Herne the Hunter 21 Read online

  ‘Sure, but …’

  ‘No damned buts … and times are wastin’. Two men, Pony Bob Haslam and Jack Keetley, both done better. First made near four hundred miles in a day and a half. Jack did three forty without a rest in twenty-four hours. You think on that, Banker.’

  ‘You was younger, then, Herne.’

  The shootist sniffed. ‘I’d not argue with that. It was more than twenty-five years ago. I guess I’m around thirty pounds heavier than I was then. Skinny runt. But if I can’t reach South Pass by sunset tomorrow and catch those two…’

  He allowed the sentence to dangle.

  ~*~

  It brought back memories of his months with the famed Pony Express. The world shrinking until it was only the back of a horse’s head and the smell of sweat. The constant pounding that rocked the hips and jarred the skull on the spine. Dust and heat that blinded you, so that every now and then you had to rein in. Had to spill a precious handful of brackish water from a canteen and use it to wipe your eyes clear of dirt and salt.

  The long gallop to South Pass was different. This time there were no way station s where men would have a fresh horse ready for you, so that all you needed to do was leap from an exhausted mount on to the new steed, flinging the special light-weight, twelve pound saddle on. Add the flat leather pouch, the mochila, with its four padlocked mail pockets, the cantinas, and away again.

  Herne was forced to shepherd his horses with more care. It was no use to ride them into the ground, arriving with a red-eyed, foaming, staggering beast. That way he could not have made a deal.

  During the hundred and fifty miles he changed animals five times, each occasion costing him money. Once finding that a spavined gelding was the only animal available in a community. It was the middle of the night and the owner didn’t take kindly to being woken by a man demanding to trade a horse. But Jed was able to persuade him, with the aid of the razored bayonet, that it was in his interests to make the deal.

  Dawn came creeping up from the east, heralded by a sky of spectacular pink that dappled the brush around. Jed had no eyes for any of the beauty. His sole concern was to keep moving west, towards the looming peaks of the Rockies and towards the pass to California, through Utah.

  His jaw began to ache where he’d lost a tooth some months back and his shoulders began to pain him. All through a long, baking day he moved inexorably onwards. Not once seeing any sign that he was on the right trail. Not until late afternoon, when he was within twenty miles of where the Sweetwater crossed the track. It was the final change of horses, trading in a piebald, hard-mouthed pony for a bay mare, not unlike the beast he’d left behind at Casper.

  The stable owner was a young man, barely into his twenties, with a shock of thick black hair. And a swelling on his left cheek that was beginning to turn purple.

  ‘Two men? One a kid and the other more your age? Damned right.’ A thought striking him. ‘They wouldn’t be kin, or friends? No? Then I can tell you that they passed this way only a couple of hours back. Just past noon.’

  Howell and Kid had ridden in and asked for feed for their horses. Appreciatively accepting the offer of some stew and biscuits from the young man’s wife. The boy had tried to get familiar with the woman and when the husband had protested, Charley Howell had laid him in the dirt with a pistol barrel across the cheek.

  ‘Near broke my jaw, the bastard. Said if they had more time they’d stay round and teach me a lesson. They …’ he hesitated. ‘They talked real dirty about Jessica. Said they could … Hell, you know them.’

  Herne nodded, pouring water over his head. Cooling himself. ‘Yeah. I guess I know them. And dozens like them in every cow-town from Tulsa to Portland, Oregon.’

  ‘There a bounty on them, mister?’

  ‘There is. They raped and killed a girl, back in Casper.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. They sure looked mean bastards. I guess it was my unlucky day.’

  Jed shook his head, swinging up into the saddle of the bay. ‘No, son. Not with Charley Howell. You’re living and your woman’s safe. I’d say it was your lucky day. Sure was.’

  With a wave of the hand he moved away, leaving the young man watching him, slack-mouthed. The stable owner shuddered as if a cold wind had just passed over the land and he turned and hurried inside to where his wife was still weeping. He closed the door and bolted it, joining her on the bed, holding her tight.

  Even though the danger was gone.

  ~*~

  His prey chose to camp on the eastern side of the Sweetwater. Ready for an early rising and a quick push through the Pass. Herne saw their smoke from three miles back. He hadn’t seen anyone else on the trail for a couple of hours, so it had to be them. Unless there was a hunting-party out from either the Cheyenne or, maybe, the Wind River Shoshone. Herne had encountered both of them at different times when he rode with the Express.

  It was a coincidence that he should once more be riding the same trails as he had all those years ago. And after a man who he had once known well. Known and even liked a little. Twenty-five years. No, twenty-eight. It would have been back in ’sixty. Full summer.

  Just a little cooler now that they were close to the high country. Herne remembered the mountains in the winter of ’sixty-one. Snow-tipped, with a wind that cut through you like a war spear. He and Whitey Coburn had been riding together that winter. The tall albino a terrifying sight, his mane of white hair cascading across his shoulders like a veil from an ice-fall. It had been Paiutes after them, a hunting group of young bucks out to make a name for themselves by taking the letters of the white men, with their strange black curls and scratches on the smooth paper.

  They’d outrun the Indians, after killing two of them in a desperate hand-to-hand fight on the edge of a gut-scraping crevasse.

  Now there was little trouble with the Paiutes.

  ~*~

  The young boy reminded Herne of the way Whitey Coburn had been. Less tall, his hair more yellow than white. But something in the way that Kid moved around the camp, slouching like he’d rather have been shorter. He still wore the white shirt and grey pants. From the bluff where he hid, Herne figured him for sixteen or so. Plenty old enough to die.

  The bandolier of bullets was draped over the boy’s saddle, beyond the fire where a haunch of venison was roasting. The carbine was by it. Safe in camp, Kid didn’t even wear a handgun.

  Not that a pistol would have made the least difference to what was going to happen.

  ~*~

  Charley Howell was more difficult to see. Lying in deep shadow against the trunk of a fallen tree. Resting on one elbow, the tethered horses a few paces away on the near side of a narrow stream that ran tinkling among the woods.

  He had both of his guns out, checking and cleaning them. Reloading each one with scrupulous care as Jed watched from a hundred yards off. The kind of care that gave a clue to why the fat man had lived as long as he had.

  Twenty-eight years since they’d last met. Herne smiled grimly to himself as a thought struck him. Most shootists didn’t even live to be twenty-eight.

  Charley had put on a lot of extra weight. Near enough to double his size from the runty kid that Herne recalled. He was wearing the same plaid shirt that the neighbors had described.

  The Mexican sombrero was lying across the clearing where he’d dropped it, the firelight glittering off the silver belt around it. Howell looked across to the Kid and said something, but Jed was too far off to catch the words. But he could see that Charley had indeed grown a long, straggling moustache that seeped down both sides of his mouth and disappeared off his double chin.

  Somewhere beneath the layers of fat that coated Howell’s body and face, Herne could still make out the clean lines of the eager young boy that he’d known.

  He had tied the mare a quarter mile back along the track, among some trees. Leaving it there while he came hunting. Making sure that the long Sharps was loaded and ready, hefting it on his shoulder. Easing the pistol in his holster.
/>   A hundred paces for a Sharps is a little like cracking a walnut with a steam-mallet. Herne moved the backsight to its limit, thumbing the hammer. Easing the barrel through some stones at the edge of the bluff. He squinted along, moving the gun uncertainly from side to side. Jed very much wanted this to be fast and simple. There wasn’t really any personal animosity against Howell and Kid, though anyone who treated a woman the way these two had treated Eliza Newbridge made it certain that he wouldn’t shed any tears over their passing. Nor did it matter to him that he was being judge and jury. And executioner. There seemed little doubt that they were guilty of the rape and the murder. So where better should they be than dead?

  If conditions were good enough, and his ammunition reliable, Jedediah Travis Herne was capable of putting six shots out of six through a playing card at better than two hundred paces. Of hitting a man with three bullets from four at a quarter mile. And of having at least a fifty-fifty chance of striking a man on horseback at close to half a mile.

  Kid and Charley were a whole lot closer than that.

  ‘Which one first?’ he whispered to himself, unable to decide. Charley was probably the most dangerous. Potentially. Unless his skills were gone. Maybe as he grew fat he’d spread his talents lean.

  But Howell was partly in shadow, at a difficult angle, beneath the trees. Miss him, or wound him, and there wouldn’t be time enough to pick off the boy. And there’d be two of them, armed, ready to try and circle behind Herne and turn the hunter into the hunted. The hunted into the butchered.

  But the sound of shooting at Kid would be enough to send the older man scurrying for cover himself. Still, on balance, it had to be the young boy first.

  ‘Yeah,’ he breathed. Habit making him put a tiny dab of saliva on the foresight to get it to stand out more clearly.

  Finger on the cool metal of the narrow trigger.

  Butt pressed against his shoulder, good and firm. The faint scent of oil and polish and cordite hanging in his nostrils.

  Lining up on Kid.

  Cautious, even at such absurdly short range. There was no margin at all in trying for a clever or difficult shot when you were hoping to kill a man, or put him totally out of the conflict. It was fine if you wanted to impress some small town marshal by putting the bullet smack between the eyes. A quick movement and that hit became a miss.

  Herne aimed for the boy’s chest, near the throat. That way the .55 ball would certainly hit something. Probably heart and lungs. Maybe the spine. If it went high it was through the throat. Low and it opened up the target’s belly. A hand’s breadth to either side and you still had a stopping shot that would kick a grown man to the dirt, eyes blank, looking up at the sky and wondering what the fuck had happened to him.

  Kid glanced across the clearing, towards the stream, looking like he was about to move. Maybe get himself a drink of cool water.

  Herne held his breath, shooting two-eyed like all great marksmen. Squeezing the trigger.

  Blinking through the burst of powder smoke to see whether his aim had been true.

  It had.

  Three

  Kid was down and done for.

  On his back, one leg drawn up under him, the other stretched out, his foot actually resting in the fire. The cuff of his pants was already smoldering. His hands were both pressed to the middle of his chest, between the first and second buttons of his shirt.

  In the flickering firelight Herne could see blood, black and gleaming, pumping between the young killer’s fingers, streaking his shirt, soaking into the dust-dry earth. Kid’s mouth was open with shock and his eyes looked big and white. His head was jerking from side to side in painful spasmodic twitches.

  The two horses were both rearing, whinnying in fear, jerking at their bridles.

  Jed Herne took all of the scene into his mind’s eye in a fraction of a second. His main interest being where Charley Howell had gotten to. For a big man he had moved fast, taking his pistols with him. The sound of the shot and the flash from the muzzle had been enough for the old gunman and he had rolled out of Jed’s sight behind the nearest tree.

  The shootist reloaded the long Sharps, taking his time, keeping an eye on where Howell was hidden. It was the only big tree around, and to move from its cover would inevitably expose Charley to his aim. There wasn’t any hurry about anything. Nobody was going anywhere; not for a while.

  Least of all Kid.

  Herne figured that the heavy caliber bullet had gone clean through the boy and smashed his spine. Neither of the legs moved, even though you could smell the stench of his flesh roasting in the fire. The young boy wasn’t feeling anything much.

  But above the waist he was still living, head still moving. Now the horses had quietened a mite it was possible to hear him, groaning in pain.

  ‘Help me, Charley. Charley, help me. I’m your fuckin’ cousin, Charley … you got to … got to help me. Jesus, I’m hurtin’ bad, Charley.’

  Howell stayed out of sight, silent. Probably hoping that the unknown assassin might be careless and show himself. Herne wasn’t at all careless.

  ‘I’m bleedin’, Charley.’ The voice faded to a low mumble and then rose again, soaring through the pain. Tinted with the certainty of dying.

  Herne wriggled a few yards around to the right, trying to draw a bead on the hidden figure of the second killer, but Howell was still too well hidden.

  ‘I could have done good, Charley… Could have been a contender … You said I … Didn’t mean to hurt them, did I? No. Just wanted to lean on ’em, some.’

  The smell of burning was stronger.

  ‘Roll out the fire, Kid,’ called Howell, his voice thick with the tension of the moment.

  ‘What, Charley? I don’t hear you good. You sound a real … real long ways off.’

  ‘Your leg’s burnin’, Kid. In the fire. Roll away from it.’

  ‘I can’t move my legs. Can’t! Must be hit bad, eh? Can’t … You joshin’ me ’bout burnin’, Charley? Are you? I don’t feel nothin’.’

  ‘Hey!’ called Howell, his voice echoing around the clearing and making the horses shift their hoofs uneasily. ‘Hey, you up there!’

  Herne kept silent, eyes narrowed, trying to make out whether the other man was moving.

  ‘You! Man with the Sharps. I know you’re up there. Must be on your own, else I’d be coughin’ out my life yonder. You hear me, mister?’

  ‘I … I guess I’m dyin’, ain’t I. Pain’s not bad. Just cold. Like there’s a fall of ice through my heart. Oh, Lord Jesus, I’m a sinner.’

  ‘You done for him, mister. Why don’t you just do him a mercy and put a ball through the poor young bastard’s head?’

  ‘I don’t figure mercy’s a word that he knows much about, Charley.’ Herne was finally stung to reply.

  Kid’s groans drowned out Howell’s reply. The boy was desperately trying to drag himself away from the fire, but he’d lost too much blood and he finally lay back once more and began to weep.

  ‘Come on, mister. Put him out of his misery!’

  ‘Misery might be more this style. And yours, Howell. Your partner. You kill him!’

  ‘You’re a cold-hearted bastard, whoever you are. One bullet won’t hurt you none.’

  ‘One bullet hurt Kid. You want him out of it all, you pull the trigger, Charley.’

  ‘How come you know my name, mister?’

  Herne didn’t answer for a moment, concentrating on watching closely in case the killer was leading up to making a run for it, trying to distract him. Kid suddenly heaved himself up, rolling half on one side. Then falling back, stricken, hands dropping limply to his sides. The boy’s eyes remained open, but Herne knew that he was dead. There was a quality of limpness in death. A total and positive absence of life. Once you’d seen it, you could never, ever mistake it.

  ‘Kid! You still with us, Kid?’

  The stillness rested all around them. Herne eased his shoulders, adjusting his position, figuring that this might be a long wait.
Unless Howell lost patience.

  ‘He’s gone, mister.’

  ‘I figured that, Charley.’

  ‘This ’bout the stage driver in Kansas City? Hell, he drew first and there wasn’t above fifty dollars in that box.’

  ‘Not Kansas City.’

  Howell laughed. A deep, throaty sound. ‘Must be that dry goods store in Laramie. I told Kid that old bastard weren’t dead. Damned fool, he was! Keepin’ four hundred and eighty dollars in gold at the bottom of a fuckin’ keg of beans. Took Kid close to a half hour to make him tell us where it was hid.’

  ‘Not Laramie, Charley.’

  ‘Nebraska widow? North Platte, I recall. Handsome woman. Bastard Jew only gave us twenty dollars for a fine gold watch.’

  It was catalog of robbery and death, covering a thousand miles of the country. The knowledge of having caught them after such a litany of crime didn’t make much difference one way or the other to Jed Herne. Though he filed away names and places with the certainty that there must be flyers out on both men. Flyers meant rewards. Some bounty hunters called lawmen’s flyers the Book of Revelations.

  ‘Not North Platte, neither. Come on, mister. At least say what the boy died for. So’s I can let his kin know.’

  ‘Banker’s daughter in Casper, Territory of Wyoming. Three days since.’

  ‘Ah.’ The monosyllable was followed by a longer silence. ‘Plain girl, weren’t she?’

  ‘Her father loved her, Charley. And you and Kid butchered her.’

  ‘Kid’s idea to string her up. Bottle was his idea, too. Got a kind of bright mind, did Kid. So, the father sent you after us?’

  ‘Right. I just made one hundred dollars.’

  Howell whistled. ‘Not a lot for … How’s about me?’

  ‘Double. Flat two hundred.’

  ‘Hey! There wasn’t a shootist around town when we was there. You must have ridden hard to come up to us. Just ’nother day and we’d have been through the Pass and away.’

  ‘I didn’t leave Casper until late on yesterday. I figured you’d come this way.’