Shadow of the Vulture

  Issuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!

  The man called Ed lunged at her with the bottle before she had time to finish. She half-turned towards Herne, holding up her arm for him to see. There was a crazed gash down the inside of it and the blood was already pouring freely from the wound. She put her other hand across to try and stem the flow, but the blood bubbled thickly through her spread fingers. Herne looked coldly at the wall-eyed man. ‘You got three seconds to drop that bottle and go for one of them guns,” he barked.

  SHADOW OF THE VULTURE

  HERNE THE HUNTER 4

  First published by Corgi Books in 1977

  Copyright © 1978, 2013 by John J McLaglen

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: April 2013

  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. If you’re reading the book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Published by Arrangement with the Author.

  This is for Angus Wells. He writes westerns too.

  Chapter One

  Jed Herne shifted his weight uneasily from one booted foot to the other. He hadn’t felt so damned awkward since his ma had made him go off to his first ever barn dance wearing a brand new pair of pants. Or since he had gone calling for Louise that first evening…a bunch of flowers pushed down behind his back. It had been a warm evening, he remembered, but the hand that held the daffodils had been fixed and cold.

  His Louise—his Louise that was. That had been. Had been his until the night he hadn’t been able to get back through the snows to their homestead...

  But seven others had. Seven men. They had killed the wife of his nearest neighbor. Then they had raped Louise. All seven of them. Until every orifice of her body was running over with their lust. They had not bothered to kill her. Simply left her for Herne to find on his return.

  They had not needed to kill her: she had done that herself.

  Jed Herne closed his eyes for an instant. Imprinted sharply upon the back of the lids was the memory of her body. Swinging. Swinging slightly at the end of the rope she had tightened about her own neck.

  Seven men. He had chased them, tracked them down like the vermin that they were. He had seen that they paid. That they died. Even to the last he had enjoyed it. He had stood over the body of that young boy and fired bullet after bullet into him from such close range that his body had been torn apart. Only when his gun was empty had he stopped.

  Now that all seven were dispatched to the shades of Hades, did that mean it was the end? An end? He didn’t know. Could not be sure. But he suspected that it was not.

  Herne’s thoughts were interrupted by the sudden bellow of a ship’s horn and a voice shouting.

  Then she was standing in front of him, her head held to one side inquisitively. She had on her best new dress and was carrying a parasol in her left hand. In her right she held a square-shaped leather bag. The rest of her belongings had been taken on board earlier.

  Herne looked at her and observed, as he had done many times before, how beautiful she was. How beautiful she had become since he had taken her with him on his quest for revenge. A beauty that disturbed him greatly.

  He felt as awkward as he had that first time standing before his Louise. Only this time he didn’t have any flowers and he wasn’t courting. He was seeing Becky off on the journey to England where she was to go to school. She was just fifteen. ‘What is it, Jed?’

  ‘Nothin’ special.’ Her eyes didn’t believe him.

  ‘I was thinkin’ you’re goin’ to be pretty cold on that ship with only a dress on. Hell, it’s December. Just ‘cause we’re having some freak sun, don’t make it summer.’

  Becky smiled. She knew that whatever it was he had been thinking about, it certainly hadn’t been the weather.

  ‘Don’t fret, Jed. I’ve got my coat in the cabin. I’ll put it on just as soon as we sail.’ She paused and took a step towards him. ‘They’ve been calling out for everyone to get on board. I shall have to go.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Becky took another small step towards Herne. Right up close to him.

  ‘Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye, Jed?’ she asked, head upturned and eyes staring into his.

  Jed reached out his hands and placed them on her arms. Through the thin material of the dress, she could feel the strength of his broad fingers. He squeezed her and moved his face down over her own. She slid her body between his arms and he kissed her gently and quickly on the cheek. She was aware of the roughness of his skin, where his beard had already begun to push through despite his morning shave.

  ‘Jed?’ Her voice sounded strangely loud, unnerved. She said his name again and the tremor was even more pronounced.

  ‘I shall miss you, Jed. More than...more than...’

  Herne was certain that she was going to break down in tears and prayed to heaven that he was wrong.

  She was looking at him: her face still very close to his own.

  ‘Goodbye, Jed.’

  And she kissed him. On the mouth. One moment her soft, cool lips were pressed against his, the next she had wheeled away and was running towards the foot of the gangplank, her bag and parasol bouncing clumsily at the end of either arm.

  She was unable to wipe away the tears.

  Herne watched the girl’s shapely figure as it moved along the deck and heard the shouts of the sailors as the gangplank was hauled up and final preparations for moving off were made. He lost sight of her for several minutes, then she reappeared, one hand clenched round the rail, the other waving.

  He lifted his arm and waved back. Once only. As positive a gesture as he could make it. Then he turned and walked away from the dockside.

  He knew that it would be possible for him to remain there until the ship’s sails were no more than white shadows on the horizon and Becky’s waving hand a gull’s wing on his imagination. But that was not what he wanted. He had never liked saying goodbye.

  A man who lived as Herne did, by his gun, couldn’t afford to let the past get in the way of the present. If you were faced down in the street by a young punk kid with a six-gun strapped to his side, you couldn’t afford to have some damned memory come creeping up and tapping you on the shoulder.

  Besides, he had his gutful of memories already.

  The street that led away from the docks was straight and as he walked along it, Jed Herne never turned round once.

  New York! Herne mentally cursed the place and spat down into the gutter. Down by the docks it had been squalid and foul. The wharf buildings ran with rats, even in the daytime, and the stench that wafted out from between the cracks in their scarred wooden walls hit you in the face like the smack of an ugly, open hand.

  But maybe, thought Herne, just maybe, that’s preferable to being uptown surrounded by...by all this.

  He looked across the broad cobbled street at the four and five storey buildings that stood squatly in their places, each as hard, as unyielding as its neighbor. They were nobody’s homes; places of business. Places where men went each day and thought up schemes for making more and more money so they could build more and more of those damned brick hells!

  Herne longed for the open space of the prairie and for a horse beneath him. He wo
uld give the animal its head and let it take him where it chose. Together, they could ride for ever and never run out of room.

  But here. For all the width of the street, Herne felt cramped, threatened. He looked up at the sky and as he did so a cloud ran its gray edge over the December sun.

  Herne braced his back against the sudden cold. He crossed the street, heading back for his hotel. He would collect his things and get out just as soon as he could.

  The hotel was a three-storey building with a lot of brass and gilt downstairs in the lobby and torn and soiled sheets upstairs on the beds. Not that Herne was too worried by that. It had been a long time since he had slept under anything other than the old blanket he kept rolled up behind his saddle.

  Herne felt in his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. He was wondering whether he could afford a drink. Hell, he needed a couple of drinks! Only paying a term’s fee for Becky’s schooling as well as for her passage across to England had taken about every dime he had. Still...he flipped a coin up into the air and caught it smartly...he guessed that a shot of whisky wouldn’t make that much difference.

  He was half way across the rich red carpet when he noticed the man in the dark suit. He was certain that he’d seen him before, standing around the dockside.

  Jed ordered his whisky at the bar and watched the man in the mirror. It was one of those with an artiste’s impression of a naked woman painted on it in gold outline. The man’s head was filling one of her breasts.

  Herne turned slow and easy, conscious that his Colt .45 was upstairs in his room, wrapped up carefully and stashed away in his bag. All that he had was the honed bayonet blade which he carried down inside his boot. He shifted the glass over to his left hand, lowering his right shoulder so that the fingers of that hand swung loosely above the top of the weapon.

  The man in the dark suit looked directly at him. He was younger than Herne, but not by many years. His face was pale, as though he had never exposed it to the sun, almost as though he had lived permanently in the shadows. The man’s head twitched–the same odd way it had done the time Herne saw him by the dockside. That’s how he had remembered seeing him before. The man stood up–he was about six feet tall and Herne could detect, beneath the well-tailored clothes, the firm outline of muscles that he suspected the man knew how to use. And underneath the flap of the jacket…?

  Herne tensed as the man’s right hand hovered around the pocket of his coat, then darted inside, removing the single button from its neatly threaded hole.

  His gun belt was clearly visible. Herne’s right arm dipped lower, the man’s eye following it down. He stared piercingly at Herne for several tense seconds then turned and walked away.

  Herne watched him go, making sure that he was well out of sight before turning back to lean against the bar. As he finished his drink he kept his eyes on the mirror. But there was nothing to see: just his own reflection and a painted, naked lady.

  He drained his glass, enjoying the roughness of the alcohol as it burnt against the back of his throat, then moved easily over to the desk and collected the key to his room. On the first flight of stairs the sound of his boots was muffled by the pile of the carpet. After that, there was nothing but bare board and the noise of leather on wood reverberated around him.

  If there was anyone up there waiting it would give them plenty of time to get clear…or to move back into hiding. Herne stood at the end of the landing, facing towards his room. There were three doorways on either side before his own. The corridor was poorly lit.

  Herne walked carefully, slowly, every muscle tensed and ready to react.

  But there was no movement, no sound.

  He unlocked the door of his room, stepped quickly inside and locked it again behind him. He picked up the bag and took out the wrapped gun, laying it down on the bed. Unwound the soft material and exposed the Colt. Oiled. Cleaned. Deadly.

  He lifted it and rolled the chamber with the forefinger of his left hand. There was a metallic clicking sound. Perfect. He tested the balance in his hand. That was perfect too. It was part of him. An extension of his arm...of his brain.

  There had been a time when he had set it aside. Had left it for a long time; tucked away in a drawer wrapped inside the same cloth that now lay unfolded on the bed. That had been for Louise. For her he had put up his gun. For her he had taken it up again.

  Now it was all he had.

  His heart missed a beat as he heard a footstep on the other side of the door. Not the sound of a man walking naturally. Someone who did not want to be heard. Someone who had not succeeded. Someone who was not smart enough.

  Herne put one hand on the handle of the door, the other still gripping the butt of his Colt. He waited until he heard further movement, then quickly yanked the door open.

  The man in the dark suit stopped in mid-pace. His legs were apart and his hands were empty. His eyes were staring down the barrel of Herne’s gun and it didn’t seem like they were too pleased with what they saw. The head shook more agitatedly than usual.

  Herne gestured with the gun. ‘Maybe you’d better step inside, friend. All this pussyfootin’ around don’t seem like it’s goin’ to be good for your health.’

  The man did as Herne suggested. There was no way in which he was about to do anything else. He may not have been all that smart, but he wasn’t a complete fool.

  Herne shut the door and relocked it. He pointed towards the room’s solitary chair. ‘Take the weight off your feet. You bin doin’ so much walking around, I reckon you must be tired out.’

  The man looked for a hint of a smile on the westerner’s face.

  He didn’t find one. Only two piercing eyes that seemed to look right through him.

  ‘Now you’re comfortable, why don’t you unbutton that coat of yours?’

  The man looked as if he was about to open his mouth in protest, until the Colt jabbed in his direction. He undid his coat.

  ‘Now use your finger and thumb to ease that gun out of its holster and drop it down on the carpet. Take it careful, now.’

  He did as he was told, never once looking at his gun as he did so, but still staring at the one that was pointing at him, with the broad thumb resting lightly against the hammer. Ready to cock it back in an instant.

  ‘Right,’ said Herne when the gun was on the floor between them, ‘now suppose you tell me what the hell you’re playing at.’

  ‘Me…I…’ The attempt at an answer was lost in a series of jerks of the head. Herne was beginning to wonder if he might shake it plumb off.

  ‘Keep your hair on, friend. I can’t see no way you’re goin’ to get out of telling me what I want to know, so I should just sit as still as you can manage and let me have it.’

  Again, since he wasn’t a total fool, the man decided to do as he was told.

  ‘I was hired to follow you. See what you were doing. Certain party seemed anxious to know if you was intent on leaving the country or not. I had to check on that. When it became obvious you was staying, I was supposed to find out what your plans was. ‘S’far as I could.’

  ‘That all?’ Herne asked.

  The man nodded. ‘That’s how it was. Didn’t rightly know too much about it.’

  ‘How come they hired you?’

  His expression showed that he didn’t know how he was supposed to answer, but he answered anyway. ‘Got me an office here. Private detective.’

  His voice swelled out with pride.

  ‘You ain’t from New York, though?’

  ‘Hell, no. I’m from Mississippi.’ The accent was becoming broader with each sentence he spoke.

  ‘What you doin’ in this place then?’

  ‘Figured that New York was the place to come to get on. Make a name for myself. Make some money. This is where the money is.’

  ‘And who’s paying you yours?’ Herne sat down on the edge of the bed and rested the Colt on his knee.

  The man didn’t answer. Herne asked him again. He still didn’t answer. Herne raised
the gun from his knee and pointed it at the detective’s chest. The thumb went to the hammer and began to ease it back.

  ‘I asked you a question,’ he said, threateningly.

  ‘Look...’ a shake of the head and a cough, ‘…look, mister, you’ve got to understand, it’s agin my code as a private detective to divulge the identity of one of my clients.’

  Herne grinned. ‘Well, I’ll tell you something that you’d better understand and understand good. If my thumb keeps working its way back the way that it is, a point is goin’ to be reached where it won’t go back no further. After that there’s only one way it can go and that’s forwards. If it does that then I reckon from this range it’s goin’ to splash a whole lot of your body all over your fine suit and over the walls of this hotel room too.’

  Herne grinned again: ‘You reckon you can understand that?’

  The man nodded, frightened eyes fixed nervously on Herne’s thumb.

  ‘Right then, who hired you to follow me around? You goin’ to be sensible and tell me?’

  ‘Sure, mister. Sure. I’ll tell you.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Herne and he let the hammer of the Colt slowly back down. He set the gun down beside him on the bed.

  ‘See,’ the detective began hesitantly, ‘I had a wire from…’ He paused to shake his head yet again, then dipped his body forward in a sudden cough. Only the body kept on dipping...

  His hand dived for the floor, aiming to scoop up the gun which he had dropped there. He moved fast and he had the advantage of taking Herne completely by surprise. Which meant that he actually got his fingers around the butt before something hit him hard in the left shoulder. Herne’s boot. The impact was hard enough to send him rolling across the room and into the wardrobe that stood against the wall. But not enough to make him let go of the gun.

  He bounced back and tried to level his arm. Herne dived on top of him, not wanting to use his own weapon if he could avoid it. His outstretched hands grabbed at the detective’s forearm and forced it upwards, while his right elbow jabbed into his face.