Shadow of the Vulture Page 7

  Tom’s father interrupted him by placing his hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘Reckon this new-fangled friend of yourn ain’t such a friend after all. He’s taken sides with that bastard Mellor!’

  The older man leaned forward and spat once more down into the fire.

  ‘That’s not possible!’ Tom Newman pushed back his chair and stood up. The blue eyes were staring wildly down at Herne; the expression on his face one of startled disbelief. ‘You couldn’t have done that. Not after what you did for me yesterday!’

  Herne returned his stare, saying nothing.

  ‘Dang me, boy. Jes’ see how he ain’t answerin’. He’s gone over to Mellor right enough.’

  ‘Jed! Say it isn’t right!’ Tom Newman implored. But even as he said the words, he knew it was. A cold wave, a mixture of disappointment and fear, rolled across his stomach.

  ‘See, Tom,’ said Herne, ‘what I did in Charity I would have done for anyone who seemed to be lookin’ down the wrong end of a gun for no good reason at all. What I’m doin’ now is a job. Paid work. I hired myself out to the only man who wanted to pay me. There’s nothing personal about what I’ve come here for today. I’m just sorry it turned out to be you and your folks,’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Then nothing. I may be sorry, but that won’t stop me doing my job. Not now I’ve taken money for it and given my word.’

  ‘Your word to Isaac Mellor,’ snorted the old man. ‘I’d as soon give my word to a rattlesnake! He wouldn’t pay any attention to holdin’ his word if it didn’t suit him.’

  ‘That don’t matter none. It don’t matter at all. Once I shake hands on somethin’ then it’s done.’

  Tom Newman took a step back from him. ‘You shook my hand yesterday, Jed.’

  ‘Damn it, boy!’ shouted Herne, ‘that was different. You got to see that.’

  Tom Newman turned away. He didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to see Herne’s face.

  The old man spat on the boards in front of the fire. He got up slowly and ground the yellow gobbet of spittle under his foot.

  Then he looked up at Herne. ‘What exactly is this dang job you’ve come to do?’

  ‘You got till nine in the mornin’ to quit, unless you come up with the money you owe the bank. That’s all.’

  ‘All!’ Tom whirled back round. ‘All! What the hell does that mean? Turning a family out on Christmas Day and you say, that’s all. God, Jed, yesterday I thought you was a decent man with feelings. Now I know you ain’t got no more feelings than this floor.’ And he stamped heavily downwards.

  Herne blinked. For most of his life what the youngster had said had been right. He had felt nothing. Then Louise had opened up something in him which for years he had kept suppressed, had refused to believe existed. After that he had known what feelings were...but now...

  Now it was different. Now it had to be different. Feelings were luxuries he couldn’t afford.

  Then he remembered Becky standing before him by the quayside in New York.

  ‘Tom. I’ll go back and tell Mellor that you’ll move within the next two weeks. That will mean you and your folks can stay here for the Christmas and still have time to look around for somewhere you can move on to. How about that?’

  By way of an answer, Tom Newman led Herne across the room to a log door. He opened it, a finger to his lips, and let the tall man pass through into the room beyond.

  Lying in the bed was a woman. Her hair was straggly and matted in places to her scalp. There were dark lines underneath closed eyes. A nose that was marred by scabs of purplish skin. One hand clung to the edge of the rough cotton sheet. It was as thin as the woman’s hold on life.

  When she breathed, her breath rattled inside her body.

  Herne looked down at her, then turned quickly around and walked back into the other room.

  Tom Newman closed the door behind him. That’s my Ma.’

  Herne faced him. ‘Yep,’ he said solemnly.

  ‘She’s wastin’ away. Every day she gets thinner and thinner. We try to get her to take somethin’ down, but she brings it back up again as often as not. Mostly she lies there sleeping which is a mercy. But she wakes sometimes and asks Pa or me if everything’s still all right with the ranch.’ He fixed his blue eyes on Jed. ‘There ain’t no way we’re goin’ to tell her that we got to move out. It ain’t right. Surely you can see that, Jed? It just ain’t right.’

  Herne nodded. ‘Mellor knows about your Ma?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure he knows. Says that’s why he’s given us as much time as he has. Now I suppose he can’t wait any longer.’

  ‘Seems that way.’

  ‘This changes things, doesn’t it, Jed?’

  Herne looked from the youngster to his father, from his father to the door behind which his mother lay. And then he shook his head very slowly from side to side.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Tom blurted.

  ‘I mean it don’t change a thing. It can’t. Like I told you, I already took the man’s money and gave him my word. If you say I can tell him you’ll be out in two weeks, then I’ll try and do my best for you. If not...then I’ll be back in the morning.’

  ‘Hellfire, son,’ said the old man, ‘tell this friend of yourn to get his miserable ass out of here before I fill it with shotgun pellets!’

  Herne turned and saw the man with the weapon in his hands, pointing in his direction. He ignored him and looked back at Tom. ‘What’s it to be?’

  ‘We ain’t movin’! Not for anything. Not for anyone. Not even for you, Jed Herne.’

  Herne moved towards the door. ‘I’m right sorry, Tom. For you and your folks.’

  He walked outside and went over towards his horse. The two men came out of the building after him, the older one with the shotgun over his crooked arm.

  Herne swung himself up into the saddle. ‘I’ll be back at nine in the morning, Tom. For your sake, I hope you’ve seen sense and moved on out before I get here.’

  Tom Newman stood away from his father. ‘If you come here in the morning, Jed, then you’ll have to come in shooting.’

  Herne saw the young man’s defiance in his stance, in the expression in his clear, open face. He said: ‘Don’t worry, son. I will.’

  And he wheeled his horse around and moved on up the slope that led back to Charity. Behind him, the snow clouds still gathered, thickening with the passing of time.

  Chapter Six

  The plain was white. A hard frost had set a crisp seal on the snow that had fallen during the night. Each forward movement the horse made cut down through the brittle crust into the softness beneath. Herne pulled hard at his coat and cursed the cold. He had jammed a Stetson down on his head and bought a pair of gloves for the hands that held the reins but was still colder than he’d been for some ten years. The time he’d been trapped in a blizzard in Wyoming Territory. Then it had been more than thirty below.

  Jed pulled the horse to a halt at the crest of the hill that wound down towards the Newman homestead.

  He looked round behind him at the expanse of whiteness, unrelieved except for the straight line of hoof marks that marked his progress through the snow. Above him the sky was still darkly gray.

  Below him …smoke curled up out of the chimney and was soon lost to sight. Chopped wood. A cart with a broken wheel. Away to the right of the main building a single, bare tree. All were lined with snow. Heine’s attention went back to the tree. There was a flutter of movement, a flapping of wings: a large bird perched on an out flung branch, tumbling small showers of white powder downwards. Dark. Ugly. A vulture.

  Not even this temperature could negate its greed; not even the extreme cold could blunt its sense of the proximity of death.

  Herne wanted to draw his gun and shoot it. Instead he moved his mount on the descent to the ranch.

  He had got within fifty yards of it when a shot rang out. It was oddly muffled by the eerie, snow-filled atmosphere. Jed reined in sharply and waited. The bullet had passed well wide
of him. He sensed that it had been meant as a warning. A warning that he should keep well away.

  The sound of his spurs announced his decision to continue towards the building from which the shot had been fired. Another ten yards and there was a second shot. This one was closer. It dug a tunnel into the snow close to his right, causing the horse to rear up.

  Herne brought him back into line and moved down once again.

  This time the door of the ranch house was flung hastily open and the figure of Tom Newman jumped out. He had a rifle to his hip and even from that distance, Jed could see the anger that burned on his face.

  ‘I warned you, Jed! I warned you what would happen!’

  ‘And I told you that I was comin’ in, no matter what you said or did.’

  Newman started to lift the rifle to his shoulder.

  Herne shouted down to him. ‘Don’t be more foolish than you need be, Tom. There ain’t no point in you shootin’ me, anyway. For one, you’ll likely miss and then I’ll have to take you myself. For two, if you did stop me, then Mellors would only send someone else. You can’t win, son. Don’t cause people to die when it ain’t necessary.’

  The young man waved the rifle in an outburst of temper. ‘It’s too damn late for you to talk about people not dyin’. Ma lay awake yesterday when we thought she was asleep. She heard us talking about what you’d said. When she spoke to Pa about it, what little bit of life she had left seemed to drain from her. She never said anything again. Just lay there with her mouth frozen open. All we could hear as we sat around the bed was a dry rattle at the back of her throat. ‘Bout midnight she sat up in that bed as though a bolt of lightnin’ had struck through her body. Arms flung out and eyes staring up above her like she’d seen something terrified her. By the time she’d fallen back on to her bed, Ma was dead.’

  Herne reached up and pulled off his Stetson and held it in front of him as a mark of respect

  Tom,’ he called down, ‘I’m sorry. Plumb sorry. I…there ain’t nothing more I can say.’

  Tom began again to lift his rifle to his shoulder. ‘You’re right, Jed. There ain’t nothin’ more you can say. You’ve said enough already. What you said yesterday brought about Ma’s death.’

  ‘That ain’t so, Tom. You know that. Only don’t lift that gun of yours any higher. ‘Cause I don’t want there to be another dead body round here an’ if you make a play against me I got no alternative. Not as far as I can see.’

  The movement of the rifle stopped momentarily. Herne relaxed. Then another figure stepped out into the coldness of the morning. Tom’s father held his shotgun in front of him, twin barrels aiming in Herne’s direction, stock pulled back against his hip. He walked past his son and moved up the slope towards the spot where Jed Herne was waiting.

  ‘You killed her! You killed her!’ the old man shouted feverishly. ‘My Emily. You killed her!’

  His foot drove down into an especially deep patch of snow and he was stopped short. Herne looked at the old man’s face; it was lined with strain and creased by year after year of hard work. Work which had proved ultimately fruitless. His eyes were flooding with tears: tears of hatred for the man sitting astride his horse on the slope above him; tears for the woman he had loved for more than thirty years. The woman who now lay on the bed that had been their marriage bed. Now the worn white sheet was pulled high over her face. And a covering of snow was over the land he had tried to tame for his own.

  Old Man Newman pulled his leg high out of the deep fall and started back towards Herne. Tom Newman watched helplessly. Knowing that he should interfere; knowing also that he would get no thanks from his father if he did so.

  ‘Mister, I’m gonna kill you if it’s the last dang thing I do! My…my Emily…she was everything to me. All I ever wanted. All I…watching her like that…fading away…her poor body racked with pain …hate, that’s what it is…gonna make you regret that you ever come here — gonna kill...kill…k...k...’

  Saliva flew from his mouth. The man was merely babbling now, making sounds rather than words. His feet slipped and stumbled as he tried to hurry towards the man he wanted so desperately to kill. As he got nearer, Jed could see clearly where the flecks of spittle had frozen on to the ragged edges of his beard.

  He looked at the man’s gnarled right hand; the one close by the double trigger of the shotgun; the one which would send a devastating cascade of buckshot in Herne’s direction.

  ‘Gonna…gon…gon…k…k…Emily…kill!’

  Herne looked past the man at his son, who was still waiting below with his rifle close to his shoulder.

  Tom!’ Herne shouted. ‘Stop him, can’t you? He’s gone loco!’

  Tom Newman’s answer flashed back, ‘Don’t you say that about my Pa!’

  ‘Kill...kill...kkkk...!’

  Herne watched as the old man lost his footing and fell forward, pushing out the gun in an effort to right himself. Half way to the ground, his fingers pressed down on the trigger.

  Herne flipped himself backwards from his horse, rolling through the snow in a ball from which he emerged with his legs splayed out into a gunfighter’s crouch, his Colt .45 drawn and ready.

  One barrel of the old man’s gun had been fired; the other was still waiting. Not for long. He looked truly crazed now. His mouth was open and hissing sounds emerged, together with a stream of spittle which dribbled down over his chin. He wasn’t more than fifteen feet away from Herne and he suddenly decided that he was going to charge across that space and fire the remaining barrel full into Herne’s body.

  There was no way in which Jed could accept the risk–he might get close enough for it to be impossible to miss, or he might get thrown off balance the same way as a few moments earlier. In either case, there was no doubt what he had to do.

  Herne fired twice. The first bullet smashed into the old man’s knee cap, breaking it instantaneously into a myriad shards of brittle bone. The second almost split the wiry arm at the elbow, again rending bone and tearing through sinew.

  The old man was spun round by the impact of the bullets. He balanced precariously on his left leg, staring at the shattered limbs of the right hand side of his body. A ragged scarecrow guarding a field of snow. Only not stuffed with straw. The blood that ran down into the whiteness by its feet testified to that.

  Then he fell with a crunching sound as the frozen surface opened up and accepted his broken body.

  Only then did Herne notice where the first charge from the shotgun had gone. It had blasted into the side and stomach of his horse. The animal lay now with its torn belly facing in Herne’s direction. Coils of intestine tumbled over one another and slithered like snakes down on to the ground. Blood washed over them and soaked into the white surface, through which it spread like fire through paper.

  Herne watched spellbound as the blood from the animal reached out tendrils towards that from the old man’s shattered arm and leg, some five feet away.

  Amazingly, the animal’s head moved up off the ground and it gave an almost human whine of pain. Herne stood over it with his gun aiming downwards.

  ‘Jed! Jed Herne!’

  He had temporarily forgotten Tom Newman.

  ‘Herne! How many more of my family you gonna kill?’

  Herne ignored him and fired once through the animal’s brain. Only then did he turn and face down to the ranch. Tom had shifted his ground, finding cover behind the cart to the left of the main building.

  ‘I didn’t kill your Ma and your Pa’s not dead. Why the hell don’t you come up here and get him into the house instead of trying to get yourself shot into the bargain?’

  The answer was a bullet which ploughed into a thick drift of snow a foot or so to his right.

  ‘The next one’s going to be straighter, Jed.’

  Herne had no intention of waiting to find out. He holstered his gun after snapping off a shot to keep the youngster ducked down. Then he ran hard and low, heading for the opposite end of the ranch buildings. A shot came after him,
close enough for him to sense it passing by his head. He ducked lower still, tripped over something hidden under the surface of the snow and dived headlong. This time he couldn’t manage an even roll, but he didn’t shake himself up too badly. He pushed down on his hands and darted the final feet to the cover of the low barn.

  Time to get his breath back and reload.

  ‘Tom,’ he shouted, partly stalling for the chance to prepare himself again, partly because he still hoped it would be possible not to have to shoot the youngster too. ‘Tom! You hear me?’

  ‘Sure I hear you.’

  ‘Don’t it do anything to you that your old man’s lyin’ bleeding up there in all that snow?’

  ‘Sure it does. It makes me want to put a bullet from this rifle of mine right between those eyes of yours.’

  ‘You reckon that’s more important than stopping your old man bleedin’ to death? Or freezin’?’

  Silence. Herne guessed that the kid was thinking this last remark over. He hoped he would see sense. Something told him that he would not. Up on the tree, that was almost immediately above him now, the vulture had been joined by three others. Herne glanced at them with a growing feeling of disgust deep in his stomach.

  He was surprised when Tom Newman stepped out from behind the cart. ‘Jed! You put up your gun and I’ll go up and get my Pa. We can sort the rest of this out later.’

  Surprised and pleased.

  He stood out from the side of the barn and let Tom see the Colt fall smoothly down into its holster. Tom laid his rifle on top of the cart and walked, then ran, up the slope to where his father lay.

  Herne walked after him, hoping all the while that he had been right and that the old man was not dead.

  Tom Newman knelt down beside the still, bent figure, putting his face close to the old man’s head, anxiously searching for some sign of life. Herne saw the expression of relief flood over the boy’s face, then change dramatically as he examined the damage to his father’s arm and leg.

  He pushed his arms underneath the old man as gently as he could, aiming to lift him up.

  Herne moved forward and went down on one knee. ‘Let me help you, Tom.’