Silver Threads Page 5

  He was about the best.

  Slightly higher than him, standing up the slope of the street, the kid took the first bullet in the pit of the stomach. With his pistol still not clear of the holster. The .45 slug kicking him a couple of steps back, the gun dropping from his fingers. Both hands reaching for the wound as if he couldn’t believe what was happening. Eyes staring wide, jaw gaping in shock.

  It would probably have been enough. Any bullet that got itself buried deep in your stomach in 1885 would generally kill you.

  Quick or slow. Often slow. And painful.

  Jed wasn’t in the waiting mood.

  ‘One to kill them. Two to set your mind easy.’ That was what someone had once said to him. Couldn’t recall the name. Might have been that ex-officer. Caleb something. Thorn. Or maybe it was the man that folks just called Crow. No other name. Probably Crow. Meanest and coldest son of a bitch Jedediah Herne had ever met. Cavalry man.

  The second bullet took the young boy’s feet the last steps along the road to the shrine of death.

  The kid was fighting to straighten up from the bullet in the stomach when the second slug hit him. Ripping his throat apart, snapping splinters of bone from the top of his spine, and bursting on through the back of his neck in a gout of bright arterial blood.

  He dropped to his knees, coughing, hands resting in the dirt. Gripping the small stones of the street so hard that Herne could actually hear the boy’s nails snapping and tearing backwards as the pain beat him down.

  Blood pattered in the sand, loud in the quietness, clearly audible even above the noise of the Clearwater River and a sigh from the crowd. The ragged breathing of the dying boy, bubbling through the frothing blood from his lungs, was the only other sound. Herne watched him, the smoking pistol still in his fist, a cartridge ready under the cocked hammer.

  ‘Herne ...’panted the kid, raising his head with an agonizing effort.

  ‘What is it, son?’ asked the older man, stepping a few paces nearer.

  ‘Herne ... They said... to me...’ A coughing fit interrupted him and he slid forwards on his face, the blood flowing more slowly from the wounds at front and back of his neck. Barely trickling from the other wound in his stomach.

  Jed took another couple of steps, trying to hear what the kid was saying. Watching him carefully in case he was going to try a last trick. The fallen pistol was only inches from the boy’s clawing fingers.

  ‘Who told you, son?’ he asked.

  ‘They…’

  ‘They?’

  The face turned up to him, slobbered with blood, bubbles smeared across his mouth. Spotting the blue shirt and dappling the white jacket. The boy’s eyes were veiling over as he became preoccupied with the mystery of his own dying.

  ‘The...’

  The bullet smashed into the back of his skull, bouncing his face in the dirt. Herne spun around at the shot, gun seeking out who’d fired it. Seeing the pistol in the chubby hand of Sheriff Matthew Daley. Who waved it apologetically at him before holstering it.

  ‘Sorry, Mr. Herne. Thought I saw him going for his gun.’

  Jed looked down, seeing that the boy’s hand was close to the butt of the pistol, the fingers now relaxing in death. Looking up again into the frank, open face of the ageing lawman.

  ‘That’s the case then I got to thank you. And I got to go lookin’ for someone else owes you a debt of thanks.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Persons the kid was goin’ to name before you blasted the words off his lips.’

  ‘What are you sayin’ Herne?’ asked Daley, fingers hooked belligerently in his wide belt.

  ‘I’m sayin’ nothing, Sheriff. And neither is he.’

  Chapter Five

  Four days drifted by and not a great deal happened in Wild Rose City.

  Jed Herne moved his saddlebags and Sharps rifle into the Sowren mansion, and his horse into the luxurious stable at the back of the sprawling house, on the side overlooking the cemetery.

  The weather changed for the worse.

  It had been perfect spring days, when Jed reached the town. The Dakota Territory looking at its best in the warm greening. Now the skies had darkened, the whole region buried under a leaden pall. Old-timers said the rains were coming, but each day stayed dry. The wind rose, kicking up dust across the river, whipping up the clouds from north to south. And it became colder.

  It was a cold day when they buried the kid that Herne had gunned down. Nobody went. Jed didn’t see much point and it seemed that there wasn’t anyone else in the whole of Wild Rose that knew him. Which was strange. Considering the reception Jed had received from Sheriff Daley when he thought he was a saddle tramp. Yet there was this kid, a born killer from his looks, drinking alone and in style in the saloon. The town was an enigma shrouded in mystery.

  On the kid’s grave they stuck a wooden marker. It didn’t say much. Wasn’t much to say. The day and the month and the year. And the words: ‘A boy of about eighteen not so fast as he figured’. It was a fair enough epitaph.

  ~*~

  There wasn’t a whole lot Jed could do. He’d been hired to try and prevent any shipments from Mount Morgoth being stolen. Since there wasn’t a shipment due for a couple of weeks, he considered going and trying to gain some information from other mines in the area. But this was checked by Eliza Sowren.

  ‘We are having an excellent year at our mine, Mr. Herne. And it is our mine and ours alone that you have been hired to protect. Let the other owners look to their own precautions. We all know each other around here. Indeed, some of my family have on occasions ridden out to try and help other shipments get through. But this is a different matter. You are not family, Mr. Herne.’

  ‘Indeed not, sister,’ Lily had said, appearing suddenly in the room from upstairs. Herne had noticed that the massively overweight sister disappeared to her room most afternoons for a rest. Yet he sometimes heard the noise of movement and once, as he passed by, he was sure he could hear her groaning in the room. If it hadn’t been locked he might have risked a look in from simple curiosity, even though it was none of his business.

  ‘It is none of your business, Mr. Herne,’ Eliza had continued. ‘Kindly remain in Wild Rose City or at the mine. Sheriff Daley or one of the other boys will accompany you if you travel to Mount Morgoth. It is a perilous region with many abandoned shafts and pits there. We would not wish anything to happen to you.’

  ‘Indeed not, sister,’ added Lily.

  ‘Indeed not, ladies,’ Herne had felt bound to say, bowing to both of them. It was a strange job.

  ~*~

  He decided that he must get to the mine, and try and have a word with the nervous Mr. Zimmerman. Jed wished he could have shaken off his tail, but whenever he wanted to leave the immediate limits of Wild Rose, there was always someone there. Generally the sheriff. Sometimes the fat mayor, Julius. Once it was the solemn Joab, riding a sedate chestnut mare.

  But he was never alone.

  Once he’d tried to slip casually away, but there was Matthew Daley. Sitting on his horse, chewing on a piece of tobacco, spitting a brown stream in the dirt in front of Herne’s stallion. Grinning at him.

  If he was ever going to get to the bottom of the layers of mystery that covered the problem, Jed knew that he’d have to step easy and clever.

  So he simply called in at the office of the lawman and said he wanted to go up to the mine and would Matthew come along.

  They rode together, mainly in silence, through the dull morning, along the winding trail to the mine.

  ‘Looks like there’s some dirty weather on the way, Jedediah,’ said Daley.

  ‘Looks that way. The Clearwater’s high, considering the warm spell. That melt water?’

  ‘Yeah. If’n we get rain now like the sky looks, it could burst over. Happened before. Guess it’ll happen again. Who do you want to see up there?’

  ‘Manager. Just look around.’

  ‘Sure. Bob Zimmerman’s a funny guy. Kind of nervy. Know what
I mean?

  ‘Can’t say I do.’

  ‘Kind of sees things aren’t there.’

  ‘Ghosts?’

  Daley reined in his horse, turning to stare at Herne. ‘You know I don’t mean that.’

  Since the efficient way Jed had disposed of the kid, the sheriff had been more respectful towards him. Taking care with him.

  ‘Then what do you mean, Sheriff?’

  ‘I mean you shouldn’t listen too careful to some of the things he says.’

  ‘Come on, Daley. Either crap or get the Hell off the pot. What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean Zimmerman’s a liar. Dreamer. He got wounded back in the war.’

  ‘So did lots of guys. I did.’

  ‘Sure I know that. Lots of innocent people got hurt in it.’

  For a moment Herne’s mind flashed back to the dreadful massacre at Lawrence, Kansas. When he and the albino, Whitey Coburn, rode with Quantrill and his infamous Raiders. Plenty of innocent people killed amid the flames and slaughter of that doomed town. iii

  ‘So what’s special about Zimmerman?’

  ‘Morphine.’

  ‘Got its hooks in him?’

  Daley nodded. ‘Yeah. They gave him that heroin stuff to get him off the morphine. Then that caught him. They call it...’

  ‘The “Army Disease”,’ interrupted Herne. ‘I know that. And the manager’s caught it?’

  ‘So they say. Reckons he’s clear of it now. But he’s kind of strange. I’ll stick around while you talk to him, if’n you don’t mind.’

  ‘I don’t mind at all, Sheriff,’ replied Herne, deciding there and then to do everything in his power to get to talk to the mysterious Zimmerman alone.

  ~*~

  The manager of the Mount Morgoth mine looked even more pale and nervous than when Herne had seen him first nearly a week ago. His curly hair was straggled and uncombed, strands of it stuck to his high forehead. Sweat trickled down the side of his nose as he greeted them, even though the day was quite cool. His eyes flicked from man to man, yet never quite looking at either of them. And he licked his lips a lot.

  Jed had seen people infected by a need for morphine, and for the newer drug, heroin, before and he thought he recognized some of the symptoms. The haggard face and sunken eyes. The way Zimmerman’s hands constantly played with each other, the fingers tangling and knotting.

  ‘Good to see you, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Anything special I can do for you?’

  ‘Herne wants a look around. That’s all. I came with him because a mine and smelting plant can be kind of dangerous, can’t they, Bob?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, Sheriff, they can.’

  ‘And we don’t want any foolish mistakes or accidents, do we?’

  Zimmerman attempted a laugh that didn’t work. And a smile to go with it that never even made it as far as his lips.

  ‘Sure don’t. Guess the Misses Sowren wouldn’t take to that, Sheriff.’

  ‘Guess not. Let’s get to it, shall we?’

  ‘Sure thing. Anything Mr. Herne specially wants to see?’ Glancing sideways at Jed.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Everything, Mr. Zimmerman. I’d like to see just about everything.’

  ~*~

  It was like a lot of other mines in other towns. There didn’t seem anything special about it. The refinery was working flat-out, even though there seemed rather less activity on the actual ore-mining side of the operation.

  Jed picked his moment to play a hunch. Waiting until they were in the refinery, amid the noise and bustle and heat and stink. Choosing an opportunity when some trucks were being wheeled past along rusted rails. Their axles squeaking and grinding. Sheriff Daley was temporarily cut off from Zimmerman and Herne.

  ‘Miss Sowren said the mine was well down on last year, Mr. Zimmerman,’ he said.

  If he’d whispered that he was really Pope Leo XIII visiting America in disguise he would hardly have got a better reaction.

  ‘What?’ said the manager. But the word somehow got lost between his brain and his mouth and no sound actually came out. He tried again. ‘She said that?’

  ‘Yes. Said the mine wasn’t doing all that well, this year.’

  ‘But I thought that Miss Eliza and Miss Lily had promised ...’

  Daley spotted the private moment and came quickly over to them, cursing as he dodged the line of clattering trucks.

  ‘Promised what, Zimmerman?’

  Herne got in before the stammering manager could reply.

  ‘I was saying that Miss Eliza had said what a great year Mount Morgoth was having. Mr. Zimmerman was telling me that the ladies had promised not to mention it here in case the men wanted more money and used it as an excuse.’

  It was a clever lie. Hardly on the spur of the moment as Herne was ready for the Sheriff to try and catch him out. But it worked.

  ‘That so, Mr. Zimmerman?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That true, what Mr. Herne here said? Is it right?

  ‘Yes. Of course, Sheriff. What Mr. Herne said is quite correct. Absolutely correct in every single detail. Correct.’

  Herne was glad that Daley was moving, not noticing the way that the manager’s hands were shaking. Zimmerman excused himself for a few minutes shortly after that, mumbling something about a little dog. Herne didn’t catch what, but it seemed to be an excuse to get away and regain the nervous state that passed, in his case, for composure.

  When he reappeared he did look better and Jed wondered whether he had given himself an injection of the drug that Daley claimed possessed him.

  At the end of the tour all three men walked to the top of the hill that dominated the area, looking back towards Wild Rose City. Herne noticed that the Sowren’s great mansion commanded a view over an amazing expanse of land. From their upper windows the sisters were able to look out not only over their own little kingdom of the town, but also clean across the knife-edged canyons to the mine and smelting plant.

  ‘Is there anything else you wish to see, Mr. Herne?’ asked the little man, now keeping his hands firmly in the pockets of his gray jacket. Perhaps to hide his nerves from Daley.

  ‘I don’t think so, thanks, Mr. Zimmerman. You’ve shown me all there is, I guess.’

  ‘Oh, no. Given a better opportunity I believe I could show you much, much more.’

  The sheriff was gazing homewards, taking little notice of the social requirements of their leaving, and he didn’t seem to hear the emphasis that Zimmerman gave to his last words. Nor did he see the glance that the manager gave Herne. A look of entreaty that bordered on desperation.

  ‘Good day to you, sir,’ said Herne, shaking hands with Zimmerman. Blinking as he felt something pressed in his fingers by the manager. But giving no other sign of his surprise.

  ‘Good day, Mr. Herne. I hope we shall meet again.’

  ‘I hope so. Coming Sheriff?’

  ‘Sure,’ grunted Daley. ‘So long, Zimmerman. You take care now, you hear?’

  ‘Of course, Sheriff. So long.’

  As they walked away Jed looked back once and saw the slight figure standing alone on the side of the tip of waste ore. Looking somehow isolated—and vulnerable.

  ~*~

  On the short ride back to Wild Rose, Herne reassured Daley that he thought Zimmerman a nervous old woman. The sheriff reined in and glanced across at him with a sly grin on his beefy face.

  ‘Wouldn’t use an expression like that around town if’n I was you, Herne.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Nervous old woman. My aunts might be old women but you better not make the mistake of thinkin’ they’re nervous. They ain’t.’

  Herne didn’t reply. Waiting until he was alone in the stable at the mansion at the top of the hill to reach in his own pocket and pull out the note that Zimmerman had pushed in his hand as he left the Mount Morgoth mine. It was scrawled in pencil and showed the panic of the manager in its hasty composition.

  ‘You know trut
h silver roberys all around meet sunup tomorow where river bends back of Monroe place.’ It wasn’t signed.

  It didn’t need to be.

  Chapter Six

  The Clearwater had risen better than two feet during the night.

  It was a sure sign that rain had been falling heavily up in the high country of the Dakotas, adding to the burden of the melt run-off.

  Herne stood under a small grove of cottonwoods, scarcely visible in the pearly light of early morning, waiting to see if Zimmerman would keep his nerve long enough to show up for their meeting.

  It had been easy to get out of the Sowren mansion without being observed. The servants who rose before dawn had their quarters at the back of the house, and nobody saw Jed as he crept silently out. The sky was lightening towards the east, with the first signs of the false dawn, but it would be a full hour or more before it became properly light. By then he hoped that his business would be finished and he could be safely back in the high feather-bed with the polished brass frame.

  The sky was completely clouded over and a thin mist hung across the lower end of the valley, its tendrils reaching halfway up Main Street, about to the dry goods store. But stopping short of the Sowren house as if it didn’t dare to come any closer without incurring the wrath of the redoubtable ladies sleeping within.

  Herne bent down and picked up a handful of tiny pebbles, flicking them absently into the surging waters of the river.

  Hunching his shoulders protectively against the cold and damp. There was so much water carried in the air that it didn’t make a lot of difference whether it was actually raining or not The effect was the same. For a moment he wished he’d brought out his oilskin, but it was an impossible garment to wear or carry quietly, with its crackling folds, and he decided he’d made the right decision. It wouldn’t be a good thing if Miss Eliza or Miss Lily were to see him meeting secretly with their mine manager. Though what Zimmerman had to tell him was beyond Herne’s guesswork. But it had to be worth hearing.

  He glanced back up the hill and wondered whether it would be possible for anyone in the house to see him, Deciding that they couldn’t. It was a good quarter mile and the visibility was very poor.