Herne the Hunter 20 Read online

  ‘I never said nothin’ ’bout bein’ high an’ mighty.’

  ‘What are you bein’ then?’

  ‘I ain’t bein’ nothin’.’

  ‘Save a pain in the ass!’

  Herne looked as if he would have liked to have wiped the words from off her mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘Sorry if my language ain’t ladylike enough for you,’ she said, sarcastically.

  ‘No more’n you could expect from a whore,’ he grumbled low, though she heard him just the same.’

  ‘Yeah. So don’t make such an all-fired fuss when we aim to behave the way we are.’

  ‘I still don’t like it.’

  ‘You ain’t bein’ asked to join in. That weren’t no part of the deal.’

  In the back of the wagon, Stephanie giggled shrilly.

  Both Herne and Mary Anne Marie looked fast over their shoulders and the giggling broke off short. Neither of them spoke for maybe a mile or more, the trail steadily rising all the while before it dropped down into Banning.

  ‘What I was meanin’,’ Herne began, ‘part of what I was meanin’, was there ain’t no sense courtin’ trouble if’n it can be avoided.’

  Mary Anne Marie looked across at him and nodded. There seemed to be a more than usually strong hint of green about her brown eyes. ‘All right. But you got to remember how we make our livin’. Remember, too, you want to get paid when this is through.’

  ~*~

  Banning was a main street, short and wide, ’dobes and frame stores with false fronts, a boardwalk that ran half way along the southern side and was in need of repair. The church was the oldest building there, likely a Spanish mission that had been built around and added to from the sixteenth century on. When Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo had made his landing at Point Loma and set up the first Franciscan mission above San Diego, he had followed much the same route north as Herne and the girls. There the similarities began and ended.

  Folk stopped what they were doing and watched the wagons trundle down the center of the street, heading towards the high barn and wind sail that had to be the livery stable.

  The sight of a curly-haired, fine-looking woman with a cheroot at the corner of her mouth, handling the reins on the lead wagon caught a deal of attention-as did the smiling, then laughing faces that were soon looking out and around.

  Herne rode on ahead away, rousing the livery man from a game of checkers and making sure he had room to stable his own mount and allow the teams to spend a couple of nights in the hotel.

  He was heading back towards the wagons when he was intercepted.

  Jim Wickens had been marshal of Banning for close on five years and he was getting lazy. He knew it all too well and from time to time he would bestir himself and go chase a few young hoodlums or start cracking down on the Saturday night drunks who liked to bust up the furniture in the saloon and break a few windows up and down the street.

  It never seemed to last long.

  Wickens got to thinking that Saturday night weren’t Saturday night without a little ruckus and if youngsters weren’t going to run wild now and again what sort of young people was the state of California rearing anyhow. So he turned a blind eye and contented himself with a few verbal warnings that were rarely followed up. He spent the mornings sitting on the boardwalk outside the dining rooms, drinking coffee, talking with anyone who happened to chance by, occasionally thumbing through the newspaper that came weeks late on the stage from Merced or San Francisco.

  Afternoons he’d stretch out on the narrow cot he kept in the office and close his eyes for a while, simply to let his lunch digest the better. When he woke, he’d do a little paper work, maybe fetch his horse from the livery and take a ride out Holcombe way, swinging back by the San Bernardino road and passing the time of day with one or another of the ranchers who had places along the valley.

  Evenings he’d eat early and make the rounds, stopping at the Crazy Moon for a few beers and a hand or two of stud. If everything was as quiet as it usually was mid-week, he’d take another couple of turns around and head back to his office, light the lamp, pull down a book from the sloping shelf behind his desk and read for a while. Right then he was in the middle of an account of the life of a Mormon wife, written by some woman who’d spent time doing just that in Salt Lake City and published not more than a few years before in Hartford, Connecticut.

  Damn Mormons! Weren’t even as if they wanted all them wives for the sheer pleasure of it!

  More women they had, the more little Mormons they could bring into the world. More women they had, more folk they could get to do their work for ’em.

  It didn’t seem to Jim Wickens that was what taking a wife was about. Not the whole of it, anyhow. Other things he’d read had told him about love and companionship and the sharing of work together. He knew folk who stood together and worked alongside one another from sun-up to sundown, didn’t seem to matter which was the man and which the woman. Working the land the way they were, it seemed the only sensible way.

  Course, there were other kinds of women – them as liked to sit straight-faced and straight-backed in church on Sundays and hoist their noses in the air the rest of the week as if they were better than ordinary folk.

  And there were those like Maria and Clara who spent most evenings sitting close by the bar in the Crazy Moon – when they weren’t lifting their skirts in the side alley or taking their sporting men along to the small adobe they shared towards the edge of town.

  Most of Wickens’ thoughts about women sprang from one kind of second hand experience or another -even the special little tricks favored by Clara and Maria only filtered through to him from the eager and boasting gossip of others. Jim had kept thinking the right woman for him would happen by sooner or later until he knew it was later and she hadn’t stepped off the stage, rode into town on a buckboard come to make a first visit from some new place in the foothills.

  Inside, he was kind of glad. He wasn’t sure he wanted his life disturbed any more. He had a place all marked out over on the coast, right under the shadow of the Mission San Juan Capistrano. The pines came to within a few hundred yards of the shore and there was a clearing on a bluff that was just begging to be built on. He’d make the frame and the timbers himself and set it right. Use stone for the chimney and at the base of the walls. He’d buy a small boat and go out fishing, take his rifle off into the woods, likely keep hens and a cow or a goat.

  Wasn’t going to be long now.

  He’d been sitting back of his desk day-dreaming about it for the umpteenth time when he saw the wagons go slowly past, heading up for the livery stable. He’d failed to notice Jed Herne a few minutes before.

  Out of curiosity more than anything else, Jim Wickens reached his battered black hat from the back of his chair and set it on his head, working the smooth hat band a little this way and that until it was set just right. He glanced at the shotgun on the wall and shook his head. His Smith and Wesson .45 was holstered pretty high on his hip, safety thong over the hammer. By the door he paused and tied the bottom of the holster down before stepping out onto the street.

  The light was brighter than he thought and he blinked away and worked his hat brim lower. He walked along the edge of the packed earth of the street, passing the wagons and thinking to get ahead of them and welcome the newcomers into town. Thinking about his place out by the ocean had put him in a good mood.

  A round-faced girl with red cheeks smiled quietly down at him from the rear wagon and he touched his fingers to the brim of his hat and carried on by.

  He hadn’t seen Herne, hadn’t bargained on stepping up to the high-arched entrance and coming face to face with the tall stranger with trail dust on his clothes and a Colt close to the curled fingers of his right hand.

  Jim Wickens hesitated, uncertain. A hundred different fliers raced each other through his head, face after face appearing dimly and then being replaced. The stranger was a tall man, muscular, there was something narrow about the eyes an
d strong about the mouth. Wickens had a half-memory but it didn’t fit with the wanted posters he’d been running through his mind.

  ‘Marshal.’ Herne’s voice was steady, friendly. He was careful not to let his gun hand drift too close to his holster; careful not to let it stray too far away.

  ‘You ridin’ with them wagons?’

  Herne nodded, glanced up to where Mary Anne Marie had brought the first one to a halt close alongside him.

  Wickens looked with surprise at the woman with the cheroot, the younger blonde girl sitting up next to her.

  ‘What you got here?’ the marshal asked Herne.

  Before he could answer, Mary Anne Marie had said for him: ‘Wrong ways around, marshal. It’s us as has got him. Guide an’ guard. That’s Jed Herne.’

  ‘Herne,’ Wickens said again, testing the sound.

  ‘Right, marshal. Like the lady said, Jed Herne.’ He took a couple of paces forward like he might have been going to hold out his hand but he didn’t do so. Didn’t do anything. Just waited.

  ‘You ever ride with a feller name of Coburn? Whitey Coburn?’

  Herne nodded.

  ‘I’ll be damned! Herne the Hunter, huh?’

  ‘So some folk say.’

  From the wry smile on her face, Mary Anne Marie didn’t look too impressed.

  ‘You was workin’ for the railroad, long time back, that right?’

  “Long time back.’

  ‘An’ you an’ Coburn was in that Lincoln County shindig?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Whitey come out of that okay?’

  ‘That one he did.’

  Wickens slotted his thumb down into the top of his pants, rubbed his jaw with the forefinger and thumb of his other hand. ‘Ain’t ridin’ no more, huh?’

  Herne shook his head. ‘Every once in a while I buy a bottle of Jim Beam an’ drink him a toast or two.’

  Wickens nodded. ‘That’s the way it ought to be. Man ought to have someone to remember him after he’s gone.’

  Mary Anne Marie stamped her boot against the board at the front of the wagon and the horses shifted restlessly. ‘Do we have to hang here all afternoon while you two old men get sloppy an’ maudlin over one another?’

  ‘No, you don’t!’ snapped back Herne.

  ‘Can’t see no one standin’ in your way, ma’am,’ said Wickens, smarting.

  ‘Well, marshal, or sheriff, or whatever, there’s a question I want to ask you first.’

  ‘Uh-hmm, ask away.’

  ‘Have you got any objection to my girls an’ me moving one of these wagons down the street where none of your law-abidin’ citizens are goin’ to get too disturbed and settin’ up a little party later on tonight?’

  Wickens glanced at Herne and pushed his hat further back on his head. ‘Party, ma’am? What kind of party would that be, exactly?’

  Stephanie giggled and Irma and Ilsa laughed from the front of the second wagon. Wickens saw Irma’s round, flushed face for the second time and wondered why it bothered him as much as it did.

  ‘Sportin’ party, sheriff.’

  ‘Marshal,’ Wickens corrected her.

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  Wickens looked at her carefully, her and the others. ‘Four of you, huh?’

  ‘Five. Christiane’s restin’ there in the wagon.’

  ‘She got beat up by some righteous citizens down the trail south of here,’ explained Herne.

  ‘Which is why I wanted to get your permission to do a little business in this town,’ said Mary Anne Marie. ‘Not wantin’ a repetition of that incident here in Banning.’

  Jim Wickens thought about it a few moments; he was trying his damndest not to turn his head so that he could see Irma and he was failing fast.

  ‘How long you fixin’ on settin’ up this … er … business?’

  ‘Two nights,’ put in Herne, ‘no more’n that.’

  ‘Two?’ Wickens checked with Mary Anne Marie.

  ‘Two.’

  Irma had swung her legs round over the side of the wagon and was resting her head on her hands, legs swinging lightly below.

  ‘Okay. Two nights is fine. Why’nt you drive whichever wagon you’re aimin’ to use for your party down past the livery here and swing it round the back of the corral. That should suit you fine.’

  ‘Ain’t that a little out of the way there?’ asked Stephanie, pouting. ‘Folks might not know we’re here.’

  Wickens shook his head. ‘Don’t worry ’bout that. They’ll know soon enough.’

  Thank you, marshal.’ Mary Anne Marie acknowledged Wickens with a friendly wave of the hand. She picked up the reins and loosed the brake handle and got the wagon moving through the archway and into the livery entrance.

  ‘When you’re all through here,’ said Wickens to Herne, ‘maybe you’d step by the office. We can have a talk ’bout this an’ that.’

  Herne nodded. ‘Glad to, marshal.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Wickens turned on his heels and walked back the way he’d come, risking a grin at Irma as he went by. He lengthened his stride and without meaning to begin to whistle. If she was one of them party girls, she sure as hell weren’t the same as Maria or Clara – nor most others he’d seen in his time. No, sir, not the same at all.

  He nodded to a couple of folk walking down the opposite side of the street, waved to a third and was still whistling when he set his hand on the office door. He stood quite still for a few moments and then turned on his heels a second time and stepped decisively in the direction of the saloon.

  The owner was swabbing down the tables when Wickens walked briskly in and he stopped what he was doing long enough for the water to squeeze out of the dirty cloth and run down the outside of his pants leg.

  ‘Somethin’ wrong, Jim?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘What is it, then? You ain’t usually in here at this time.’

  ‘That don’t mean I can’t change my mind, does it?’

  ‘No, ’cept I always figured you for a man of habit.’

  Wickens shrugged. ‘Man can change his ways a little, can’t he? Does him good every now an’ then. Shakes him up. Gets him to look at things afresh.’

  The saloon proprietor noticed the spreading damp on his pants and threw the wet cloth onto the table top, cursing and brushing down at his leg with the palm of his hand.

  ‘When you’re through there,’ Wickens said with a grin, ‘you can set me up a … no, I’ll have a shot of brandy, I reckon.’

  ‘Damn it, Jim, ever since I knowed you, I never heard you ask for brandy the once.’

  Wickens nodded, moving to the bar. ‘Now we ain’t got to go through all that again, have we? Let’s see what’s the best you got there, I don’t want to drink nothin’ as is goin’ to take the skin off my mouth.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘An’ while I think of it, best tell Maria an’ Clara they’re gonna be havin’ competition for a couple of nights. Tell ’em to sit home and sew – supposin’ they know how.’

  And the marshal lifted his brandy from the counter, raised it in a toast, downed it in one, belched, and walked briskly out, leaving the owner open-mouthed.

  Eight

  Herne was getting a shave in the barber shop when the marshal strolled in, still whistling.

  ‘Won’t be a minute, Jim,’ said Ollie Pickens, pausing to flick a blob of lather from Herne’s sideburn with a deft flick of the towel.

  ‘Don’t rush on my account, Ollie. Ain’t you I come to see.’

  Herne eased himself round a little in the chair and almost caused Ollie to nick away a half-inch of his ear lobe. Beneath the white towel that was spread across him, Herne’s fingers slid over the butt of the Colt .45.

  Just because the marshal had come in whistling cheerily through his teeth didn’t mean a thing. He’d known a bank-robbin’ bastard one time called Fat Waco James who laughed all the while he was skinning one of his gang who’d crossed him with a hunting knife.

  �
�Just took a walk up to Miss Delaney’s wagon, figured I’d meet the other girls, say welcome proper. One of ’em, she’s sure taken a beating. Says you hauled off these fellers an’ gave ’em hell.’

  ‘Did what I could.’

  ‘Miss Delaney, she says part o’ the reason you’re ridin’ north with ’em is to catch up with the feller as was behind the trouble back there.’

  ‘Been on his trail for quite a time now. Aim to catch up with him one way or another.’

  ‘Preacher, ain’t he?’

  ‘So he says – strangest damn preacher I ever saw.’

  ‘One you’ve got here in town’s reg’lar as noon an’ night. He ain’t goin’ to be too pleased with a wagonload of soiled doves stoppin’ over but he ain’t about to raise a ruckus about it. Might get the good folk of Banning to pray a mite harder and throw a few more coins in the collection plate, but that’s about all there’ll be to it.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Ollie Porter set Herne’s head back and carefully drew the razor down under his nose and onto the curve of his upper lip, one stroke either side and then a quick dip into the middle.

  ‘Soon have you done.’

  ‘Sure. Take your time.’

  ‘You goin’ to be along there tonight?’ Wickens asked. ‘Just in case there’s any trouble – not that I’m expectin’ none.’

  ‘May do. Depends what else you got round here to occupy a man.’

  The marshal shook his head ruefully. ‘Not a deal goin’ down, as you might say.’

  ‘You’ll be stoppin’ by yourself, then?’ said Herne.

  The marshal nodded a little too enthusiastically. ‘Might do. Might do. In the line of duty.’

  ‘As you might say,’ grinned Herne, one side of his face still half-covered with lather.

  ‘As you might say,’ agreed Jim Wickens and raised his hand before stepping out onto the boardwalk and walking back towards his office.

  ‘Ain’t never heard Jim perky as this all the time he’s been here in Banning,’ said Ollie. ‘An’ that’s more’n seven, eight year.’

  ‘Maybe Banning never got itself a wagonload like the one that’s waitin’ down the street before?’