The Hanging (Herne the Hunter Western Book #17) Page 7

  ‘Very well. Over this side,’ agreed the minister, leading the shootist by the arm towards a small hollow, a dozen paces from the fire, four paces from where his stallion was pawing at the frozen ground, unhappy at the closeness of the eighteen strangers.

  ‘Here?’ asked Jed.

  ‘Yes.’ Calling out to the others who were standing watching them. ‘Give us a little privacy, men. And a couple of you go and bring our horses here from where we tethered them. Then we can make a speedy departure once we have finished what we must do.’ Looking at Jed. ‘You understand that we do only what we must do, Mr. Herne?’

  ‘Sure. Priest’s got to do what a priest’s got to do. Everyone knows that.’

  They sat together and Herne folded his hands together, like he’d seen folks do in church. He couldn’t remember any kind of prayer, except the one he’d heard most. So, moving his lips silently he began to patter off to himself what he could recall of the service for the burial of the dead. Wyndham watched him in the stillness. Around them Jed heard the noise of horses being brought up, but the posse had fallen oddly still, as though embarrassed by his request for praying time.

  ‘Can I assist you in…?’ began Wyndham, tentatively. ‘Perhaps if we were to unite our prayers?’ A pause for a dozen heartbeats. ‘Our prayers?’

  ‘Thank you, but I guess I’ve said ’bout all I can to the Lord.’

  ‘Forgiveness?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve asked him for forgiveness?’

  Herne nodded. ‘Sure have. And I seemed to hear him tellin’ me that it was fine with him.’

  ‘There is more rejoicing in the gates of Heaven on one sinner come to repentance … ’ said the priest with a quiet smile. ‘Now, the letter…?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The men were all on the far side of the camp, talking quietly among themselves. A couple of them were holding the horses for the whole posse. The only man who was showing an active interest was the sullen figure of Jud Bridges, standing with legs apart, holding the scattergun, pointing it towards the shootist.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I don’t have paper nor pencil, Reverend. Maybe Mr. Bridges there?’

  ‘Jud?’ called the minister.

  ‘What is it? This fuckin’ bastard givin’ trouble, Reverend?’ The man’s knuckles were tight on the triggers of the gun and a nerve jerked at the corner of his mouth with his utter desire to wipe the shootist clean over the land.

  ‘No. No, and please guard your language, Jud. We are together here at the closing of this man’s life. He is to pay the price for all of his sins and he has expressed himself contrite. So, we must help him into eternity.’

  ‘I’ll help the tall son of a bitch into eternity all right. I’ll tie the hemp round his throat and I’ll pull on the rope’s end.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the priest. Worried in case Herne changed his mind and refused to write a letter to his old mother in Norwich, Vermont.

  The chubby priest wasn’t to know that Herne’s mother had actually been dead for forty-two and a half years. She had been Elizabeth Julia Herne, married to Albert Jedediah Herne, cartographer and associate of the explorer, J. C. Fremont.

  Both his parents were with the expedition that was surveying over the Sierras in the early part of ’forty-four. They were trapped by unusually severe weather at Carson Pass. The delay meant that Elizabeth’s expected first child was born in a rough campsite instead of in the relative comfort of a town. Jed was born on February 29 in 1844 and thrived.

  But his mother died.

  ‘He wants to write to his dear old mother and he doesn’t have any paper or a pencil.’

  ‘I got me some,’ replied the vigilante. ‘Don’t figure on givin’ it to a killer, though.’

  ‘Please, Jud. It would be simple Christian charity for him.’

  ‘Can I whip the horse to send him off?’

  The priest tutted. ‘Yes. I suppose you can. Now, the paper.’

  Bridges reached inside his long coat and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. It was a receipt from the store for a new kettle he’d bought a fortnight earlier. From another pocket he tugged out a stub of pencil, less than an inch long. Peered closely at the point, holding it against the bright flames of the fire. ‘Shit. It’s busted.’

  ‘Then perhaps …’

  ‘No. I got me another, somewheres. Here.’ It was nearly new. He recalled he’d picked it up from the counter when he’d made his mark on the bill. It was plain wood, with a little eagle’s head stamped on one end. The point was broken but Bridges drew his narrow-blade skinning knife from his hip and put a keen point on it. Handing it to the minister.

  ‘I thank you, Jud.’

  ‘Guess I’ll stay here. Case there’s trouble with him.’

  ‘You think I might attack you with this pencil, Jud?’ asked Herne, taking it, smoothing the paper as best he could over his lap. Licking the end of the pencil and screwing up his eyes.

  ‘Can you write, Herne?’ asked the priest, a tone of concern in his voice. It would be so much better if it was in the robber’s own hand.

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Jed, uncertainly. ‘But I’m not so good at puttin’ the letters in the right places when I do spellin’.’

  ‘I’ll help. Here.’ Wyndham shuffled closer, so that his shoulder was almost touching Herne. Eager to control what went in the missive.

  Bridges stood a little to one side, watching with great suspicion. The rest of the sixteen men were some paces away. Despite the heat of the giant fire at his back, the shootist could see his breath frosting the chill air in front of him. He guessed that there was about five hours to go to dawn.

  ‘Dear Ma,’ wrote Jed, hissing between his teeth with the effort of composing the letter. ‘Gues this is the larst you will ever here from your son Jed. I am to be hunged by these men from Stansted Springs for robing theyre bank.’

  ‘That’s good, Herne,’ encouraged the minister. ‘Very good. You should say that you are filled with remorse.’

  ‘Sure.’

  He began to write again, leaning further forward over the paper so that Wyndham also had to crane across him to make out what he was putting.

  ‘I am fild with… .’ he stopped. ‘How the Hell do you spell that word?’

  ‘Remorse?’

  ‘Yeah. Means bein’ sorry for bein’ caught, I guess. Does it?’

  ‘Not just for being caught, Herne. For having committed your dreadful crimes.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Someone called out from behind them, asking how much longer they’d be.

  ‘Just a moment now,’ replied the priest, failing to keep the irritation from his voice.

  ‘How’s the spelling, Reverend?’ asked Herne again, holding the pencil in his right hand, the paper across his lap.

  ‘Begins with an “R”. That’s it.’ The priest was now leaning clean across the shootist, right hand pointing at the letter.

  Jed Herne took a deep breath, controlling himself, ready.

  Ready for the burst of explosive effort that would be his one and only chance of saving his own life. And a desperate chance it was.

  ‘Then an “E”. That’s good. You can … ’

  The priest saw a blur of movement, and then there was a fearful pain in his right eye. Something burned and bored into his head, feeling as though it was exploding in the middle of his brain.

  Herne had jabbed the sharpened point of the pencil with all his strength into the priest’s eye, feeling wet fluid squirt out. He ground it in as far as he could, through the back of the eye, along the optic nerve until it penetrated clear into the vulnerable centre of the skull.

  The minister leaned sideways, hands going to his face. Feeling the stump of the pencil, sticking out from his eye barely an inch. Trying to grasp it to pull it out, but there was blood on it and his cold fingers slipped. Starting to stand, the beginnings of a scream of dazzling agony forming deep in his throat.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked
Bridges, taking a step to the side. Suddenly seeing what had happened. ‘Oh, my Jesus … ’ he began, mouth sagging in shock.

  Every fraction of a second was vital to Herne and he grabbed the handgun from the priest’s belt, pushing him over. Wyndham was already dying, the sight fading in his good eye, the breath fluttering in his chest. Seeing only the brightness of the flames of the camp-fire. The scream never made it, ending in a feather of sound that rippled out into the muddied ice by his mouth.

  Herne shot Bridges through the stomach, doubling him up, so that the scattergun dropped at his feet. Stooping to scoop it up, ignoring the bedlam that burst into life behind him.

  Faces were turning, men screaming out warnings. But nobody quite knew what was happening. Their priest was lying on his side, without an obvious sign of a wound on him. Though there seemed to be the broken stump of an arrow-shaft protruding from his right eye.

  ‘Indians!’ yelled Blennerhassett, nearest to the killing.

  But their captive was standing up, a smoking pistol in his left hand. Jud Bridges was on his hands and knees, coughing, bright scarlet arterial blood spilling from his mouth.

  Bracing the stock of the shotgun against his right hip Herne fired both barrels.

  Not at the posse.

  At their horses.

  It was total bloody carnage.

  The lead ripped out in a double star pattern, hitting at least a dozen of the animals. Wounding both men holding them. Immediately the horses screamed and reared, all of them pulling free. Two were hit in the face, one blinded. Blood showed on flanks and necks and they bolted, scattering the posse who were just preparing to gun Herne down.

  The shootist threw the smoking shotgun to the earth, snapping off the remaining five rounds from the minister’s pistol, hardly bothering to aim. Immediately dropping the warm handgun and drawing his own forty-five Peacemaker, this time aiming with a little more care.

  There wouldn’t be another chance.

  His six shots killed three men and wounded four others. One bullet went through the side of a vigilante’s neck and angled off into the face of the man standing immediately behind.

  The moment that the sixth round was fired Herne was moving. Running crouched, sticking the pistol back into his holster. Just before he reached his stallion he drew the bayonet from his boot, gripping it tightly in his right hand.

  ‘Stop him!’

  ‘Shoot the bastard!’

  Words were cheap.

  But when you’re surrounded by panicking horses and dead and dying friends, nobody’s going to be that steady on the trigger. Several shots rang out just as the shootist reached the black horse, but he wasn’t aware of any of them coming even remotely close to him.

  With a desperate leap he powered himself into the saddle, not bothering with the stirrups. Slashing through the reins to free the animal, and kicking his heels as hard as he could into its flanks, his spurs drawing blood. With a cry of protest the stallion leaped forward, nearly bucking him out of the saddle. But he hung on, lying low over the neck of the horse.

  The noise behind him rose to a deafening crescendo. Horses and men screaming and shouting. Chaos ruled totally and the frozen ground was churned up to a morass of bloodied earth and mud.

  There were surprisingly few shots fired from the posse. Partly because the escape had been so shocking and so violent. One moment they were ready for the hanging, talking quietly about what they’d tell the folks back home. The condemned man was writing a last letter to his Ma and the Reverend Henry Wyndham was helping him out.

  Next second there was the minister dead. Their horses scattered, several with severe gunshot wounds. Altogether five men dead and two more, including Jud Bridges, dying. Three more were wounded, one with a broken hip after being kicked by a stampeding horse.

  The vigilantes were finished. Only eight were free from injuries and they had three horses between them. The rest of the animals were scattered all across the freezing Colorado mountains.

  It took close to a fortnight before the remnants of the proud posse returned to Stanstead Springs.

  Herne wasn’t concerned with them anymore. He’d gotten away and that was all that mattered for that moment.

  By the time that dawn came in, touching the Rockies with a pink glow, the shootist was well on his way after George Wright and his three companions.

  Two days later he caught up with them.

  At a town called Cold Christmas.

  Chapter Nine

  Cold Christmas. Population: 347. Founded: 1871. Two rooming-houses and seven saloons. One church. No school. One bank. (First National.) A pretty settlement nestling on the fringe of the Rocky Mountains. There is an abandoned silver mine close by with unsightly workings. There are a number of ill-marked trails in the vicinity where the keen walker and botanist might find great solitude and considerable beauty. The river that flows through the quaintly-named township is called the Lost Herd, named after a sad accident some years back when a flood took away many local cattle. However there is little danger of any accident to the modern traveler in this picturesque place.

  From: ‘High Mountains And Beyond’ by Edgar Souse

  published by Austin, Howell & James of Radlett, Ohio, 1885.

  Walkers and botanists would have had a hard, cold time of it that fall in Cold Christmas. The snow had stopped, but the temperature, even in the middle of the day, hardly scraped its way up towards ten below. Jed Herne had known it a whole lot colder, once being up in the far north when the thermometer slipped off the scale at seventy-five below. So bitter that your spit froze and sang in the air and your eyes seemed like to freeze shut in their sockets.

  That October wasn’t even close to that.

  But it was still cold.

  The citizens of the neat settlement were mainly indoors that Tuesday morning. The stores had opened for business but most of them had fires going in their iron stoves. The local branch of the First National Bank was also open, the pair of counter clerks busily preparing their monthly statements of accounts.

  It was less than two months since the bank had been robbed by a gang of five men, led by an older bandit who made sure everyone there knew that his name was Herne the Hunter. The raid had been unusual for that particular gang as nobody had been killed. The manager had taken a ball through the right knee when he was tardy in opening up the vault.

  Now it was his assistant, Matt Kitchener, who was in charge. Glorying in the chance of sitting in a comfortable office with his own fire blazing in the small iron grate, lounging back in a padded red chair, feet scarring the top of the manager’s desk. There had even been the chance to poach some of the regular manager’s precious stock of Havana two dollar stogies, normally reserved for very special clients of the bank.

  Kitchener had been out the day that the gang raided the branch but he’d heard the story a couple of dozen times from everyone who’d been involved.

  There was a knock on the office door and one of the clerks brought him in his morning cup of coffee, placing it carefully on a polished tray. Leaving a neat stack of buckwheat cakes on a plate at the side of the drink. Bowing respectfully and walking quickly out before Kitchener could find something wrong.

  But the acting-manager was sitting smugly back thinking how obedient the two clerks were to him. Raising his cup of coffee delicately to his lips and savoring the delicious taste. Kitchener would not have enjoyed it so much if he had known that the two juniors had invented a ritual for themselves three times a day. Each time they made coffee for him they would offer it to each other first and each would spit in it. Or pick their noses or ears. Or worse. Stirring it in with the spoon with gigglings and mutterings of: ‘Here you are Mr. Kitchener, Sir.’ ‘Hope it chokes you, Mr. Kitchener.’ ‘Lovely green bit of spittle in that one, Mr. Kitchener.’

  It was harmless fun and gave them a great deal of pleasure.

  Herne was waiting outside town.

  During the hour and more that he’d spent cowering in t
he snow-dusted forest, before the posse took him, he’d heard George Wright telling the others what he planned.

  ‘Hit a place we hit already. Sons of bitches won’t be ready for us. Easier than candy from a blind baby.’

  The other four of them had laughed. Herne recalled that Dermot O’Sullivan had laughed louder than any of them. By now there wouldn’t be much left of his body. Just whitening bones with shreds of gristle still sticking drily to them.

  And the town that they’d been laughing about was called Cold Christmas. Not the kind of name you could easily forget. Herne remembered it. Held it in his mind even while he was galloping through the blackness of the Colorado night, with the bullets of the vigilantes whistling about his ears.

  It was the place to stop them for once and for all. Watch the trails in and out until Wright appeared with the other three. Then come in after them.

  The shootist was certain that the killing of one of the twins wouldn’t have altered their plans. The snows were hanging in the air to the north like a threatening shroud. Any day and the mountains would close in on themselves and the paths to the west would be shut for half a year.

  It had to be soon.

  The idea had crossed his mind to go in and warn the good folk of Cold Christmas that their bank was likely to be hit. But during the hour he was a prisoner of the posse Herne had seen the futility of trying to reason with men who think they’ve a bank robber in their midst. So he decided that it was better to sit with the cards he’d got. Knowing that it was a good hand. Good enough to beat most.

  So, he waited.

  It had taken hard riding to get to the township before the robbers, pushing the stallion on to the limits and sometimes beyond. Overtaking them in the evening of the previous day, by taking a higher, more dangerous trail than the one that they were spurring along. Looking down on the four figures, their duster coats flaring in the chilly wind that blew through the canyons.

  Now they’d caught up with him.