Herne the Hunter 21 Read online

  ‘You read sign, Jedediah?’

  ‘Some.’

  ‘What d’you see?’

  ‘Indians. No doubt ’bout it. Around ten or a dozen. Unshod ponies.’

  ‘What about the Pony’s horses?’

  Jed wiped his nose with his finger, thinking before he replied. ‘I guess that they’re taking the horses off to some camp. And the rest of them …’

  She nodded. ‘Looks like it’s not goin’ to be that easy to find any fuckin’ place to lay our heads this night, Jedediah Herne.’

  ‘I guess not.’

  ~*~

  A deep pool, shaded with sycamores, stood alongside the next station down the line. It had been a single-handed stop, run by a young man named John Feeney.

  Feeney was still there.

  Floating facedown in the pool, the stumps of his arms outspread as though he was flying through space. The building had been left unburned, but all the horses were gone.

  ‘All thanks to that prickless gutter-bastard Corleon,’ hissed Aurora Clifton. ‘Johnny Feeney was a nice young lad. Betrothed to a lass from Iowa. Des Moines, as I recall. Feeney used to send her money every month. She was to have come out here for Christmas.’

  They left the body where it was. They didn’t have the time or the inclination to hang around burying the young man.

  ‘Figure he’s past hurtin’,’ said Herne, as they moved on and away from the silent place.

  ~*~

  ‘Me and Josiah married kind of late in life. He came along when I was workin’ in this dry-goods store. I was all set to be a dusty old spinster, and he just up and looked at me. Said was I spoken for. I said I wasn’t. Josiah walked out with nary a word. Came back a half-hour later with the ring and the news that he’d arranged a priest and all. Hell of a fine man.’

  Aurora became more talkative as the afternoon slipped towards evening. They passed nobody on the trail, and Jed saw no signs of anyone else moving. Except for the band of Cheyenne. By now he guessed that the Indians were down of seven or eight men, with several of their number going off to tend all the stolen horses. It was becoming a serious question just where the raiding was likely to stop. The Paiutes in May had destroyed seven stations. The Cheyenne had already taken out at least three.

  Herne and the woman were moving on towards the next swing station.

  A place similar to the one that she and her husband had run, with trees close around it. Unless the agents there had been given some sort of warning, Herne was resigned to finding a similar scene.

  The agents were a married couple, both Pennsylvania Dutch, in early middle-age. The husband, huge and blond, taciturn and pink-skinned. His wife was a tiny woman, with eyes like a mouse, bright and busy. One highly unusual thing about them was that she took care of the horses and the needs of the riders, while her husband did all of the cooking. It was one of the most popular swing stations on the entire route, with the Dutchman’s apple dumplings with homemade cheese and fresh-baked bread enough to satisfy the most demanding palate.

  Jed hoped that the Cheyenne would not have carried on to destroy their station.

  But the tracks did carry on and the day was wearing thin. At Aurora’s suggestion they stopped a half-mile off and tethered the horses.

  ‘Go on foot, Jed. If’n those bear-greased bastards are still there we don’t want to ride in amongst them.’

  ‘Maybe you should stay with the horses, Aurora?’ Jed suggested.

  Regretting it immediately when she swung a punch at his chin that laid him flat in the dirt.

  ‘One more word like that and I’ll stomp the shit from you, boy. I’ll burst your liver if you try and fuckin’ treat me like a piece of spun crystal. I got a gun and I can use it. Maybe better than you can. Now get up and dust off your britches and we’ll go see what’s happenin’ down at the Dutchman’s spread.’

  ~*~

  It hadn’t happened long.

  And the fight had been so harsh that the Cheyenne must have been glad to limp away and leave their dead behind them.

  Four dead.

  Two with bullet wounds outside the house, in the area of ground between trees and cabin. One hit clean through the forehead, the other lying with knees drawn to his chest, face contorted in agony, a dark stain across his stomach showing where he had been shot.

  Oddly, two more of the Cheyenne, both young men, inside the wrecked house, among the torn clothes and broken china and glass. Both with their necks snapped, lying one on top of the other, eyes wide with their ultimate horror and shock.

  The Dutchman had been knifed to death. The two corpses probably belonging to two of his last attackers. Blood had poured out through a dozen wounds to chest and face and hands. Oddly, this time the Indians had left the forearms on both their victims. Maybe as a sign of their respect. Maybe because they didn’t have the time.

  The woman lay in the same room as her husband, shot. A single bullet from a Belgian-made Dragoon pistol. The barrel was still in the little woman’s mouth, angled backwards. Her index finger was still on the trigger. It was a familiar enough story on the frontier.

  ~*~

  ‘We should burn it, Jed.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘That’s right, Aurora. There’s around four Cheyenne dog-soldiers somewheres here. Mighty sore and angry, with friends dead. They see a fire here they’ll know there are whites in the woods. And they might just come to even up the score some.’

  ‘I guess that’s fuckin’ right, boy.’

  ‘Don’t call me ‘boy,’ if’n you don’t mind.’

  She nodded. ‘I beg your pardon, Jedediah. I’m sorry. Maybe you are only a boy in years, but there’s nobody else I’d feel any more safe with. You say leave the house, then we’ll just damned well leave it.’

  ‘I figure we could stay here the night. Dark’s only an hour or so off. Better than bein’ out in the woods yonder.’

  Aurora nodded again. Reaching up with her right hand and tucking an errant strand of hair back into its pinnings. ‘It’s comin’ on like rain. Guess that’s right. Can we … Can we move the Dutchman and his wife outside?’

  Jed looked round the house. Hearing the first pattering of rain on the windows at the front of the building. The ones that faced west.

  ‘Sure. And the Cheyenne. I’ll do that. You get a fire started. Dry wood.’

  ‘I know that, you egg-sucker! I been out here a while longer than you, Jedediah. Dry wood so’s there’s no smoke. I’ll scout about and rustle up some food for us both. Be good to have somethin’ hot inside. I’d like that.’ She smiled, as though the words had some kind of meaning that he didn’t understand.

  ~*~

  ‘Mind if’n I ask somethin’, Aurora?’

  ‘What, Jed?’

  The door was bolted shut and all the shutters were across the windows, so that no light would escape to warn that the house was occupied. There was a small stable around back of the main building, away from the empty corral and Jed had put both of their horses there, giving them plenty of water and some well-earned feed.

  ‘Your husband?’

  ‘Josiah. What of him?’

  ‘You talked of him as we rode through the afternoon. Yet now, you … you have not wept.’

  ‘Josiah is dead. Gone from me. If he taught me one thing, Jed, it was that grief is empty. He would not have wanted it. Indeed, he would have pulled me over his knee and tugged off my drawers for crying. Leathered me until I near… I near wept from it.’

  Jed felt bone-tired. He had been on the move on the same horse for too long, and all he wanted now was to rest and catch up on some missing sleep. But the memory of the mutilated and tortured corpses rested too closely with him. To sleep might be to allow the survivors of the Cheyenne to creep up on the house and finish the work they’d started. And there was always the possibility that there might be more Indians around the Territory.

  ‘Want some more food, Jed?’

  ‘No. No, thanks, Aur
ora. That was real good.’

  She smiled at him and took the two dishes out into the kitchen. Outside he could hear heavy rain pounding against the shuttered windows, and some of it came hissing down the stone chimney on the bright fire. Inside it was warm and snug, and he felt his eyes closing.

  ‘The Cheyenne won’t be out in this kind of storm, Jedediah. Your Indian don’t like gettin’ himself fuckin’ soaked any more than your white man. Guess we’re safe enough for this night.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. Watching the woman as she came back into the living room. He found it odd to recall that the building must reek of death. That there had been four corpses earlier that day. The two Cheyenne lay tangled in the back yard, near the empty corral, where he and Aurora Clifton had dragged them. The bodies of the Dutchman and his wife lay with a little more ceremony on a trestle table in an outbuilding.

  Aurora had taken off the shawl, sitting on the floor across from him, wearing only her skirt and blouse. Her boots stood by the front door of the house. He looked at her bare feet, and the way that the firelight played across the soft swell of her breasts. She saw the way that he was looking at her and she smiled.

  ‘Jesus, but you surely are a young boy, Jed Herne. Sweet young sixteen, and never been kissed.’

  ‘Don’t tease me. I have been kissed.’

  ‘But you’re still a virgin, aren’t you?’

  ‘No.’ Flushing at the lie, and at the certainty that she was experienced enough to see the lie.

  ‘I can’t even recall what it was like. Not having laid with a man. Me and Josiah used to do it damned near day in and out. Lusty dog, he was.’

  For a moment he thought that she was at last going to break down and cry. But she shook her head, staring into the flickering flames of the fire, and then smiled at him.

  He lay back on the blankets, looking at the ceiling. Glancing away as his eye was caught by the patch of smeared blood and brains where the Dutchman’s wife had killed herself.

  Jed could feel his eyes beginning to close and he allowed them their way. The room was hot and the weather outside was dreadful. If the Cheyenne came in this, then …

  ‘Let ’em come,’ he said, not even realizing that he had spoken out loud.

  Darkness swam up around him and he fell asleep.

  ~*~

  A hand closing gently around his penis woke him. Surprised to find himself already erect, roused.

  ‘What the fuck?’ he hissed, pulling back.

  But the hand tightened and held him still. ‘Rest easy, Jedediah Herne. Lie real quiet. I’ll do what’s needful. Here, give me your hand. There. Touch me here, and then lower. That’s … Oh, that is very nice. Gentle here, and now … yes, harder.’

  It was difficult to tell whether he was dreaming or waking. There was a warm, naked woman’s body pressed against him, beneath the blanket. His hand was cupping a nipple, squeezing it, feeling it harden. Aurora guided him, pushing his fingers lower into the warm wetness between her spread thighs.

  ‘Yes, there, lover. Go on, now. Rub me, nice and easy… Not too hard. Here, lie still and let me wriggle round some so’s I can get my lips where they can do some good work.’

  Only whores did that. At least, Jed had always believed that only whores did that.

  But she did it for him. Her palm cradling his balls, while she lowered her head over his erect penis, lips swallowing him up. He could feel her long hair brushing softly against his naked belly, rousing him yet more.

  ‘Keep doin’ that … Yeah, Jed, my brave lover.’

  Her voice was muffled as her head started to bob up and down under the blanket. He could lie there and watch it, illuminated by the light of the sinking fire. It was one of the most wonderful experiences of his sixteen young years.

  There was a moment that chilled him, when he thought he was about to spend in her mouth. But he tensed his thighs and used all of his concentration to hold off. Aurora must have felt the change in him, and guessed the reason for it.

  She rolled over on her back, opening herself to him. He knelt between her legs, taking the weight on his hands, either side of her broad shoulders. Lowering himself and kissing her tenderly on the lips. For a few seconds his swollen cock jarred against her pubic bone, then she reached down and guided him into her.

  ‘Oh, Christ Almighty,’ he sighed, experiencing the marvelous feeling of being tightly gripped inside a woman for the first time.

  ‘Not too fast, my dearest boy,’ she whispered in his ear, locking her feet in the small of his back to draw him more tightly into her. Pushing up against his driving thrusts, her arms about his neck, her nails digging into his shoulders.

  Herne closed his eyes, feeling himself moving faster and faster. Wanting to crush Aurora Clifton clean through the floor of the cabin. His mind shutting off where they were and what he’d seen in the last couple of days. Everything passing away from him except for the wonderful feeling of approaching orgasm.

  She paced herself to him, so that they climaxed together. He heard her cry out as she came, and he thought he might have yelled, but the power of his own spending overwhelmed him.

  The woman collapsed beneath of him, and then she began to cry. Weeping out her loss and desolation, and he held her tight, feeling himself grown-up.

  Feeling himself, in that few minutes, at last a man.

  Ten

  He slept well.

  Twice more the woman came to him and twice more they made love.

  First like animals, as she tore at him with a desperate and ferocious passion, calling out obscenities, urging him to fuck her all ways up. Mounting him, despite his efforts to throw her off and resume control. As she climaxed she slapped his face, so hard that his head rang. And when he rose to wash himself, he caught a glimpse of himself in a square of cracked mirror. And the marks of her fingers were splayed bright on his cheek.

  ‘I’m sorry ’bout that,’ she said, coming to stand behind him and fold her arms around him. Guess I lost some control there.’

  ‘Sure, Aurora. Just don’t slap me again, or I’ll have to hit up on you some. Nobody does that and then walks away.’

  The woman nodded. ‘Maybe that’s right. Some men like it. But I’ll tread light next time.’

  ~*~

  The next time was utterly the opposite. This time it had been at his initiative, touching her as she dozed, coming into her from behind. Making love with a quiet calm that left them both utterly fulfilled and at peace. So they slept, until morning came in.

  ~*~

  ‘Morning’s on the way, Jed! Hear me, Mr. Herne the Hunter!’

  Jed heard him. Charley Howell had tried three times to persuade him to let the rape and the killing lie where it was. He talked about the debt between them, saying that surely Kid’s death would be sufficient.

  ‘Nobody would know, Jed, you old son of a bitch, you!’

  ‘I’d know, Charley. I’d damned well know.’

  The Sharps still rested on top of the rocks, its gaping barrel like a tunnel leading to the campsite below. To the tree where Charley Howell hid and waited.

  ‘Dawn and this’ll have to end, Jed.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I don’t figure you’ll do it. Not gun down an old friend. Near thirty years we go back, Jed Herne. Back to them good days with the Pony.’

  Herne didn’t answer. There wasn’t anything left for him to say.

  ‘You’d not kill someone who saved your life, Jed. Think on that. Not with what you owe me.’

  There was the first faint lightening of the sky, heralding the false dawn.

  ‘Can’t be but a few of us gallopers left alive, Jed. From them Pony Express days. Remember them? Huh? Remember that Cheyenne rising, and that bastard Corleon. Ethan Corleon. Remember them days, Jed?’

  ~*~

  ‘Time to be up and out, Aurora.’

  ‘Jesus! I feel like I’ve been rolled in a burlap bag with a panther in a hurricane.’

  She sat up, naked, breasts fi
rm, smiling at him. Outside there were lines of sharp light around the shutters and the fire had smoldered down to a handful of gray ashes.

  ‘I got some food. Biscuits and some fruit. And there’s a pot of coffee on the go.’

  ‘I smell it, Jed. Let me have a couple of minutes to wash up, and I’ll be right with you.’

  ‘Sure. There’s a butt of water just out back the house.’

  She stood up and Jed caught his breath at the beauty and power of her body. She saw him boggle at her and dropped a curtsey. Stepping closer to him and kissing him very lightly on the cheek.

  ‘They say you don’t ever forget your first, Jedediah Herne. Don’t you ever go and forget me now, or I’ll come back and haunt you. Make that fuckin’ big pecker of yours go limp as a dish-rag.’

  ‘I’ll never forget you, Aurora. Never.’

  ‘I’m goin’ out back. Pour me out a mug of that coffee I can smell.’

  ‘Hey, take care out there, now,’ he called after her, going on through into the kitchen, hearing the click of the bolts on the back door as Aurora Clifton went out into the morning to wash and wake herself up for the new day.

  The coffee was boiling on the small iron stove that he’d lit in the neat kitchen. The blue enameled pot was too hot for him to lift and he took down a check cloth and gripped the handle with it. Pouring out two brimming mugs, setting one by the plate of fresh biscuits on the scrubbed table.

  Through the window he could see across the yard. Grinning to himself, with a touch of male pride, at the way he’d come through his first time. Though his own honesty forced him to admit that he couldn’t have asked for a better teacher in the arts. As he watched Aurora, a blanket draped over her bare shoulders, Jed’s thoughts began to turn towards the future. Once this present rising was over, then he would be back with the Pony. Maybe she would also stay and run a swing station. And maybe he and she could …

  After all, with her husband dead, Aurora Clifton might need someone to look after her.

  She turned as she reached the massive water keg, halfway between the house and the surrounding woods. Waving cheerily to him. The blanket started to slip and she clutched it to herself.