Herne the Hunter 24

by John J. McLaglen

  The boom of the explosion, powder-smoke bursting from the muzzle of the Peacemaker.

  A forty-five caliber bullet will knock a man on his back in the dirt, if it hits him anywhere between belt-buckle and throat. Herne rarely tried for a clever shot at the head. If he hit his opponent then there would always be plenty of time for him to take a second shot while the other man was fighting against the shock.

  This time he hit Micah Abernathy four fingers below his prominent Adam’s apple, clean in line with the row of shirt buttons.

  The boy felt the hammer-blow to his chest before he even heard the boom of the gun. His own pistol fell soundlessly in the soft dirt. He could taste iron on his tongue and the sky above him was such a bright blue that he closed his eyes to avoid staring into it. There was very little pain, though breathing wasn’t easy, like someone was sitting on his chest.

  ‘Jesus,’ sighed the barkeep, crossing himself with fingers that were still smeared with his own vomit.

  Herne stood still, watching.

  Waiting.

  Micah was rolling on his side, hands scrabbling in the street-dirt, legs kicking like a pole-axed steer. His mouth was open and he was making mewing sounds, like a part-drowned kitten. Blood came from his nose and between his lips; bright, frothing arterial blood. The wound in his chest wasn’t bleeding very much.

  Jed had seen enough men with a bullet in their lungs to be certain sure that the lad wouldn’t see the next sun-up.

  The boy was trying to talk, but the blood was drowning him and all they heard was spluttering and coughing.

  ‘Now we … Hadn’t we best get him up and send for the doctor?’ asked Webb, eyes flicking from face to face in the hope of seeing a friendly look.

  ‘Too late for that, I fear,’ said the pale-faced man with the English accent. ‘The boy is done for. Perhaps an hour, perhaps less.’

  ‘We goin’ to let him just lie there?’ asked Webb, desperation riding on his voice.

  ‘Best let him lie,’ said Herne, checking that Micah wasn’t going to try and crawl towards his fallen pistol. ‘Just cause him pain in his passin’.’

  ‘His pa,’ said the barkeep, stopping as he caught the eye of Sheriff Rogers.

  ‘He’s out in New York on business. Won’t be back for weeks.’

  Herne caught the note of warning in the voice of the lawman and he turned slowly to face him, the Colt now back in its holster. ‘You want words, lawman? There’s folk enough to say the boy was drunk. Riled me. Drew first. Now he’s down and done.’

  Rogers coughed, squaring his shoulders, looking about him for support. ‘That may be, Mr. Herne. Fact is I’m holdin’ you in jail for a whiles. Until we catch them murderin’ Indian demons done this,’ pointing at the stage.

  ‘Wrong, Sheriff. Twice wrong. You aren’t goin’ to hold me.’

  ‘What’s the twice, Mr. Herne?’ asked Jabez Webb.

  ‘This massacre. Wasn’t Indians did it.’

  Chapter Four

  The first reaction came from Marvin Ettinger. His face creased and he began to giggle. Nerves getting the better of him so that he found he couldn’t check his own sniggering. The arrival of the coach of slaughter, followed by the gunfight and the local boy dying in the street. It was too much for him. The others looked on in disapproval as he stuffed a kerchief in his mouth, face purpling with the struggle for control.

  Finally he managed silence.

  The rest of the town’s folk stood and looked at the shootist, slack-jawed, as though they couldn’t believe the evidence of their own ears.

  ‘You say Indians didn’t do… this,’ said Sheriff Rogers.

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Sure and it’s fast you are with that handgun of yours, Mr. Herne,’ stammered the barkeep. ‘But I can’t help thinkin’ your eyes have trouble in seein’. And that’s a fact.’

  ‘It’s not Indians. Not Chiricahua.’

  ‘You sayin’ them arrers ain’t from the ’paches, mister? Huh?’ asked one of the trappers, voice truculent.

  ‘They’re Chiricahua arrows,’ agreed Herne, keeping his eyes on the lawman, wondering whether the man would prove enough of a coward to let desperation over rule his common sense.

  ‘And the knives in that poor little dove’s hands? What of them?’ asked the Irishman.

  ‘Chiricahua hunting knives. Very good ones, are they not?’

  ‘Yes, that they are,’ nodded the barkeep.

  ‘It’s white men did this. White men who stole the money. Indians hardly ever steal gold or silver. Not their way.’ Among them, Micah Abernathy fought for one last flailing breath. His body heaved and then he lay still. Dead, in the dirt, but nobody even gave him a second glance.

  ‘The killin’.’

  ‘You ever known Apaches butcher a pretty white woman when they could take her alive as a slave? I haven’t.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ admitted one of the trappers. ‘They might sport some, but they wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Indians will do anything, no matter how barbaric,’ interrupted the Englishman, earning himself a cold glance from Herne.

  ‘Mister, you keep talkin’ such foolishness and folks might think the sun’s addled your brains. Indians mainly torture and kill for the honor. Braver the man they slaughter, the more honor for them. No damned honor in burnin’ and mutilating a poor dumb whore.’

  ‘They did leave her hair,’ agreed Jabez Webb.

  ‘And the knives. Chiricahua values his weapons. Be a damned fool ifn he left two good blades like that.’

  ‘The arrows!’ exclaimed the lawman triumphantly. ‘What the fuck do you say ’bout that?’

  Herne came close to a smile. ‘Sure. More damned Apache arrows than spines on a spear-hog. You ever seen so many, Sheriff? Have you? Sure you haven’t. Take a look at them. All hunting arrows. Not a war-shaft among them.’

  ‘That don’t signify,’ protested Ettinger.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Could have been they were out after buffalo and mistook the stage for a herd. Don’t be a damned fool! Most of these arrows were fired at the stage after it was stopped. Look at the way they’re stuck in. Straight and true. Men stood around and took their leisure with them.’

  ‘You mean white men did this?’

  ‘I seen Mexicans pull this trick, Sheriff. But if there was white folks along with the money, then bandits would have tried for a ransom first. Not spoil their trade goods by burnin’ it all to bits.’

  The silence was deafening. The drapes at every frame house were twitching as the women and children peered out into the street, wondering what was happening. What was all the talking? And who was the tall stranger with the broad shoulders and dangerous eyes who’d just killed the Abernathy kid?

  ‘White men. Sure and that’s the worst thing I ever heard in all me life,’ muttered the Irishman, spitting in the dirt.

  ‘That’s the way of it,’ said Herne. ‘You want me any longer, Sheriff?’

  Casually, very casually, the shootist’s right hand fell to rest above the gunbelt. The lawman had never had to face real trouble in the six years he’d been doing the job. Rowdy cowboys and a drunk breed or two was the limit of it. Once there’d been a knife fight between two Mex whores, but that was all.

  ‘I guess not. Guess that Micah there stepped over the line.’

  ‘And drew first,’ prompted Herne.

  ‘Yeah. He drew first,’ agreed Rogers.

  Bob Rogers knew, that he’d be seeing some hard times when Ralph Abernathy returned from his trip East and found his only boy was buried out yonder. But the worst that could happen was that Abernathy would take the badge away from him. That was the worst. With Herne the Hunter glowering at you from ten paces, it didn’t seem so bad just to lose your badge.

  Jedediah Herne stayed in Bulmer’s Wells until the next morning, leaving quietly just after dawn. Collecting his stallion from the livery stable and throwing a quarter to the sleeping kid in the straw.

  The pe
ople generally kept away from him, frightened by the taint of death that dung to him. In awe of the cloaked shadow that squatted at his shoulder.

  It didn’t bother him none. He’d seen it plenty of times before. It was part of the price of being a bounty-hunter. A hired gun. Good Christian folk hired you to do their dirty work. Clean out their stables. When it was done and they could open their doors once more, they’d begin complaining that you smelled of shit.

  Jed was used to that.

  The night before, Mike Cimino had served him with a good meal. Couple of steaks, brimming over the edge of the platter, with four eggs, over easy, on the side. Some hash brown potatoes and grits. With a blue enamel pot of coffee. Thick and black enough to float an axe-head. But the conversation had been strictly limited.

  It had been the same with the whore.

  Now and again, like all men, Jed Herne felt the need to unload the dirty water off his chest. There were times when some obliging married woman would take care of him. But most times it was the automatic caress of some dead-eyed prostitute aged anywhere between twelve and sixty.

  This time it had been a quarter-breed Comanche girl, slit-eyed, broad-hipped with a body that stank of cheap cigars and beer. At first Jed had found it difficult to obtain an erection; something that was starting to happen more often. Once he managed to get himself firmly in the saddle, it was good as ever, and he roused the girl to a passable imitation of passion. She ended up giving him two ups to his one down, which made the fifty cents well spent.

  Once he had done he rolled her stickily off him, refusing her offer to spend the rest of the night with him for another fifty cents. Once she’d gone he slipped the bolt on the door and pushed the chair under the handle to hold it shut.

  He lay back on the hard bed, watching the light of the moon as it speared through the gap in the brocade curtains. The wind had risen, driving shreds of torn cloud across the sky, bringing alternate darkness and silvery light.

  His thoughts ran back over the day. The least of the incidents had been shooting down the boy. Already the face and the name were blurring away, vanishing among the countless dozens that Herne had seen die. From the first battle of the Civil War onwards. No, he remembered, even further back than that. The Pony Express. Riding with Whitey Coburn, the red-eyed albino killer whose destiny was to be tangled with Jed for more than twenty years. So many dead.

  He finally slipped into sleep, still puzzling about the stage-coach. The town’s folk of Buhner’s Wells were still charged up and angry, ready to piss blood at the callous massacre. And Herne knew that few of them had really placed any credence on his suspicions that it had been white men, not the Chiricahua Apaches, responsible for the raid.

  Sure, they’d nodded, agreeing with him, but in their hearts there burned only the lore of the frontier. It’s Indians do the torturing and the massacring. But too many questions were left unanswered.

  The knives, the wrong arrows, the tortured woman who’d retained her beautiful hair after the atrocities that butchered her. And the money gone.

  It had to be whites. But what kind of group could take a loaded stage by surprise?

  It was to be a couple of weeks before Jed came across the answer to that particular question.

  Chapter Five

  Two weeks later and Jed Herne hadn’t moved any great distance from Bulmer’s Wells.

  It was still blazing summer, the desert rocks bouncing back the heat so that it seemed to scorch a man’s face.

  Jed had been running short of money and had taken on a quick job, shooing some flies away from a spread near the border.

  The owner had been plagued by a few drunk gunmen and bandits; no more than seven of them. Jed had found the cabin in the foothills where the men had been holed up and he had told them to leave his employer alone. Four of them had seen reason and left hurriedly. The other three had remained behind.

  Permanently.

  Five days’ work, bringing in a basic hundred dollars, plus another seventy-five as bounty for the three dead men. It was enough to keep him in food and liquor for a few weeks. There wasn’t anywhere particular that he had to be. Nobody particular that he had to meet.

  He heeled the stallion westwards, letting his mind wander back, along the dusty corridors of times past. The adventures and the friends. The few women and the many enemies. That brought back to him a soft-voiced shootist called … what was his name? Lee, that was it.

  He’d met Lee around four years ago, when gunmen were being recruited. Lee had once been one of the best, noted for the elegance of this clothes and the lethal speed of his draw. He was still smart, but the lace cuffs were ragged and stained. The lapels of his coat were greasy and his black leather gloves worn across the knuckles, marked with gun-oil.

  He had once been paid a stunning thousand dollars for disposing of a pair of brothers who had insulted a sister of his employer. When Jed had met up with him he had been hiding in a crib at the back of a cheap saloon. Outside Juarez, one rainy Easter. And Lee had been considering accepting a bounty of ten dollars a day. Herne had asked him about that and Lee had replied in that gentle, Southern accent: ‘Right now, ten dollars is a lot of money.’

  The stallion snickered as something moved among the sagebrush to the right, near the base of a towering saguaro cactus. Herne reached for the gun, automatically considering the possibility of an ambush. But from his height he could make out the dull form of a sidewinder, snaking its way rapidly away from him.

  The incident had temporarily taken his mind from the past, but as he jogged along he thought back again to the gunslinger called Lee, and something else he’d once said.

  Whitey had still been alive then, and he and Jed had been sitting with Lee, drinking, And they’d been joined by a young man, ail fancy leather and polished handgun, with silver bells on his spurs that tinkled as he walked, proud and full of sand and gall. He’d heard of the three shootists, and wanted to ride with them. Wanted to share the good living with them.

  Lee had replied for all of them,

  ‘Good livin’, boy. I’ll tell you what our “good livin” is. It amounts to this.’ He had ticked off the points on the fingers of his black gloves. ‘Small town lawmen I know by name, two hundred. Faro dealers in cheap saloons, three hundred. Fifty cent whores all along the border and up northwards, five hundred. Barkeeps I can call by their first names, a thousand.’

  The boy hadn’t seemed impressed. So, Lee had carried on a whiles longer. ‘People I can trust, none. Wives, none. Children, none. Homes, none. Friends, none.’ The anger had become clear in his voice and the youngster had risen nervously, muttering his thanks, tinkling away across the saloon. As he went, Lee watched him, and he ended his shortlist. ‘Enemies, none.’

  Whitey had grinned wolfishly at that. ‘No enemies, Lee?’

  The gunman had smiled back. ‘None … alive.’

  Jed also recalled that young man with the pretty clothes and noisy spurs. Three days later Herne had been riding through a small border town, and seen the boy a second time.

  A last time.

  Propped up against an unhinged door, a rifle tied in his limp arms, eyes held open with small sticks, while the folk gaped and the traveling maker of daguerreotypes went about his business of capturing the young man’s portrait for posterity.

  The blood always came out dark brown, and the bullet holes were black.

  He was around seventy miles from the crossing of the Colorado, the river drought-low. Despite the talk around Bulmer’s Wells, Herne had only twice seen any sign of Indians. Once there had been smoke from twenty miles away north, beyond a line of rolling buttes. Dark smoke, greasy, meaning oil of some sort burning. It didn’t concern Jed, and he kept on riding.

  The second incident was closer.

  Despite his certainty that the stage had been attacked by renegade whites, the land was still the vast hunting-grounds of the Apache nation. Proud, suspicious, cruel people.

  Just before evening he had that pr
ickling sixth sense that rarely let him down. He was being watched, from somewheres close by. He reined in the horse, leaning down as though he was checking the girth. Squinting under the animal’s neck, seeing a half dozen mounted men, a scant half mile off, watching from the rim of a shadowed arroyo. An arroyo that could easily hide a hundred more men.

  They were Apaches. Nobody could doubt that. Stocky, muscular figures, in cotton shirts and breeches, hair tied back with colored bands. Most holding rifles, watching him intently.

  So maybe it wasn’t whites after all. It had nagged at Jed’s mind that the stage had shown no evidence of any other form of attack. No bullet marks at all. So how could a loaded coach be so easily taken by white men? What trick could they have used?

  Was it Indians after all, hoping that someone might assume it was whites? Many white men assumed that the Indians were naive and foolish, and in diplomacy they often were. But when it came to cunning and military skills, some of the chiefs were just about the best around.

  Herne continued to fiddle with the girth, glancing behind him to make sure he wasn’t going to be encircled. Away to his right his eye caught a flash of light. As though the sun had been bounced off a carefully angled mirror. It was obviously a signal and the Apaches moved silently back out of sight, and the desert land was once again bare and still.

  It was the following evening that he saw the wagon train, already circled in ready for the night. He paused on a ridge and looked down. Twelve wagons; the high-sided Conestogas. Probably now into the latter half of their long journey westwards from Independence, Missouri, to the Pacific Ocean and fame and fortune for the emigrants.

  For a few minutes he watched them, enjoying by proxy the familiar sights and smells and sounds. Fires being lit, food cooked. Scented buffalo stew rising to his nostrils. Water and wood being fetched and carried, under armed escorts. Whoever the wagon-master was, he knew his job. Realized the paramount importance of taking care in such a place.