Herne the Hunter 24 Read online

  There were a couple of dozen adults, at his best count, with some fewer children. It was always hard to count the little ones, as they were scampering about and under and round the can vas-topped rigs. Some of them were being washed in iron tubs of steaming water, and their shrieks and laughter carried to the ears of the lone man on the high ground above.

  After a while he kicked at the sides of the horse, pushing it forward at a fast walk, onto the flat ground, towards the ring of wagons.

  He was still 200 paces off when someone spotted him.

  ‘Hold it, there!’

  ‘Ho, the wagons! ‘ he replied. ‘One man, coming on in.’

  ‘Come a mite closer and take it easy.’

  He did as he was bid, noticing that at least eight men were covering him with rifles, watching him carefully. And that most of the other adults on the train, with the children who weren’t stuck in the tubs, had also come to stare. Which left the far side of the circle bare and exposed if he’d had a band of thieves with him. But that wasn’t any of his business.

  He was halted again fifty paces off.

  ‘What’s your name and your business, mister?’ The voice came from a tall, lean man, holding a Winchester cradled in his arms.

  ‘I’m passin’ through, headin’ west.’

  ‘Same as us. The name?’

  ‘Jed Herne.’

  The rifle shifted, so that one hand now lay under the barrel, the other by the trigger.

  ‘Herne the Hunter? I heard word you was dead.’

  Jed shook his head. ‘Kind of an exaggeration. Maybe a mite older but not dead.’

  ‘You on a bounty?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not after someone on this train?’

  ‘Not that I know it. You got a train of killers and robbers, Mister…?’

  ‘Name’s Nicholas Pilch. They call me Austin Nick, from Texas.’

  ‘Heard of you. Can I stop off for the night? Maybe have some of that fine-smellin’ stew your ladies have brewed up there?’

  Austin Nick nodded. ‘Sure. Come ahead, Herne. Be glad to have a man like you with us. Seein’ as how folks talk of ’pache troubles.’

  Herne walked the horse forward, through the gap that two men opened for him. He could tell immediately that the travelers in the wagons had heard of him. Leastways some of them had. And the others were catching up in hurried groups, whispering, looking in his direction.

  There was a feeling of security and friendliness within the circle of high-sided Conestogas, and Jed found himself beginning to relax for the first time in several months.

  ‘You seen any Indians?’ asked Nicholas Pilch, kneeling beside Herne as the shootist prepared his bed-roll, against a wheel of one of the rigs.

  ‘A few Apaches, last evening. Watching me from the mouth of an arroyo.’

  The wagon-master nodded. Herne noticed that the man’s Winchester was never out of his hands. He liked that. A man goes ready for trouble is less likely to find it than a man who doesn’t.

  ‘Word in this region is of some evil bastards. Ranches burned, and stages robbed.’

  It was Herne’s turn to nod. ‘I heard that. Seen some. Smoke. Seen one of the stages.’

  ‘Bad?’

  ‘As can be.’

  ‘Jicarilla?’

  ‘They said Chiricahua.’

  Austin Nick had the eyes of a frontier scout. Permanently narrowed, used to staring over great distances to unseeable horizons. They were clear blue, startlingly light in the tanned face. Now they examined Herne closely.

  ‘You said that like you aren’t so .damned sure of it.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Tell me, Mr. Herne.’

  ‘Name’s Jed.’

  ‘Nick. Tell me, Jed.’

  ‘There were things didn’t set right about that Butterfield got raided, back at Bulmer’s Wells.’

  He told the scout about the weapons, and the torturing of the woman.

  ‘You say she had real pretty hair and they left it on?’ Nick shook his head. ‘That’s surely not their way. But we’ve seen no sign of any whites likely to cause real trouble.’

  ‘None at all?’

  Nick laughed. ‘Not less’n you count a patrol of the Fifth Cavalry.’

  ‘I haven’t seen a dog-face in more weeks than I can recall. Big patrol?’

  ‘Yeah. Around fourteen men. And a captain. They came out of the mist one morning, four days ago. Rode in to about a hundred paces, then moved off. Officer gave me a right cheerful wave. Guess they was after those Indians. If it is Indians.’

  ‘Odd they didn’t come in to ask if you’d seen any sign of any…’

  But Herne was interrupted by the arrival of one of the women on the train. With a bosom like a grain-carrier rounding the Horn, she bore down on the shootist and Pilch with a smile on her face as big as all outdoors.

  ‘We have some excellent stew, Mr. Pilch. With some fresh bread and dried fruit. Agatha and I would deem it a great honor if you and Mr. Herne would join us for a repast.’

  The food was as good as they’d promised. Herne was used to meeting women of a ‘certain age’ - and a little beyond it - out on the frontier. Life was hard and bleak, and some men didn’t make it. Generally, their women were of tougher stock and survived. Often on the lookout for a fresh companion.

  Agatha Wells kept disappearing into the bowels of their rig, reappearing with a fresher, rosy tint to her cheeks, her breath delicately flavored with more than a hint of gin. She and Teresa Harknett were quite overcome at having two unattached men as their dining companions and they almost fell over each other in their efforts to offer more coffee or an extra helping of the stew.

  It was close on nine o’clock before Jed and Nick could break away with polite excuses about having to check on the sentries and watch out for hostile Indians.

  ‘I pity any poor devil falls into their hands once they hit San Francisco,’ grinned Pilch, wiping away beads of perspiration from his forehead with a large spotted kerchief. ‘Guess they’d have to tie his ankles to the bottom of the bed to have any hope of saving him.’

  It was a good wagon train. Jed Herne was impressed with the easy-going humor of the leader, seeing’ that it hid a steely professionalism that permitted no breach of camp discipline. The guards were all in place, each of them knowing precisely what he should do in any kind of emergency.

  And the folks were pleasant, each of them eager to offer coffee, or something stronger, to the stranger in their midst.

  As evening passed quietly into night, Jed found himself with a foursome of young hopefuls. Bart Harvey and Jack Nolan, with their pretty, pregnant wives, Dorothy and Christina. There was a coffee pot on the small fire and every now and again one of the women would rise and offer it to the three men.

  The women spoke little, and the husbands were particularly interested in Jed’s tales. Sensing the fear that overlaid the questions, the shootist did what he could to try and reassure them that serious Indian trouble was very rare. That the bad days were over and done and most of the warriors now lived on reservations.

  ‘It’s still mighty hard to do what you folks are doin’,’ he said. ‘To give up everything and pack your lives on the back of a wagon and just head off west.’

  Bart was a serious, balding man in his thirties. ‘That may be so, Mr. Herne. But I was a cutter for a man who made gentleman’s vests. I’ve worked with thirty other men and women in a room nineteen feet by fourteen, with no window. In the lower part of New York. In winter we froze and in summer we stifled.’

  Jack Nolan leaned forwards. He was a small, sharp-faced fellow, with the remains of an English accent. ‘I came over twelve years ago. I was ten years old. Me Mum and me Dad both died of the wastin’ illness the first winter and I lived where I could. I’m a skilled man, Mr. Herne. With Bart here, it’s cloth. With me, it’s glass. Him and me lived within a scant quarter mile of each other and never laid eyes on each other ’til we was a day out from the town of Indepen
dence. My story’s his, and likewise.’

  It was a story that Herne could barely understand. He’d visited the big cities, and hated them. Hated the noise and the bustle and the clogging stink of the thousands of fires that filled the air with flecks of choking soot. He’d passed the jammed tenements, where families who had fled from the miseries of Europe found the New World precious little altered from the Old.

  He smiled as Dorothy Harvey leaned over him, offering more coffee, the handle of the pot wrapped in a linen cloth to protect her fingers from the heat. The sprigged muslin of her long dress bulged across the stomach with the swelling new life. She saw him looking at her condition and she blushed prettily.

  ‘And this hardship … this damned long journey … it’s worth it?’

  It was Christina Nolan that answered him, squatting awkwardly on a grey blanket, across the dying fire from him.

  ‘It’s not for us. Not for Jack and Dorothy and Bart and me. It’s for this.’ Patting her body, leaving the palm of her hand pressed against the new life within her. ‘It’s for him and for Dorothy’s little one. And their brothers and sisters to come.’

  ‘And their children, and their children,’ added the other woman.

  ‘Just to be able to live and grow, clean and free,’ continued Christina. ‘That’s all that matters. That way you feel you’re ... I guess this sounds pretty foolish, but…’

  ‘Go on.’ said Herne.

  ‘It’s just that when we pass on to the choir celestial, and all our mortal remains are departed from the earth, we’ll sort of live on through our children and their families. It’s just a chance to do something right and leave something good behind. You know what I mean, Mr. Herne?’

  Jed nodded, lost for words at the simple honesty of the two families. Envying them their plain aspirations and wishes.

  Shortly after, he excused himself and went to his own sleeping-place. Muttering a ‘Goodnight’ to the tiny ramrod of the train, the New Englander, Paddy Neumann. The noises of the train subsided quickly, with only a crying baby to keep him awake. But that finally ceased and well before midnight there was stillness. Stillness broken only by the muttered exchanges of the sentries as they passed each other on their rounds.

  A wagon train was off and rolling by dawn, so early nights were always the order.

  Herne rarely dreamed. But that night, locked into a deep sleep, he found himself wandering alone through a bizarre landscape, surrounded by towering peaks of jagged, grey rock. His feet slowed by deep dust, making his progress silent, laborious.

  And all the time he felt possessed by fear. Fear of something, nameless, shapeless that was following him. Moving faster, yet never in sight. Time after time in the dream Jed turned to look behind him , panting for breath in the oppressive stillness, but there was never anything to be seen.

  Yet, in his heart, he knew that whatever it was, was catching him up. And that at any moment it would appear and that would be the end of it all.

  In the morning he made a hasty farewell to Austin Nick and rode away westwards, alone.

  Chapter Six

  Throughout the next day Jed rode on, his mind filled with memories of the past. The few men he had called friends. The one woman with whom he had truly been in love, and whose death had sent him back on the vengeance trail. Names and faces from times past.

  Not worth forgetting.

  There was a moment, as the sun beat down directly above him, that the shootist seriously considered returning to the wagon-train. Riding along with them until they reached the Pacific. Sharing their optimism and their hopes. It might recharge his own spirits that had lately seemed sunk so low.

  It was late afternoon when he saw the column of dust that rose swirling from the desert, showing the presence of mounted men. Herne reined in, standing in the stirrups to try and make them out. Ready to set spurs to the stallion if they were Indians.

  But he made out the guidon fluttering in the wind of the United States Cavalry. The troopers riding in double column. Twelve of them. Then a galloper with the Fifth Cavalry pennant. Then a stout sergeant, bouncing uncomfortably in the saddle. And the officer at their head. The silver badges of rank showing him to be a captain. They were riding to Jed’s right, on a course that brought them slowly converging, closing in to less than fifty paces.

  Herne waved a hand, receiving a wave from the officer in return. But the patrol seemed to have no great wish to narrow the gap and his mind went back to what Austin Nick had said. It must be the same patrol, out hunting Apaches. On an impulse he turned the head of his horse towards the cantering platoon.

  ‘Whoa,’ called the captain, the sergeant repeating the order, the soldiers straggling to an untidy halt.

  Jed pulled up his horse, walking it in to stop a few yards from the officer.

  ‘Good day to you,’ said Herne.

  ‘And to you, sir,’ replied the officer with a casual salute. The men were busily brushing trail-dust off their dark blue shirts, beating at the pale blue pants with the one and a half inch yellow stripe. Jed noticed that few of them seemed to be carrying Army issue weapons. The rifles were mainly Winchesters, the handguns, Colts. Few of them wore the heavy sabers on their hips. But at the rear were a string of a dozen pack-mules, carrying supplies. Possibly carrying other weaponry.

  ‘After ’paches?’

  ‘Indeed we are, sir. Indeed we are. Have you seen any sign of a wagon train?’

  ‘Yesterday. Coming this way.’

  ‘Dozen wagons?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You their scout?’

  ‘No.’

  The captain had a fresh, rosy-cheeked complexion, lacking either beard or moustache. His manner was open, bluff and hearty. Herne figured him for one of those West Pointers with rich parents who was serving a few years in the Cavalry, before retiring into the family business. He looked to be about thirty.

  Jed instinctively disliked him.

  ‘Then what’s your business in these parts? If I may ask?’

  ‘You can ask, Captain. But the business is my own. It stays that way.’

  The smile thinned a moment and the green eyes narrowed. ‘It is not good policy to obstruct the military on their lawful patrol, Mister…?’

  ‘Name’s Herne. And you’re…?’

  ‘Captain Darke. James Darke, at your service, Mr. Herne.’

  The name didn’t mean anything to the officer, but Jed had noticed a movement and whispering among the troopers. Someone recognized the name. He also noticed that the fat sergeant was slowly edging his horse around behind him, as though to cover him in case of trouble.

  ‘Captain Darke from… which outfit, Captain?’

  The smile was thinner. ‘You see the flag, Mr. Herne. The Fifth. Any more than that is our business. And it stays that way.’

  The sergeant had worked his horse slowly until he was directly behind Jed. The shootist was conscious of some signal being passed from the officer, but he resisted the temptation to look around. There was something wrong about the patrol, but Jed couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.

  His first thought had been that they were a party of renegade whites who’d stolen an Army supply wagon and were using that as their front for robbery. Probably even the very group that had hit the stage outside Bulmer’s Wells. But that didn’t sit right with what his eyes told him.

  These were undoubtedly soldiers. Maybe they were a little slovenly, but that was often the case on some of the patrols that ranged out from their bases for weeks on end, often living off the land. But nobody could pretend the way they wore their uniforms, and the way they sat their horses in the high McClellan saddles.

  ‘You travelin’ alone, Mr. Herne?’ asked the officer, flicking irritably at some flies that clustered around his face, waving them away with the leather gauntlets.

  ‘Sure.’ On an impulse. Doin’ some work for a Territorial marshal up north. Meetin’ him in a couple of days or so.’

  ‘Where?’

>   ‘Yuma, but now we’re gettin’ in towards things that fail into being my business, Captain Darke.’

  The round, smiling face became impassive, as the man considered something. It was like seeing a bustling house suddenly abandoned. Jed had never met a man who devoted so much concentration to his thinking.

  The troopers watched in silence. Despite the relaxed way they sat their horses, Jed was seized by the feeling that they too were waiting for something to happen. Some signal. A word.

  He didn’t know.

  But the sixth sense kept the short hairs at the base of his neck prickling uncomfortably. Suddenly, the soldier smiled again. The house once more had its tenant.

  ‘Then we mustn’t keep you, Mr. Herne. The Lord Himself knows that it is not the way of the United States Cavalry to hinder the lawful business of officers such as your good self.’

  It was a flowery, amicable speech.

  And at its conclusion the sergeant, sweating like a stuck pig, reappeared at the edge of Herne’s vision, a yeasty smile pasted to his face.

  Jed nodded. ‘Sure. You go carefully now, after those Apaches. Keep a good watch.’

  Darke took off his slouch hat and waved it courteously at the shootist. ‘Why, I thank you, sir. And on behalf of myself and my men I too wish you well on your own journey.’

  He turned to face the sergeant, giving him a wave of the hand. ‘Forward, Mr. Quincannon.’

  ‘Forward, it is, sir.’

  Herne sat his stallion, immobile as a statue, watching through the springing curtain of red dust as the Cavalry patrol moved forwards, away from him. Going at a steady canter, heading westwards, veering after a hundred yards or so in the direction of a line of low hills to the north. Several of the troopers turned to look in his direction as they went, but the officer sat upright, looking neither to left nor right. The very model of an earnest, conscientious young officer.

  Herne had rarely met anyone that he had so disliked on such a brief acquaintanceship. The hairs at the back of his neck still prickled, and he felt cold.

  Something was wrong about the unit of soldiers, Herne couldn’t quite work out what it was. Maybe they were just an ordinary platoon of pony-soldiers, going about their business.