Shadow of the Vulture Read online

  He lifted himself up into a half-standing, half-crouching position. The dealer looked at him coldly.

  ‘Sir, so as there may be no mistake later, I would like to confirm what you have just said. You have accused me of unfair play during the course of this game. Is that correct?’

  ‘You’re damn right it is. Now you push that money back over the table to me an’ I’ll just go back to my seat and forget about the whole thing.’

  He must have known the dealer would do no such thing.

  ‘If I were to do that, sir, it would be tantamount to an admission of guilt on my part.’

  ‘Don’t you pull all them fancy words on me! That’s all you are, a lot of fancy talk an’ fancy clothes an’ fancy dealin’. I bet you even shit fancy!’

  ‘Whatever I do, I’m not intending to take any more shit from you.’

  ‘Like hell you’re not! You goddamn fancy cheat!’

  He swung his hand down to his gun belt but opposite him Herne had his Colt clear of his holster and aimed at him before he had even had time to reach the butt of his gun.

  ‘Don’t do it, son.’

  The man checked his move, staring at the drawn gun in amazement. The dealer remained seated. He did not appear to have made any move at all.

  ‘So that’s it,’ the loser blustered finally, ‘you got a fast gun workin’ with you as well. Someone to back up your play when you git found out.’

  ‘I haven’t seen this man before today,’ Herne said.

  ‘Then what you doin’ drawin’ iron for him and agin me?’

  Herne held the Colt steady. ‘Never did like to see men throw their lives away for no good reason. Throwing away your money’s different. There’s ways of making more. Throwing away your life somehow just ain’t the same.’

  ‘You ought to stay out of things what don’t concern you and...’

  ‘All this gentleman has done, sir,’ drawled the dealer, ‘is to save your wretched hide. Though why he should think it worth saving is not at all clear. You will only throw it away again at the next convenient opportunity.’

  The youngster stood up straight. He wasn’t above five foot seven and he had a lean, hungry look which only emphasized his lack of stature. The dealer was thin by design; this man was thin by necessity. Herne wondered how he had managed to get the rail fare and what he hoped his journey would bring him. Wondered what he was running away from or running towards. If it was the former it was sure chasing him hard and if it was the latter, well that was going to keep shifting away from him the harder he ran after it.

  That was the kind of man he appeared to be.

  He looked from Herne to the dealer and back again. He could not cope with the gun of one, the words of the other. He was beaten and confused. His own gun was still in his holster but the gap between his hand and the butt of the gun was widening with every second.

  Finally, he struck out at the table with his left fist and sent money and cards to the floor. Then he turned on his downtrodden heels and stomped out of the car,

  Everyone sighed and exhaled loudly. The dealer turned and looked up at Herne. ‘I thank you kindly, sir, for stepping in on my behalf. And I thank you on that young man’s behalf for stopping him from getting killed.’

  ‘You appeared to be taking things coolly,’ said Herne.

  The dealer allowed himself a smile and lifted his left arm up onto the table. He pressed the sleeve of the cutaway coat downwards on the surface and a spring released the concealed derringer into the palm of his hand. Herne looked at it, observing the intricate filigree work on the curved handle.

  Not only a cool man, thought Herne, but a mighty dangerous one as well.

  The dealer stood up and offered Herne his hand. ‘My name, sir, is Pardoe, Wayne Pardoe.’

  ‘I’m Jed Herne.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,’ the gambler replied without showing any sign of recognizing the name. ‘Won’t you join us for a game of poker? There appears to be an empty chair at the table.’

  The initial stake that Herne had at his disposal to buy into the game had been so small that a few bad hands would have removed him from the table in the first ten minutes. As it was he began by winning more hands than he lost. He knew he wasn’t an ace player, although his judgment was keener than most, and that he would need a whole heap of luck to keep him going.

  Nobody in the game looked as if they were the type who made stupid errors although the dealer was the only one who looked capable of pulling off something exceptional in terms of sheer skill. It was a matter of staying in there and hoping that Lady Luck would smile down for long enough.

  For the first hour, she stood behind Herne’s chair and positively beamed down on his cards but then suddenly Herne found himself holding a pair of kings and a pair of queens and still losing out. He felt her protective fingers slip away from around his shoulders as she moved away and walked capriciously back round the table. There must have been something about the dealer’s white shirt that attracted her.

  An hour later everything that Herne had won had been pushed back across the table surface; from his diminishing pile into the central pot; from there to the dealer.

  Herne found himself beginning to think along the same lines as the wild young man whose seat he had taken over. The gambler was having an awful lot of luck. Could he be dealing off the bottom, palming cards, using a marked deck? As if he guessed what Herne was thinking the dealer asked the conductor to bring them a new pack. His luck didn’t change.

  The game continued. Herne bet his last two dollars on a hand with a pair of kings, and luckily picked up a third. Everyone was still in the game; the pot was large. If he was fortunate enough to win it, there would be enough to keep him playing for a lot longer. And then perhaps his luck would turn once more.

  Herne looked down at the three kings in his hand. He wasn’t about to throw them in.

  He looked across at the dealer. Pardoe, you wouldn’t care to take my IOU, I guess?’

  The man smiled thinly and shook his head. ‘Afraid not, sir. Rule of the game. Rule of my game.’

  ‘Not a rule you’d care to bend?’

  ‘No, sir. Not even after what you did for me earlier. But if you’ve got something you could trade in as a kind of collateral…well, I’d be privileged to accept that. If these other gentlemen are willing?’

  He looked at them and they both seemed to nod simultaneously, although it might have been the movement of the train.

  ‘Very well, sir,’ said Pardoe. ‘What do you have?’

  Herne had been thinking about that very thing. The point was that he had very little. Only two things of any worth, in fact—his Colt .45 and his rail ticket. Everything else of value had gone towards paying for Becky’s trip to England and her schooling.

  There was no way in which he could part with the gun.

  ‘Well, sir? We can’t keep these gentlemen waiting for too long. Good fortune has a habit of going cold.’

  In that December light which came dully in through the windows of the dining car, Herne thought he had probably left it too long already. But he was holding three kings.

  He reached into his pocket and took out his rail ticket. He placed it down on the table. ‘I’ve got this ticket for Kansas City. I guess that some of it’s redeemable. I’ll stake that to see you. If’n you’re agreeable?’

  The dealer looked down at the ticket, across the table at the other two players, who nodded once more. Then he called the conductor to check if the ticket was redeemable. It was.

  ‘Very well, sir, I accept your bet. Now perhaps we should see what you are holding that makes you think it is all so worthwhile.’

  They all looked at Herne’s face, then down at the backs of the cards in his left hand. Herne turned them slowly over and spread them out in front of him.

  ‘Three kings,’ he said, needlessly.

  ‘Beats me,’ said one player.

  ‘And me,’ said the other.

  Pardoe
said nothing. He glanced up at Herne’s face quickly and somewhere around the corners of his mouth there was something moving that might have been the trace of a smile.

  A smooth, manicured hand spread out the cards. Four queens.

  One of the men sitting to the left of Herne whistled; the other began to say something, then stopped abruptly. There wasn’t anything to say.

  Jed Herne stood up and looked over Pardoe’s handsome head to the conductor, who was standing behind him in the aisle.

  “Well,’ he said, ‘guess I’ll be leaving the train at the next stop. Whatever that is.’

  At least they weren’t going to stop the train right now and push him out into the middle of nowhere. Though Jed guessed that most any town between the Missouri border and Kansas was pretty much the middle of nowhere anyway.

  On the other side of the window, the flat grasslands of lower Illinois were gradually being replaced by the hillier slopes of eastern Missouri. Hell! It was the wide-open spaces he had been mourning for when he’d been back in New York. That was what he was going to get. With a vengeance.

  A vengeance. He thought about Senator Nolan. Thought a lot of things about him and what he was trying to do. Ended up by thinking that he was still a hell of a long way off.

  He looked round and saw Pardoe walking towards him. The gambler smiled briefly, then sat down opposite him.

  ‘Game over?’ Herne asked.

  ‘Sure. Guess they decided they’d had enough. There don’t appear to be many folk with a liking for cards riding this train. Perhaps things will pick up at Kansas City.’

  ‘How far you going?’

  The elegant shoulders shrugged. ‘Depends on how the game goes. It always depends on that.’

  ‘You always work trains?’ Herne asked.

  ‘Not always. Trains. Riverboats. Saloons. Anywhere there’s a nice flat surface and men with money and a will to gamble, then I’ll play.’

  ‘You always do as well as you did today? •

  The gambler grinned broadly. ‘Guess so. Have to. Once I begin to lose then my living is gone.’ He nodded down in the direction of Herne’s holster. ‘Much the same as you. The instant you lose out with that, your living’s gone too.’

  Herne nodded. Yes, if he lost out his living was gone, literally! He allowed himself a smile at his own joke.

  ‘When you said your name back there in the dining car, I recognized it. You’ve travelled around. I’ve heard some of the things you’re reckoned to have done. It all sounded very impressive. But I thought that was a while back...’

  His voice trailed away.

  ‘It was,’ Herne said flatly.

  ‘You on a job now?’

  ‘Not so you’d notice.’

  Pardoe sensed that the conversation was over. He rose to leave. He was half way out of the seat when the youngster who had lost at poker appeared at the far end of the carriage. Only this time he was cutting back on the odds: his gun was already drawn.

  The gambler stared in his direction and Herne turned his head so that he could see what was going on. Pardoe flashed him a look that said keep out of things this time. Then he stepped into the gangway between the seats.

  Herne watched as the loser came slowly forward. The rivulets of sweat had reappeared on his face; the hand that held the gun was shaking slightly.

  His mouth started to move but it was a while before the words formed. ‘You…you took everything I had. My money…my…my…you made me look a goddamn fool in front of all those people. You and that gunslinging friend of yours. I bin thinkin’ about it. I know there’s no way I can let you get away with that. Just ‘cause you got them fancy duds on and talk long words the way you do, you think that makes me nothin’. Well, I tellin’ you that ain’t so.’ He glared at the gambler, whose eyes betrayed no sign of emotion at the hail of insults. ‘You hear me, you bastard?!’ He screamed.

  ‘I hear you, son.’ The gambler’s voice was steady, cool as ice.

  ‘And don’t you call me “son”. Who the hell you think you are?’

  ‘Who are to talk to me like that? Hear me? Who in hell’s name do you think you are?’

  Pardoe studied the pattern of the carpet on the floor for a second, then gazed back into the

  youngster’s face. ‘Seems to me, son, that I’m the man who’s going to have to kill you.’

  ‘You’re what? When I’ve got you covered this way! You ain’t gonna kill no one, mister, not for all your flashy clothes an’ the rest. You’re gonna give me back the money you cheated out...’

  The words were cut short by the crack of an explosion. Herne, who had been watching the youngster, saw the sudden look of surprise on his face, then the blotch of red that appeared above his heart. As the blood from the wound spread, so the expression changed to one of pain.

  By the time Herne looked back at Pardoe, the derringer had disappeared back up his sleeve.

  ‘I was getting tired of his foolish babbling,’ the gambler explained. ‘I was going to have to kill him eventually.’

  His words were punctuated by the sound of the youngster’s body hitting the floor of the carriage. Hell, thought Herne, at last the poor son of a bitch had got what he was born for.

  Chapter Three

  Jed Herne stepped down from the train. His boots hit the boards hard and the sound echoed along the short platform. Almost straight away the whistle from the engine swallowed up all other noise and the train began to pull out.

  Herne turned his head and watched the train gather speed. A white frilled shirt cuff waved from one of the open windows. He gave a short wave back then started to walk along the platform. The station sign bearing the name of the town had been shot at by passing drunks and was dented and chipped but Herne could still read the single word: Charity.

  Well, Jed thought as he walked through the wooden shack which was the ticket office, that sure is some name. Here I am without more than a couple of cents in my pocket; it’s two days off Christmas–and I get put off the train at a town called Charity!

  He stood at the top end of the street. It looked like it was the only street to speak of and it led straight down to the railway track. It looked like any other one-horse town in the mid-west. On either side of what for most of the year was a river of mud, ran a pair of raised boardwalks. There were only two buildings that rose above a single storey, the saloon and the bank. Otherwise, it seemed there were a couple of general stores, one doubling as a barbershop, an eating-house, a blacksmith’s and a saddlers.

  Jed wondered where you went if you needed to get buried.

  He also wondered what his chances were of finding some kind of work. They didn’t strike him as being particularly good.

  Charity wasn’t overrun with action. In fact, at that moment, the only thing active in Charity was Herne himself.

  Had anyone been looking, he would have seemed an impressive figure. Around six feet two, weighing a little over two hundred pounds, he walked erectly, broad shoulders swinging slightly. His right hand was never far from the holster which carried his Colt. Every so often his fingers would brush the worn, smooth leather above the butt of the gun.

  His face was strong and his eyes unwavering; the black hair hung down low over his collar–at the temples it had turned a handsome but telltale gray.

  He didn’t look like a man who had no job and nowhere to stay for the night. Though it might have been wondered why he hadn’t bought himself a warmer coat, considering it was the middle of winter.

  Herne stopped outside the saloon and looked up at the sign. ‘Queen of the West’ Above this was draped a piece of white cloth with the words, ‘Rosie wishes all customers a Merry Christmas’, painted in uneven letters along it.

  He was tempted to step inside and return the compliment, but the knowledge that he couldn’t even afford the price of a beer stopped him. He wasn’t ready to join the groups of tatty bar flies and down-and-outs who spent their time begging drinks and scrounging for handouts from any lucky gamblers.


  Instead, he wheeled round and walked back the way he had come. There was still no clear idea in his head as to what he might do. Perhaps if he walked down and chatted a while to the blacksmith, he might pick up some information he could put to good use.

  But he did not get as far as the blacksmith.

  The door of one of the general stores suddenly burst open and a sack of flour came flying out. It landed with a thud on a jagged edge on the side of the boardwalk. Its thin material ripped apart and the browny-white flour spilled out on to the hard surface of the street, filling the ruts and wagon tracks that were solid along its side.

  Herne stood and waited. Something else had to happen. It did. There was a shout and a clatter and a pair of iron pans followed the sack through the door, striking the ground with a ringing sound that chimed strangely when they collided with each other.

  Next to come were a side of bacon and a second flour sack, even larger than the first. It was pierced by the handle of one of the pans and its contents trickled out to join the flour that already lay over the street.

  From inside the store came the sound of raised voices. Herne could only catch the occasional word, but even then it didn’t sound too friendly.

  As if to prove that, the next thing to come flying through the door was a body. A short, plump man wearing a striped apron left the store backwards and at a speed that suggested he sure wasn’t coming out of his own accord.

  He tried to keep his balance by hopping backwards, but after a few paces it was clear that he wasn’t going to manage it. His arms began to flail wildly. His foot got stuck in one of the pans. He toppled backwards and hit the ground with a hefty thump which sent him rolling over into the flour.

  Herne looked up from the sprawling, cursing, aproned figure to the man who had that moment appeared in the doorway. He was young; somewhere around twenty. His face was open and fresh, with a lick of fair hair hanging down between his eyes. He was wearing a thick plaid coat that Herne was immediately envious of. But he did not appear to be wearing a gun.

  The man who was dusting himself down and trying to clear away the flour that was sticking to his face—he did have a gun. High on the left side and covered by the apron. It was there all right. There was no mistaking the bulge.