The bullet hit him clean through the middle of the stomach, in almost exactly the same position as Herne’s previous shot had hit the young gunman in the tower bedroom.
Ruth screamed with the violence of the pain that tore at her stomach, kicking her backwards on top of her son, who also screamed out loud, the derringer spinning from his fingers into the corner of the room. With a scrabbling effort, the robe falling open, the boy pushed clear of his mother, crawling across the room towards Herne, head down, gasping with the agony of the gut wound.
Herne watched him come, lurching slowly forwards like something out of a nightmare. The last man he had ridden thousands of miles to kill, dying at his feet. He ignored Ruth Stanwyck, trying to get to her feet, pulling the white runner from the table, scattering china ornaments on the floor. Ignored Coburn at his elbow, breathing hard.
Shut out everything except this pathetic object groveling at his feet.
‘You bastard, Herne. You killed my mother.’
‘You bastard, Stanwyck. You killed my wife.’
He pulled his lips back over his teeth in a wolf-like snarl and pumped the last five bullets from the heavy Colt into the boy’s body, cocking and squeezing, long after the chambers were empty.
The air was thick with gunsmoke. When it cleared Herne saw what he had done. The bullets had literally torn the boy apart. His flesh had been mashed into the carpet, and blood had sprayed everywhere. Splashed in Herne’s face. Sprinkled in the ghostly whiteness of Coburn’s hair.
His revenge had ended as it had begun. With death and blood.
The only sound came from Ruth Stanwyck, sobbing as she tried again to get up, blood dribbling through her dress from the stomach wound.
‘I’ll loose the servants,’ said Coburn, quietly. Almost apologetically walking from the living-room. The death-room.
Herne stood locked in with his own thoughts, hardly aware of the presence of the woman. She had managed to crawl across the floor, kneeling and cradling the mangled corpse of her son in her arms, wiping away the blood from his face, only to find more blood beneath.
‘Why? Why?’
‘Why not?’ said Herne, walking away from her. He stood by the window, staring out at the setting sun, dappling the mountain peaks with golden orange. Reddening the fields of snow on the walls of the valley. Gleaming off the sheets of ice on the lake and the tumbling chandelier of the Rich Stream Falls over to the right.
‘Time to go, Jed,’ said Coburn, waiting in the doorway, watching as Herne joined him, ignoring the crying woman.
‘Right,’ said Herne.
‘Why... ? Why do you leave her alive, Jed?’
‘Because she hasn’t got anything left to live for,’ he replied.
Just before he closed the door on the mausoleum Ruth Stanwyck finally stopped her crying, and he saw her eyes closed in her torment and madness, holding the body to her. Heard her talking to the corpse.
‘Better by far you should forget and smile, than that you should remember and be sad.’ He shuddered and walked out of the house into the clean air of the evening.
Chapter Eleven
‘It’s gettin’ dark. Too dark to see.’
The house had been quiet as they left, slipping out through the same tower door through which they’d entered. The servants hadn’t appeared above stairs, and there was no further sound from Ruth Stanwyck.
The sun was almost down, falling behind the western slopes of the sheer-walled valley in a cascade of red and orange, turning the snow into rivers of fire. The sky was clear, with the first needles of stars appearing, and a sliver of moon.
Neither of them spoke as they made their way carefully over the packed, rutted ice on the path round the house. Stepping in under the trees, ducking beneath the low branches, keeping a careful look-out for traps in the little light left to them. But the night was too close. Coburn, who was leading, stopped.
‘If s gettin’ too dark to see, Jed. I don’t figure to losin’ a leg at my age.’
The voice made Herne start. He’d been locked into his own private thoughts. Feeling an awful depression biting at him. It was like the sadness that came to him after making love to Louise. The feeling that what had happened might never happen again.
In the last few months, since his wife’s suicide, he had been filled with the drive for revenge. The burning desire to see all the men responsible dead at his feet. Now he’d done that.
And there was nowhere else to go. And nowhere else to run.
Just Becky.
Now it was over, the girl was his only responsibility. The only real reason for going on. She needed schooling, and with Nolan threatening both of them, there would be nowhere in the whole country that she might be safe. When they got back east, he’d enquire again about that expensive school in England. He’d need a whole lot of money to pay for it.
‘What?’
Standing still under the snow-weighted pines, Coburn patiently repeated it for the third time. ‘I said that with that moon hid by that big black cloud comin’ on down, and with these woods sown with man-killers, seems better to take another way out.’
Although they only stood three paces from each other, Jed could hardly see his old friend. Just the splash of whiteness that was his face and the swirl of silver that was his hair.
‘I don’t reckon on there being another way.’
‘Round the top.’
‘Clear over those cliffs? By the top of that frozen fall and down the other side?’
‘Yeah. I scouted it before we met. The Rich Stream River comes spouting over the top about a half mile from here. The Falls drop sheer for a thousand feet. Normally to rocks, but there’s a pile of snow drifted up there now. We go another quarter mile and I reckon we can scramble down a path I seen.’
Herne looked around him. Coburn made good sense. It was dangerous enough risking the traps in daylight. At night it could be fatal.
‘Right. You know the way, Whitey. So you go first.’
Back up on the track round Mount Abora. The mansion lay still and silent, with lights blazing in several of the rooms, but not the least sight nor sound of life. Along past the main gate, with its stiffening corpse still on guard, sightless eyes rimed with ice.
Then the climb up over broken rocks towards the ridge of the hillside, with the moon playing hide-and-seek among the scattered clouds.
‘’Ware barbed wire,’ said Coburn, stepping carefully over the rusted remnants of an earlier attempt to fence in the house. Ice hung in clusters from the points of the wire, catching the pale light.
Herne paused for a moment, bending to peer at the wire. ‘It’s Allen Two Line Four Point wire, Whitey. Had some like it on my spread.’
‘Wish I could have seen that place. Always did want some kind of spread of my own, Jed.’
Panting a little from the effort of climbing at that altitude, Herne joined him, a hundred feet or so beneath the stark edge of the ridge.
‘Guess we all wanted that kind of thing. Best most of us get is six foot of earth in Boot Hill. With a belly full of lead for our last meal.’
‘It was good? Wasn’t it? Your spread, with Louise? It was good like you wanted it to be, wasn’t it, Jed?’
Herne thought back to the summer sun shimmering off the brown earth, and a day’s work done. His beautiful young wife coming smiling from their porch, with a tin dipper full of clean cool water. And the warmth and sweetness of her lips, her hair filled with the scent of baking.
‘Yes. It was good.’
‘Envied you. Some ways. Some times. I figure to finish up on a spread. Running water and shady trees. Somewhere a man can live free. Breathe free. Not always look over his shoulder for the next punk with a store-bought Colt and skinful of cheap booze.’
‘Got to stop somewhere, Whitey.’
‘Yeah. True, Jedediah. It’s all got to stop somewhere. Some time.’
It still lay between them.
Herne had been conscious of it ever since they’
d fought against the boys back at Coburn’s camp. The deal to go together against the Stanwycks had worked out well. Better than he could have hoped. Without Whitey, it would have been a whole lot harder and taken a whole lot longer.
But both of them knew that it had to end. The part against the Stanwycks had ended well. But the contract out on Herne was still open. He knew Coburn well enough to guess that it wouldn’t be long before the albino made his move.
He wondered if it would come out of the darkness, or if it was going to be an open challenge.
The wind was rising, whistling off the peaks around them, scattering ice crystals against their faces, stinging tears from their eyes. It crossed his mind that it would be as well to make his own move first. Wait until they were both up there on that hogback, then just a good kick and it would be over. On that surface of packed snow and ice there would be no hope on earth for anyone.
He thought back to the many years he’d known Whitey. Without much effort he could think back to at least a half dozen times that he’d saved his life. And maybe the same number of times that Coburn had done the same for him. It came hard to murder a man like that.
But still...
Gradually he closed the gap between them as they struggled up the steep hillside, their boot-heels slipping in the snow, forcing them on to their hands and knees. They were only twenty or thirty feet from the crest of the mountain and Jed had climbed to within reaching distance of his partner.
Near enough to stretch out and touch him.
Suddenly, they were at the edge of the mountain, with only space and snow toppling away in front of them, and the narrow spine of rock leading round to their left, towards the glistening ribbon of the Rich Stream.
They were completely exposed on the ridge, the wind shrieking and tugging at them, as though it was trying to shake loose the rocks from under their feet. Whitey turned round to make sure that Jed was safe behind him, when somehow he stumbled.
Or maybe Jed slipped and fell against him.
Or maybe...
Whatever caused it, the result of the accident was instant and spectacular.
Jed slid forwards on his stomach, reaching into space with his gloved hands, trying to see in the darkness where Whitey had vanished. There hadn’t been more than a short muffled cry before the dark shape disappeared over the edge. That side of the ridge the valley dropped away sheer and sharp.
‘Here!’
It was only then that Jed saw him. Coburn had fallen about eight feet, but for his chances of climbing out without help, it might as well have been a hundred feet. He had slithered down the steep face, landing on a ledge no wider than a man’s shoulders and about the length of an over-mantel, slightly undercut. He had to stand pressed hard against the wall of iced rock to avoid plunging to his death in the freezing darkness beneath.
‘Here, Jed.’
By straining up, Coburn could nearly, so nearly, reach over the crest, but it was covered in snow. He had no way of getting a grip, and the overhang meant that he couldn’t jump to try and get a better grip. All Herne had to do to save his life was stretch over the edge of the drop and extend his hand. With that bit of extra purchase, it should be possible for Whitey to heave himself up and out.
‘I see you, Whitey.’
If he left him, the cold combined with the icy wind would kill him within a couple of hours. And there would no longer be any danger from him. No threat of the attack to claim the bounty on the contract from Nolan.
It would be so easy to walk away and leave him. Easier than shooting him down.
‘Thanks, Jed.’
The rescue had been more difficult than Herne had thought it would be. The crust of snow on the very edge of the drop was wafer-thin, and crumbled each time Jed tried to lie stretched right out and pull Coburn clear. Twice they locked grips, and twice Jed had to tell him to let go and risk the slippery drop back on the narrow ledge. Each time Coburn did what he told him. Trustingly and unquestioningly.
At the third attempt Jed was able to find a better purchase, bracing his heels into the bare rock of the ridge, leaning far out into blackness. Unable to see Whitey, and with the albino stretching up blind. Both men had taken off their gloves, hoping to get a better grip. But they were both sweating hard with the exertion, fingers slipping.
Groaning deep in his chest Herne pulled back, forcing his left hand into the snow to try and get better leverage. Gradually dragging Coburn up and over. Not even looking up when his head and shoulders loomed over the edge. They finally slithered a few feet down the safe side, both landing against a jagged boulder in a confused tangle of limbs.
‘Yeah. Thanks, Jed,’ Coburn was panting, head down, trying to pull his gloves on again.
‘We’re gettin’ too damn old for this sort of thing, Whitey,’ gasped Herne.
‘Maybe you’re right. If ... if this didn’t lie between us, then maybe we could have got us a place somewheres together.’
The silence stretched between them, with only the howling of the wind to break it. The pale clouds scudded across the face of the moon in a wild chase, throwing the valley deeps into waves of light and dark.
‘I sure appreciate what you done, Jed; I want you to know that.’
‘Hell. I guess you’d have done about the same for me, Whitey.’
Coburn laughed. ‘Guess I would at that. Yeah, I guess I would. Must both be crazy.’
The Rich Stream River was completely iced over. Sheltered from the wind in the lee of the plateau, safe off the hogsback, it was just possible to hear the tinkling of water, still bustling busily under the ice. Most of the time the Rich Stream was only a thread of clear water, sliding across the bare rock and tumbling over the edge of the valley wall in a drifting curtain of frothy lace to the lakeside far below.
Occasionally the flash floods came and it became a growling killer, spitting a solid bar of water horizontally out from the cliff-top.
Now it was quiet, trapped in by the ice. Not more than seven or eight feet wide.
Herne and Coburn stood together at its nearer side. They leapt easily across it. There was a simple path away down the cliff-side, visible in the patchy moonlight, finishing up near the lake on the far side of the valley. Way back in the gloom it was just possible to see the bulk of Mount Abora, now with only a single golden light burning in one of the upper windows.
Somewhere ahead and to their left, clear across the lake, and up through the trees, Becky would be waiting for them to return. Sitting in that tiny shelter, the wind tugging at the trees, spooking the horses. Waiting for them both to return.
‘Jed?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I guess this is going to have to be it.’
‘Figured you might say that, Whitey. Seems as good a place as any to me.’
‘Can’t both be going back there. Not like this.’
‘Nope. One place is just about as good as another, isn’t it?’
The small open space on the side of the river was about forty feet long by eight feet wide. The mountain cut sharply downwards at that point, protecting them from the wind.
‘How you reckon on playing this one, Whitey? Guns?’
Coburn laughed. ‘Hell! You reckon I want to get myself wasted up here as well as you? We draw against each other, it won’t matter much who wins.’
‘That’s right. Guess there’s about that much,’ snapping his fingers with little success in the thick gloves, ‘between us. Course, I got the edge on you. Always have had.’
‘Bullshit, Jedediah.’
‘But I reckon that you might just have enough speed to wing me on the way down. And I don’t fancy trying to get down that path with a bullet in me. Or gettin’ out of the Sierras with the girl.’
‘Jed. Whatever happens here, I want you to know that I’ll take her on. I’ll get out of this killin’ game and raise her proper. You got my word on it.’
‘Makes me feel easier. That is if I’d trust a child like her with an old goat like you, I
saiah. But thanks. Now, how are we to do it?’
Casually, Coburn pulled off his gloves and tucked them in his back pocket. ‘How ’bout knives? Border-style?’
‘Just as bad. Anyways, if you and me stood up here with a corner of a ’kerchief stuck between our teeth, I guess we’d maybe start grinnin’ at each other and drop the damned thing. If we didn’t we’d cut each other up some on the way to the killin’.’
‘Hard, ain’t it?’
Herne also finished taking off his gloves. ‘Only one way out of this, Whitey. Fists. If’n you beat me so I can’t stand, then I come with you to be handed over to Nolan.’
Coburn moved a step closer. ‘Not good enough, Jed. Only way out’s down there.’
He pointed towards the gaping jaws of the ravine, spinning in blackness clear down to the packed drifts at the bottom.
‘Loser goes down there?’ asked Herne.
‘Right. Shake on it’
Ceremoniously, the two men shook hands, then broke away to stand a few paces from each other.
‘Whitey?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Kickin’ and gougin’?’
‘Guess so.’
‘Right.’
There were no more preliminaries to the fight. Both men started to circle, trying to get the other with his back to the drop, avoiding closing for two or three minutes. Finally, Herne spoke. ‘We keep this up, Whitey, we’re goin’ to be here all night Becky’ll take to worrying.’
The words were still on his lips when Whitey charged, coming in with his head tucked in behind upraised arms, taking Jed’s first punch on the elbow, closing with him, hooking his heel behind Jed’s leg and falling on top of him.
Herne managed to twist as they fell, avoiding getting the back of his head cracked open on the icy rocks. He tried to butt Coburn in the face, but the other man was ready for it, pressing in close to Jed’s chest while he brought his knee up sharply between Herne’s legs, finding the trick jarringly checked by Jed’s own knee, moved so that Whitey banged his leg on the Colt.
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