Geronimo! (Herne the Hunter Western Read online

  ‘Guess it’ll get a whole mess worse before it gets any better, my little dear one,’ replied Thaddeus, a slight slurring of the words betraying the fact that he had been imbibing with his younger brother before they boarded the train.

  ‘That is a wonderful consolation, Thaddeus,’ Carola replied, acidly. ‘When brains were being given out, I fear that the Good Lord for reasons of His own chose to leave you barely ten pence in the shilling.’

  ‘Ninety cents in the dollar, my little British possum.’

  ‘Don’t you possum me, you drunken sot! I shall not say another word to you until you apologies!’

  Thaddeus Ray knew his wife and knew her for a strong-willed woman of her word.

  ‘I’m surely sorry, dearest. I know the heat offends you this time of month.’

  The look on her face told him that he’d gotten it wrong again. ‘And will you kindly not discuss the difficulties of my menses with every hobbledehoy within hearing of us,’ she hissed with bitter anger.

  This time the apology was too late and they exchanged no further words for the better part of two days.

  ~*~

  It was while Herne was in bed with Adeline Fuller and the Rays were having one of their usual rows that the Chiricahua war-leader Geronimo, after a night’s drinking, decided that he would rather be a fighter than a farmer and slipped away from the soldiers into the dark wilderness of the Southwest.

  Chapter Two

  Herne had caught the sound of heavy feet climbing the stairs of the hotel, rising above the noises of the Tucson day, and he had tensed, as he had on every previous occasion. The odds against any shootist living beyond his thirtieth birthday were long enough, but he’d survived for twelve years more, and that was one of the reasons he had become a living legend throughout the frontier lands.

  ‘Why don’t you relax, Jedediah?’ whispered Adeline Fuller, her finger idly tracing an old scar near her wrist, smiling across at him.

  ‘Relaxation’s just a step off dyin’,’ he replied, hand poised as the boots came nearer, counterpointed by a heavy voice singing.

  ‘And if you ask her why the Hell she wears it,

  She wears it for her lover in the …’

  A key chinked to the floor of the corridor and the voice stopped in mid-line. The song had been one traditionally as popular with the United States Cavalry as ‘Garryowen’ itself.

  That meant …

  ‘Jesus on the cross! It’s Albert back early!’ squeaked Adeline Fuller, suddenly seeing the nightmare of her life becoming flesh.

  The key turned in the lock, even as Herne’s fingers were closing around the butt of the Colt, ready to draw it from the dangling holster.

  ‘You here, you damned slut?’ came a voice that seemed to mix honey and lead in it, overlaid with liquor.

  The Peacemaker slipped easily into Herne’s fist and his thumb tugged down on the spur of the hammer, cocking the gun with the unmistakable triple click. He leveled the pistol at the opening door, knowing without a shadow of doubt that the odds were he was going to have to use it.

  The other man was still in uniform, the vest hanging open, buttons missing. His face was flushed, pouches beneath both eyes, and the holster over his heavy Colt Army pistol had its flap open.

  ‘Who the fuckin’…’ he asked, jaw dropping, eyes straggling to focus on the naked man in his wife’s bed. With his equally naked wife lying at his side.

  ‘Don’t try it, soldier,’ said Herne, pitching his voice quiet and calm, still with the outside hope that it wasn’t going to end in a killing.

  ‘Adeline! You damned slut, whorin’ after anyone who’d give you a—’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault, Albert.’

  ‘I’ll put a bullet through your fuckin’ head after I’ve dealt with this … Christ! He’s a fuckin’ old man, Adeline!’

  ‘No!’ That wasn’t what she’d hoped for. In her deranged mind Adeline had created a scene where the two men would not fight. They would both look at her and they would shout at her, using the worst kind of language. Then they would both whip her and slap her finally taking her together, using her body to …’No!’ It wasn’t going to be like that. And she had lost touch with reality to such an extent that she had actually been believing her fantasy. But life is rarely if ever like our dreams.

  ‘Don’t go for the gun, soldier,’ warned Herne, wishing that he’d kept his boots on as he usually did. But all his clothes lay jumbled on the floor at the bottom of the bed, close by Captain Fuller’s feet.

  ‘He forced me. Used that gun against my breasts, dear. Truly.’

  ‘Lyin’ bitch,’ grunted Jed.

  Fuller was so drunk that his mind wasn’t functioning all that fast, but he knew that it wasn’t right for a man to stand there while a stranger... a rapin’ stranger, called his own wife a lying bitch. No, that surely wasn’t right at all.

  ‘Not right, mister. My wife says—’

  Fuller still hadn’t made any kind of a move towards his own Colt. Just standing there, one hand on the edge of the door, swinging it very slowly backwards and forwards, giving Herne glimpses of the empty corridor beyond.

  ‘Your wife says that, then she’s just what I think.’

  ‘What’s that, Jed?’ shrieked Adeline, eyes flicking between the two men, still hanging onto a vestige of her dreams.

  ‘Jed? Jed who? Seems you know him fuckin’ well an’ you rapin’ he was ... I mean sayin’ he was tryin’ to rape you.’

  ‘I didn’t—’

  Herne had to raise his voice to try and be heard above the boiling storm of words. ‘Soldier! Your woman here’s a whore and a liar. Only difference between her and an honest whore is that she don’t even claim money for what she puts out.’

  Adeline’s reaction was so violent that it took Herne by surprise. The shootist had been keeping his eyes locked to the heavy-built figure in blue, by the door, concentrating on holding the Peacemaker steady and cocked. The woman suddenly lashed out with the back of her hand at him, catching him across the bridge of the nose with her knuckles. The pain was electrifying, bringing tears that blinded him. The force of the blow sending him sideways, nearly knocking him clean off the bed. His finger tightened on the trigger and if it had been filed down a hair’s width more he would have put a bullet clean through the hotel window.

  As it was he was totally off balance, fighting to recover. Seeing Fuller snatch the moment to leap back into the corridor, slamming the door shut behind him.

  ‘Bitch!’ hissed Herne.

  But Adeline Fuller wasn’t finished. Kicking out hard at him, her bare heel hitting him a glancing blow in the groin, making him yelp with the shock. Then she was out of bed, running towards the closed door, screaming out to her husband.

  ‘Kill him, Albert! Shoot the bastard!’

  ‘Get away,’ shouted Herne, recovering himself, leveling the gun at her white back.

  ‘Kill him! Kill—’

  Her hand was on the knob of the door, rattling it as she tried to turn it with fumbling, terrified fingers. Outside, Captain Fuller had drawn his own heavy pistol, thumbing back on the Colt’s hammer. Trying to hold it steady.

  The door finally began to open, against a barrage of shouting from all three of them.

  Herne was ready to fire the moment that Fuller showed himself. He’d considered gunning down the woman, and he would have done it without the least compunction, but she might provide him with cover from her husband and that was potentially valuable.

  But the way the dice fell it didn’t much matter.

  The officer fired first, seeing a figure through the gap in the door, putting two bullets into it. As the door swung shut again he fired three times more, feeling the Army Colt buck in his hand, seeing great jagged holes appear in the panels, the wood splintered white through the brown coat of varnish.

  And he heard a single scream that died away into a long, bubbling moan.

  From inside the room, Herne saw the other side of events.


  Adeline staggered back at the sound of the first shot, pushing at the door so it closed again, but by then she had been hit a second time. The first bullet hitting her high in the right shoulder, tearing a fist-sized chunk of flesh, spraying blood all across the room, dappling the yellowed ceiling The second slug buried itself in her sagging belly, folding her up like an eager courtier, her good hand going to hold herself. That was when she screamed, once, leaning her forehead against the closed door.

  Herne threw himself sideways off the bed, guessing that the shooting wasn’t over. Whitey Coburn, his old friend, now dead, used to say: ‘Man starts pulling on the trigger, he mostly finds it hard to stop until the gun’s empty.’

  Albert Fuller was no exception to that. Pumping three more bullets through the thin door into the room, pausing a moment, and following it up with the sixth and last round in the pistol.

  Number three caught his bending wife through the throat, punching out the back of her neck in a welter of blood and tiny shards of pale bone. The scream faded away into a bubbling moan as the impact of the bullet sent her toppling on her back, legs kicking. Above the acrid scent of the black powder smoke, Herne realized that Adeline had fouled herself as her muscles began to relax in death.

  The fourth bullet broke a flowered china bowl on a wash-stand, chipping plaster from the wall behind. The fifth came within a couple of feet of Herne’s head as he peered cautiously round the side of the bed, shattering the window. And the last one went higher, ricocheting off the brass frame of the bed, whining into the ceiling and showering the crouching shootist with flakes of paint and plaster.

  ‘Adeline?’

  Herne ignored the call from Fuller. The woman was as near dead as makes no argument and his only concern was the best way of getting himself out alive. In the corridor he heard voices, calling, asking what was happening. Fuller shouting drunkenly at the top of his voice that his wife was being held by a gunman and killer.

  Jed began to dress himself, as quickly and silently as he could. Feeling safer as soon as he had his pants hauled up and buckled. Tugging on the worn boots, flexing his leg against the sheathed bayonet.

  Wondering whether Fuller was sober enough to be reloading his pistol, or whether he was too drunk to even realize that he’d used the full six rounds. Listening to the growing noise and to Fuller’s protestations for them to go away and let him rescue his dear woman.

  ‘Your dear woman’s messin’ up the floor in here with three of your bullets in her, Fuller,’ shouted Jed Herne, stilling the bedlam outside.

  ‘Adeline, wounded?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Dead, you brainless, drunk son of a bitch!’ called Herne, completing his dressing. ‘You shot your own wife. Three times. Took out most of her throat with the last round!’

  In the silence he could catch voices whispering. Out through the broken window he heard a man yell that the sheriff was on his way. By the time that the law arrived Herne figured it would be as well to be on his way out of Tucson. Though he was innocent, and the evidence was clear against Fuller, it might still mean a long delay, and if there were any other soldiers in town the U.S. Cavalry was known for looking after its own, even when they were incapable drunks who’d gunned down their own wives.

  ‘Time to go,’ Herne said to himself.

  Though the door was still shut, he could just see the dim blur of the dark blue uniform through the shattered panels. Walking cat-footed feeling the stickiness of the woman’s blood on the soles of his boots, Herne made his way to the wall alongside the corridor, pistol still cocked in his right hand.

  ‘You come on out, you coward!’ bellowed Fuller, not sounding entirely sure that he really wanted to see Jed. And if he’d known that the shootist was the notorious Herne the Hunter he’d have been considerably less keen on meeting him.

  Jed doubted that the soldier was even capable of the delicate operation of reloading the Army Colt without dropping it all over the floor. Drink and percussion pistols didn’t go well together. So the chance was a carefully calculated one. If he was going out against an armed man, then Herne could easily get himself killed. But he figured that Fuller was holding an empty gun.

  He was right.

  The door jammed as he pulled it open, making a squeaking noise, one of the panels falling lopsidedly out as he finally moved it. Seeing Fuller with the Army Colt aimed at his guts. Faces disappearing like a frightened town of prairie dogs at the confrontation.

  Fuller’s face mixing rage and fear as he saw Herne come through the door, only five paces away from him; pulling the trigger. A dry, sharp click. Another and then another.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Herne quietly.

  Shooting the soldier through the forehead, the impact of the forty-five kicking him backwards, his heels slipping on the floor of the corridor. Blood blossomed crimson between Fuller’s eyes as he lay there, mouth working, hands twitching.

  ‘Shouldn’t have …’ said Captain Albert Fuller, and then he was dead.

  Herne was away from the hotel and out of Tucson in less than four minutes, heading off south and east, into the red-orange wilderness towards the border with Mexico.

  ~*~

  A week later he was near Nogales where he gunned down two Mexican horse-thieves and earned himself fifty dollars.

  Giving himself a time to stay down there for another couple of days.

  It was then that Thaddeus Ray, the New York journalist, and his wife, Carola, arrived in Nogales. They’d heard the news about Geronimo taking off from the escort and had been told their best bet of finding any action was to go towards Mexico. Carola complained endlessly about the blistering heat that dried her skin and made her lips swell and crack. Isaac had vanished three days earlier when they were leaving the train but he had succeeded in catching them up, mumbling apologies and asking where the nearest cantina was so that he could go and revive himself. At least he still had his camera so that if they ever did get to see Geronimo he’d be able to try and take his picture.

  ~*~

  The Chiricahua leader was not that far away from the Rays, lying on his stomach on the top of a shallow mesa watching the tiny specks of blue-uniformed soldiers cantering away from him, towards the west. Geronimo smiled at the sight.

  Chapter Three

  ‘Mr. Herne?’

  ‘Who are you, mister?’

  ‘Name’s Ray. Thaddeus Ray. Here’s my card. Tells you the sort of man I am.’

  Herne reached out and took the proffered slip of pasteboard, examining it carefully before flipping it back on the table in the Nogales saloon. ‘Tells me you had that printed up real pretty. Tells me the job you say you do. Doesn’t tell me a damned thing about what sort a man you really are.’

  Ray was sweating in the sultry heat of the bar, wiping at his cheeks with a blue bandana. He had left his wife at the rooming house, lying naked in a large bath of coolish water and he wanted only to get back so that he could take his turn and change out of the sodden clothes. He picked up his card from a pool of liquor and wiped the tequila off it on his sleeve.

  ‘Mind if’n I sit down, Mr. Herne? That is your name?’

  ‘Yeah. Jedediah Herne.’

  ‘Herne the Hunter?’

  ‘Some say that.’

  The reporter looked pleased and made a hurried gesture with his hand to someone behind Herne. Jed immediately spun around, hand going to the butt of the pistol, suspecting that he had been set up for a killing.

  All he saw was a smaller version of Thaddeus Ray, with a moustache that straggled a little more. Wearing a tight suit and carrying what Herne recognized as a camera on a spider-like tripod, with a couple of scratched wooden boxes.

  ‘Who the—’

  ‘My younger brother, Ike. Isaac Ray, this is Mr. Jedediah Herne.’

  ‘Good to meet you. Can we go outside, Thad? Only good thing about this ass-hole out of nowhere is the light. Best I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Outside?’ sa
id Herne.

  ‘Yes. To take your portrait.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But we figured that someone like you that everyone knows—’

  ‘No, Mr. Ray.’

  ‘But you’re a real killer. Shot twenty men.’

  ‘I have shot more than twenty men in my time, Mr. Ray, but that doesn’t mean I want my portrait.’

  ‘How many more?’ Thaddeus had his notebook out, licking the point of the pencil eagerly.

  ‘I don’t count death,’ said Herne, finding that his dislike for the New Yorker was growing fast, relative to his patience shrinking.

  ‘Fifty?’

  Herne leaned across and gripped the journalist by the hand, squeezing his fingers shut on the pencil, his face immobile beyond the faint red glow of anger in his deep-set eyes.

  ‘You need not try and … Aurgh! That fuckin’ … Oooh,’ the pain turning to a moan with tears springing to Ray’s eyes as Herne tightened his grip and broke the green pencil into the palm of the man’s hand, jagged pieces of wood drawing blood in several places.

  ‘I said that I didn’t count the men I killed, Mr. Ray. And I said I don’t want my picture taken. Not here. Not now. Not anywhere. And not ever.’

  He let go of the smaller man’s fingers and Ray leaned forwards, pressing his hand to his mouth, sucking at the pain to try and make it go away, as a mother would with a young child.

  ‘Didn’t have to—’

  ‘No. I could have just shot you.’

  ‘I’m... I’m goin’ back for a siesta, Thad,’ muttered Isaac Ray from near the door and he clattered out of sight, humping the load of gear.

  ‘Why don’t you go back with him, Mr. Ray? Keep from under my feet and you won’t get hurt.’

  The reporter had recovered something of his composure and was concentrating on removing splinters from the palm of his hand. Trying hard to control the trembling. In New York and in London he’d interviewed some hard men, but never anyone like Jedediah Herne,

  There’d been a dacoit gang leader who’d been involved in the heinous affair of the killer rats of Sumatra. And the Hoxton Creeper. The vicious gang of female garrotters from New Jersey. Thaddeus Ray had tracked them all down and persuaded them to talk to him so that he could ornament their words and sell them to the papers. But none of them had chilled him as this man Herne did.