Herne the Hunter 24 Read online

But nothing was quite as it should have been. Colors and distances were awry and hills stood where he recalled only valleys. Rivers flowed over barren places and pale sand trickled over what should have been foaming rapids.

  He saw the old Mimbreños warrior, the immortal Cuchillo Oro. But both of the Apache’s hands were whole, undamaged, gripping the fabled golden cinqueda, precious stones studding its hilt. He had met Herne only once, and Jed recalled the wisdom of the Indian.

  ‘When a man reaches past his thirtieth summer, Cuchillo says that the mountains do not become more steep, but the valleys become deeper and deeper.’

  Other faces.

  The Cavalry leader from the great fighting between the states. Caleb Thorn. His path had crossed with the young Jed Herne on three or four occasions, each time in the midst of killing.

  And the king of all the gunsmiths, Blackjack Ryker. A man whose skill at making and mending all kinds of firearms was only matched by his lethal ability at the art of killing.

  Mostly dead or disappeared.

  Bought the farm.

  Caught the last train for the coast.

  Died.

  He woke, by habit, just as the false dawn was fingering the eastern sky. Full light was a good half hour away, but by then he would be on the trail. The wind had dropped again during the night, and the sky was clear, the morning chilly.

  The stallion snickered softly where Jed had tethered it, raising its head as it saw him stirring. Dew had gathered in the folds of the rock and the horse sipped at it.

  Jed too lapped up some of the cold, fresh water, trying to clear away the bitter dryness of the dark hours. He chewed on some of the biscuits that Teresa Harknett had pressed on him before he left the train and ate a couple of pieces of fresh chicken that one of the other women had given him.

  When he stood up he was conscious of the creaking in the muscles in his lower back, and the stiffness caused by the broken collarbone. Automatically the shootist checked his weapons. Sliding the bayonet into its sheath before he pulled on his boots. Replacing the pistol in its holster from where he’ d slept with it by his hand. As he had done every night for the last … the last too many years.

  It took him scant moments to saddle up the stallion, patting it on the neck, talking quietly as he gentled it. Tightening the girth, checking the leather on the irons wasn’t about to let him down at a crucial time.

  ‘Should be movin’,’ he muttered.

  The sun was just appearing, like a sliver of molten gold, far behind him, pulling itself up out of the Mississippi, stretching out across the grasslands, towards the fiery deserts.

  It was still cold. Cold enough for both man and beast to show plumes of breath out in front of them as they began to get into their stride. Herne had no doubt that Darke would also be up and moving by now. As the ground rose and then dipped, it was more than likely that he might soon be able to glimpse his prey ahead of him.

  Half to three-quarters of an hour.

  With a horse moving on, two-up, that could mean as little as four or five miles. Less, depending on the toughness of the terrain.

  He spotted them a half hour after ten.

  A skeletal black shape, out on the plateau, several hundred feet below him, and less than two miles away. The man was leading the horse, and he could just make out the second figure, long-skirted,, dragging along several paces behind. The shimmering heat made it hard to make out details, but Herne figured that Darke was trying to rest his big mare, in case he needed a flat-out, lung-bursting run for safety. Christina Nolan was likely tied to the horn of the saddle, plodding on. In her delicate condition, the whole journey must have passed from the realms of a living nightmare into something that was far beyond any awful imagining.

  The shootist hesitated, wondering whether Darke might see him if he was looking back.

  But the scraped stone of the hills was still in the morning’s shadow, and any movement at that range would be indistinguishable. Once he got out on the open desert it might be different.

  At least Jed knew that he was still on the right trail.

  And that the woman still lived.

  During the morning he pushed the stallion forward as fast as he dared, trusting to its own sure-footedness to pick a way down the shifting scree and loose boulders of the narrow trail. It was vital that he closed the gap on Darke before evening.

  Across the stretch of open ground, around four miles from side to side, Herne knew that there was an ideal camping spot. Ideal for a man on the run who wanted to keep his options open. It was a narrow box-canyon, with a pool of deep water at its far end. Though it looked as though it might be totally closed, Jed knew that its further end concealed an exit. Barely wide enough for a man on horseback.

  Since Darke would have been in the area on frequent patrols, before he became a runner, it was a better than evens wager that he too would know of the canyon and its secret trail out.

  By an hour after noon, Herne figured he had closed the gap on Darke and the woman to a scant mile. As the ground undulated, he had only spotted his enemy a couple of times, for less than a minute. But it had been sufficient to see that his pursuit was still going well. And he guessed it wasn’t long enough for Darke to have spotted any sign that he was being so closely followed.

  Beyond the canyon it was a hard day’s ride to anything that resembled water.

  Which meant two things.

  Darke would certainly kill Christina Nolan during the night, to avoid being burdened with her for the following day.

  And it also probably meant that the renegade would pick the canyon for his night’s rest, stopping early, before the light ran out, so that he could begin fresh the next dawn.

  He was bound to check if he was being followed. Which meant, in turn, that Jed had to find a way of staying hidden as he approached the canyon’s mouth. There was a long draw running diagonally to the foot of the hills that flanked the narrow, shadowed opening. It was further.

  But it was safer.

  Sunset was a little over an hour away.

  The blazing heat of the desert sun had gone, drifting away as the light began to dim. It was much cooler in the bottom of the draw as Jed walked the stallion along it, picking the stony side of the trail to avoid kicking up a sheet of dust that would betray him.

  The cliffs loomed, less than a quarter mile ahead of him, their rocks in deep shadow. By keeping out of sight of Darke,, Jed also risked the possibility of the man not stopping in Snakehead Canyon for the night. But he had to gamble that the soldier would know the region well enough to realize that he had no other realistic option.

  In the last hundred paces the narrow valley rose again. Jed tethered his horse to a large boulder, taking the long Sharps from its bucket by the saddle. Even though he’d checked them all that morning, he went through the rifle, pistol and bayonet again. Making certain sure that the guns were loaded, with a round under the hammer. And that the thin-bladed dagger was in its oiled sheath, ready for a quick draw.

  He stood still and silent for a moment, closing his eyes, taking several deep breaths. Calming himself ready for whatever was to come. Finally Herne opened his eyes and looked up, at the pink-tinged sky, with a host of tiny clouds scudding high above him.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  There were two ways to cross the open space between the end of the arroyo and the safety of the tumbled boulders at the foot of the cliffs.

  Fast and slow.

  Fast would have taken around fifteen seconds and involved a dash, all out. Slow meant a long crawl on your belly, moving only when you’d checked as far as you could that nobody was watching you.

  Up to a few months ago Jed would have taken the fast option, trusting to his speed and fleetness of foot to carry him through. Using the odds that said that a running man was hard to hit, even if he was spotted.

  This time the shootist chose slow and careful.

  He made it.

  His knees were sore,
and he once disturbed a rattler, sunning itself, making the best of the dying sun. The snake hesitated, its rattle vibrating noisily. Herne knew all the tales that they didn’t attack you unless you threatened them. He’d also been attacked by rattlers on at least four occasions in his life. When he wasn’t doing a damned thing to threaten them.

  To shoot the head off the reptile would have been easy.

  And fatal for Christina Nolan.

  He had half-drawn the glittering bayonet from his boot, but the rattler decided that it was better to slide away to fight another day. Departing with an angry hiss.

  The mouth of the canyon was now less than two hundred paces to the right, and Jed was able to make that distance, placing cautious foot in front of cautious foot. Slow and careful.

  Snakehead Canyon wasn’t wide enough for a wagon to get more than halfway in. Then the sides came clamping in, blocking off the trail. Herne paused at the entrance, stooping to check that his deductions had been correct.

  Finding to his relief that he had been doubly right in his guessing.

  The bay mare had been along the trail. With one person riding it. And a man in heavy boots walking alongside it. And what was more interesting was that the man had come out again, near the opening. Pausing for several minutes, smoking a stogie while he watched out across the open land. Looking for pursuers. The smoldering end of the nickel cigar, its end chewed, still glowed in the trampled sand.

  If Darke had checked recently, then he wasn’t likely to come back again. Not with dusk already beginning to close in around the land.

  The inside of the canyon was already darker than a shuttered tomb, and there was no sound from within. But Jed knew that there were two people in there. If Christina Nolan had ridden in, then she was still living. Captain James Darke hadn’t seemed the sort of man to waste his mare’s energy on carrying a corpse.

  Carrying the Sharps rifle at the trail, Jed Herne began to walk slowly and silently along the winding track that led into the heart of Snakehead Canyon.

  It was simple. All he needed to do was very simple indeed.

  Get to a place where he could see Darke, away and clear of the woman. Quietly thumb back the hammer on the big fifty caliber Sharps, and put the heavy ball clean through the renegade officer’s skull. It shouldn’t be difficult to get within fifty yards or so without being spotted. And at that range Jed could take a quarter from between your fingers, so all you felt was the wind of its passing.

  The gathering gloom was disturbing the legions of rattlers that had given the canyon its ill-omened name. Three times, as he stepped into the deeps of shadow, Herne nearly trod on a snake. Moving lazily back to its lair, to shelter from the approaching cold of the bitter desert night.

  Ahead of him the shootist suddenly caught the sound of an animal drinking. The bay mare, lapping at the water that was a permanent fixture of the canyon.

  And a man’ s voice, pitched low. Laughter, and then more talk. A woman, her voice sounding thin and weak. As if she were pleading. Jed stopped a moment, thumbing the hammer ready on the rifle. Knowing that the chase was over. One way or the other, the outcome of the hunt was going to be decided in the next five minutes.

  ‘Be full evening out yonder in ten minutes or so. Nobody to see out there. Means your yellow-bellied dirt farmer husband and his chicken-livered friends off the wagons have given you up for dead, lady.’

  ‘Let me go. I’m with child. I keep tellin’ you, and you don’t care.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘A baby! Why kill us? Just leave us here, unharmed. There’ll be men out lookin’ for me, Captain. I know there will.’

  ‘Sure there will. Be too damned late, ma’am. Far too late.’

  Darke’s voice was calm, controlled, slightly amused at the woman’s attempts to soften his heart.

  ‘Why steep yourself more deeply in blood, Captain? Why?’

  ‘Mistress Nolan ... I am so deep in blood that it washes o’er my eyes. I bathe in it. It sweeps in my mouth and nose and ears. I breathe it in and taste it with every moment of the day.’

  There was a hideous relish to the soldier’s voice, and Herne realized that Captain Darke was totally insane. Evilly, wickedly mad.

  It would be a great cleansing to remove him from the earth, so that he could no longer contaminate it with his presence. It would be one of the best things that Jed Herne had ever done.

  At last he could see them.

  The woman lay on her side, wrists tied behind her, her dress hoicked up far above the knees, revealing the whiteness of her thighs, tinted pink by the setting sun. Captain Darke had his jacket off, wearing his blue shirt. His trousers were unbuttoned, but the belt was still fastened and the revolver remained in its holster at his hip.

  ‘Sir, you shame me!’ exclaimed the young woman as she felt his gauntleted hand on her leg, gripping the tender flesh.

  ‘Shame, Mistress Nolan,’ laughed Darke. ‘I confess that is not a word with which I am familiar.’

  ‘Pray let me go. Have your way, if you must, but spare my life and that of my babe. That is all I live for. Please.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Upon your honor.’

  ‘I have none, Madam. None.’

  ‘My husband will hunt you down to the ends of the earth:’

  The hand was higher, tugging at the white vee of her cotton drawers, while she tried to kick and struggle against him. Making Darke laugh all the more.

  ‘Your husband could not hunt down a rat in a barrel, Mistress.’

  ‘Men will come after you.’

  ‘No. If they were to come, then they would be here by now. They are not, so they will not come.’

  Herne lifted the gun, shooting two-eyed as he always did. Aiming at the soldier’s pale face. Despite the poor light it was not a shot he was going to miss. The only fear was the closeness of the woman. If she were to thrash suddenly upwards, the bullet might strike her. For a moment, Jed relaxed his finger on the trigger of the Sharps. Trying to find a safer, better way.

  ‘Is there nothing that will stop you from this foul action?’

  ‘No. Nothing.’

  ‘If I allow you this, will you let me live? What are your plans for me?’

  Darke sat back on his heels, laughing, and Jed’s finger came quickly back to the trigger again.

  ‘I am going to fuck you, lady. In every orifice of your body that I can fit into. And when I can fuck you no more and you are no use nor ornament to me, then I shall cut your throat. And be on my way.’

  Herne’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  Squeezing.

  Darke was no more than thirty paces away, back to the water, the woman spread before him.

  Squeezing.

  When the rattler struck.

  Jed’s boot was thick enough to save him from the poisoned fangs, but the shock was total. He lurched sideways, the rifle exploding in his hands with a deafening roar. Loose stones slithered under his feet as he slid from his rest, and he knew that he was going to fall. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Darke was moving, dropping for the cover of the woman’s living body, his pistol already sprung into his hand. She had screamed. Screamed once at the noise of the gun.

  Despite his age, Jedediah Travis Herne still had the reflexes of a big cat, and he rolled as he fell, gasping at the pain from his broken shoulder, coming up into a crouch with his own pistol cocked and ready.

  Just across the other side of the camping-place, Darke had hauled the woman to her feet, her dress falling back into place, her face white with shock in the dimness. The soldier Was almost completely hidden behind her, his left hand tight around her swollen belly.

  It was a moment frozen in time.

  It wasn’t the first occasion in his life that Jed had faced a similar situation. His own life on the line, measured against the person being used as a shield. And it had always been an easy decision to make. You put three or four bullets into that person, and at least one of them would slice on
through and your enemy would fall at the same time. Most always it meant that the poor innocent victim also died, or was critically wounded.

  But that wasn’t Herne’s fault.

  He stayed alive that way.

  His finger was bone-tight on the Colt’s trigger, ready to blast away at Darke, hidden behind Christina Nolan. Ready.

  ‘It’s just a chance to do something right and leave something good behind.’

  The woman’s words came drifting back, filling his ears, blanking out his mind.

  Clumsy in his heavy gloves, the renegade officer had no chance against the honed speed of the shootist. All that Jed had to do was pull the trigger and Darke was dead. Probably taking the woman with him into eternity.

  ‘… something right and leave something good behind.’

  ‘You bastard, Herne! You’re fuckin’ dead, you fuckin’ bastard!’

  The words seemed slurred, echoing about the walls of Snakehead Canyon. Herne saw the flash from the muzzle of Darke’s pistol, counting them automatically. Hearing the boom of the handgun.

  Feeling five out of the six bullets hit him.

  Next thing he knew, Jed was on his back, staring up at the darkening sky.

  ‘… leave something good behind.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Colt was eight feet from Herne’s spread fingers, its polished metal gleaming red as blood in the crimson light of the evening.

  Herne’s eyes were open, and he saw Captain James Darke, late of the Fifth Cavalry, push the pregnant Christina Nolan in the back, so that she rolled in the dirt. The barrel of the soldier’s pistol plumed smoke. And he was laughing.

  ‘You dumb, stupid fuckin’ bastard. You come after me on your own. Near caught me. Now you’re fuckin’ down and done and I’m free.’

  Five bullets had hit him, by Jed’s counting. And the officer’s handgun was empty.

  Five bullets.

  One had barely nicked his rib, passing like a lance of fire, penetrating clean through and out with no more than a trickle of blood to show for it.