White Death Read online

  ‘What?’ called Yates, already fifty yards behind him.

  ‘No smoke. Not from my spread or from yours,’ he threw back over his shoulder. Although the weather was appreciably warmer than it had been, it was still cold enough for a fire. And Louise should be expecting him back this morning, and there should be a big breakfast ready cooking.

  Behind him, Yates abandoned the mule to find its own way home and was spurring on his big dun mare after Herne. Jed instinctively felt for the gun on his hip, and for the first time for many months regretted that he no longer carried it. Louise had asked him to put it away, and he’d locked it in a drawer in the bureau. And the Sharps was up over the fireplace on pegs. Unfired for weeks. The Colt unfired for over two years.

  But for Herne the Hunter to walk into a town wearing a six-gun on his hip would be an invitation for any man who fancied his chances to call him out.

  Now he felt naked and exposed without it.

  When he was about a hundred yards from his cabin, he saw something else that chilled him more than all the snow and ice. The front door hung askew on its hinges, as though it had been burst open or kicked in. He reined in Billy and waited till Yates had joined him. Without saying a word, he pointed at the cabin.

  ‘Looks bad, Jed,’ said Yates, now completely sobered up.

  But all of his anxieties were washed away in an instant when he saw his young wife walk out on the front stoop and wave her hand to him. If there’d been anything wrong, she would obviously have shouted out. He waved back, wondering what could have happened to the door, but now content that there was some simple and reasonable explanation.

  ‘Come on in and have a bite to eat before you go on home, Bill,’ he said.

  As they rode in nearer he called out to Louise, asking if there’d be breakfast for their neighbor. And she smiled and waved back. They hitched their horses to the front rail, and Bill Yates waited for the mule to come ambling along, pausing here and there to nibble at some of the grass that had been bared by the churning feet.

  Louise had gone inside and Herne unloaded the dress, carrying it carefully in its oilskin packaging under his right arm. He paused at the broken door, looking more closely at the damage. There were marks on it as though someone had been kicking at the bottom of it, while the heavy bar that should have held it in place was snapped clean through. The hinges were bent and broken.

  ‘Louise? What in Hell happened to this door? You have an invasion of hungry Indians?’

  She was standing in the corner of the room by the fire, and she turned at his words and smiled vaguely at him. ‘What’s that darling?’

  Her eyes were very bright, but there was something new in her voice. A tone that he couldn’t quite pin down, but hadn’t been there when he’d left two days before. Again he felt that unease, like some itch that he couldn’t quite reach to scratch.

  ‘The door?’

  ‘I’ll fix some food. Eggs, ham, and we’ve got some potatoes. I can slice up and fry. With coffee. Sound good?’

  ‘Sounds fine, Louise. But what happened to the door?’

  Despite his best intentions, he found his voice was rising in anger. But she had turned her back and was working in the corner of the room, humming to herself.

  Yates came in, pausing to stare at the wrecked door. He opened his mouth to ask about it, then saw Jed raise a finger to his lips and shut it again.

  ‘Did you have a good time in Tucson, Jed? And did you get all the provisions, Bill? Becky was here yesterday with me, and we were going to do some cooking but …’

  The sentence stopped as suddenly as a stone breaking the ice on a shaded pool. There was an uneasy silence in the room. Yates wasn’t the most sensitive of men, but even he realized that something was gravely wrong.

  Although it was dark in the cabin, Jed had been looking at his beautiful young wife, trying to catch her eye and see her face to face. But she kept ducking away from him, keeping her head in shadow.

  It seemed as though their presence was making her nervous. She chattered on in a high, strained voice, telling him about how cold it had been. The snow piling up round the barn at the back.

  ‘What were the folks from that train like, Louise?’ asked Yates.

  Her flow checked for a moment, then she carried on about the house and cooking and Becky, as though Yates hadn’t ever spoken.

  The sun was getting well up, and its warmth was melting the snow fast. Its rays broke through the open doorway, striking across towards Louise, and as she moved through them, Jed saw her face properly for the first time.

  It took all of his self-discipline to stop himself jumping up and grabbing her. There was a great bruise under her right eye, and her nose had been bleeding. A thread of black blood crept drily from the corner of her mouth, down across her chin, on her neck. And there were deep scratches around her throat.

  He realized that Yates had also seen it at the same moment, hearing the strangled gasp, and feeling the man’s body tense in the chair beside him, ready to leap up. Herne reached across and seized his arm, squeezing it with all his strength.

  Yates moaned softly, his face turning white under the tan. Jed looked sideways at him, and whispered, his lips barely moving. ‘I know. Come outside with me, away from her.’ Raising his voice to Louise: ‘We’ll get a breath of air out on the porch, dear. Maybe you could bring out the food to us?’

  Still in the same bright, cheerful voice, she replied: ‘Of course, Jed. Be right out. It’s nearly ready.’

  The two men got up and walked outside, standing together in silence, staring out over the valley, away beyond the black slash of the railroad. Looking back over his shoulder to the dark interior, Yates spoke first.

  ‘Jed! You didn’t have no cause to hurt me that way! You just don’t know your strength!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Bill. But I didn’t want you to say what you’d seen. I seen it too, and I know something’s damned wrong here. But Louise’s acting so downright odd that I reckon we have to come up on her easy like. As if she was a spooking steer in a storm. Else she’ll scare and never tell us.’

  ‘But what about my folks? Rachel and little Becky? The path’s all trod down there.’

  ‘All right, Bill. Just wait till she brings out the food. Maybe we can find out then. It can’t be that awful. I figure she’s just been bad scared.’

  Again that part of his mind that he could neither control nor understand, bothered Jed. The food! How could she cook them breakfast when …?

  ‘Here it is, boys. Hope you’re hungry. I’ve done heaps for you.’

  Her face set in a thin smile, the young woman set down two big platters by the men, rattling the knife and fork by them. The tray was also loaded down with a plate of bread and two great mugs of coffee. Jed sat down on the steps and picked up the knife and fork, then set them right down again. Yates looked at him, stunned by the look in Herne’s eyes, keeping his own mouth tight shut.

  ‘What’s wrong? Why aren’t you eating, Jed? And you too Bill?’ Her voice trembled with eagerness for them to begin on what she’d brought them.

  The plates held three eggs, and four thick rashers of ham. And a heap of sliced potatoes.

  All cold. All uncooked. All raw.

  The bacon lay there, pink and bloody, nudging the heap of hard, small potatoes, all cut and stirred up. And the eggs ran around everything, their yolks broken, soaking into the potato, and their whites dribbling over the ham like strings of thick mucus.

  Jed picked up the mug, feeling it as cold as charity to his touch. It was filled nearly to the brim with water, with a few dark grains of roasted coffee floating turgidly in it. Feeling that he was living in a nightmare, he put the mug down and looked at his wife.

  Got up and stood by her, reaching out his hand to touch her. As he did so, she recoiled as though his hand was some deadly snake, her face contorted with horror, her mouth drooping down, making her look unexpectedly ugly.

  ‘No … Don’t you touch me! I’ll te
ll my husband!’ The cry rose to a bubbling scream, sending a lone buzzard wheeling higher into the blue sky.

  ‘Louise.’ He spoke as gently as he could, standing near her, but being careful not to touch her. ‘We know something bad’s happened. We can see the door’s been broken. The fire’s out. Your face is scratched. I saw the rifle had been taken down. Tell us what happened and we’ll make it alright.’

  She laughed. A forced, rasping laugh. ‘Nothing’s wrong, dear. You’re just being a silly and teasing me, aren’t you? Now eat up your food …. before it … before it … before it gets cold.’

  As the last word struggled past her white lips, she began to laugh again. And the laugh went on and on, getting higher and higher. Pealing at the snow-covered fields, rasping at the ears. Herne stood there, helpless, not knowing what to do. It was Yates who got up from where he’d been sitting, and gently pushed him aside. Stood in front of Louise, who was now shaking her body, wracked with the force of her crying laughter. Swung his arm back to the shoulder, and cracked her hard across the face, the mark his fingers standing out red against the pale skin.

  Herne made an involuntary move at the unexpected action, but Yates turned to him. ‘The only way to stop them. My Rachel gets taken like that some days. See.’

  And it had worked. The noise had stopped like turning off a tap, and Louise now leaned against the upright support to the cabin, her shoulders still shaking, but now crying more quietly and normally.

  Nodding, Herne stepped in nearer to his wife. ‘Louise. Tell us.’

  ‘Nothing much to tell.’ The false brightness that had been in her voice had gone. Now it was more like her usual voice, but dreadfully beaten and low.

  ‘Go on. Or would you rather come in and sit down and tell us?’

  ‘No. Out here where it’s cleaner. All that happened was that you went away and left me all on my own, Jed.’

  ‘But . . . ’ he was thunderstruck. ‘But you know that Bill and I always go into Tucson each month to get provisions for us all. You always stay here on your own, and nothing’s happened.’

  ‘No. Nothing happened before. But something happened this time didn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Tell us.’

  ‘Oh, it’s hardly worth bothering about. Just that seven men came up here from a train that was stuck in the snow. They broke in the door and they all raped me. One after another. Some of them several times.’

  Yates and Herne were quite silent as she told them in flat, calm tones what had happened the night before, lasting until well after midnight.

  ‘They took it in turns to hold me down. One man stood on my hands, digging the heels of his boots into my palms, grinding them into the floor so that I couldn’t move. Two more stripped me and held my legs as far apart as they could. It was all very funny, Jed. They laughed a lot about it, and made a lot of jokes. The sort that you enjoy, Bill. And they had bottles of whisky and they drank and laughed while they waited for their turn.’

  Uncontrollably, Jed spun away, leaning over the rail retching in the snow. Vomiting until his head sang and his eyes watered. Heaving until there was nothing to bring up only threads of yellow bile. Louise stood and watched him her eyes incurious, then went on, her voice unaltered.

  ‘I screamed a lot to start with, but it wasn’t any good. They just hit me and hit me and hit me, and in any case, Jed, you didn’t hear me and come and help. But I understand, and I forgive you for it. After a while, they became bored with the procession, and having to wait around. So they found . . . they found other ways of using me.’

  ‘No, Louise. Don’t.’ His wife had always been a shy girl, living a protected and sheltered life until he had come along and married her. On their first night, she had cried out with the pain as he took her maidenhead.

  ‘It’s well that you know it all, Jed. There were seven, of them, do you see. One would be taking me from the front, while another penetrated me from behind. They tied me to the table to make it easier for them. And one of them, the youngest, who seemed to be the leader, said he would make it a pair royal and finish the trio. So he gripped my jaws and made me open my mouth, and he rammed his …. in my mouth, and made me suck it until he spent himself. He said that he’d break out every tooth in my head if I tried to bite.’

  ‘God! Oh, my God! Oh, God! ’ Jed moaned, banging his fist against the front wall of the house, beating it until the blood flowed, but still the pain wouldn’t shut out that quiet voice, rolling on with its seemingly endless tale of horror.

  ‘What of Rachel? And Becky? In the Lord’s name where are they?’

  ‘Rachel? While they took me in this room, some of them had gone to your spread, and they brought her back. I heard them beating her in the other room, because she fought them so. After a while she was quiet, and they must have tied her to the bed. I haven’t seen her this morning.’

  ‘Becky?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps she escaped them or hid somewhere. Or perhaps they used her as they used me and then killed her. Go to your own house, William Yates, and see what you can find there. See what happens when you too leave your wife and family alone in this Hell.’

  Yates looked at her as though he wished to strike her again, for her placid and heartless answer to his question.

  ‘Bill. You see she’s in a fearful state. She hardly knows what she’s saying. Go home and see what you can do to help Rachel. And find Becky.’

  Louise walked inside, totally ignoring the men, sitting down in her favorite rocking-chair, and picking up some knitting. A small coat in white wool.

  Yates leaped for his horse, and whipped the dun into a gallop, heading the few hundred yards along the ridge, towards where his own spread stood. No smoke came from his chimney either. Snow and water splashed up from the pounding hooves. Herne watched him go, then followed his wife inside, and sat down across the room from her.

  Neither of them spoke.

  They were still sitting in exactly the same place, still silent, when they heard the hooves returning a quarter of an hour later.

  Not even bothering to tether his mare, Yates flung himself from the saddle, bursting into the room.

  ‘They ain’t there. No sign of either of them. There’s a window smashed in by the back door. But not a sign of either of them.’

  Jed stood up, while Louise carried on with her knitting, not giving a sign that she’d even heard their neighbor.

  ‘And the path’s trampled down. Three, maybe four men went that way. And bare feet with them. Coming this way. Must be Rachel. The tracks lead here. And they don’t go back again.’

  ‘What about Becky?’

  Yates looked at Herne, his eyes distraught. ‘My little girl’s not there either. No sign of her anywhere. But I found another set of tracks leaving out by our barn. Has to be her. Girl’s bare feet. Circling round below the ridge, and coming this way.’

  ‘You mean they’re still both here? But they’d have heard us by now. Louise! Bill says that he reckons Rachel and Becky are both still here.’

  He could have been asking her the price of beans for all the interest she showed. ‘Then you’d better look for them, hadn’t you?’

  They looked for them.

  And they found them both.

  Chapter Three

  The body of Rachel Yates lay in a pool of melting ice and mud at the side of the barn. Furrows in the ground showed that she had been dragged there by her heels, then thrown down. Someone, or more than one, had then kicked and beaten her to a bleeding mass of bruised flesh. Her face was almost unrecognizable; both eyes vanished beneath lumps of purple skin, her nose broken, and teeth shattered to splintered stumps by kicks to the mouth.

  She had not had an easy passing. There were marks on both breasts where cigars had been stubbed out on her white flesh, and a long knife cut ran, skin-deep, from the top of her throat, down the valley of her heavy breasts, across her stomach until it vanished in the tangled mat of her pubic hair. There was mute evidence that she had
been raped several times, and the broken top of a whisky bottle in the mud near her body suggested things too horrible to think on.

  But none of these mutilations had killed her. Death had come to Rachel Yates by way of a sharp knife pushed in the centre of her throat, and drawn with strength and skill round under the ear until it sliced through the big artery under the right ear. Then, and only then, had release come.

  The bright blood had flooded from her, washing over her bare shoulder, and soaking into the mud and ice and snow underneath her, staining it all a dirty pink.

  Louise came out and looked at the mutilated corpse of her old friend, saying nothing, simply gazing on the appalling sight, her face carved from stone.

  They had done nothing with the body. Merely covered it up with a blanket, draping it over the drained nakedness while they looked for Becky. Having seen what had been done to the wife of his neighbor, Jed Herne had no great expectations of finding Becky alive.

  In his life he’d seen enough violence and brutality to know, that the white man and the Indian were no different when it came to handing out a savage end. Scalping had been the invention of the white man. A practice that shocked the tribes of the plains and the mountains. In the year 1860, young Jed Herne had ridden for the Pony Express with; another teenage boy named Bill Cody, and they had seen appalling slaughter by the Paiutes. And after the Civil War Jed had seen action against the Apaches. But the worst brutality he had ever encountered had been during the war.

  Riding at the side of the nearest thing he ever had to a close friend, the skinny albino, Isaiah Coburn, Herne had been one of the infamous Quantrill Raiders. Just before his nineteenth birthday, he had taken part in the bloody massacre at Lawrence, when one hundred and fifty men were butchered.

  White man or Indian; cruelty wasn’t the reserve of either of them.

  Finally, near mid-day, it was Herne who found the girl.

  Alive. Unharmed.

  Unharmed physically.

  He had been looking round the barn, when he heard rustling under the pile of winter feed left in the corner. When he went cautiously over to it, he found Rebecca Yates, and she looked up at him, and hung on his neck and cried and cried, until her eyes were swollen and red and she had no more tears to cry.