Shadow of the Vulture Page 6

  A few drinks he needed; sleep he needed; he could not remember when he had last eaten and perhaps it was food that he needed most of all. As for what the lovely saloon owner was offering–it was the last thing that he either needed or desired at that moment.

  ‘Jed,’ she breathed softly.

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘What you did out there...it was wonderful.’

  ‘Was it?’ he murmured.

  ‘Jed, you know what I mean. You were good, really good.’

  Herne looked at her but did not reply.

  Her hand found its way back to his knee. ‘I want to thank you, Jed. Those men have been asking for trouble for a long time now. They needed bringing down like that.’

  ‘You seemed to greet them pretty friendly,’ said Herne with an edge to his voice.

  She withdrew her hand and sipped at her drink. ‘What else could I do? I couldn’t stand up against them and there isn’t anyone else in Charity who could have done it for me. All I could hope to do was to stay on their good side.’

  ‘You sure seemed to have that operation off well.’ The sarcasm in Herne’s tone was even more marked.

  ‘Jed!’ Rosie’s voice rose in protest. ‘What are you sounding so bitter about?’

  ‘Lady,’ he said, leaning forward, ‘you do realize, don’t you, that had you not come and made a play for me when you did, I would have been left to walk out of there without anything happening?’

  ‘Why, Jed, I never thought about it.’

  Herne slammed his empty glass down on the low table and leaped to his feet. There was a fierce anger in his eyes that Rosie did not like. She had seen it before. And too recently for her to forget it. She had seen it when he had faced the man who had attacked her with the broken bottle. She did not like it directed towards herself. It told her all too clearly that here was a man who was dangerous; a man who spent all of his life walking on a razor’s edge between life and death,

  ‘Whatever you do, lady, don’t ever make the mistake of trying to take me for a fool!’ His lips were set in a snarl and his finger jabbed at her to reinforce what he was saying.

  ‘Jed, I...’

  He flung back his hand and she cowered back, terrified that he was going to slap her around the face. The pain from her roughly bandaged arm was already sending waves of sickness through her stomach and up to her brain.

  ‘I’ll spell it out for you the way I see it,’ Herne stormed. ‘You correct me if I’m wrong. Those fellers have been coming in for quite a while and getting louder and louder, more and more difficult to control. You’d tried charming ‘em and that had worked for a time, but it was wearing off and you were getting frightened. You could see them running riot and wrecking your whole operation. And then I came in.

  ‘You heard about my showdown with Brodie earlier and thought there was a chance I could get those cowboys off your back. If it went wrong and I lost out, then you weren’t in any worse a position than before. If it worked then I’d get my just rewards and you’d send me on my way.’

  Rosie turned away from him and faced the door.

  Herne cut through the silence. What’s the matter, lady? That getting too near to the truth for you? Admit it, you played me for a sucker. You came up and bought me for a bottle of whisky and a quick feel.’

  The head of red hair sank forward a few inches. She still said nothing, nor did she move.

  There was a business-like knock on the office door. ‘Come in,’ she said, looking up immediately.

  The man who entered was silver-haired, gray-suited, a diamond tie-pin sticking from his silk cravat. He looked as though he was used to good food, good drink–and getting his own way.

  He looked right past Rosie to where Herne was standing.

  ‘Mr. Herne, if you have the time there’s a little business proposition I wish to put to you,’ he said brusquely.

  Herne had the time. He followed the man out of the room, leaving Rosie standing gaping in the doorway.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Charity is a small town. Nothing more than a collection of tumble-down shacks until folks heard the railroad was coming through. That was when the bank moved in and the saloon got built. But the big boom we had all hoped for didn’t happen. The railroad is used by some of the larger ranchers in the area and so the trains keep stopping. Leastways, sometimes they do.

  ‘Groups of men from these outlying ranches drift into town from time to time. Usually after they’ve been paid, or to fetch supplies. Either way, they cause as much trouble as they can. Show the average cowboy something that approaches his idea of civilization and he will do his best to destroy it. But you are a travelled man, Mr. Herne. I don’t need to be telling you these things.’

  Jed Herne sat slightly uneasily in his chair. The banker’s office was larger, more opulently furnished than the one he’d just left. The beautiful saloon owner had been replaced by a rather paunchy, smug banker. It wasn’t a change mat he particularly liked; though he was beginning to sense that the man’s lengthy preamble might be leading up to something more worthwhile.

  So he contented himself with sitting there and nodding agreement. The banker puffed away at his cigar. One of these days, Herne thought, I’ll come across a banker who doesn’t smoke damned cigars.

  ‘Not being a town which receives many visitors, we tend to pay a lot of attention to those we do get. Especially those like yourself who have the appearance of being in some way—er—special.’

  He put his cigar down on the edge of his desk and leaned forward with an earnest look in his eyes. ‘I pride myself on being a good judge of a man’s character, Mr. Herne. I like to think I can sum him up in a matter of a few minutes. In my business, you have to be able to do that. It’s vital to know immediately who you can trust and who you can’t.’

  He clamped the cigar back between his teeth, pulled hard on it, then released the thick blue-tinged smoke into the enclosed atmosphere of the room.

  ‘I think you are a man I could trust, Mr. Herne.’

  Herne sensed that the banker expected him to react to this as though it was a great honor. At least as though he had just been handed a large check. He simply nodded rather more decisively than before. He still wanted to know what the man was leading up to.

  When the banker saw that he was not going to get any verbal response, he carried on. ‘Not only a man to trust, sir. More than that. I saw the way you handled that situation out in the street this afternoon. Not that I hold any brief for young Newman, none at all. But you showed an awful lot of common sense as well as a great deal of courage. It’s a long time since I’ve seen a man with so little fear and so strong a sense of confidence in himself and his decisions.’

  He exhaled more wreaths of smoke. ‘Yes, sir, it was an impressive performance. Impressive. And as for what I have heard of this evening in the saloon…well, that beats everything. Certainly tops anything that’s happened in Charity for a long, long time.’

  Herne pushed himself further back into the chair and wafted a wreath of cigar smoke away with his hand. The banker seemed to puff all the more strongly.

  ‘Would I be right to assume, Mr. Herne, that you would be disposed to offer your services for a fee?’

  It was the first direct question and it called forth the first direct answer.

  ‘That’s right,’ Herne said.

  The banker sat back with a smile on his face. An inch of light gray ash tipped off the end of his cigar and tumbled down on to his suit.

  ‘The job I have in mind isn’t an especially difficult one, but it might require certain…er, skills. Skills which very few men around Charity possess.’

  He stopped as he noticed Herne’s expression change.

  What’s the matter, sir? Did I say something wrong?’

  ‘No. It’s just that that’s the third time inside a single day that someone’s said something similar to me.’

  ‘You don’t mean that somebody else has already hired you out?’

  ‘Rel
ax. No one’s done that.’

  The banker looked relieved. ‘I take it you’re interested, then?’

  ‘I’m interested,’ Herne said, ‘Depending on the job…and on what it pays.’

  The silver-haired head came closer; the tone became more confidential. ‘You’ll understand that from time to time people come to owe us money; they fall behind on loan payments and such. We do our best to be sympathetic, naturally, but there comes a time when we have no alternative but to demand what is ours. It is unfortunate that our debtors are not always as reasonable as we would wish.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Herne casually, ‘they object to you throwing them off their land.’

  The banker sat back and bit down on the cigar. ‘That, sir, is rather a harsh way of putting the situation.’

  ‘But that’s what it amounts to, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sometimes the foreclosing of mortgaged property is the only avenue left for us to take.’

  ‘And you want me to...’

  ‘The bank would like to hire you to see that its rightful business is carried out. I can assure you it will be nothing difficult for a man of your proven abilities. Merely…’ He freed the stump of cigar from his mouth and waved it in the smoky air. ‘...swatting away a few flies.’

  Half an hour later, Jed Herne was lying flat on his back on the hard bed he had been able to pay for with the advance the banker had given him. He stared up at the ceiling. Moonlight drifted into the room through the window, enabling him to see quite clearly.

  It wasn’t only the bed that made him uncomfortable. He didn’t like the job he had just agreed to take on. Not that he was in any position to refuse it. He needed money to live, money for a horse and cartridges, money to get to the west coast. Until Nolan was dead he could not afford to rest. He had to take whatever work that would enable him to achieve that end.

  He knew it. Knew it well. Yet...

  He hadn’t exchanged many words with young Tom Newman but he had liked him. There was an admirable open courage about the way he had faced up to the enraged storekeeper’s gun. There was something about the unwavering expression in those blue eyes that marked Newman as a good man to have on your side in any kind of showdown.

  And a showdown was what seemed inevitable.

  For Newman and his folks had fallen six months behind with the payments on their spread. The bank had waited patiently, waited a long time, longer than most. Now they were going to foreclose. The Newmans were to be evicted the moment their final ultimatum expired.

  Nine o’clock on the morning of the twenty-fifth of December…and they called the place Charity!

  When the dawn broke on the morning of Christmas Eve, Herne was awake to greet it. He cleaned and checked his gun, pulled on his newly acquired top coat–the one he had got for helping the man he was now about to turn from his land—and walked out into the street. Rays of sunlight spread themselves over the low rooftops as Herne passed along to the livery stables to look for a good mount.

  After quite a while of testing and haggling, he walked his new horse back down the street, tied it to the hitching rail, and had himself a good breakfast. It had been such a long time since he had eaten that the food was strange on the roof of his mouth.

  He swung up into the saddle and took the road out of town.

  The blinds above the bank’s offices were still down; no need to rise early when you had others to do your bidding.

  Once he had left the town behind, Herne nudged the horse into a canter. The plain spread out on either side of him, rising up high away to both right and left. There were dark clouds gathering over to the east: storm clouds. Herne pulled the collar of the thick coat up over his neck and round his ears. It was cold and getting colder.

  He looked once more at the cloud formation spreading across the sky. Before the day was out, Herne thought, it would snow. The land would be covered in white. White Christmas.

  He clicked through his teeth and his new mount picked up speed. The rider smiled, pleased at the animal’s instant response to his instruction.

  The terrain began to get rougher as Herne followed the route he had been given. He passed over a low, gradual incline and reined in. The track led down in front of him rather more steeply than it had risen. It wound to the left and passed by a small ranch building which was flanked on both sides by low barns. In front of one of these a man was busy chopping wood.

  Herne watched him, recognizing him as Tom Newman. He lightly touched the flanks of his horse with his spurs and jogged down the track.

  He hadn’t gone far, when the young man looked up. He turned quickly, dropping the axe and reaching for the rifle that was propped against a pile of logs. He raised it to his shoulder and called in the direction of the house at the same time.

  Herne made no move towards his own gun, but kept moving at the same steady rate. He saw Newman lower the rifle, peer forward, then rest the butt of the weapon on the ground while he waved welcome with his free hand.

  ‘Hi, Jed! It’s sure good to see you. Didn’t think you’d come out. Thought maybe you would have ridden on already. There didn’t seem to be much in Charity to keep a man like you.’

  He stopped talking abruptly, suddenly conscious of the fact that his voice had been high and excited and that he had been chattering away while Herne had neither spoken nor smiled.

  ‘You all right, Jed?

  ‘Sure. I’m fine.’

  ‘Good.’ Tom Newman grinned up at him, clapped his hands, blew on them and then banged his arms crossways several times–over his chest.

  ‘Hell!’ he exclaimed. ‘It sure is good that you rode over. The folks will be real pleased to see you. ‘Specially after what I told them you did for me in town.’

  ‘You have a funny way of welcoming visitors,’ said Herne slowly, nodding down towards the rifle.

  The young man followed his gaze. ‘That! That weren’t nothin’. Thought you might have been…well, someone else. Course,’ he laughed, ‘I recognized the coat straight off, but there’s more than one of them around here.’ His face clouded over. ‘Doesn’t do to take too many chances.’

  Herne nodded.

  ‘Get yourself down, Jed. Come in and have some coffee. Morning like this it’s good to get something warm inside you.’

  Herne looked across at the door to the wooden building. A man of about fifty, possibly older, stood leaning against it, a shotgun in his hand. Again, Tom followed Herne’s stare. He waved an arm at the man and called out, ‘It’s all right, Pa, this is that Jed Herne I was tellin’ you and Ma about. He’s comin’ in for some of that good coffee we got.’

  He chuckled again and watched as his father lowered the gun and disappeared into the house. Herne dismounted and tied up his horse. Tom Newman waited and then led him inside, a friendly hand laid on his back.

  He introduced Jed to his father with evident pride. Herne shook the man’s gnarled hand and looked at the rheumy eyes and the white scrub of beard that was stained brown around the mouth through years of chewing tobacco. Whenever he had been able to afford it. From the face, the hand, Herne guessed that there had been many a time when he had been forced to go without.

  The inside of their home was sparse and simple; it testified to a lifetime of struggle and hardship. A lifetime spent trying to succeed in building up a profitable concern so that the old man and his son could stand on their own two feet and say that what was theirs was truly theirs. So that they would not have to stand aside from other men.

  And now Herne was going to help to snatch all of that away from them: their home; their land; their pride.

  The coffee in his cup tasted suddenly sour.

  The old man reached across with his foot and kicked at one of the logs jutting out of the fire, causing a flurry of sparks to spring forth.

  ‘Dang me, nothin’ I do seems to kindle any warmth in these old bones of mine!’

  He cussed a few times, then spat down into the flames. There was a sharp hiss and crackle. The old
man wiped his sleeve across his mouth.

  ‘You aimin’ on settlin’ in these parts,’ he asked Herne, ‘or just passing through?’

  ‘I might see out the next few days,’ answered Herne. ‘After that I’ll be moving on.’

  ‘Where are you headed, Jed?’ asked Tom Newman.

  ‘Down San Francisco way.’

  The young man shook his head in amazement. He’d heard of the place, of course, but for all that he knew it was in another world.

  What are going all that way for?’

  ‘Business...sort of,’ said Herne slowly.

  Tom Newman shook his head a second time. This surely was a strange man who had come into his life. He reached out a hand towards the fire and enjoyed the warmth his father could no longer feel. It was a good life really, he thought. Oh, the work was hard and they were desperate for money. There was serious illness in the family. So many things that should have gotten him down, yet...

  He glanced at the tall, dark-haired man who sat opposite him and knew that while there were friends like him in his life he could never completely give up hope that things would improve.

  Herne was staring down into the now empty mug.

  What you thinkin’, Jed?’

  Herne looked at the blue eyes with an expression that was suddenly, chillingly cold. Tom drew his hand back from in front of the fire.

  ‘What is it, Jed? What’s troubling you?’

  ‘A job I’ve got to do.’

  ‘Job. What kind of job? Something that will stop you passing time with us?’

  Herne nodded unhappily. ‘Reckon it will, Tom,’ he said heavily.

  ‘What is this job you’re all frettin’ about?’ asked the older Newman.

  ‘Somethin’ I have to do here.’

  ‘Here?’ Tom Newman’s voice rose in surprise.

  The room was abruptly quiet. The faint hissing and cracking of the wood fire seemed oddly loud and forceful.

  ‘You can’t...there ain’t no job you could do here! It’s ...’