White Death

by John J. McLaglen

  ‘Yeah, I see what you mean ’bout the whiteness, now,’ interrupted Charlie.

  Herne looked at the two men. There was something in his eyes that made Charlie speak, the words tumbling over each other in their hurry to spill out.

  ‘Ten days back. Must have come in from the west by train. Fresh horses. Ten of them. Meanest bastards you ever saw.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Herne calmly. More calmly than he felt. A private posse was always bad news. And when it was paid for by a wealthy and influential man like a Senator, then they were in it deep.

  ‘It weren’t so much the meanness of them all. It was the guy who rode at the head of them.’

  ‘What was he like? Young or old?’

  ‘Oldish. Begging your pardon for it, Mr. Herne, but he seemed much of an age with you. Sort who’d have fought in the great war.’

  A man like Nolan would have gone for the best that money could buy. That would be why it had taken them so long to get to Tucson. They’d have been waiting for . . .

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Tall. Very tall. Weighed ’bout . . . let’s see. I reckon round one-fifty. But really tall. Topped me by near a foot.’

  Charlie stood a half inch under six feet.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Dressed in ordinary sort of clothes. But all made in black. Like a preacher he was.’

  ‘But not him, Charlie. He weren’t like no preacher at all, was he?’

  Charlie shook his head, agreeing with his friend. ‘Sure not. Not like a preacher. Longish hair but no beard or moustache.’

  ‘What color was his hair?’ This was the question that mattered, although Herne half knew the answer already. That prickling wouldn’t have come for any ordinary gunman.

  ‘That was it. His hair! My Lord! I still see that hair in my dreams. I once saw a woman selling silk thread in a store in Buffalo. And she took it out in the street to look at the texture. And the wind blew it about. Like that it was. As soft and pure as blown silk.’

  ‘The color, you son-of-a-bitch!’ Herne grabbed Charlie by the front of his denim shirt and lifted him, big man though he was, clean out of his chair in one hand.

  Gasping for breath the cowboy tried to speak, but naked fear had seized his tongue and he couldn’t talk till Jed dropped him back again.

  ‘My Lord! You didn’t have no call to . . . I’m telling you, I’m telling you,’ he went on as Herne reached again for his throat. ‘White it was. White as the snow.’

  ‘And his eyebrows.’ interrupted the other man. ‘And his face an all. White as a carved bone. Eyes that blazed like the fires of Hell in the Pit itself .’

  Herne relaxed. Now it was told there was no call for more tension. ‘Did he say when he was coming back?’

  ‘Yeah. Day after tomorrow. But seems like you know him?’

  ‘I do Charlie.’ Jed laughed, his eyes catching those of Yates, frightened by the outburst of barely-controlled rage.

  ‘That is . . . I knew him. Name’s Coburn. Isaiah Coburn. Most men call him Whitey, but not to his face.’

  ‘He sure knew you, Mr. Herne. Is he a kind of old enemy?’

  ‘No. No, Charlie, I’d say that he was about the nearest I ever did have to a friend.’

  Leaving their spreads to be auctioned, Yates and Herne quit their homes for the last time at dawn. All their possessions would be stored for them, though Herne had little there that he wanted kept. Most of the furniture had been bought by Louise, and he couldn’t see his new life leading him to a settled existence where he’d need tables and chairs.

  Just guns and bullets.

  In a drawer he found the pivoted bullet mould that he’d carried with him for so many years. Leaved, with a sliding sprue cutter for removing the surplus from the casting point. When he’d first carried that, bullets had been difficult to come by, and were not always consistent in their molding. So the man who made his own could at least be sure that he was taking his own life in his own hands.

  Now things were better. Guns were more accurate, but he still used a store of bullets for the old Sharps that he’d cast himself three years back. Herne had always travelled light, with saddle-roll, pistol, rifle and knife. A little water and a small leather bag of jerky, the tough dried meat that would carry you through bad times better than any other type of food.

  They paid off their ramrods and locked up their cabins. While he waited for Yates to gallop across and join him, Herne sat easily in his saddle, thinking back to the good times, and to the hopes that had been buried in that late fall of snow.

  Tucson lay dead behind them. There was nothing for either of them ever to go back for, and with Coburn breathing vengeance down the backs of their necks, it was time to move on and keep moving. Herne had pointed out to Yates that Whitey would also have the list of names, and he would probably know by now just where they’d been, and who they’d removed forever from that list. And he’d be closing in on them, watching to see which way they went next.

  ‘But he won’t guess Phoenix, because he won’t know about Becky. So we go there, then you head west with the girl, and drop out of sight. I’ll be moving east after Duquesne.’

  Yates grunted. Unconvincingly. He’d brought very little with him and only after Herne had reminded him did he throw in a few of Becky’s clothes. His breath smelled like the bottom of a flophouse spittoon, and he was clearly in a bad temper. He cursed at Cleo when she stumbled in a wagon rut, punching her hard between the ears, making her rear in protest.

  ‘Beating her won’t make your head nor your guts feel any better, Bill,’ commented Herne, glancing up at the blue dome of the sky, with a hawk hanging motionless against it.

  ‘I want your damned advice, then I’ll come and ask for it,’ muttered Yates, wiping sweat from his head with a corner of his faded bandana.

  They rode around the town, in case they happened to run into Coburn and his posse, picking up the train to Phoenix at a small way-station. The track drove near to the stagecoach trail for part of the distance. Near Casa Grande it actually ran alongside for about eight miles.

  Yates was asleep, having drained the first of the bottles he’d picked up in Tucson, his mouth gaping open, showing a mouthful of blackened, rotting teeth. Every now and again, as the train lurched on a rough bit of track, he would spring forward, finally slumping back in the same position.

  Jed Herne sat and thumbed through a paper that the conductor had found for him, glancing out of the window at the land passing by. Content to sit still with his own thoughts. Letting his mind wander back into his past, and then forwards, realizing how, with Louise gone, the two were going to be the same.

  The last few weeks had proved to him what he’d always suspected. That the skill and the feeling for killing never deserted you. It simply lay slumbering, ready to be re-awakened.

  And he was realistic enough to know that now he had brought it back to burning life, he would find it near impossible to ever stifle it again.

  Out beyond the window the landscape of the Territory of Arizona slipped by him. Once he caught a glimpse of smoke high on one of the ridges of the Galiuro Mountains, and once they clattered on past a drive of wild mustangs.

  They were nearly in Casa Grande, laboring on an upgrade, when the train slowed to a bare crawl. Yates moved in his sleep, rubbing his nose with a grimy finger, then settled back again. Looking round him. Herne saw that every other person in the coach was asleep.

  The trail lay dusty and still right outside his dirty window, and he leaned his head against the juddering glass, and spotted a bunch of horsemen, riding easily along towards the train. Heading towards Tucson from either Phoenix, or from Fort Yuma.

  The hairs prickled.

  Fort Yuma!

  How many riders? He looked again and counted quickly. Nine he made it, and he wasn’t about to stay there and count again. Not when he had seen the man who rode at the front of the group.

  Towering head and shoulders out of the dust, far taller than th
e rest. Though he wore a bandana over his chin, and his Stetson was tugged over his forehead, Herne knew him.

  Moving with an easy grace he slid out of his seat, making his way to the end of the coach, edging the door open on the platform between the carriages. A cloud of dust blew in, making him blink, but by keeping his face to the narrow gap, he was able to see the band of riders nearing him.

  The locomotive had virtually stopped, hooting and whistling as though it was trying to encourage itself to greater efforts on the grade. Herne could hear voices raised in laughter. He closed the door gently so that only the thinnest slit of light showed through.

  There he was. The hatchet-face, white even beneath its coat of red dust. And the eyes seeming to glow in the shadow of the hat, turning this way and that, as restless as a feeding cougar. Herne’s hand dropped to his gun as the eyes seemed to burn right through the gap, eating into him, but they passed on.

  Two hours later they were in Phoenix.

  Chapter Ten

  Rebecca Yates hadn’t changed all that much to look at in the month or so since her mother’s murder. She was still several months away from her birthday, on September 24th, when she would be fifteen. She wore a plain dress of dark blue and her brown hair hung neatly in twin plaits, swinging gaily as she ran along the platform to meet her father and Jed Herne.

  She flung her arms round Bill and kissed him, but he pushed her away, embarrassed by the emotional scene. Herne bent down and kissed her solemnly on the cheek, then on the other cheek, feeling the softness of her young skin and the fresh smell of her.

  She wanted to tell them about how Aunt Rosie had passed on, and what her life had been like and how had they been and what had they been doing and where were they going and a thousand other questions.

  ‘Shut your mouth, girl, and tell me what’s a good cheap hotel.’

  ‘The one over there, Pa. The Transworld Star.’ Mrs. Pearson had been unable to stay with her, having family ties that had taken her east for the summer. But she had installed Becky at the ‘Transworld Star’ for the last four days.

  It was a decent family hotel, clean, pleasant and cheap, and Herne approved it as the sort of place that he’d like to see his daughter in. If he’d ever had a daughter. The owner was a smiling little Englishman, named Terry Harknett, who made up in girth what he lacked in height. He was glad to see them, though Herne sensed an air of disapproval at the unshaven and whisky-smelling appearance of Becky’s father.

  After they’d signed in, Yates went up to the room he had insisted on having alone at the front, while Herne had the room nearly opposite and Becky kept the room she’d had all along, down the end of the hallway. Jed flopped out on the bed, lying back on the soft mattress, resting his head on his hands.

  There was a gentle knock on the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  Becky walked in, looking unhappy, and pushed the door shut behind her. Herne grinned at her, but she looked stubbornly away and went and stared out of the window at the side street which was beginning to bustle with the early evening activity of the town.

  ‘Where’s your Pa? Is he coming to have some supper with us?’

  ‘Gone out. Didn’t even wait and see what I wanted to do, or talk to me at all. Mr. Herne, what’s been happening since I came here? Pa’s different, and so are you.’

  ‘How’s he changed? Still the same old Bill Yates,’ he lied. ‘Still loves you, Becky.’

  ‘No, Mr. Herne.’

  ‘Cut out this Mr. Herne stuff, Becky. My name’s Jed and that’s what my friends call me. And that’s what I expect you to call me.’

  ‘All right . . . Jed. But I somehow feel that you aren’t the same Jed Herne that I knew back home in Tucson. Pa’s turned bad. He’s begun drinkin’ again. And he seems like he hates me. Like I’m in his way. He was like that when Ma was took sick a year or so back. He went off and left me for days, all on my own. And when he came back . . . ’

  ‘What? I didn’t know anything about this, Becky. This must have been before we . . . ’

  ‘It was. I’d have only been a young girl of about ten, going on eleven.’

  ‘What about when he came back?’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t know I know, because he was awful drunk when he got back. Cleo made it on her own with him just about hanging on up there. You promise you won’t tell?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘His clothes were all covered in blood, like he’d been in a real bad fight. When Ma was home again, she was trying to wash his shirt, and asked him ’bout it. He near knocked her through the wall. He was like that a lot. Then about the time you and Louise came, he changed. Got better. Worked harder. Made some money. Now, he’s like he was before.’

  There wasn’t anything that Herne could say to that. He too had seen the change in his neighbor. This was the reason he was going to ride alone again. There’d been times, like with Isaiah Coburn, and with others, when he’d ridden from choice as one of a group. But he was always happiest when he was quite alone. And in a day or so that was the way he’d be again.

  ‘Maybe it’s just the bad times. Once you get out west, then he’ll be just like he was.’

  ‘Will you be like you were again, Jed?’

  ‘Hey now! I didn’t know I’d changed at all.’ And that was another lie.

  ‘Yes you do know it. And you’re a great story if you say not.’

  Herne beckoned the girl over to sit by him on the bed, moving his boots out of the way of her dress. ‘Come on here, and you tell me how I’ve changed.’

  Her face was oval, gradually losing the layers of puppy-fat that had softened it. It was the first time for months that Jed had found the time just to lean back and look at her, and he was surprised to see that the child was fast disappearing and the young woman was ready to come out of the cocoon.

  The blue dress seemed too tight for her, and he saw that her breasts were beginning to swell gently, and that her hips were filling out. The gawky little girl was beginning to bloom.

  ‘Should I tell you, Jed? You might not like what I have to say.’

  To his absolute amazement, she put up a finger and stroked him across the face in a totally feminine gesture that actually shocked him by its maturity. He reached up and took her hand, and for a moment he squeezed it, then let go of it. But in that moment he had unmistakably felt her return his squeeze.

  To pass the moment off Jed stood up and walked to the window. ‘Come on now Becky. Tell me how I’ve changed. And then you and I’ll go on down and find ourself somewhere to eat.’

  She folded her hands in her lap and looked demurely up at him, so that he wondered whether he could have imagined the pressure of her hand.

  ‘Well, Jed. When I first knew you, when you and . . . you and Louise came to live near us, then you were kind of old. Older than I thought you ought to be. Like a man who’s been very ill for a long time.’

  ‘Maybe that’s not a bad way of putting it, Becky. Go on.’

  ‘Then over the years you changed. You got happier, and you smiled more often, and you didn’t look as worried.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now you’re kind of back like before. Not exactly older, but . . . I don’t know . . . more careful. Since you’ve been here in Phoenix, I’ve been looking at your eyes. And they don’t stay still for long. Like you always expect somebody to come up behind you and hit you over the head.’

  Herne laughed, genuinely amused by her perception. ‘Now there is something in that. You’re a clever girl, Becky. Smart as a whip.’

  ‘I’m not a girl, Jed. Not really. I’m near fifteen, and I have to help look after Pa now Ma’s not with us.’ She paused and stood up, walking with a coltish grace to join him at the window. ‘And maybe I could look after you as well, Jed, if’n you like?’

  ‘Maybe. But there’s things to do first. Take a deal of time, Becky.’

  ‘You’re killing the men who killed Ma and Louise, aren’t you ?’

  ‘Well . . . ’ />
  ‘Jed, I know that I’m not very old but you don’t have to hide things from me. I guessed that’s why you seem different, because you’re Herne the Hunter again. Louise used to talk about those times.’

  ‘Never to me. What did she say? How ashamed she was about me in those days?’

  ‘Sort of. But I guess that she was kind of proud of you as well. If I married a man. I’d be awful proud that he was the finest shot and all that ever lived. And that all the men were feared of him.’

  ‘Becky Yates. That is not the sort of talk I want to hear from a young woman. Maybe one day I’ll tell you all about what it really means to be the best. But for now, I am about to stroll down and find some place to eat, and I would consider it a great honor if you would consent to take my arm and accompany me. Well?’

  She curtseyed to him. ‘I am greatly pleased to accept, Mr. Herne.’

  They walked laughing down the wide staircase, going out to a cheery call from Mr. Harknett, leaning on the edge of his desk. Herne had noticed that he never actually sat anywhere. Always on the edge of something.

  They found a good clean place to eat, and the evening passed easily, until he took her back to the ‘Transworld Star’ and saw her to her, room. She kissed him delicately on the cheek, like the fluttering of a moth’s wing, and then Jed too went to bed.

  Maybe tomorrow he could leave Phoenix, and continue his mission of vengeance. Bill might have got things out of his system and be more prepared to take his responsibilities seriously. He hoped so.

  Then he could be the way he’d always been. Apart from those three good years with Louise. He could be on his own again.

  Herne would have slept a whole lot less easily if he could have seen Yates during that evening and night.

  As soon as he left the hotel, Yates went off, his roll padding out his belt, to look for the action in Phoenix. From the time he’d dropped Becky off with her aunt he knew where some of the hot spots were, and he quickly found his way to the ‘Silver Sphere’.

  That was a saloon on the west side of the town, with its own red-light house right on the top floor. The girls hooked themselves around the balustrade that ran round the landing, calling out to the men at the bar and at the gambling tables. Wild Bill was interested in the tables first, with an adequate supply of drink. And after that?