Death Rites

by John J. McLaglen

“I’ll tell you this one more time and one time only, Jollye. You try crowdin’ me like that and you’ll end up with a broken face and no printing plates. You talk slow and easy to me, and we’ll get along real fine. That understood?”

  The agent drew a deep breath. “Very well. I offer you my apologies, Mr. Herne. Since I heard about the robbery, I have been almost out of my mind with worry. It is bad enough if criminal elements get hold of good counterfeiting plates. But to have the real thing.”

  “Kind of like a strong-box that never gets empty, isn’t it?”

  Herne sat down on the bed and looked at the little Government man.

  “We will pay you well for the return of those plates, Mr. Herne.”

  “I knew that before. Try me on something that’s new.”

  “One thousand dollars.”

  “That’s for just gettin’ up on a horse.”

  A sniff from the agent. “Another thousand if you return with the plates.”

  “Two now, and three more when I get back. I have to attend to a funeral. Buy a horse. Supplies,” Herne said firmly, brooking no argument.

  “Very well. But when will you be able to start after them?”

  “Tomorrow, if my plans go well. I figure the burial can be in the morning, so I could be away by noon tomorrow.”

  “How ... where ...? Do you truly have any idea where they are?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know?”

  “I think I know.”

  “You realize it is an offence to hold back on any information that might lead to the return of valuable Government property?”

  “You realize I could bust you in the mouth and take a deal of pleasure in it?”

  There was a silence in the room, taut as a bowstring, with both men eyeing each other warily. Much as Jed could use five thousand dollars, the pendant meant more to him. But Jollye was caught in a cleft stick. Much as he disliked Herne, if the big gunman really knew where those plates were, then it would be folly not to let him go after them.

  “Five thousand dollars?”

  “Five thousand dollars.”

  “You bring the plates back to me, unmarked.”

  “Unmarked?”

  “Surely. If they are damaged then they are quite without value.”

  “So if I don’t get to bring them back in one piece, then it’s fine with you if”n I mark them up so they can’t ever be used.”

  “Yes. Two thousand dollars for starting off. Three more if you get back to me with the plates, or irrefutable evidence that you have destroyed them.”

  They shook hands cursorily, like men afraid of catching a contagious disease. The day was wasting away and Jed needed to arrange the burial of Becky out on the old spread with Rachel Yates and his wife, Louise. He felt a faint stirring of the small hairs at the nape of his neck at the remembrance of memories now past. Past, but not yet dead.

  “I’ll arrange to see you before you leave tomorrow, Mr. Herne,” said Jollye.

  “That’ll be fine,” said Herne. “Keep it to yourself about me knowing where those bastards are hid up. I don’t want them coming into Tucson gunning for me before I can even get started.”

  “Of course. I will have to wire my head office to the effect that there is good news on the way. I do hope that it turns out as good news, Mr. Herne. I would hate to have spent two thousand dollars of Government money on a chase after a wild goose.”

  “Like I heard a man say once, Mr. Jollye; if you don’t risk speculating, then you’re never going to start accumulating.”

  The agent left the room without another word.

  On his way back from arranging the interment with the local preacher, Herne bumped into the old gunfighter, sitting in a rocking-chair on the porch of the eating-house, whittling away at a piece of wood. Not seeming to carve anything in particular, just to pass the day along.

  He looked up at Jed blankly, but then recognition came flooding to the wrinkled face and he leaped to his feet, setting the chair to squeaking.

  “You’re ... don’t tell me, Mister. It’ll come along to me in just a ... You ain’t Ben ... Nope, he got gunned down in a whore-house in Dallas.”

  “Jed Herne.”

  “What’s that?” cupping a hand to his ears, and bending forward at the knees in a half-remembered gunfighter’s crouch.

  “I’m Jed Herne and you’re Scotty Mitchell.”

  A look of pure delight came to the hooded eyes. “Damned right I am. You heard of me then, Jed?”

  “Sure. Everyone from Juarez up to the Lakes has heard of Scotty Mitchell.”

  “That’s right. That’s right. Sure is.” A thread of spittle hung white on his chin as he stood there nodding his head.

  Herne noticed that the butt of the Colt on his hip was well-polished, and every few moments the old man’s gnarled hand would drop to it, as if he was seeking reassurance that it was still there.

  “I’ll be seeing you, old-timer,” said Herne, preparing to walk back to his room through the gathering dusk. The funeral was planned for ten the next morning and he wanted to have time enough to get a good mount, and stock up on food and water for the trip into the Pinaleño Mountains.

  “Wait on a moment, Mr. Herne.”

  The glaze had suddenly gone from the eyes and the voice seemed sharper. More biting.

  “What?”

  “I hear some things. Some things I don’t hear good. But on account of my ears being kind of muzzy at the edges, folks talk in front of me where they might do well to hold their tongues. Can’t abide that in a man.”

  “Go on.”

  “Yeah. Like Wes Hardin always said: If you come to shoot then get on with the shootin’. If you come to talk, then do it. Don’t mix them up.”

  “That’s good advice, Scotty.”

  “Sure is. I recall a couple of road-agents up in the north of Texas. Near Palo Duro Canyon, as I remember it. They had me dead to rights. Colder’n mutton. Sat there jawin’ away at me as to how they’d been waitin’ to bushwhack me on account of me killing their brother. Gave me time to draw and shoot them both out of their saddles. One was still talkin’ when the bullet hit him. Sons of bitches.”

  Seeing signs of the old man starting to ramble again, Herne took him by the arm.

  “You had something to tell me, Scotty.”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah, you ...”

  “Sure. You and those fellows that took the train and the money plates.”

  “What about them.”

  “I know a guy over at the telegraph office and I heard him tellin’ the barkeep at the ‘Mother Lode’ about how you been hired to bring it back. And that you knowed where them bandits took it.”

  “He said that?” asked Herne, seething with a bitter anger that Jollye had been so indiscreet.

  “Yeah. The bastard’s a real drinker. Leans right up on the points of his elbows and bends the arm. After a couple he’ll tell anyone about anything. He’s about as much to be trusted as a treed grizzly. Talkin’ of which did I ever tell you the time that me and ... who was it?”

  “Scotty,” interrupted Herne. “You’ve been a whole lot of help. Thanks. But I’ve got to go.”

  If the town oldster knew about his plans, then it might be that Tucson harbored friends of the gang. It wouldn’t take that long to get a warning out. A fast horse during the night. They could be laying for him on the trail. Or even try and hit him in Tucson. He had to get away and think about it.

  “Listen, Mr. … Herne.” Scotty grabbed him by the sleeve of the coat. “You don’t forget now what I said. I’ll be lookin’ out for you. You want help, then you just give a whistle.”

  Jed nodded. But Mitchell was looking anxiously at him. “Remember, just whistle. You know how to do that?”

  “I guess I do. Now you go in before it gets real cold out here.”

  The old man grinned up at him, and shuffled away, in through the door.

  Herne went back to his room to do some hard thinking and
prepare himself for the next day.

  Dismal weather greeted him when he rose the next morning. And even more dismal news. The priest was confined to his bed with a sudden cold and wouldn’t be able to officiate at the burying until early afternoon in two days’ time. That would mean that Herne couldn’t reasonably set off into the mountains until the morning after that.

  Jollye was deeply concerned at the news, urging Herne to go ahead before the burial.

  “No. If it’s genuine, then not a lot of harm will be done. I have a feeling that maybe someone’s got to the man of God and told him it might suit his health to rest up for a day or so.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you that before I go. But I figure someone might ask the Sheriff here to keep an eye open for any strangers in town.”

  “What are you goin’ to do, Mr. Herne?”

  “I’m goin’ to catch up on some sleep and do some buyin’. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

  There it rested.

  The priest duly recovered and they rode out to where Jed used to have his spread. A couple of local men followed on with the coffin on a wagon. The grave had been dug the day before, though the cold had made the ground hard.

  Herne had pressed him on his “illness”, but the priest had colored and looked away, muttering about something on his chest. It made Jed even more certain that there was pressure from someone in Tucson to keep him there for a few more days. If the gang wanted time to make their move, then that would have to happen. But, as Herne had explained to the anxious agent, he doubted that. If they’d made plans they wouldn’t want to have to alter them on the chance of a bounty-hunter guessing where they were hidden.

  No. It had to be that they planned an attack on him. Most probably on the trail.

  “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.”

  The priest prayed, his voice raised against the curling wind from the east. The small coffin was ready to be lowered alongside the twin mounds where her mother and Jed’s wife lay.

  Herne wondered about just what it was that the Lord had given to Rebecca Yates. Dead at such a young age with so little of her life lived, and much of that young life filled with sadness and loneliness.

  A thought that was strengthened as the coffin was lowered into the dusty earth with jerky stops and starts as the new rope round it screeched on the wood.

  “—hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”

  Jed stooped and picked a handful of dry sand, ready to cast it in on top of Becky’s coffin. Hearing the priest as he spoke of the: “Sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.”

  It rattled on the wood with a flat, hollow sound, and he thought about Becky. Not about the wizened, rotting corpse that lay beneath his feet.

  But the bright face of the beautiful young girl with the determined chin and the deep-set eyes.

  “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore.”

  “Amen,” chorused the two grave-diggers, bending to pick up their shovels and fill in the black hole.

  “So long, Becky,” said Herne, quietly. “I’ll get that pendant to you. I promise that.”

  The priest came over to him, face set into the conventional lines of sympathy, only to recoil at the look of anger on the face of Jed Herne.

  “What can be wrong, Mr. Herne? Was the service not to your liking?”

  “Surely, Reverend. I love funerals. All those last rites. In some cases it could be that they’re last wrongs, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I’m afraid that I don’t understand, Mr. Herne. The ways of God are strange.”

  “The ways of his servants don’t bear too much lookin’ at neither.”

  The shovels scraped in the earth, filling up the grave, and sealing in Becky. Herne looked away from the minister and thought again about the pendant, determining that he would have the grave reopened so that the necklace could be laid where it properly belonged.

  “Mr. Herne. I take offence at your repeated suggestion that I pretended illness for some wicked reason. You have no proof at all of that.”

  “No proof?”

  “No. It is a most outrageous calumny and I feel that you owe me an apology.”

  “I owe you something, that’s for certain, and maybe I’ll pay you.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “If I did have any proof about what I think you did, then I tell you straight Mister Minister, that I would have crucified you to the wall of your damned church.”

  Turning on his heel Herne stalked back to his horse and rode towards Tucson, ready for the next stage of his mission.

  Chapter Eight

  Jollye was standing in the main street waiting for him, wringing his hands nervously.

  “All went well?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then you’ll be away in the morning?”

  “MisterJollye. I have never found it sound practice to discuss my business while standing in the middle of the road.”

  “But you are going?”

  “Of course I’m damned well going. Now don’t ride my tail and get the money ready to pay into the bank straightaway. I’ll be gone from here well before first light and I want the two thousand dollars to my account before then.”

  “It’ll be there, Mr. Herne.”

  “It better be.”

  By the time that the sun shrank from sight over the hills away to the west, there was a flurry of snow, dusting across the frame houses. Jed put his new horse - a stallion called Jubal - away in the livery stables and walked back past the Mitchell eating-house, towards his own rooms. He had the ammunition he needed for the Colt and for the Sharps, as well as two canteens of water and enough food to keep him going for several days.

  Now all he needed was plenty of sleep.

  Tucson was quiet, and Herne wondered if he had totally misjudged the priest. Maybe he had been ill. Maybe there wouldn’t be any kind of attack. Not on the trail. Not anywhere.

  “Jedediah Herne!”

  The voice came from the shadows away to his left. His hand fell automatically to the butt of his Colt, flipping off the restraining thong.

  “Herne!”

  “Who’s that?”

  With the buildings all around, it was hard to judge whose voice it might be, or precisely where it was coming from.

  “Me.”

  “Who?”

  “Scott Mitchell. Over here by the side door.”

  Something was going on. Herne could feel it in his bones. Even allowing for the distortion, there was something wrong with the old man’s voice. Some kind of strain.

  “What do you want?”

  Herne kept his hand on the gun, ready to power himself into immediate action as soon as he could establish what the threat was.

  “I want you to ... to come on over here.” A pause. Then something that sounded like a gasp. Then: “Come on. I got something to tell you.”

  “I hear you.”

  There were deep pools of shadow all along the high street, darkened by the heavy clouds, and Herne very slowly and casually eased himself into one of them.

  “It’s about the train gang.”

  “I know everything about them.”

  “Cal Ryder is out to get you.”

  “That so?” Herne hadn’t even known the gang leader’s second name, so the old man couldn’t possibly have known it.

  So?

  Scotty Mitchell was being forced to betray him. To try and lure him closer so that someone could gun him down.

  It wouldn’t be hard to break and run. But there were two objections to that plan.

  One was that it would mean Scotty would definitely get shot.

  More importantly it could mean that all four members of the ga
ng were in Tucson and Herne might just run right into one of them.

  The only way to try and get out of the trap was to go and stick his neck in it.

  “I’m comin’, Scotty.”

  “Jed. Look ...”

  The words were cut off like a razor had been drawn across the old man’s throat. Which was possible. Jed had noticed that the Mexican, Diego, had been wearing something in a leather pouch at the back of his neck. It could be a trick that he had picked up from Josiah Hedges, the legendary ‘Edge’, who had always worn a cut-throat razor in that way.

  Still playing innocent, Herne took a few faltering steps towards the side alley, calling out as he did.

  “Scotty? You all right in there, Scotty? Damn it, where are your

  Herne’s mind was racing like a train barreling across the prairies, trying to think how in Hell he could get the bandits out of the alley. He had to get them to start their play first, so that he could know just where they were.

  But how?

  “Scotty?”

  Silence.

  The street was deserted, and he wondered just how many people in Tucson had been bought or frightened. The Sheriff hadn’t impressed him much. Used to be a fat lawman in Tucson, called Nolan, way back. Old Nolan wouldn’t have known what a bribe was and the only thing that frightened him was his beautiful young wife, Heidi.

  But he was long dead. Ten years or more.

  Nothing lasted, thought Jed bitterly.

  “Scotty? You had one of your turns again?”

  Maybe the noise of someone nervously shifting a boot in the gritty dirt of the alley.

  “Wait on there, old-timer,” he called, the Colt now ready and cocked in his right hand. “I’ll go and get some folks to help. Maybe the doc to take a look at you.”

  He half-turned away, balancing like a great cat, ready to make his move at the first sign.

  “Waste him!” yelped a voice from the blackness, and Herne dived to his left, snapping off a couple of shots into the alley.

  A volley of shooting came whining back at him, the bullets digging sand up all around him. But the light was poor and he was a moving target.

  “Jesus!” Herne screamed, rolling over and over, holding his stomach as though he’d been gut-hit, making sure that he ended up in the cover of a horse-trough, in case they had a long gun with them and just pumped a few slugs into him to make sure he wasn’t faking.