Death in Gold

by John J. McLaglen

  Walt moved his head to one side and brushed the hand away. He tightened his grasp of the scatter gun. “Who the hell d’you think you’re getting’ hold of?”

  The kid lifted his knee into the man’s crotch hard and fast, while his left hand reached down and took hold of his wrist; his right moved to his belt and came up with a Remington until the end of the barrel was alongside Walt’s temple. The anger in the youngster’s eyes was clear and frightening.

  Walt knew nothing would stop the boy now: he would kill if he could. And the bartender didn’t intend it should be him.

  “All right,” he said, hastily. “Take it easy. It’s okay. He’s comin’. They’re comin’. Two of them.”

  The pistol pushed harder against the man’s head.

  “Two? What two?”

  “Friend of the gunfighter’s. He was up there with him. Don’t know anything else.”

  The kid moved the gun away, but kept hold of the wrist. “You sure they’re comin’ out?”

  Walt nodded and as he did so the light in the front room of the hotel went out Herne and the albino weren’t going to set themselves up in silhouette; they knew better than that.

  The kid saw the change in Walt’s expression and turned his head to follow his stare.

  “They’re on their way!” he shouted to his friends.

  “The gun,” he gestured to Walt.

  The bartender shook his head; only once. This time the length of the kid’s gun barrel cracked against the side of his head, instantly drawing blood. He stumbled backwards into the saloon wall.

  “I said the gun!”

  Walt wiped at the line of blood running freely down his cheek and lifted up the scatter gun, butt first. Like he’d already thought, he wasn’t going to be the one to slake the kid’s thirst for killing.

  The boy swiveled round, his pistol holstered, the scatter gun pointing towards the front of the hotel opposite. Neither Herne nor Coburn had appeared.

  “Keep watch!” he shouted. “Get spread out! Don’t make it any too easy for the bastards!”

  He spat on to the boards beneath his feet and waited, straining his eyes into the darkness.

  He took a step forward and opened his mouth to yell once more.

  There was no need.

  The moon slid out from behind a cloud and revealed the tall, thin figure of Jed Herne. His Colt was holstered at his right side and he didn’t appear to be carrying any other weapon.

  Of the second man, Whitey Coburn, there was no sign,

  As the kid hesitated, Herne looked around, eyes narrowed beneath dark brows. Up on the sidewalk he could see the one from the saloon, the one who had been making most of the noise. And he had the barkeep’s gun – that was something he had not reckoned with. A gun like that could do a powerful lot of damage.

  The others were out in the street itself. There was a knot of three to his left, one tall youngster whose blond hair showed up clearly, two shorter, darker boys on either side of him. All three were armed with pistols as yet holstered by their sides. The tall one had a rifle held in his left hand. A .44 Winchester carbine, its twenty-inch barrel not the most efficient for that kind of shootout.

  The last pair were well separated, which made things more difficult A fat boy who looked little more than fifteen or sixteen in the moonlight that illuminated his face, stood with feet splayed outwards, arms tight against his bulging sides. He gripped a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun as though his life depended on it. Which, of course, it did. And so did Herne’s.

  The last one had his right leg bound in splints and rested that side of his tall, rangy body on a hefty wooden crutch. He had a Colt .45 in his left hand it was halfway from its holster, waiting for Herne to make his move.

  They were all waiting for Herne to make his move.

  The gunfighter knew they would not wait long. Untrained, unused to such situations, one of them would break. A gun would be jerked up and into action and after that moment there would be no let-up until it was all over.

  Herne glanced quickly up at the sky. A line of cloud had slid across the face of the moon: there would be more to follow. He looked at the kid on the boardwalk and again wondered if there was any chance of talking him out of it.

  And again he knew there was not.

  It was the fair haired boy whose nerve snapped first. Right then; before the moon was covered. He brought the barrel of his Winchester down and round in Herne’s direction. He never got the chance to pull the trigger.

  Herne drew his Colt .45 and shot him through the head. The shell split the skull directly below the wave of light hair. Even before he had had time to rock backwards under the impact, Herne had fired again.

  Swiveling to his right, he aimed at the kid with the scatter gun. He was a fraction late. The bullet tore through the youngster’s coat sleeve and grazed his arm as he jumped to one side.

  Herne dived for the dirt and rolled to the left, knowing the contents of the scatter gun might empty in his direction. What he heard instead was the single sharp bark of Coburn’s Colt. Coming round from the rear of the hotel and into the street beyond the six kids, Whitey had had plenty of time to grab his share of the action.

  He fancied the fat boy with the shotgun. Fancied him so much that he let him have two bullets all to himself. The first hammered into his left side. After the boy had thrown the shotgun away in his agony, Coburn got himself a better view of his face. In that kind of light faces presented the best target.

  Coburn’s second shot drove home inches behind the left eye socket and exited upwards at an angle through the brain.

  “Bastard!” The kid on the boardwalk allowed himself to be distracted by Coburn’s sudden appearance. He swung the scatter gun round sharply and fired both barrels. Whitey was no longer there. He had ducked back into the protecting darkness and started off for the front of the hotel in an easy run.

  Herne was on one knee to the left of the hotel door, Colt steady in his hand. The first of the two short kids did his best to pull his gun clear of his holster. His best was nowhere near good enough.

  Herne had plenty of time to place his shot and allowed himself a quick smile of satisfaction as the shell struck home at the left side of the kid’s chest, no more than an inch from the center of his heart.

  Herne shifted the gun a fraction to the right The second of the pair was reaching for the discarded Winchester. Herne’s bullet pierced the flesh of his left shoulder and propelled him backwards. He had half-rolled, half-stumbled to his feet when Coburn’s bullet entered at the base of his throat, smashing away his Adam’s apple and causing a sudden jet of blood to spurt upwards, where it was caught dramatically in the lamplight.

  Four down: just the leader and the cripple remaining.

  A shot dug into the dirt close enough to Coburn’s right boot to make him hop involuntarily to the other side. Another streaked through the air and thudded into the hotel wall behind him.

  Coburn raised his Colt but Herne touched his arm and indicated for him to hold his fire.

  “No,” he said quickly, then ran across the street towards the saloon.

  The boy with the crutch had got through the bat-wing doors seconds before him. Herne pushed hard into his back, sending his sprawling forward, vainly trying to keep his balance. As he toppled sideways towards one of the tables, a couple of shots flew past Herne’s head from the direction of the bar.

  Herne drew and fired in a blur of continuous movement. The bullet whistled over the kid’s hastily ducked head and cracked the long ornamental mirror close to its center. A section of glass fell forward and smashed into fragments on the floor behind the bar.

  Herne ran low for the near end of the long counter, partly aware that the cripple was once more pushing himself to his feet but concentrating on the kid who had set everything in motion.

  Now it was due to be finished: one way or the other.

  A further piece of glass, long and jagged, slowly fell away from the mirror and broke into myriad silver
ed shards. The kid eased his gun along the edge of the bar and waited for Herne to show himself.

  Herne reached forward and picked up a full bottle of beer. He lobbed it through the air, so that it landed behind the boy at the far end. Then Herne showed himself j and fast. He vaulted on to the. counter, legs spread for balance, Colt drawn and in front of him. The smashing of the bottle was lost in the roar, of the .45.

  The kid blinked his startled eyes and gripped the bar rail with his left hand. Herne could see the knuckles whiten with the strain as the kid struggled to hold himself steady. Steady enough to stand and try to bring his own gun to bear. Herne waited until the kid’s arm was almost level and then aimed and fired above it.

  The shell ripped into the arm at the shoulder blade and the Remington clattered down on to the surface of the bar and skidded out of reach.

  The kid’s head gave a last, violent twitch and a gout of blood gushed from between his pale lips and splashed downwards. The left hand lost its grip and the kid pitched forwards, his hair falling into a pool of his own blood.

  Herne watched and waited as the body slipped slowly backwards and thudded on to the sawdust strewn floor. Then he jumped down and walked along behind the bar towards where the kid had fallen.

  It had been short enough time, but sufficient for him to have lost sight of the cripple. He was standing over the kid’s dead body when Coburn shouted a warning from the doorway. Jed Herne swung his body low and round, drawing his Colt from its holster in the same movement.

  The pistol leveled at him was already cocked. That being the case, Herne wasn’t too dissatisfied that his shot missed the forehead and entered the face between cheekbone and jawbone, splintering the latter savagely.

  It probably would not have killed him outright: he would have taken hours to die, Mercy then that Whitey Coburn’s bullet had struck the center of his spine. He was dead before the pain in his face could register. His gun fell to the floor, unfired.

  Coburn shrugged his shoulders. “Didn’t seem worth the risk,” he said apologetically. “Not a nothin’ like that.”

  Herne looked across the saloon at him and nodded. He knew that Whitey had been right.

  The batwing doors opened a little and Walt’s bald, perspiring head poked through.

  “Jesus Christ!” he whispered hoarsely. “You killed all six of ‘em!”

  Coburn turned on him, anger clear in his voice. “What in damnation did you expect? What did they think was going to happen? This weren’t bottles on any damned wall!”

  The barkeep looked with horror at his shattered mirror, then walked to the cripple kid’s body. Several other townsfolk edged their way warily into the saloon and stood close together just inside the doors.

  None of them spoke. Terrified eyes stared, trembling fingers pointed. They had seen the bodies outside; witnessed the speed of the shooting, the speed of the dying.

  Now there were two more, one of them that nice Batson kid with one good leg who had been so polite whenever he was in town for supplies for his pa.

  A kid who had been drunk enough to be dangerous with a gun was now an object of pity.

  Walt turned slowly round from kneeling over the body. “One of these bullets was in the back,” he said, shaking his head hi a mixture of disbelief and sorrow.

  “Damned right it was!” retorted Herne.

  “Why?” Walt fingered the cut alongside his head and looked at the man he had helped earlier, helped and admired. Now …

  “Why,” interrupted Coburn, his pink eyes small and fierce, “is because the dumb bastard had his bade to me at the time. You got any other fool questions?”

  “But he was a cripple. To shoot a cripple in the back – did you need…I mean, wasn’t there any other way?”

  “Not when he was about to do the very same thing to Jed. What other kind of death you reckon backshooters deserve, Even those as bad at it as he was?”

  Walt shook his head and walked between Herne and Coburn to the bar. Herne went and stood near him, reloading his Colt as he did so.

  “It’s like I said before, the ones you don’t know about, the ones that ain’t any real good – they’re the ones you don’t take risks with. Not if you want to go on living.”

  The barkeep said nothing, just stared at the broken mirror and at his own shattered reflection. Neither told him anything.

  Through the cracks in the mirror he watched Herne and Coburn quit the saloon.

  The moon was fully covered now and the night was dark. The four bodies had been dragged or lifted away. Only the marks where they had fallen remained. That and the darkening stains of .their blood upon the dust and dirt of the street.

  Next morning when Herne and Coburn rose early and fetched their mounts from the livery stable, the bewhiskered old timer accepted their money without a word or a look. As soon as their backs were turned he spat into the straw.

  The owner of the general store said nothing either; his hands shook as they accepted payment. The girl who served them with their breakfast had no smile for Jed Herne that morning.

  Neither man minded; neither had expected anything different. It was ever the same. Friendliness, pride at their presence, always turned to coldness and hostility after a shoot-out like that one.

  No one attempts to pat the head of a lion fresh from its -kill, its jaws, its claws still redolent of the blood of its prey,

  Herne and Coburn ate in silence, paid their dues, mounted up and rode south out of town. Folk on the boardwalk turned their heads away as the two men rode past.

  Chapter Four

  The clouds from the previous night had disappeared. The sky was a bright, uncluttered blue. Sharp and clear the way mornings sometimes are in the fall.

  Herne and Coburn rode at a steady trot along the track which led between the hills, neither speaking, each one’s thoughts his own.

  At the point where the trail reached its highest point, they reined in their mounts and looked out over the valley.

  The descent was sharp, taking them into a wide plain which stretched almost to the horizon without disturbance. A river meandered its way through the center of the valley, the banks broadening and narrowing with its bends and straights. Away to the left, a further line of hills rose slowly, turning in towards the plain and framing it at the horizon itself.

  The furthermost peaks were already layered with snow.

  A gradual slope to the right was thickly covered with trees, firs towering green and tall above other branches heavy with leaves that had turned and were ready to fall: golds, yellows, reds, browns.

  Whitey Coburn lifted his sweat-stained Stetson and dragged the arm of his wool coat across his forehead.

  “Know what?”

  “What?”

  “Time was I’d have seen that over there and thought nothin’ ‘bout it. Now it looks to me like a goddamn miracle.”

  Herne followed his friend’s gaze, down on to the wooded slope.

  “Uh-huh. Guess you’re right at that. Sure is somethin’.”

  Herne scratched at his neck, steadying the movements of the horse under him with his knees. The animal was impatient to be on its way.

  “Growin’ old, Jed, that’s what it is. When you get to feel that all you want to do is sit an’ stare at goddamn trees, maybe it’s time to do just that.”

  “Meanin’ what?”

  Coburn slapped at a drowsy fly resting on his mount’s neck. “Meanin’ I’ve got me a powerful hankerin’ to settle down. I’m too old for this sort of life. Want to enjoy a few good years with a place of my own – some place like this, maybe. Sky as blue as that one up there, water runnin’ close; cabin I built with my own hands. A woman to share it with, even a couple of kids. A son. Damnation, I sure would like to get me a son.”

  He stopped abruptly and looked at Herne’s darkening face. “You know what I mean, don’t you, Jed. You…”

  “What the hell we doin’ sittin’ here and ramblin’ on like two old women? We got places to be an’
men to meet. Let’s move out of here.”

  He slapped the end of his reins down on his horse’s flank and pushed his thighs downwards. The animal moved off sharply and Herne rode quickly down towards the valley, leaving Whitey Coburn to follow.

  The albino’s thoughts were still of some place he could retire to. A good life, free from danger. A beautiful young woman with blue eyes and soft hands.

  Jed Herne’s mind turned on less pleasant things. Memories triggered off by Coburn’s words beat against the inside of his brain like the wings of trapped birds. He knew what Whitey had been talking about, right enough. Knew too well.

  For Herne had set his gun aside and settled down in just such a place, with just such a woman. Louise. So much younger than him in years, so much older in wisdom. They had run their small spread together and apart from the child that had been still-born everything had been fine.

  Louise had got pregnant again and Herne had not known. She had been saving the news until she was certain, until she could give the man she loved the surprise she knew he wanted more than anything else in the world.

  But before she could break the news, their whole lives were ripped asunder. Men, drunken men, savage in their lust, had tramped over the snow to the cabin where Louise was alone save for a neighbor woman.

  When they left, they left her raped brutally, the life that had quickened inside her body harshly dead. Louise could not face the prospect of carrying on after that. Not even with Jed.

  She had hanged herself in their barn.

  Yes, Herne had settled down all right. And in the end all he had to show for it were two dead children and the memory of a beautiful young woman who had put on her best dress in which to take her own life.

  He heard Whitey moving his horse up alongside him and spurred his own animal ahead again. Right now, the last thing he wanted to do was talk: even to a friend.

  The deeper they rode into the valley, the further it seemed to recede. The white crested hills were now both behind and beyond them.

  Whitey Coburn spat out the last remnants of his plug of chewing tobacco.

  “Tell you somethin’,” he called ahead to Herne’s back.