pupil.

  Three weeks after his fifteenth birthday Jed was out in the shed at the back of a bar called The Green Frog, relieving himself into the length of guttering that served as a urinal. A local bad-hat, Rupert Cabot, came and stood alongside the boy. Moving closer and starting to talk to the good-looking youth. Offering him five dollars if he’d allow him to perform a certain act with him. Ten dollars for something even more perverse and bestial.
r />   Jed laid him on his back in the mud and piss with a hard right fist to the belly.

  And Cabot came up holding a little hideaway derringer pistol.

  ‘I just put my boot into the brown-holer’s eggs, Aunt Rosie,’ was Herne’s excuse.

  He had actually kicked the man to death, working him over with heavy boots from face to groin. Cabot was notorious in Boston for his approaches towards young boys, and few tears were shed at his passing. But there were also some right-minded citizens who felt it wrong that a callous young killer like Jed Herne hadn’t paid some sort of a debt to society.

  By the time that the sheriff’s men came calling at Rosemary Herne’s front door, her teenage nephew was long gone, never to return.

  A few weeks later, armed with a Colt Navy and a lot of self-confidence, Jed Herne was in Gothenburg, Nebraska Territory.

  Five

  Jed had read through the notice several times, lips moving as he carefully followed the lines with his eyes. He was young and he was a few pounds the right side of the weight limit for the trails for the Pony. Fifty a month and all found wasn’t a bad offer by any standards. And all you had to do was ride fast on a variety of animals over a short distance.

  There were seventeen boys waiting around the front of the T. W. Corral at ten-forty-five. All of them also thinking fifty a month and found was a damned good offer.

  He leaned casually back against a picket fence across the main street, picking at his nose while he tried to size up the opposition. It hadn’t yet been announced how many would be hired, but the rumor was that only two or three would be taken. Herne was prepared to work hard to try and make sure that he was among that number.

  The money would see him through a few months of the summer into fall. And there was that unpleasant matter of a warrant for unlawful killing still threatening from back in Massachusetts.

  Sharp on the dot of eleven a dapper man in smart Eastern clothes came out of the saloon along the way, opening a silver watch flat on the palm of his hand. Nodding to himself approvingly and bustling along towards the crowd of waiting lads with a prim, mincing stride.

  Only about half of the boys there looked to Herne like they’d be serious competition. At least four of them were too fat. With an upper limit of one hundred and twenty pounds, you couldn’t afford to carry any spare flesh. And not many of them appeared the sort who would have much experience of tough riding. In his time up in New England, Jed had become an accomplished horseman as well as being a fair shot with a pistol.

  ‘Eight,’ he finally decided. Only eight of them might pose any real threat.

  ‘Bring out the scales, if you please,’ called the little man, coming to a military halt in front of the stables.

  Waiting while a couple of brawny men carried out and rigged a set of scales. Pointing to the nearest of the waiting youths. ‘You. Come and be weighed. Rest of you form a line. No Indians, breeds or niggers. No chinks. Not that we ever get any chinks. Too busy openin’ laundries, I figure. Never met a nigger could ride a damn, a breed I could trust or a sober Indian.’

  Herne grinned. That disposed of at least three of the opposition, all with rather darker skins than might pass the test.

  The weighing took out three more, leaving a total often. One of those only hung on there by peeling himself right down to his long-johns, ignoring the hooting from a group of town’s folk who’d gathered to watch the fun.

  The small official grinned and nodded. ‘Sort of spirit we like. Boy who’ll try for somethin’ he really wants.’

  Herne spat in the dirt, cursing the other boy’s persistence. Ten left including himself. After they had been weighed they all had to read a simple couple of sentences and then print their names.

  One of them couldn’t do more than an ‘X’ scrawled on the paper and he was also rejected. ‘We sure can be choosy with so many brave lads wishin’ to ride with the fabled Pony Express,’ crowed the little man. Who finally introduced himself as Theodore B. Sikking, for the company.

  Nine left at the end of less than half an hour. All standing grouped around, nervously, most shuffling their feet in the dust.

  ‘Very well, gentlemen. Doubtless you will have wondered how many of you I am allowed to hire this fine and sunny day. The reply to that hitherto unspoken question is simple. It is for the run across Wyoming Territory, westwards from here. A total of one hundred and forty-five miles from your first station to the last. You will be tiny pieces in the great machine envisaged and created by Mr. William H. Russell.’

  He said the founder’s name with such reverence that a youth next to Herne was compelled to murmur: ‘Amen,’ thus earning himself a stern look from Mr. Sikking.

  ‘Two of you. Two only, Not three and not one. But two. I shall read your names and then we shall draw lots to find what order you will take your riding test in. I must stress to you that this is the single most important part of this recruitment. Ride well and you may be picked. Ride badly and you will not.’

  Two from nine. Not the best odds that Herne had known, but better than some.

  ‘Are you listening? Good. Michael Conrad? Just lift your hand.’ Conrad was the boy who had nearly lost on being too heavy.

  ‘Daniel Travanti?’ An older boy, close to twenty, with narrow face and dark eyes. Herne thought he looked like a Frenchman, or an Italian.

  ‘Jedediah Herne? Charles Howell?’

  ‘Prefer “Charley”, if’n it’s all the same to you, Mr. Sikking,’ replied the lad standing opposite Herne. A bright-faced youth with the beginnings of a mustache. Wearing a fancy brocade waistcoat over a pale blue shirt. He and Jed were the only two there carrying a handgun. Howell sported a cannon of a Walker Colt. The Whitneyville Walker. Biggest and heaviest pistol a man was likely to see. Packed a .44 ball, propelled through a nine inch eight-sided barrel. Its total length was nearly sixteen inches and its weight a monstrous four and one half pounds.

  Herne noticed the Walker. Seeing that Howell had also noticed his own Colt Navy.

  There were five more on that final list. Jed stood and listened, matching faces and names.

  ‘Bernard Weitz.’ The smallest man present, looking around nineteen, less than five feet tall, with thick, black curling hair. Busily gnawing at a mighty hunk of bread filled with cheese and sliced meat and something that looked and smelled like vomit. Herne didn’t either look or smell too closely.

  ‘Joseph Spano.’ Slightly buck-toothed, with a pleasant, eager-to-please smile. Jed didn’t figure him as one to worry about.

  ‘Charles Haid. Or is that another Charley, Mr. Haid?’ It was “Charles”. Haid had ginger hair, pasted flat with some kind of patent oil, and eyes that crinkled up with nerves when anyone looked in his direction.

  ‘Michael Warren.’ Tall and slender, with an easy grace to him that looked like he could pose some problems. He walked and moved as if he knew how to take care of himself.

  Last of them was called Victor Hamel. A slightly feminine youth, around seventeen, with very long dark hair and a complexion that made Jed wonder whether he came from south of El Paso.

  ‘Conrad. Travanti. Herne. Howell. Weitz. Spano. Haid. Warren. And Hamel.’ Ticking them on his list, and looking around at the circle. ‘Fine and dandy. Now we put your names in my hat, and draw them out. You ride the horse in that order.’

  ‘Which horse, sir?’ asked Spano.

  ‘That red-eyed, iron-jawed, sharp-toothed, sun-fishin’ son of a gun out yonder, at the side of the stables. You ride him for four minutes and I want to see how good you are. I want it easy and quiet.’

  ‘What about a faller, Mr. Sikking?’ It was Charley Howell asking the question.

  ‘Man falls then he’ll fall when the Paiutes come after him, Howell. Faller is out. No second chances.’

  ‘I think that’s damned fair, Mr. Sikking’ grinned Howell. Adding a ‘sir,’ for good measure. ‘And I’d appreciate the honor of being allowed to make the draw on your behalf, sir?’

  Sikking was b
usy tearing the names off the list and folding them. Finally placing them in his upturned hat.

  ‘Asked about me helpin’ by makin’ that draw, sir?’ repeated Charley Howell. Holding his hand out for the first name.

  ‘Very well. Draw.’

  He cheated.

  At that moment Herne couldn’t begin to guess why, but his eyes were sharp enough to make out the deceit.

  Charley Howell picked out one of the strips of paper, unfolding it with quick fingers. Herne, in his own slight nervousness, knew that he had pushed the tip of the pen through the paper as he signed, leaving a large blot of ink on the other side. The first strip bore no such mark.

  ‘Jedediah Herne,’ read Howell, eyes meeting Jed’s as though challenging him to say something. Being first wasn’t a great advantage or disadvantage. Sometimes a horse would grow more amenable and easy during a string of riders. Sometimes it would simply turn more vicious and stubborn. So Herne said nothing. Wondering what the smiling boy was up to.

  Immediately the paper was in the dirt and the next one out. ‘My own. Charley Howell,’ he read out, dropping that one in the dirt.

  ‘Daniel Travanti is third.’

  Why should the youth want himself second, behind Herne?

  The rest of the names pattered out, so fast that twice Sikking called out for him to slow down as he was writing the names in the riding order.

  Last named was Victor Hamel.

  ‘Very well, gentlemen, let us now adjourn to yonder corral and try the fortunes of that jet-black beauty of a horse.’

  As they walked across the street, followed by the swelling throng, Herne maneuvered himself next to Charley Howell. Slipping into step with him, glancing round to make sure that nobody was paying any attention.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why did you cheat at the draw, Howell?’

  ‘Name’s Charley, and you’re Jed, aren’t you? Good to meet my fellow Pony Express rider.’

  ‘Why should we two win through against the rest?’ Herne was genuinely, totally puzzled.