Massacre!

by John J. McLaglen

  Issuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!

  Hunting down his quarry in Kansas brought back memories Jed Herne had kept locked away for more than twenty years.

  Standing over a dying man those nightmares came flooding back. He’d seen a man he knew who’d ridden with Quantrill back in the bloody fighting against the Missouri Jayhawkers twenty years back, butchered by a man who’d used his three year old daughter as bait. Later that same day Herne had also seen William Quantrill hang both man and child from a branch of the same tree.

  It had been a bad War. He’d been a young boy, full of gall, with his friend Whitey Coburn, dead for more than a year now. He had rode alongside the Younger and James brothers as part of Quantrill’s Raiders through Missouri and Kansas. They’d killed around a thousand folks that year of sixty-three.

  On August 21 the Raiders launched a raid on Lawrence, Kansas. Their main target was Senator Jim Lane but the guerrillas killed men and boys before burning the town to the ground.

  These were the memories Jed Herne had lived with. Now he had the chance to exorcise them…

  MASSACRE!

  HERNE THE HUNTER 9

  By John J. McLaglen

  First Published by Transworld Publishers in 1978

  Copyright © 1978, 2014 by John J. McLaglen

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: September 2014

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.

  Cover image © 2014 by Tony Masero. Visit Tony here

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Mike Stotter

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author.

  This is for Chris Collingwood who paints the pictures.

  With a lot of thanks for his skill.

  Chapter One

  It had been a long, long chase.

  Southwards from Omaha, across the Smoky Hills to Ellsworth. Herne had nearly caught them there, but they’d had word of his arrival in town and rode out the back of the livery stable while he was still coming in through the front. With a blown horse he gave them six hours start, then came close again in Abilene.

  The Kansas sun baked down over the rolling grasslands, as he heeled his horse onwards, stretching his broad shoulders under the dark coat, feeling it tighten and the heat strike through to his skin.

  The three men had left only an hour before, with their bills not paid in the saloon and a barkeep with a broken arm who’d spoken out of turn. Jed fed himself and his mount, and bought a new pair of boots, making sure there was room in the back of the right one for the transfer of the sheath holding the Civil War bayonet, its edge honed keen as a razor.

  They cut southwards after that, trying to throw him off the trail. Heading for Wichita. If they’d split up then they might have had more of a chance but, like wolves, they stayed together in a pack, huddling close to each other for fear of their pursuer.

  Two of them tried to dry-gulch him eight miles north of the cow-town, but Jed was alert, prepared, having spotted the tell-tale movement of dust on the bluff. Dismounting with an unhurried ease and drawing the long Sharps fifty-five caliber rifle from its bucket,

  The first shot was the wildest kicking up splinters of stones twenty yards to his left. The second one came closer. Spraying him with dust and pockets of hot sand. Both shots left puffs of powder-smoke hanging in the still air of the summer afternoon. Giving him enough of a target to aim at with the Sharps. Hearing the scream of pain from a quarter mile off, and seeing the two men scuttling for their horses.

  Herne grinned to himself, wiping sweat from the stubble that jutted spikily beneath his chin, taking a swig of the warm brackish water in the canteen’

  There was no hurry.

  Gradually, he was wearing them down. Making them panic. It wouldn’t be that long before they decided to try and make a stand of it.

  Red.

  Kid.

  No-name.

  That was all Herne knew.

  And that they’d stolen horses from a ranch way up in Wyoming.

  If that had been all, the owner of the ranch wouldn’t have bothered to pay the top to get the best. Jedediah Herne. The top gun, now sliding uneasily into his forties. The man who had been the best and the fastest, and who’d dropped out of sight for several years. Only to reappear meaner than ever.

  But it wasn’t all. There’d been the three dead men, blasted apart with scatter-guns as they’d tried to defend their boss’s stock. And, behind the house, the raped daughter with her throat slit. And the wife who’d taken a long while to die.

  It added up to a big debt. One that made it worthwhile putting out a bounty on the trio of killers. One with gingery hair, aged around fifty. A boy who laughed a lot and was called Kid. And another man. Silent as a wind-blown grave. A real loner who wouldn’t answer to any name at all, and who might bloody you some if you tried to push him with one.

  Jed Herne had been riding the trail after them for nine days, and he was getting tired of it. There had been a torrential downpour near Cedar Bluffs, coming down out of the high country. There’s little change in Kansas rain, falling mainly on the hills, but it had damned near drowned him and the horse trying to cross a narrow creek that turned suddenly into a ravening wild torrent of white water and foaming mud.

  The men he’d been chasing had left their stolen horses there hoping the pursuit would stop. That wasn’t the deal, and Herne carried on after them.

  And now he’d hit one, and the others wouldn’t run much further.

  He found the dying man a little before sundown.

  Lying where his friends had left him, a blanket around him, under a grove of trees, overlooking a small stream, with the setting ball of gold away to the west, vanishing towards the peaks of the Rockies.

  There was a bird singing in the leafy darkness somewhere over Herne’s head as he walked the horse forward, towards the still figure. It would have been a beautiful place to take a girl you loved. But No-name was dying and you can do that just about anywhere.

  Jed stepped down cautiously, wondering if it was a trap. Looking around him and waiting. Not prepared to take the chance. Considering putting a bullet through the man lying a hundred paces ahead of him along the trail. Deciding it wasn’t worth the noise and waste of a slug. He’d experienced a lot of ambushes and this wasn’t one. He’d stake his life on it. Like he staked his life most every day.

  ‘That you?’

  The voice was quiet, as if it came from an eternity of time away. A tired voice that knew the running was over and even the paying was nearly done,

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You come to end it?’

  ’Figure I have already.’

  There was something that could have been a laugh, but finished in a bubbling cough that racked the man’s body, Herne edged in closer, the Colt ready cocked in his right hand. Eyes flicking from side to side in case it was a trick. He’d seen a man he knew who’d ridden with Quantrill back in the bloody fighting against the Missouri Jayhawkers twenty years back, butchered by a man who’d used his three year old daughter as bait. Later that same day Herne had also seen William Quantrill hang both man and child from a branch of the same tree.

  It had been a bad War. Herne’s mind moved back those twenty years, when he’d been a young boy, full of gall, with his friend Whitey Coburn, dead for more than a year now. The raids with the Confederate irregula
rs in Missouri and Kansas. They’d killed around a thousand folks that year of sixty-three. Including the people in Lawrence.

  That was a room in his skull that Herne rarely entered, and he closed the door on it swiftly, closing off the memory of that terrible August day. But not before it occurred to him that if his quarry kept heading the way it was going then the final scene might be played out damned close to Lawrence.

  It was about a hundred miles north and east of where he stood.

  ‘Come on, mister. You want me then you better move fast’

  ‘No matter to me if you’re dead or livin’. Money’s the same.’

  Again that painful laugh. ‘Folks been sayin’ that ’bout me since the day my Ma dropped me in Lubbock, Texas. Never had no friend. Don’t figure on any now.’

  ‘Kid and Red?’

  He was within twenty paces of the man now. Seeing both hands lying on top of the stained blanket, palms up, empty. And he could see the wound. The hole in the chest as big as a man’s fist. No-name must have been facing away when the fifty-five bullet hit him, ripping him apart

  The blood was crusted and brown over the front of his light blue shirt, but pink and frothing at the dark centre of the wound. Small crimson bubbles appeared with every painful, rasping breath.

  ‘Gone north. Left me. Knew it was over.’

  ‘They’re about right,’ said Herne, keeping the pistol in his fist.

  ‘Who the—’ A spasm of coughing racked the dying man’s body. ‘Who the Hell are you? You must be paid damned good to trail us this way?’

  ‘You murdered some folks. Woman. Raped a girl. Man pays a lot for the sons of bitches done that’

  Herne didn’t mention that his own wife had suffered a similar fate. The paying had taken him a while but the score was well settled now.

  ‘Red done it. Most. He’s a mean old bastard is Red. Rode with Quantrill in—’

  Breath ran out on him in the middle of the sentence and he lay still, looking up at Herne.

  Jed hissed softly through his teeth as the memory was strengthened. Red. There’d been three or four men with reddish hair out of the four hundred or so guerrillas. Maybe he’d know him when he caught up? It was impossible.

  ‘Your name, mister? Pretty shot hit me up high like that.’

  ‘Easier to shoot up than down. I’m Jed Herne.’

  ‘Jesus! That don’t beat all! Herne the Hunter. Of all the ... the sons of … Red said you and him and a guy named … named … Hell. I don’t recall.’

  The man with no name lay still, one white hand pressed to the crimson cavity in his chest, trying to hold back the frothing blood, his life trickling out with it. Herne watched him, incurious about his going. Just wondering whether he’d have to squander a bullet on him to save the waiting around. A contract was a contract, and he’d promised there’d be no doubts about any of them. A dying man was no good. He had to be dead.

  ‘Good shootin’,’ whispered the man. If he’d kept on fighting, then he might have lived a while longer. But life wasn’t that attractive to the lonely man, and when death finally reached out a hand, he took it almost eagerly.

  Still the trail led on north. The two men were heading for Topeka, but a few miles outside the town they branched off east. Herne wasn’t surprised at the move. Somehow he guessed that a man who’d ridden with Quantrill would head for places he remembered best

  ‘You say there’s two of ’em?’ asked the old man that Jed questioned.

  ‘Yeah. Boy and a man with reddish hair.’

  ‘Old as you?’

  ‘I reckon.’

  ‘Passed through here not more than an hour back. Both on sway-backed mares looked like they’d come in from Hell on the noon train.’

  ‘Headin’ which way?’

  The old-timer scratched his armpit thoughtfully, hawking up a lump of phlegm and spitting it into the dust near his foot.

  ‘Can’t recall.’

  Herne sighed. After a long pursuit, he wasn’t in the mood for foolish old men trying to get a couple of dollars for information.

  His hand dropped to the worn Colt on his right hip, thumb flicking the retaining thong off the hammer. It was an action so automatic that he hardly realized he’d even done it.

  The heavy pistol was out and cocked, pointing at the old man, before he could jump.

  ‘Goddamn!’

  ‘Just talk.’

  ‘By God, but that’s about the fastest draw I seen since Wes Hardin came through here years back.’

  ‘I don’t want history, old-timer. Just a mite of geography. Which way?’

  From down below the muzzle of the forty-five looked bigger than a mine shaft. ‘You’d gun me down, just like that, would you?’

  ‘I want to jaw, then I’ll jaw. I want to get after a couple of killers then that’s what I’ll do. You better just believe what I say, old man.’

  ‘I do. One question?’

  ‘Quick.’

  ‘You Jed Herne?’

  ‘Yeah. How d’you know?’

  ‘Heard some Mescaleros killed you over some water, five years ago. Then heard you was married and your wife got herself murdered. And that you was back on the trail again. Ain’t nobody fast as you around now Billy Bonnets gone.’

  ‘Right. Now you know who I am, just tell me where those two men have gone.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘What?’ Herne couldn’t believe his ears.

  ‘I said I wouldn’t.’ The old man folded his arms across his scrawny chest, staring defiantly up at Herne.

  It was a stand-off. Jed looked at the man, eyes cold as death, wondering whether to squeeze the trigger of the pistol and blow his head apart. But he was reasonably certain that the man called Red and the boy would be heading for Lawrence. It was the nearest place of any size around and Red would remember it. Just like Herne did.

  Gently, like a woman handling her first-born, Jed eased the hammer back down, and replaced the gun in his greased holster.

  ‘You get to live. I figure they’re headin’ for Lawrence, That’s where I’m goin’.’

  He could tell from the old man’s face that he’d guessed right.

  ‘Damn you, Herne!’

  He reined in on his horse, ready to move on again, when he paused. ‘One thing, old-timer. Just tell me why? That’s all.’

  ‘Why? Jesus, but you got one hell of a nerve, you bastard!’

  Maybe he’d killed someone that the old man knew, thought Jed, watching in case he was holding a gun somewhere.

  Then, like a lightning storm on a summer morning, he knew. Knew why the old man wouldn’t tell him. Wouldn’t even mention Lawrence.

  ‘The War?’

  ‘Sure. My Sarah was the prettiest little thing you ever saw. We’d been wed three years and had a young ‘un on the way. I was off fightin’ for the North. And you came. You and your murderin’ friends!’

  ‘With Quantrill?’

  ‘Yeah. Massacred them all. Most of the town. They said they could see the flames for fifty miles off.’

  And he started to weep. Great blobs of tears that coursed down his wrinkled cheeks, gathering on the point of his chin and dripping into the dusty grass.

  There wasn’t anything to say. It had all happened over twenty years ago. Maybe happened to two different people. Jed Herne walked his horse forwards, leaving the old man standing, locked into his own remembered grief. He was still there when Herne paused on the top of the next sun-roasted ridge, looking back. Then he vanished as the shootist moved on again. After the last two killers.

  East towards Lawrence, Kansas.

  Towards the future.

  And, maybe, towards the past.

  Chapter Two

  A few miles from Lawrence the main trail split off to the left, while another road forked right. Herne remembered that this was a back way into the township, winding through among trees. There were a few scattered cabins along the trail, each with its own smallholding.

  He didn’t have t
o wonder which way his quarry had gone. There was a grim signpost left behind. The young boy – the one called ‘Kid’ – lay dead on the trail. Jed guessed there’d been a quarrel about which way to go, and that the boy had lost.

  He stepped down from his horse and felt the corpse. It was still warm, and bright blood was still trickling slowly from two bullet holes in his chest. The cloth of the kid’s shirt was rimmed black around the wounds, burned by the explosion of powder. Showing how close his killer must have been to him when he gunned him down.

  If it hadn’t been for the body, Herne wouldn’t have taken the back trail. But the boy hadn’t died immediately. Murdered by Red, he’d lived long enough to make sure that their relentless pursuer knew which path to follow. He’d crawled a few yards off the main trail, dying with one hand stretched out in front of him, fingers pointing, along the other route into the town of Lawrence.

  Herne figured from the fresh blood and the relaxed warmth of the corpse that Kid couldn’t have been dead for more than an hour. Maybe a whole lot less. He hadn’t heard the noise of shooting, but the rolling grass hills would have closed off the sound from him.

  Most bounty-hunters needed some proof of having finished their kill. Some took a scalp. Others clothing. One or two were known for their habit of taking the head. Herne the Hunter simply made sure the boy was dead. And that would be enough. Folks didn’t question the word of Jedediah Travis Herne.

  ‘Thanks for the sign, Kid,’ muttered Herne, remounting his horse and heading it in the direction of the pointing finger. Leaving the body for someone else to bury. Or to leave to rot.

  It didn’t matter a damn either way.

  Red was riding a roan mare with a loose shoe on the right fore. Jed could have tracked him anyway, but that peculiarity in the hoof-marks made it easier. He could ride on at a fast canter, and be sure he was on the right trail. Red would probably not know that Kid had managed, even in dying, to betray him. Which meant he’d be careless. Riding head up and easy.

  The sun began to slip down towards the west and the scorching heat of the day started to ease a little. Herne paused again for a mouthful of water, swilling it around his mouth and spitting it out into the dusty earth along the side of the trail. There was the summer-dry remnants of a stream winding sluggishly down to the left. Ahead of him Herne could see the roof of a cabin, the shingled roof shining as the sun gleamed off the bare wood. It didn’t look in good repair.