White Death Read online

  Herne glanced sideways at the figure of the young girl who sat silently beside him and wondered what she was thinking. What do girls think when they have just seen their own father buried? He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and decided that he didn’t know.

  It wasn’t as though she had only seen him laid to rest; she had seen him killed as well. Gunned down in a saloon by a half-crazed man whom Herne himself had shot down in turn. He wondered now how much she had heard of the man’s reasons for taking her father’s life — and how much she had understood.

  Again he looked across at her. He noted the full mouth, set now almost in a pout, the figure beginning to swell into womanhood; hands, small and slender, clenched tightly together. Rebecca Yates: fourteen years of age. Alone in the world. Alone except for Herne — and he had things to do to which she could not be a party.

  The girl turned and looked at him frankly with her deep-set, serious eyes. They had obviously been thinking the same thoughts.

  ‘Jed?’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘Those awful things that man said about my pa — were they true ?’

  Herne turned from her gaze and looked at the town of Phoenix ahead of them.

  ‘Jed.’ She reached across and laid her hand gently on his thigh. ‘I’m not a child any more, you know. You can tell me the truth?

  The hand still lay lightly on his leg; it troubled him and he was not sure why.

  When he turned to face her again, she returned the hand to her lap.

  ‘I reckon what the man said was . . . was close to the truth. See, Becky, your pa, he was affected by what happened to your ma and by chasing the men who killed her and so . . . ’

  Becky interrupted him. ‘So he did those horrible things to that poor girl. He cut her up with that knife he always used to carry. Cut her up and did the things that man said.’ Her voice was getting louder now. ‘You’re saying he did those things because of what happened to my ma?’

  Again Herne looked away and this time she flung herself at him and her thin arms wound around him. She sobbed against his body and soon he could feel where the wetness of her tears had soaked through the material of his shirt. It was the first time she had cried. But as Herne sat there, he was not thinking of this girl.

  His thoughts were of another, years before, not much older than Becky was now. A beautiful young girl whom he had fallen in love with and married. His Louise, only sixteen when she had first become his. Only nineteen when seven men had trudged through the snow drift up to their cabin, with Herne away.

  Although he had not been there, he could hear now the splintering of the wooden door echoing inside his head as it must have done when they had smashed their way in. And then they had raped, abused and defiled her body until she had gone out of her mind. Crazy.

  So that on the morning after he had returned home, early enough to catch the first rays from a new day’s sun, she had gone into the barn in her best green velvet dress and hanged herself.

  Herne clenched his eyes shut and in the tight blackness of his mind he could see her body swaying slightly in the early breeze from the open door. He could see the light glinting from the gold ring on her finger. Their wedding ring: till death us do part.

  His eyes opened again and he looked around him. Something was glinting still. Something high in the building to the right.

  He pushed Becky away from him hard and threw himself to the right, his hand instinctively reaching for the butt of his Colt .45 as he rolled out of the buckboard. As he came up out of the roll he fired in the direction of the upper window. Two bullets tore into the woodwork of the seat where he and Becky had been sitting. He fired again, then ducked round to the other side of the wagon. The horses were rearing and snorting, jolting wheels and harness noisily.

  Becky lay still on the rough earth beside the buckboard. Herne reached a hand down on to her shoulder, setting himself between her and the wheel, between her and the gunman.

  ‘Becky! Are you all right ?’

  He felt her stir under his hand and she moved her head round.

  ‘I ... I think so.’

  He looked at her and recognized fear in her wide eyes. Then he turned his attention to their attacker.

  The building from which the shots had come was one of a number right on the edge of town. Barns for the most part, with the occasional cheap rooming house. There was no sign of a gun at the upstairs window now. Maybe he had gone, maybe he was still waiting. Only one way to find out.

  Herne showed himself slightly around the corner of the wagon and a shot winged out in his direction. Still there.

  He looked at Becky, crouching behind the still shifting buckboard. He couldn’t stay where he was and draw fire which might find her as a target. With an order that she stay down and out of sight, Herne loosed off another shot at the window. Then he ran for the side of the building: fast.

  He edged his way along the wooden planks to the rear and found the door he hoped would be there. The only question was – would whoever was inside be expecting him to use it?

  Herne stood alongside the door and kicked it open hard. Two shots whistled out from the interior. Herne jumped through the open doorway, saw bales of hay and a wooden stairway, dived behind one and fired at the other. Time to reload and think. Who the hell was it, anyway?

  It crossed his mind that it could be Coburn, the hired gun sent after Becky’s father and himself by Senator Nolan, whose son, Josiah, they had killed for leading the group of rapists and murderers against their unprotected wives. But no, Coburn wouldn’t have missed. Who then?

  He was to get his answer.

  ‘Herne! You killed my brother Ed. You shot him down like a dog!’

  ‘He had his gun already out of his holster before I even drew. That’s what I call better than even odds.’

  ‘Against a man who’s no gunfighter?’ the man shouted.

  ‘Why, Ed stood no chance against you and you must’ve known it.’

  Herne called back, ‘What chance did my pardner have against him? With his back turned towards him?’

  Now the man was silent.

  ‘You call that fair?’ shouted Herne again. ‘Three shots in his back!’

  All the while he had been talking, Herne had been busily reloading his colt and trying to get a good sight of Ed Fisher’s brother. There was a dark shape in the shadow at the top of the stairs, not clearly defined enough to be sure.

  ‘Maybe you’re like your brother,’ Herne taunted, ‘scared to fight men face to face. It has to be from behind, or from an upstairs window. Regular family of dirty bushwhackers, I reckon.’

  The shape stirred; a leg moved down on to the stairs from the darkness. Herne took quick but careful aim and fired. Almost at the same moment as the shot rang out, there was a cry of agony followed by the sound of the man crashing down the stairs to the floor.

  Herne could see him clearly now, lying by the foot of the stairs, clutching at his knee, trying vainly to stem the flow of blood that was already gushing its way down his leg and on to the straw-strewn floor.

  ‘You bastard !’ the man shrieked. ‘You lousy bastard! You smashed my leg!’

  Herne stepped out from behind the bale, gun in hand. Fisher’s own weapon had fallen a couple of feet away from him, but near enough for him to make a grab for it. If he still had the guts. Herne wondered if he did.

  Another moment and he knew the answer. The man’s fingers clutched desperately for his gun; they almost made it.

  Would have had it not been for the shell which passed through the back of the hand, tearing a hole big enough to slip a dollar piece into.

  ‘Christ!’ the man swore and cursed, then swayed to his feet.

  He had guts, Herne could see that, more guts than his brother had had. And there was only one thing to do with a man who had guts like that . . .

  Herne raised his Colt once more and aimed straight at the center of Fisher’s stomach from what was now close range. As the man fell to th
e floor, his belly seemed to open out through his clothes, through his already bloody fingers.

  But Herne respected his last-minute bravery. The big Colt came up once more and its trigger was evenly squeezed. A bullet through the brain ended Fisher’s agonies: and it rid Herne of another potential enemy. He had enough of those already.

  He turned around, holstered his gun, and went to find Becky.

  She was sitting in the buckboard, the reins in her hands, the horses back under control. When she saw Herne come into sight, her eyes closed momentarily and blinked their relief.

  ‘What happened ?’ she asked as he climbed up beside her. ‘Who was it ?’

  ‘The brother of the man who killed your father.’

  She looked at him sharply. ‘He wanted to kill you in return?’

  Herne nodded.

  ‘And you killed him?’

  Herne nodded again.

  ‘Did you . . . did you have to?’ Her voice was tremulous.

  This time he turned to face her and smiled grimly. ‘Nope. I guess I could have let him kill me. If not now, later.’

  There was a silence and then she said, as though she had reached a sudden point of awareness, ‘And that’s how it always is. You have to kill to stop being killed. But that killing will bring another man after you. Looking for revenge. And then you have to kill him. That’s how it is . . . isn’t it?’

  Herne stared deep into her wise brown eyes.

  ‘That’s how it is,’ he said.

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