Till Death (A Herne the Hunter western. Book 15) Read online

  ‘Ain’t that ...?’ Bowdre began.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We ain’t goin’ down there, are we?’

  ‘Passin’ by.’ Bowdre gave Herne a hasty glance to make sure he wasn’t joking, but he saw that Herne was serious. So he shrugged his shoulders, touched his spurs to his mount and followed Herne down.

  One of the women had waded out after the preacher and now she was standing before him, her skirts soaked through, the water well to her waist. The preacher held the Bible out at an angle with his left hand and set the palm of the right against the woman’s head.

  Her eyes were closed and there was a look of anticipation on her face that betokened fear or excitement of another kind.

  Suddenly there was a mighty splashing and a roar went up from those watching and the preacher had ducked the woman into the water, head first, and seemed to be holding her under. The crowd cheered and cries of ‘Amen’ mingled with those of ‘Hallelujah’.

  ‘Jed, he’s done drownin’ her!’ shouted Charlie Bowdre.

  Herne shook his head. ‘No, he ain’t. He’s savin’ her.’

  Bowdre scratched his shoulder and shook his head from side to side and said: ‘If that ain’t the darndest way of savin’ a woman I ever saw. How the hell’s she goin’ to breathe under that muddy water?’

  The woman burst back through the surface and rolls of ripples spread away towards both shores.

  The preacher turned his face to heaven and lifted both hands towards it also, their palms outspread, the Bible resting on the open left hand.

  The woman stood in front of him, eyes still closed, hair matted to her head and water dripping from her face.

  Then both of the preacher’s hands returned to her head and the Bible was pressed against her and the crowd sang out praises, and hymns were started and faded and fresh ones took their place. ‘Amen, Amen, Amen.’

  The baptized woman opened her eyes and saw the preacher standing with her in the river and listened to the words he spoke through the joyous clamor from the shore. After several moments she began to sway and her head lolled to one side and she fell forwards into the preacher’s arms. He bent below the surface of the water and scooped her up into his arms and began to wade with her towards the shore.

  ‘Let’s go, Charlie,’ said Herne, flicking out the reins.

  ‘Where to, Jed? We headin’ back?’

  ‘Not yet. We’ll take a little ride into Hondo.’ Charlie Bowdre looked at the back of Herne’s head, shrugged, scratched and followed.

  ~*~

  The main street in Hondo was twice as wide as the river after which the town was named. Squat adobes lined it haphazardly, square and low. Here and there a wooden building had been erected with lumber that had mostly been freighted down from the north or east. It was a lazy fall day in town and the only excitement was the baptism going on outside the town limits. About all that stirred in the main street was a dog the color of light chocolate which ran around chasing its tail and never quite catching it.

  When Herne and Bowdre appeared, the dog forgot its tail for a time and sat back and barked at them, running quickly towards the horses and then backing off again at a curse from Charlie and a flash of his boot.

  ‘Sure looks lively, don’t it?’ grinned Charlie.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Reckon they got a saloon here?’

  Herne gestured down the street. ‘Sign there.’

  When they reached it, it read, ‘Harding’s Store – dry goods, clothing, boots, saddles, guns and ammunition’. The words were spelt right but they sloped down the sign as if they’d been set there by a man who was in the action of very slowly falling over.

  ‘Every damn thing but liquor,’ said Bowdre and looked around for something more promising.

  ‘Help you, gents?’

  Neither Herne nor Bowdre had spotted the man opening the door to the store and they faced round sharp when they heard the high, slightly whining voice.

  Harding was maybe an inch above five foot and that had made him the tallest of his family by more than a foot.

  His folk had been circus performers in Europe, working as clowns and tumblers and jugglers and none of them any more than dwarfs. One night, it was suspected, Harding’s mother had strayed behind the big top with Zoltan the Magnificent who bent iron bars between his teeth and lifted gigantic weights on the back of his neck. The result of this unlikely coupling had been Harding - though, of course, that hadn’t been his name. He’d read it on the side of a wagon when he was starting out on the Oregon trail. Harding had never made it to Oregon. Fate had instead sent him south and west and he’d thought of California and landed up in New Mexico with some money still in his right shoe and a flair for five card stud. In his first week in Santa Fe Harding had won so much at poker it had been wise to leave town. Hondo had seemed far enough from anywhere to be safe. He’d invested his money in a store and now when there weren’t any customers, which was quite often, he did his best to lure occasional travelers in off the street to play cards with him. All the other residents had already learned the little man’s prowess the hard way and none of them would play with him anymore.

  ‘Passing through?’

  They looked down at him and said nothing.

  ‘If you’re taking a breather, maybe you’d care to step inside. Might be a few supplies you need, fill your canteens free … hand of stud to pass a little time?’

  He gazed up at them hopefully, his nose twitching slightly like a gun dog that senses the closeness of its quarry.

  ‘We was wantin’ a drink,’ said Charlie. ‘Beer.’

  ‘Well …’ began Harding doubtfully.

  ‘You sell beer?’

  ‘No, not exactly.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Charlie, ‘where exactly does?’

  Harding bit his upper lip and frowned. ‘Place down the street, they got beer but it don’t taste much.’

  ‘More taste ‘n water?’ said Charlie Bowdre.

  Harding shook his head and looked resigned to missing out on a possible hand of stud. ‘Don’t bank on it,’ he said. ‘Don’t bank on it.’

  In the event he was three-parts right. What the saloon served for beer was so watered down that little of the original taste remained: what did, assured Herne and Bowdre they were still getting the best of the deal. The beer seemed to have been made from old corn husks mashed in with lye soap and then swilled around in a horse trough for a while.

  Herne kept going until his third mouthful, then spat it out over the sawdust-spotted floor.

  ‘Hoss piss!’ he called out to the mostly empty room.

  The barkeep swatted a fly away from his head and leaned himself awake. ‘You want some more?’ he asked vaguely.

  Charlie held his glass high and tipped it so that what remained poured on to the floor and ran between a gap in the boards.

  ‘Hey!’ called the bartender. ‘That’s good beer you’re wastin’.’

  ‘Uh-uh,’ said Herne, standing up. ‘You ain’t but nearly right. It’s beer, maybe, but good beer it definitely ain’t.’

  A black and white cat missing most of its left ear and with a variety of scabs about the rest of its face, wandered over from a corner and started to lap up the beer before it ran away.

  ‘Watch out for that animal now,’ said Charlie by the door. ‘It’s gonna fall down an’ die inside around five minutes from now.’

  The barkeep shuffled along the bar a ways and coughed. ‘You ain’t tryin’ to be funny, now, mister, are you?’

  Neither Charlie Bowdre nor Herne thought it was worth trying to explain: beside they weren’t really being funny at all.

  ‘You think that feller back at the store’s any good?’ asked Charlie as they stood by their horses, prepared to remount.

  ‘At stud?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Herne set his head to one side and grinned. ‘I’d say he’s either poor as that beer we just paid for an’ threw away, else he’s sharper’n a barber
’s fresh-stropped razor.’

  Charlie Bowdre’s eyes lit up. ‘You want to find out?’

  Herne was about to shake his head when he thought, why not? There wasn’t a hurry to get back to where they’d come from and since they’d ridden as far as Hondo they might as well sample a little more of what it offered.

  ‘Why not?’ he said.

  Bowdre laughed and slapped his leg and they led their horses back across the street.

  The diminutive storekeeper was as pleased to see them as if they’d been carrying sacks of gold dust and a sign that said Help Yourself. He insisted on giving them sourdough biscuits to eat, setting a fresh pot of coffee on his stove and wiping the seats of the chairs before Herne and Bowdre sat down. He fetched a new deck of cards from the shelves and smiled and chattered and smiled and cut and shuffled the deck as fast as Herne himself could clear leather.

  Herne glanced at Charlie, who was still managing to look hopeful, but himself he realized already that they were on to a lost cause. Just half an hour later, so did Charlie. Harding had stripped him of most all his wages and was set to take everything from his saddle to his boots if Charlie didn’t watch out. Herne played more carefully, throwing in early and only gambling on the few certainties that either luck or Harding’s dealing had allowed him.

  ‘Maybe, Charlie, we ought to know when we’re licked,’ said Herne, while the storekeeper was taking a break and reaching the pot from the stove.

  ‘Hell, Jed, I want to earn back what I’ve lost.’

  Herne laughed. ‘No way you’re doin’ that if we sit here till sun-up day after tomorrow. He’s slicker’n a tomcat in a storm.’

  ‘But, Jed …’

  Harding handed them mugs of coffee and smiled ingratiatingly. ‘Gents, you are surely not thinking of leaving. Not when the game has only just started.’

  ‘’fraid so,’ said Herne quickly. ‘See, my friend an’ I, we ain’t in your league. You already took Charlie here for most every dime he’s got. I don’t imagine you want to play for matches, now, do you?’

  Harding did not. He was very unhappy about the turn of events but the way the two strangers wore their guns advised him it was better not to protest too forcefully. If only, though, he’d had as much time again, he could have cleaned them both out.

  Herne swallowed some of the coffee, made a face on account of it being both too hot and too bitter, and nodded at Bowdre. ‘Let’s go.’

  He turned from the small table and as he did so the door opened and the girl came in. Something hit Herne high in the left side, like a fist. Her face was pale and pretty and the width of her mouth already promised something that perhaps the rest of her body only knew in dreams. She recognized him, too, and almost let slip the parcel she was holding in her hand.

  With a small gasp she clasped it against herself.

  ‘Miss Louise,’ said the storekeeper.

  Louise, thought Herne, that’s her name.

  ‘Jed, we …’ Charlie started, but Herne hardly heard him.

  ‘I came to … my mother asked me …’ Her cheeks glowed under Herne’s stare. ‘Could you see that this gets on the stage tomorrow? It’s some tracts of my father’s. He …’

  Abruptly she set the brown-paper bundle on the counter and went out. Herne drew his breath and went after her. She was a half-dozen yards into the street, hurrying away, head down.

  ‘Miss.’

  Her step faltered but slowly her head turned, dark hair bobbing.

  ‘A month or more back – in Lincoln – you was there with your folks and—’

  ‘And you killed two men.’

  ‘Yes, I ... it wasn’t none of my doin’. You must’ve seen that.’

  ‘Your gun went off by itself?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’ Herne hadn’t expected it to be like this, hadn’t anticipated that she would be so firm, aggressive. He had imagined her shy, gentle, like a young rabbit with startled eyes and fear in its heart.

  ‘What did you want to say to me?’ She was blushing and her hands were nervous at her sides, but her voice was clear and loud enough and she would not look away from him now. Look evil in the eye, her father had taught her and she knew her father regarded men like this one as evil.

  ‘That I ... do you live here? In Hondo? You and your folks?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Herne hesitated. He knew that Charlie had come out of the store behind him and was standing listening.

  ‘My mother will be expecting me back home,’ the girl said, turning to go.

  Herne glanced awkwardly round and saw the ear-to-ear grin spread round Charlie’s face. He hurried closer to the girl, further from Charlie’s hearing.

  ‘That time in Lincoln,’ he said hastily, ‘when I saw you I thought …’ He broke off as if realizing the futility of what he was doing. He saw himself in her eyes, an aging gunfighter with lank, greasy hair and saddle-stained clothes: a man more than twice her age.

  Herne turned away. ‘It don’t matter.’

  He heard a soft movement behind him and turned towards it.

  Her eyes were bright and dark.

  ‘I thought you was prettier than any other girl I’d ever seen.’

  She stilled her hand on its way to her face.

  ‘An’ not only that, somethin’ different too. I don’t know, somethin’ I never saw in a girl before.’

  She smiled the briefest of smiles and there was a sign of sadness at the corners of her wide mouth. ‘I shall have to go.’

  ‘An’ if I come and see you again.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘I’m here now.’

  She fidgeted with the ends of her hair.

  ‘My father would never allow it. He was in Lincoln when you killed those men.’ She paused. ‘He knows who you are.’

  ‘Then you—’

  ‘I must go.’ She lifted her skirt with one hand and, turning away, began to run, lightly, down the wide street. Small puffs of dust sprang up behind her. Herne watched until she was out of sight.

  Charlie Bowdre was already mounted and he passed the reins of Herne’s horse down to him. The storekeeper stood against the frame of his doorway, chewing on a length of licorice root. The light chocolate colored dog lay on its back, rolling this way and that, scratching out fleas.

  Herne said nothing, mounted up and began to ride away.

  It was a good three miles before Charlie Bowdre dared to speak. When he did it was with a broad grin and a wave of his hand and: ‘Just ain’t your day, Jed. Hell, you wasn’t lucky in cards either!’

  Herne didn’t think that was at all funny.

  Chapter Six

  ‘You heard the Kid’s headin’ out t’ Fort Sumner?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Place draws him like a fly.’

  ‘Seems.’

  Charlie Bowdre passed the bottle, but Herne shook his head and Charlie shrugged and had another swallow: it did taste pretty bad at that.

  ‘You ain’t thinkin’ of taggin’ along?’

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  Charlie cleared his throat and spat down into the ground, the ball rolling and gathering dust until it stopped, choked.

  ‘You mind sayin’ just what you are intendin’ doin’?’

  Herne eased up the stained brim of his Stetson and peered up at Bowdre. ‘Little of this, little of that.’

  Bowdre laughed. ‘Now what in the Lord’s name does that mean?’

  ‘I mean, what are you goin’ to do? You can’t stay here. Less you’re lookin’ to punch cattle. That don’t seem in your line of work too easy.’

  Herne stood up and walked away from the corral fence. ‘Charlie, why don’t you saddle up and ride down to that wife of yours and stop persecutin’ me with your fool questions?’

  ‘On account of I don’t like to see no friend of mine make a fool of hisself.’

  ‘Now what does that mean?’

  ‘It means, ‘s if you didn’t know, I reckon you’re lookin’ to go sneakin’ round Hondo l
ike a rooster on the prowl an’ all you’re goin’ to get for it is a flea in your ear. That’s what.’

  Herne made a pattern in the dirt with the toe of his scuffed boot. Rubbed the palm of his right hand against the edge of his Colt butt. Said nothing.

  ‘See. I’m right, ain’t I? Ain’t I?’

  Herne came at him so fast that Bowdre all but dropped his whiskey bottle.

  ‘Charlie, you either drunk too much of that rotgut or you didn’t drink enough yet. I never heard you go blabbin’ on at the mouth like this all the time we been ridin’ together. Now quit an’ get packed out of here and go see Manuela.’

  Charlie Bowdre opened his mouth to say something in reply, but the look in Herne’s eyes told him he’d be best advised to say nothing. The mouth drew in a little air and closed again, silent.

  A while later, Bowdre was sitting astride his horse, saddle bags bulging and his bedroll tied on top of them.

  ‘Jed.’

  Herne reached up and shook the man’s hand.

  ‘Charlie.’

  ‘Ride easy.’

  Herne released Charlie’s hand. ‘Sure. You take care. See to that wife of yours.’

  Charlie turned the horse away and looked over his shoulder. ‘You give my regards to that little girl of yours – if you can get close enough.’

  Charlie Bowdre laughed and slapped his hand down on the animal’s rump and rode away. Herne sat up on the fence and watched him go, never looking back. He never saw him again. Three years later he heard that for whatever reason Bowdre had made his way back north to Fort Sumner and ran with a gang of cattle rustlers. They got themselves trapped by Pat Garrett and a posse at Stinking Springs round the Christmas of 1880. Charlie took seven slugs before he died. They buried him at Fort Sumner close by Billy Bonney.

  One way or another Pat Garrett had a lot to answer for.

  The same day Bowdre rode south to his wife, Herne stashed his few possessions on his horse, drew the last of his pay, and rode north. He wasn’t about to admit to himself that he was hanging around just so’s to be near enough to the girl to get another chance to see her, but he certainly wasn’t heading far off.

  He soon swung out east, keeping the tops of the Capitan Mountains well to his left. There was enough money in his pockets to keep him free and independent for a matter of weeks, but that wasn’t going to be enough. Not for what Herne had in mind. He reined in the horse and ran place names through his mind. He’d been talking with Chisum one time and Chisum had said … yes, Mesa. Forty or so miles to the north-east between Lincoln and Fort Sumner. A town where a man with a lot of sand could earn himself good bounty. Almost as many desperadoes hanging out in there as there were in Fort Sumner.