Herne the Hunter 24 Read online

  Somehow, Jed doubted it.

  Chapter Seven

  That night Jed Herne slept well. No specters from his past came gibbering to haunt him. No grinning phantoms disturbed his rest. From the moment that his head lay back on the saddle, until the first light of morning eased him awake, he slept peacefully.

  With the dubious Cavalry patrol in the vicinity, as well as a large hunting-party of Chiricahua Apaches, he wasn’t about to hazard a fire, however small, so he broke his fast on some corn dodgers and jerky, given to him two days ago by the shy, pregnant Christina Nolan, before he left the train.

  As he munched, he recalled her words about her hopes for the future. Her simple, innocent wishes.

  'If only …’ he muttered, to himself, not even conscious that he’d spoken aloud.

  The sand still felt cool beneath his hands as he rolled his blanket, tying it across the back of the patient stallion. The sun was barely above the hills that sprawled behind him, throwing absurdly elongated shadows out over the broken land.

  There was no pressure on the shootist to get anywhere particular by any particular time. The main trail was badly eroded by the heavy wheels of the wagons that rolled across it, leaving deep ruts. Ruts so engraved in the landscape that they would endure for more than a hundred years, as a testament to the spirit of the pioneers.

  Jed stretched, feeling the muscles creaking in the small of his back. He checked the honed Civil War bayonet was still snug in its sheath in his right boot. That the long Sharps was still greased and loaded, wanting only the cocking of the hammer to ready it for instant action. And that the Colt at his hip was fully-loaded, one round beneath the hammer.

  As he swung easily up into the saddle he glanced behind him, wondering how far back the Austin Nick wagon train was. Hoping that they’d had no trouble with the hunting party of Chiricahua that he’d seen.

  And wondering yet again about the strange meeting with the Cavalry.

  He hadn’t been in that part of Arizona for a couple of years, but he had the ability of all great scouts to remember places from way back. Trees, or the bending of a river. The silhouette of an oddly carved mesa, or the distance to the nearest water-hole. It all stayed with him, clear in his mind.

  He knew that in another mile or so the trail forked, one going in a more southerly direction, along flatter ground, snaking in and out of a maze of ravines. The northerly path being shorter and steeper. It cut around the flank of a low, nameless mountain, then dropping quickly to a canyon. In times of water there was sweet drinking in a small pool, fringed by green bushes. Dry times like now, a traveler was lucky to even find himself some orange mud.

  The wagons would have to take the lower route. It came to Jed that the higher trail wound upwards not far from the site of one of the Apache fortresses. Lost in the wilderness of tumbled stones there was a hidden camp of the people. Wide though Herne’s knowledge was of the area, even he had no idea precisely where that place was.

  On the rising climb he slipped off the back of the stallion to rest it against the scorching heat of the morning, walking alongside, one hand loose on the reins. He paused near the top, looking backwards once more. From that additional thousand feet or so of height he could see some thirty miles off, spotting the faint smudge of pillaring dust that he knew must be the wagon train.

  He watched it for a long time.

  He heard the scream a little after noon.

  An Easterner would have assumed immediately that the noise was a woman in pain, from the high, thin sound of the scream.

  Jed had heard a lot of screaming in his better than forty years. And he knew that the strongest, bravest man, under the little flensing knives of the squaws, could scream as shrill and weak as a new-born babe. Would promise anything and betray even his own children, if only the pain could stop and he could be allowed the mercy of dying.

  Jed slipped once more from the back of the horse, tethering it quickly to a boulder. Taking the buffalo gun from the bucket near the saddle, thumbing back on the hammer. Pushing the retaining thong off the hammer of the Colt and thumbing it ready for fast action.

  Then, light-footed as a panther through long grass, he began to move on along the trail. Pausing every few steps to look all around. To his right there was a steep cliff, the trail narrowing in front of him to less than a dozen yards, with a drop of a hundred feet or so to the next ledge down.

  The scream came again, weaker, more muffled. As though someone was trying to gag the person making all the noise. Above the pleading cries, Herne could catch another sound.

  Men, laughing.

  The trail widened to a plateau, edged with loose stones, like a natural fortification. A little further on was where the path came steeply downwards. Herne’s guess was that the screaming was coming from the waterhole at the foot of the hills. Still checking behind him, he moved closer to the edge, glancing down to read the signs of who had been passing that way in the last few days. In the dry spells, if there wasn’t too much wind, it was sometimes possible for a skilled tracker to make out details of travelers from two to three weeks back.

  Jedediah Travis Herne was a very skilled tracker.

  Half a dozen mules and three horses, one missing a shoe from the near fore. Within the last half day. Could be miners. Sneaking in and looking for silver. Taking a chance if the Apaches caught them with shovels and equipment. Indians didn’t take kindly to the white men invading their traditional hunting grounds, and their most sacred canyons and high places.

  What was more interesting was that Jed could also read, clear as day, the signs of a large body of men riding shod horses, with mules in tow. At least a dozen men, moving fast. Their trail was overlaid by that of the smaller party.

  By only a short time, figured Jed.

  They weren’t miners.

  The shootist crawled the last few yards to the edge of the plateau, cautiously raising his head an inch at a time, until he could see down to the scrubby watering-place.

  What he saw answered some of his questions.

  There were two dead mules. There was a dead man and a dead woman. And a teenage boy.

  And two members of Captain Darke’s patrol.

  Troopers, wearing their sweat-stained blues. Both of them with blood dappling their breeches. Their backs were to the cliff behind them, their attention centered on the task they had in hand. Their bodies kept Herne from seeing clearly what they were doing, but he didn’t need to actually see it. The noise had been enough.

  The two dead were both Apaches. Agency Indians, dressed in a reasonable pastiche of the clothes of white people. The man was spread-eagled, wrists and ankles tied to the hilts of bayonets driven into the soft earth. His breeches were around his feet and the shirt was torn open.

  Even from Jed’s height it was easy to see that the man, who looked to be in late middle-age, had been hideously tortured. The face was a mask of drying blood, with wet pools where his eyes had been. Around the groin there were the black smudges of fire.

  The woman was less marked by torture. Her cotton dress was crumpled a few paces off from her own limp corpse and a torn bonnet was nearby. There was the mark of heavy bruising across her hips and breasts, with small wounds that Jed guessed were probably burns from cigarettes. But she had died from having her throat casually slit. A gaping wound that still leaked a little blood onto the thirsty earth.

  And the screams?

  It was an Apache youth, skinny as a freshwater eel, looking less than sixteen. Unlike the older couple, the boy was not wearing white’s clothes. He had on the soft buckskin boots of his people, and a shredded cotton shirt. His headband was still in place over long, flowing black hair. His breeches were gone.

  His hands were tied behind him with thongs of thin leather that had brought blood around the nails. There were burn marks across his chest and as he writhed about under the two soldiers, Jed could see the brightness of fresh blood around the genitals.

  He was crudely gagged with a knotted lengt
h of hemp rope, forcing his jaws apart. Muffling the pathetic cries and screaming.

  One soldier was squatting near the youth’s head, holding him between muscular thighs, trying to keep himself still. There was a dagger in the Trooper’s right hand and he held it against the Apache’s throat as an added threat. The other Cavalryman was behind the kneeling boy, his own breeches tugged down over his ankles. Pressing himself against the bared buttocks of the young Indian, thrusting as hard as he could.

  The wind had dropped during the day, and the air was hot and still, like being within a heated oven. From his height, Jed could hear the laughter of the soldiers, the one mocking the other as he pumped himself into the Chiricahua boy, tearing his tender flesh with his pounding lust.

  ‘Took me but a half minute to spend, you lazy bastard. Captain said we was to leave all dear here. Remove all sign of our passing through. Then catch ’em up.’

  ‘I’m bein’ … as … fast... as ... I … can,’ panted the other man. ‘He wriggles … like a … fuckin’ trout.’

  ‘Shall I stick him? Then you can roger his fuckin’ corpse.’

  Jed Herne watched in silence. The long Sharps fifty caliber rifle was in his hands, the butt against his shoulder. The metal warm against his cheek. His right hand was underneath the gun, index finger rock-steady on the slim trigger.

  At that range it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. As far as he could see out across the flat, open desert, the rest of the patrol were already some distance off. And a couple of shots, dimly heard, weren’t like to disturb any of them. They’d likely think it was their two friends taking their final leaving of the helpless Apache boy.

  Time was, Jed Herne would have eased the hammer down on the Sharps, and stepped quietly away from the scene of death and rape. It wasn’t his business, and there it was surely no profit in it for him.

  There was blood, bright scarlet, on the side of the teenager’s neck, as the point of the knife was pressed deeper. The cry of pain was drowned by louder, raucous bellows of cruel laughter from the soldiers.

  The boy was probably dying anyway, and to attack the soldiers could only bring Herne trouble. It wasn’t his business.

  ‘Why?’ he said, barely whispering the word.

  ‘Hell,’ he sighed. ‘Why not?’

  And squeezed the trigger of the Sharps.

  Chapter Eight

  At that range, Jed could reasonably have expected to have put a fifty caliber ball through the center pip of the five of hearts. He had aimed at the man with the knife, figuring him for much the most dangerous.

  The bullet was perfectly aimed, striking the soldier through the side of the head, just above and behind his left ear. It smashed a neat, drilling hole through the skull, flattening and distorting after the impact with the thick bone. Then slicing through the brain, barely slowed at all, exploding out a finger’s breadth behind the Trooper’s right eye. The exit-wound was four inches in diameter. Shredded brains and blood came fountaining in the still air.

  The force of the heavy bullet kicked the man clean off his feet, dumping him on his back, arms flailing, several feet away. His mouth was open, blood pouring between his lips and his heels drummed in the hot sand.

  Jed didn’t wait to see what effect the shot had on the first of the white men. He knew with total certainty that his aim was true, and the man was dead. It might take a few seconds for all the reflexes to carry the messages of death throughout the corpse, but it was over. Herne’s concern was now with the second man.

  Who pulled away fast, head turning to look for the marksman. His penis was still erect, still dribbling semen from its tip. Hampered by the breeches around his ankles he couldn’t move with any speed and he was not a difficult target for Jed’s pistol.

  The Indian slumped face down in the trampled dirt, bleeding from the neck wound, making no attempt to crawl away. Herne snapped off a shot at the scrabbling trooper, seeing the man jerk as the bullet cut into him, smashing ribs beneath the right arm. The soldier screamed, much as the Apache boy had done, rolling on his side, still trying to fumble for the pistol, holstered in his trailing breeches.

  Jed steadied his right wrist with his left hand, squeezing off two more rounds. The first of them hit home in the right .shoulder, toppling the soldier on his back. The last bullet caught him in the pit of the stomach, right where his belt buckle would have been if he’d been wearing his pants.

  The screaming stopped and he started to moan, the gun forgotten. Hands clasped to his belly where only a neat dark hole showed where he’d been hit.

  It was enough.

  Jed stood up and carefully reloaded the Sharps, walking and rebucketing it by the saddle. Swinging up and setting his heels to the stallion, moving down the steep slope of the trail, towards the waterhole. He knew there wasn’t any hurry.

  The Indian boy was lying still, blood congealing around the gaping wound in his throat. It occurred to Herne that the man he had shot with the rifle could easily have slit the Chiricahua’s neck at the moment of the bullet striking him.

  It was one of those things.

  The first soldier was clearly dead. The second one was lying in a hunched position, back against one of the scrubby bushes that fringed the muddied pool. He was moaning softly to himself, like a mother crooning to a restless child. As Herne dismounted, the trooper fell silent, looking across the water-hole at the shootist.

  ‘You done this?’

  Jed paused, considering the dying man. The breeches were no longer around the Cavalryman’s ankles. While Jed was riding down from the plateau above, he had managed to cover himself. The strange fancies that those near death often had. It wasn’t the dying; it was the dying without dignity. But the pistol was still in the buttoned holster. Herne could see the protruding barrel. The other soldier’s handgun was also visible.

  ‘I asked ifn ’twas you done me?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Friend of mine once gotten sun-blind. Threw himself into a mess of saguaros. Big spiky sons of bitches. We pulled him out. Asked the same question. Why?’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said it seemed like a good idea at the time.’

  The man came close to laughing, but the pain swam back, and he groaned. ‘That’s … Jesus, but my guts are burnin’ up.

  ‘It’ll pass,’ said Herne, walking to within ten paces of the soldier. His hand rested on the butt of the Colt. He noticed that the Apache boy was still alive, chest moving a little with shallow breathing. The two older Indians were undoubtedly dead, as was the man he’d shot himself.

  ‘But you done this for a fuckin’ little Indian bastard! Killed one of your own.’

  ‘You aren’t one of my own, soldier.’

  ‘You a fuckin’ Indian-lover?’

  ‘No.’

  Recognition dawned. ‘Jesus! Scout from the train. We was for killin’ you. Captain said it weren’t worth it. Might scare them off. Should have fuckin’ done it. Done it ... done it then.’

  The pieces of the puzzle came rushing together in Herne’s brain. The answers to all of the questions that had bothered him.

  ‘You’re renegades.’

  It wasn’t a question. But the trooper chose to answer it. ‘No. Just some good old boys wanted … wanted some funnin’ and found the man to lead us.’

  ‘You’re all Cavalry?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That’s how you get close. Ride up to the ranches. Or the stages … Easy as that. Just murder them and try and fake it to blame the Apaches.’

  ‘Sure should have put a ball through your fuckin’ skull when we could. Yeah … yeah, that’s all ’bout right. You’re the first one to guess.’

  ‘Clever way of … Captain Darke … He really an officer? He acts well.’

  ‘Was. We was all with the Fifth. Captain kind of talked to us all, one at a time. Picked us. Best men in the regiment. Christ, but it pains me, mister.’

  ‘Now where have the o
thers gone?’

  ‘I surely fuckin’ don’t know.’

  Jed drew his Colt and carefully put a bullet through the trooper’s right knee, shattering the fragile joint, causing exquisite agony for the dying man.

  ‘That’s for lyin’, soldier. Where are the others? I got three more bullets in the handgun, and plenty more ifn I need them.’

  ‘I’m fuckin’ goin’, you cold-hearted bastard! I never hurt you.’

  ‘You’ve killed and raped and tortured,’ replied the shootist, voice cold as a last morning. ‘There isn’t much that I can claim to have done, soldier, but I can say I maybe left the earth a mite cleaner than it was before. Now, tell me where the rest have gone.’

  ‘Ways north.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Jesus, I’m freezin’, mister. You got any drinkin’ liquor?’

  ‘I wouldn’t waste it on scum like you, ifn I had. That patrol. That all there is?’

  The man hesitated, then he saw Herne cock the pistol and start to aim it. ‘Christ, don’t shoot me again, mister. I don’t have long.’

  ‘I didn’t hear the reply.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s all there is of us. Captain, and Sergeant Quincannon. Dozen troopers. I think I’m goin’, but it hurts bad.’

  ‘So they say. They plan to hit the train?’

  Time was slipping away faster. He could see the eyes beginning to wander, blinking, finding it hard to reach a focus. The blood was hardly flowing at all from any of the wounds.

  ‘They plan to hit the train, soldier?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s the plan. Day after tomorrow. Come at them. But that wagon-master was fuckin’ suspicious. Didn’t rightly trust us. Should … should have fuckin’ shot him as well as you.’

  A few steps away, the Indian boy groaned, coughing, bringing up a light froth, tinted crimson. Jed looked across at him, the germ of an idea filtering through his brain. Not an idea that carried any percentage of profit with it. But that seemed to be mattering less and less to him over the last few weeks.