White Death Read online

  After that there was a pretty little mulatto girl from the deep south, who reminded him of . . . of another girl in another place at another time. The memory stirred him, and he almost let his fingers go roaming again. Remembering just in time that there would be eyes on any stranger in a place like the ‘Silver Sphere’. And that the madam there, Big Angie Wells, didn’t take kindly to anyone who misused her girls.

  The game was five card poker, and the stakes weren’t all that high. Not many of the cowboys who drifted into Phoenix had that sort of a bankroll. But when you’d been playing for a couple of hours, and losing steadily, then it was a shock to find how little you had left.

  But some time round three in the morning, Yates got the big one he was looking for, and took the others for nearly four hundred dollars with a full house, aces on top. One of the local men — the protector of some of the girls at the cat—house up the stairs — called Ed Fisher, wasn’t happy about the deal, and sat there moaning.

  ‘Come on; you won some, now it’s my turn. Maybe you’ll get it back on the morrow, but right now I got me a need for one of those lovely girls, or my name ain’t Wild Bill Yates.’

  ‘Wild Bill!’ laughed Fisher, shuffling the cards with a savage intensity. ‘Why the Hell do they call you Wild Bill? You don’t look no wilder than a singing canary.’

  ‘Now then, Ed. That’s enough.’ The voice was Angie Wells, and the locals knew her well enough to shut up when she said so.

  Yates didn’t know her. ‘My name’s William Butler Yates, and that’s the same as Marshal Hickok. I call it an honor to be compared to one of the great men of our country.’

  Angie laughed. A throaty, deep voice, that told a lot about too many cheap cigars and late nights and booze.

  ‘Great man. Bill Hickok! You got the wrong one, Mr. Yates. I spent a time in Deadwood, round the middle seventies. And the biggest danger there was to shout Howdy to Hickok. He gunned down more friends than he did gunslingers. The poor old bastard was going deaf and he was so short-sighted he had to use both hands to find his ass after he went to the privy.’

  ‘That ain’t so!’ shouted Yates, half-rising to his feet.

  ‘Yep. That it is, Wild Bill. I was even in the ‘Number Ten’ saloon in Deadwood the day he finally got his. I recall it was the second of August. Hot day. Eighteen seventy-six. Hickok’d been drinking, like always. But for once he was sitting with his back to the door.’

  The men round the green table sat back and relaxed, taking pleasure in hearing a tale they knew well. Yates also eased back down, scooping the chips into his hat, and ramming it firmly on his head. The mulatto girl was still there on the balcony, grinning down at him, idly lifting her skirt, and scratching her thigh, showing him that underneath she was totally naked.

  Angie finished her story of the last moments in the life of Bill Hickok. ‘Young drunk named Jack McCall hated Hickok, and decided it was time he was stopped. Forever. So he just comes up behind where Bill’s sitting, draws his gun, points it and boom! Big hole clean through him. But Hickok was damned fast. Fastest I ever did see. He was dead, but he still managed to get his gun clear of his holster before he hit the floor.’

  ‘I heard tell of a man faster,’ interrupted one of the cowboys sitting in on the game. ‘Name of Jed Herne.’

  ‘Herne the Hunter,’ said another, dropping his voice reverently.

  ‘Yeah. Heard he died somewhere near Salinas.’

  ‘Nope. Killed in a gunfight in the rain in Juarez, at Easter-time. Back in ’eighty.’

  Yates waited, wondering whether to mention his friendship, but he was just about sober enough to guess that it wasn’t a good idea to leave the deadly Coburn a trail to follow, so he kept quiet.

  Angie shook her head. ‘Don’t know about Herne. I heared of him, of course. Who hasn’t? But I never seen him, so I don’t rightly know.’

  Ed Fisher stacked the cards on the table with a decisive thud. ‘Tell us about what Hickok was holding when he was gunned down, Angie.’

  ‘Dead man’s hand. That’s what they call it now. Pair of eights. Pair of aces up. Queen kicker.’

  ‘Dead man’s hand,’ muttered Fisher, with almost religious awe.

  ‘Ain’t my hand that’s gettin’ dead with all this waitin’, Angie, I’d like to take her for the night,’ pointing to the dark-skinned girl.’

  ‘Melanie? Well, now. I’m not sure about that. I reckon she’s due off tonight now, ain’t she Ed?’

  Her protector looked up at his girl, then down again at Yates, grinning vindictively at the bare lust on the older man’s face. Rubbing his chin while Yates licked his lips unable to take his eyes off the lovely girl up on the landing.

  ‘You took me for a lot of money tonight, Wild Bill. And I reckon that she might be one way of getting it back. But I feel like playing cards a mite longer, and Melanie there needs her beauty sleep. So why don’t you stay here and play some more and maybe tomorrow . . .’

  ‘Tonight. Now!’

  Fisher shook his head. ‘No, sir. Me and my friends will rest at the table, and have us a few more drinks. Then I’ll be following Melanie back to our place and I’ll have me a fine time with her. But I’ll be thinking of you while I let her pleasure me. And I just figure that maybe you’ll be thinking of it too, won’t you?’

  ‘You bastard!’ Yates stirred menacingly in his chair.

  ‘Just cool it, Yates, or I’ll have you taken care of.’

  ‘That’s your style, you stinking bastard! You’re fine at beating up whores, but you couldn’t face a man on your own.’

  ‘Melanie! You go on home, you hear? Right now, and you get ready for me when I choose to come on back.’ He smiled again at Yates. ‘And you go play with yourself, because you ain’t ever going to get a feel at that.’

  Without a word, Bill pushed his chair back, sending it crashing to the floor, and stalked to the door of the saloon, his spurs jingling. Angie came after him, catching him by the arm.

  ‘Wild Bill! I got me lots of other girls just itching to give you some loving. Why don’t you sit down and have another slug on the house and see what I can rustle up for you?’

  He pulled away from her. ‘I know what I damned well want, and I want that. Nothing else. So get back inside to the other sweating whores.’

  As he brushed her aside, setting the swing doors banging, Angie called after him: ‘You sure aren’t much of a gentleman, Yates. Else you’d know that only horses sweat. Men perspire, and ladies simply glow.’

  She heard his boots halt on the sidewalk, and return. He stuck his head over the top of the doors, so that it sat there like a stuffed animal on a plate. He grinned wolfishly at her, and spat on the floor, the brown liquid only just missing the hem of her long turquoise gown.

  ‘In that case, Miss Angie, all I can say is that your glow sure stinks like sweat to me.’

  Melanie trotted unsteadily back towards their rooms at the rear of the general store, glad to be out of the saloon, and eager to open the little packet of white powder that Ed had obtained for her. The spoon was ready by the side of the candle, along with the needle, that would spike it into her veins.

  Ed was real good to her. Looked after her. There was only a few more yards to go before she had to cross the piece of waste land where the gunsmith had been, before the explosion and fire that devastated the place. She never liked it, with its tall weeds and piles of charred brickwork.

  It was very quiet out there. The sky was overcast, masking the moon, and she couldn’t hear anybody moving at that late hour when all the honest folk of Phoenix were safely in their beds.

  But she’d soon be in hers. And then Ed would come along and she’d . . .

  The figure rose almost at her feet, from where it had been sheltering in the grass. Before she could make a sound, a heavy fist punched her brutally hard in the mouth, knocking her on her back, and a boot lashed out time and time again at her side and stomach.

  Unable to cry out, gasping for breath, Melani
e heard her ribs crack under the vicious attack. Noticed that her assailant was naked. Felt a coarse piece of cloth forced into her mouth, and her arms strained behind her back and bound them with strips of rawhide. Through all the pain from the beating she could still feel hands, probing at her body, finding her naked to his touch, ramming jagged-nailed fingers into her.

  The clouds drifted away for a moment, and the moon came out, silvering the land, painting her naked attackers body a pale white. And gleaming off something metal that he was holding in his hand.

  As he saw her eyes open wide with shock and horror, Bill Yates began to giggle quietly. Hysterically.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘I tell you that this isn’t the sort of place to bring a young girl like Becky!’

  ‘And I tell you to mind your own business, Jed. She’s my girl, not yours. And I do what I like with her. That little punk doesn’t tell me not to make a noise in his flea-hole and get away with it. Angie Wells says we can stay here for a day or so.’

  Herne was blazingly angry, but was wary of Yates. Wild Bill had come singing into the hotel at near five in the morning, his hair wet as though he’d been to a bath-house, refusing to admit where he’d been. And stinking of drink. He’d slept for seven hours, then had gone straight over to the saloon and got full drunk within the hour. Gone back to the hotel and cleared Becky out, installing them both in rooms upstairs at the ‘Silver Sphere’. He was unbelievably edgy, yet kept grinning to himself like a child that’s done something particularly naughty.

  ‘After that day or so. Then what, Bill ?’

  ‘Then . . . well, we’ll see. Maybe we go west. Maybe we stay here a while. But don’t let that bother you, Jed, my old friend and neighbor, because you’re going to be off by tonight, like you said. Off and running again, after those wicked men. Right?’

  It was right.

  When he woke up that morning, after the disturbance of Yates’s return, Herne had felt a great sense of relief that he was now free of the worry of having to keep part of his mind tuned to look after someone else. Now he was really going to be on his own again.

  Like Texas trail boss, John Chisum, had once said to him, many years back: ‘Look after yourself, Jed. Life’s too short to take the worries of others on your shoulders.’

  Although he was bitterly unhappy about Becky’s future, she was Yates’s daughter, and that was that. From what Wild Bill had been saying, she had no other living relative, so there was no way of knowing who’d look after her if anything ever happened to her father.

  Herne set that thought firmly to the back of his mind, walking up to the bar and ordering a shot of whisky. The saloon was beginning to fill up for the afternoon session of drinking and gambling, though few of the girls had appeared yet. Yates had already set himself down at a table with four other men, and the only noise from their direction was the click of the counters and an occasional muttered bid. Herne glanced across at Yates, catching him almost hugging himself, grinning broadly at some private joke.

  The barkeeper slid the bottle and the glass along the polished counter to Herne. Jed looked at him, puzzled by the expression on the man’s face.

  ‘What’s up? Trade can’t be as damned bad as that? Looks like it’s only the bar keeps it from hitting the floor.’

  ‘One of the girls is missing. Ed Fisher’s girl, Melanie. Mulatto bitch. Hot for anyone with a dollar bill to ram between her legs. Went off last night, late. Ed hasn’t seen her since. Saw him a few minutes ago, and he was organizing a search.’

  There was obviously more.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Your friend there. Yates. He and Fisher had a set to over the girl last night. Yates leaves only a mite before she does. That’s all. Put the pieces together any which way you like, but it don’t look good.’

  Herne leaned on the bar, feeling the prickling of tension at the back of his neck. Casually, his hand slipped down and he thumbed off the thong over the top of the gun. He heard the swing-doors crash open, the bang back together again. A glance in the mirror showed him a tall, dark-haired man, dressed in a green shirt and black trousers. The outfit completed by a Colt revolver held in his right hand.

  ‘Sit still, Yates! And don’t nobody make a move else they get it!’

  Everyone, including Herne, froze. The man was close to him, facing Yates across him, so that any move Jed made would be instantly visible. And he wasn’t about to get killed just to divert someone from Bill Yates.

  Wild Bill himself had frozen where he sat, holding five cards near to his chest. Gradually, chair legs scraping on the floorboards, everyone else moved back from the green table, leaving Yates quite alone.

  ‘It’s Ed Fisher, Yates. Know why I’m here?’

  From where he was sitting, Herne saw his neighbor lick his lips, and his voice was only a croak when he tried to reply. He coughed and tried again, his face a white mask of terror.

  ‘Can’t say I know, Ed. Can’t be that you’re that bad a loser.’

  ‘Yates. William Butler Yates!’ There was a terrifying hatred in the cowboy’s voice. ‘You wanted my girl. Melanie. Last night. And I told you no. So you went after her. Caught her near that waste land. Tied her. Gagged her. Beat her and kicked her. Then you cut her to pieces.’

  ‘How the hell you . . . ?’

  ‘Shut up!!! You dirty stinking bastard!! Shut your lousy mouth and listen. All of you. Listen to what he did to my little girl.’ Fisher was almost in tears, but the barrel of the gun was rock steady. Herne moved a fraction, leaning on his left elbow so that his right hand would be free.

  ‘I seen Mexicans that the Apache have had fun with. Feet burned off to the ankle bones. Then made them run after ponies. Cut their eyes out. Slit their bellies. Fastened hooks behind their muscles and hauled them up by them. Ears gone. Lips gone. Noses gone. Fingers, toes, arms, legs. I seen it all. But I ain’t never seen what he done to Melanie. I knew her only by the clothes.’

  There was a total and utter silence in the saloon. There was the creak of feet on the landing, but nobody looked up, paralyzed by the drama they were watching.

  ‘Yates. You’re sick. A sick animal.’

  Desperately, Yates rose, his back still turned. ‘Wait! You can’t prove none of this. None of it. It’s all damned lies'!!’

  ‘Lies? It was done with a little knife. Thin-bladed. You got a knife like that?’

  ‘No!’

  Herne knew now what was true and what wasn’t.

  ‘Not one with your name on it, spelled out. W.B.Y. Like that. In white on a black handle ?’ Yates didn’t answer.

  ‘You had yourself such a good time that you forgot all about it. You washed at the trough back of the livery stable. You’re a sick animal, Yates.’

  It was said quietly. Deceptively softly. Herne was tricked by the gentle voice. And his gun stayed in its holster. Ed Fisher shot Bill Yates three times in the back. Then three times more. His bullet-riddled body careered to the floor. The card table collapsed, strips of baize ripped off its top, splinters of white wood scarring its surface. Yates’s corpse splayed on the saloon floor, twitching for a few seconds like a stranded fish, then lay still, blood pouring out in a crimson river from the wounds.

  The cards he’d been holding had dropped near Herne’s feet, Hung there by a spasm of the dying man’s hand. There was a pair of aces. And a pair of eights. And a fifth card. Watched by the bar-keep, Herne bent slowly down and turned it over. It was a king.

  ‘Bill never could get anything quite right,’ muttered Jed to himself.

  ‘That’s it! It’s over, less anyone says different?’ Fisher turned and challenged the men in the saloon, ejecting the smoking cartridges and reloading the pistol. There was a note of almost hysterical bravado in his voice, never expecting anyone to challenge him.

  ‘I say it’s not over.’

  Fisher spun round, hastily cramming shells into the gun. Seeing an ageing man, with graying hair standing facing him, hand casually near the butt of a C
olt.

  ‘And who the hell are you?’

  ‘My name’s Jedediah Herne, and I don’t take to seeing men shot in the back. Not for any reason.’

  ‘Herne? Herne the Hunter?’

  ‘Right. When you’re ready.’

  Given time to think about it in cold blood, Fisher would never have drawn, but he’d just gunned one man down, and another didn’t seem that different. Without pushing the gun back in the holster, he thumbed it to full cock, and started to squeeze the trigger.

  But he never made it. Herne moved with unbelievable speed, cocking, aiming and firing twice. Both bullets took Fisher high in the chest, near the throat. Knocking him stumbling backwards, where he finally tripped over the corpse of Yates, lying dead in a pool of their now mingling blood.

  Quietly, Herne bolstered the gun, feeling the power and ease sliding through him. ‘Like I say; my name’s Jedediah Herne. You saw who drew first. Anyone not see?’ Nobody spoke. ‘I’m leaving now, and I wouldn’t want nobody to try and stop me and maybe get hurt.’

  The name of Herne the Hunter and the terrifying demonstration he’d just given of his skill kept men quiet and still. He walked to the door in a well of silence, feeling a great liberation and relief now that he was truly free. Now that he had no one to care for. Nor worry about.

  At last he was alone.

  When his eyes were caught by a movement on the landing, behind the ornate golden banisters. It was Becky Yates, pale-faced, wearing a white dress, her eyes locking with his.

  And he realized that he wasn’t alone.

  Not anymore.

  An exciting previous of the next book in the series, River of Blood, coming soon!

  Chapter One

  The buckboard made its journey back from the hillside cemetery slowly, as though the horses themselves were in mourning. Jedediah Herne flicked at the reins and for a few moments the animals increased their pace, before dropping back into their previous lethargy.