Till Death (A Herne the Hunter western. Book 15)

by John J. McLaglen

  ‘Or down here working for you,’ Herne had commented, and Chisum had given that a good belly laugh and clapped Herne on the shoulder.

  Mesa.

  Well, that was where Herne needed to go.

  ~*~

  The sunbaked scrubland offered nothing in the way of shelter. Herne let his animal have its head, choosing its own pace, stopping now and then to give them both a few moments respite before continuing. The sun beat down as hot as if it was still full summer and not coming into fall.

  Not that there was much out in that flatland to fall.

  Saltbush and creosote and sage.

  Gophers and rabbits and snakes.

  Herne thought about Louise as he rode, recalling the way her dark curls framed her face, the spunky way she’d talked back at him – the way he’d felt seeing her again, sudden.

  Mesa shimmered out of the desert like some mirage: only it was real. A tumbledown place that seemed to have been set out there in the middle of nothing and nowhere just to be perverse. The only reason Herne could figure out for a man going there was either that he was lost or that he wanted to be some place other men wouldn’t easily find him.

  Like Hondo, it was a mixture of adobes and wooded shacks, but these were in worse repair, crumbling and falling apart even though some of them had likely not been put up more than a year or two at most. The main street was wide as most, but short, with a well at the far end and buildings around it forming three parts of a circle.

  Behind and between the buildings there were tents, patched and re-patched, buckets and barrels haphazardly around them.

  Men sat on the remains of what had once been a boardwalk along the right-hand side of the street and watched Herne ride in.

  They were used to riders who looked much as Herne did, drifters and no-accounts whose clothes were trail-stained and whose mounts were smeared with dust and sweat and who toted guns like they knew how to use them and would at the least opportunity. Men who rode with little account of the law, even though there were times when they claimed to be about its business.

  Men like Pat Garrett.

  Men like Herne the Hunter

  Unlike Hondo, Mesa wasn’t parched for saloons. Herne rode past the Three Deuces, past the Yellow Dog and drew to a halt outside the Swados House. He dismounted and tied his reins to the hitching rail and pushed the single door aside.

  The bar was a trestle table set at the far end of the room between stacks of boxes. A few tables were scattered around the room, along with some large barrels which were performing the same function. Half a dozen men were sitting over their glasses and they all stopped whatever they were doing when Herne came in and turned towards him. In Mesa you didn’t look away from strangers - not at first-not until they’d proved that was the best thing to do.

  Herne stood just inside the door a few moments, returning the stares, checking out that there was no one present that he knew.

  One man, a thin half-breed Mex with a pencil-thin moustache and a soiled embroidered waistcoat, held his attention longer than the rest.

  Dodge.

  Wichita.

  Ellsworth.

  It seemed strange to place a Mex so far north but in the back of his mind Herne could see the man’s face, the same insolent stare, in another saloon, larger and more crowded.

  The man knew him, too, he was certain of that.

  As for the others, they meant nothing to him. Keeping one eye on the Mex, Herne walked down the room to the bar. A fat man with very little hair on his head and a surprisingly small mouth, nodded towards Herne and reached for a glass.

  ‘Just rode in?’ The voice was thin and weak as the mouth, as if it wasn’t the fat man talking at all, but some midget trapped inside him.

  ‘Beer,’ said Herne and tossed a coin down on to the trestle table.

  ‘Hot, ain’t it?’ said the fat man with the thin voice.

  Herne took the beer, brushed a hand across the top to remove the wash of froth and drank half of it down in a swallow.

  ‘Guess you must’ve ridden quite a ways.’

  Herne drank the remainder of the beer in another swallow and set the glass back on the table.

  ‘Another?’ asked the fat man.

  Herne turned round and walked back out into the street.

  He still couldn’t remember exactly where he’d seen the Mex.

  He untied his horse and led it down the street towards the well. A group of men were sitting on the crumbling adobe wall around it and swapping yarns about the fights they’d been in and the women they’d never lain with but liked to brag that they had.

  When Herne came towards them they stopped telling stories and looked him over. One of them recognized him right off. He’d been in a one-horse town on the Arizona border, oh, it could be five years back and, of course, he’d looked a mite younger then, but still there was no mistaking the way he walked, his face, that lank dark hair to his shoulders.

  ‘Herne the Hunter.’

  ‘Herne the Hunter.’

  The name ran from mouth to mouth, from man to man. To one or two, it didn’t mean a thing, others knew it vaguely from rumor and nothing more. To most, though, it meant they were watching one of the most feared guns on the frontier: railroad trouble-shooter, bounty hunter, hired gun. A man whose reputation with the Colt he wore strapped to his side was second to none and level with the best.

  Herne the Hunter.

  He stopped short of the well and retethered his mount outside the adobe with the sign attached to the wall reading: Town Marshal.

  Seth Sheperd had been working both sides of the law for all forty years of his life - or so it seemed whenever he stuck his feet up on the scarred desk in his office and thought back. He’d stole his first gold when he was but six years old, stabbed his first man-who was a woman – when he was nine. Come his thirteenth birthday he was running with the Morrel gang down by Nogales and on his fourteenth birthday they hit his first-ever bank. All that was a long time ago and now Sheperd was too tired to do anything much other than try to stay alive.

  When he’d taken the marshal’s job in Mesa he’d known it was akin to taking the marshal’s job in Hell.

  Hell! There hadn’t been a lot else to choose.

  He reached for the Colt Peacemaker he kept on the desk top as soon as he heard the steps approach. By the time Herne had opened the door and stepped inside the hammer of the marshal’s pistol was thumbed back and the barrel was pointing to a spot not unadjacent to Herne’s heart.

  ‘Marshal.’

  You want to shut that door.’

  Herne kicked it shut without turning round.

  ‘Now just as long as you’re here, lift that gun out of your holster and set it down on my desk. Easy like.’

  Herne hesitated under the stare of the marshal’s gun.

  ‘Only rule I got in town,’ said Sheperd. ‘Like to make sure when I talk to a man he ain’t gonna draw on me and get things messed up in here.’ He chuckled and the chuckle became a raw cough but the gun hand didn’t shake more than a fraction.

  Herne used finger and thumb to lift the Colt .45 clear and he set it down where the marshal indicated.

  ‘There. That makes me feel a whole lot better.’ Sheperd released the hammer on his own gun and lowered it, but kept his fingers about the butt. ‘Now what can I do for Jed Herne?’

  Herne raised his eyebrows enquiringly.

  ‘Don’t act surprised. You got yourself quite a reputation. It’s a wonder some punk ain’t called you out down some alley and put a slug in your back afore you got the chance to turn round. Just to make a name for hisself.’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Herne. ‘A couple tried.’

  The marshal chuckled.

  ‘I heard you was down with the Kid,’ he said after a couple of moments.

  ‘Was.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Hell of a business, way I heard it.’

  Yeah.’

  You just left Lincoln?’

  Herne nodded. ‘Yeah.’ />
  ‘Then you didn’t ride here by chance. You sure didn’t come for the scenery.’

  ‘No.’

  Seth Sheperd set the Colt Peacemaker down on the desk, close by Herne’s pistol. He unbuttoned the top two buttons of his vest and pushed a hand up through his graying hair. The eyes that looked at Herne were grey, watery at the corners. The skin around them was wrinkled like snake skin.

  ‘Lookin’ for someone?’

  Herne nodded. ‘Could be.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Means it depends who you got.’

  Sheperd whistled softly and pointed to the chair over by the side wall. ‘Best take the weight off’n your legs a while. We’ll talk about this.’

  Herne didn’t see a lot of point in discussing the matter, but he didn’t want to get on the marshal’s wrong side – not as long as it might be avoided. He pulled the chair over closer to the desk and sat down.

  The marshal eased back one of the desk drawers and felt around under some papers for the bottle. He passed it to Herne first, holding the stopper back in his left hand.

  ‘Good whiskey,’ the marshal promised.

  Herne sampled it and he wasn’t lying. He had a little taste more and passed it back. Sheperd poured himself a generous shot into a chipped mug and leaned back on the hind legs of his chair, cup in hand.

  ‘You’re looking for bounty.’ It didn’t come out like a question.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘How come any man goes after bounty? I want the money. Need it.’

  Sheperd drank some of his whiskey, washing it around inside his mouth before swallowing. ‘Must be easier ways.’

  ‘None quicker.’

  ‘Uum.’ He took another drink and let the chair settle back down. ‘I want to explain something to you. This town’s got more wanted men and roughnecks in it than most, but it’s also got a marshal. That ain’t normal but the reason’s straightforward enough. Every flier I get I stuff down in one of these here drawers an’ I don’t take it back out. Any man who comes to Mesa knows that an’ he also knows there’s a little debt he’s got to pay. He keeps whatever robbin’ and such he’s doing out of town.

  ‘’course, with so many hotheads around, there’s fights enough, but usually they keep it amongst themselves. I been here getting on two years and I’ve got things runnin’ pretty much the way I wants ’em.’

  He broke off for another drink and stared over at Herne’s impassive face.

  ‘I don’t want you ridin’ in here and throwin’ the whole works out the window. You understand that?’

  Herne said, ‘What happens when a United States marshal comes through?’

  ‘Hell, that’s different. I got no way of standin’ out against him and everyone else understands that. US Marshal rides this way they clear out or take their chances.’

  ‘Then they can take their chances with me just the same.’

  ‘Ain’t the same.’ Sheperd shook his head.

  Herne stood back up. ‘Too bad.’

  ‘I could stop you.’

  ‘You could shit!’

  Sheperd started to go for his gun but thought better of it almost as soon as his hand began to move. He knew that if Herne was even three parts as good as his reputation, he wouldn’t stand a chance. A man like Herne only agreed to give over his gun as long as he knew he could take it back with no problem.

  ‘Best let me see them fliers,’ Herne said.

  Sheperd sucked in his cheeks and finished his drink. He put the cup down by the two pistols and pulled open a drawer. He took a haphazard bundle of hand bills out and dropped them across the desk.

  ‘Sort ’em through,’ he said, and moved away to give Herne room.

  Some of the bills had a sketch of the wanted man or woman underneath the word ‘Wanted’, most just had the name and a description and an account of what crime had been carried out. The most important part for Herne was the sum of money capture would provide.

  Herne leafed through the names. There were Casey Dilkes and Nevada Raikes, wanted for robbery and rustling; Shorty Long, who held up a bank in Sedalia and got away with two thousand dollars; Deedee Palmer, who shot a man playing cards and took off with the pot; Dutch Daley the Butcher, who put his trade to good use when he raped a couple of women on the New Mexico-Arizona border and then dismembered the bodies; the One-Eyed Kid, wanted for murder and bank robbery; Spanish Joe LeFarge, who held up the Aitcheson, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad twice on the same stretch of track within a fortnight; Slanting Annie, who was wanted for burglary; Baldy McDowell, who raided an Apache reservation, shot and killed or wounded some dozen braves, murdered the agency chief and stole all the supplies of beef and blankets; Shorty Russell and China Mike, wanted for rustling cattle; Sissy Foustone, who held up the Santa Fe stage and shot the driver through the foot before riding off with the strong box; the McCandles family, who were wanted on seven separate counts of armed robbery; Highhat Dixon, Jerry Molar, the Arapahoe Kid, the Carter brothers, Wild Bill Nelson, Two-fingered Jack Slattery, Pierce Latham.

  Herne shuffled the fliers back into some sort of order and pulled one off the top.

  ‘He around?’

  ‘Latham?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Sheperd pushed at a gap between his teeth with the end of his tongue, trying to force out a fragment of beef that had been stuck there since the previous night. He poured himself another drink into the chipped cup and offered the bottle to Herne.

  Herne declined. Don’t waste my time, Marshal.’

  Sheperd had some of the whiskey. ‘He’s here. But what in God’s name you want to mess with him for?’

  Herne held up the hand bill. ‘Thousand dollars.’

  The sketch of Pierce Latham showed a lean face with deep-sunk eyes and thick stubble, a mean mouth and a lock of dark hair that fell down almost dead center on his forehead. He was wanted for killing a United States deputy marshal on Easter Day of eighteen seventy eight out at the Basque Redondo. His other offences included stagecoach robbery, bank robbery and two other murders. All of these offences were committed along with the rest of the Latham gang, most of whom had since been captured.

  ‘He’s a mean-looking bastard, sure enough,’ said Sheperd.

  ‘He don’t look as mean as he is.’

  ‘Know him?’

  ‘Saw him pistol whip a woman most to death one time.’

  Sheperd whistled shrilly. ‘Thought you said something about this being an easy way to get money.’

  ‘It’s fast. Federal offence, you can draw money for the reward from the bank, can’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, then, that’s an end to it.’

  Herne rolled up the poster and stuck it in his back pants pocket.

  Sheperd combed through his hair with the fingers of his left hand at the same time as bringing the chipped cup to his mouth with the other. A whoop of laughter rose up from the street and faded.

  ‘Okay if I take my gun? Guess we’ve finished here.’

  ‘Sure. Only …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Latham ain’t goin’ to be easy.’

  Herne lifted the Colt from the table and weighed it in his hand for a moment, enjoying the perfect balance. ‘I know that. Else someone’d’ve ridden in before now. Thousand dollars is a lot of money.’

  ‘You know he’s got kin?’

  Herne nodded. ‘Heard they were locked away in the state penitentiary.’

  ‘That’s right. Ezekiel, Damon and Howie, they’re his brothers. Billy Dean Latham, he’s some kind of cousin. They’re all inside. There’s another cousin called Mason or some such, he’s on the run an’ I don’t know where.’

  ‘Know where I’ll find Pierce?’

  ‘Not for sure. Was sleeping with a woman over the Three Deuces, but I heard he moved on. He’ll be around, though. Likes to drink come sundown. Deuces or the Swados House. You look for him, you’ll find him.’<
br />
  Herne moved towards the door and touched his fingers to the underside of his hat brim. ‘Marshal?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I saw a breed Mex when I rode in, moustache and one of them short jackets. Know him?’

  Sheperd considered it for a few moments, then sat back down behind his desk. ‘Sounds like Sanchez.’

  ‘Who’s he run with?’

  ‘No one special. Game in with a bunch of drifters who rode up over the border maybe a month back, but he’s been around a long time. Just drifting. Nothing special.’ He looked at Herne questioningly. ‘How come the interest?’

  Herne shrugged. ‘Seen him somewhere Kansas way an’ I can’t remember where.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s one of the troubles with living too long. Things get kind of blurred.’ He grinned and pointed at the bottle. ‘One for the trail?’

  Herne shook his head. ‘I’ll take one when I bring Latham in.’

  ‘Dead or alive?’ Dead or alive.’

  Herne opened the door.

  ‘One thing I want to ask,’ said Sheperd.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Like you said, thousand dollars is a lot of money. If you get it, what you goin’ to do with it?’

  Herne allowed himself a smile. ‘Use it to pay for an operation so’s I can play the fiddle again.’

  ~*~

  Herne mounted up and walked the horse in the direction of the adobe well. The seven men gathered round it separated out from one another, most of them standing away from the wall and making room for themselves in case Herne meant trouble.

  He reined in ten yards away from them and took his time looking them over.

  ‘Any of you know Pierce Latham?’

  There were muttered comments and exchanged glances and a few nods of acknowledgement.

  ‘You know me?’