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  ‘Forgive me, Major Corwin, but that’s not quite right. Near to it, but missin’ a detail here and there. Way I hear it, One Eye and his bucks have been there for months, and you’ve done damn-all to blast him out. And I didn’t agree to burn any of his wickiups, which don’t burn anyway. I just went in for the lady.’

  ‘That was all you get paid for, Mister Herne?’ asked a sour-faced, grizzled Captain.

  ‘Right. Way I see it, I done you a Hell of a good turn today.’

  ‘Eight troopers were killed and several more wounded! Is that your help?’

  Herne had been doing a spell of thinking about the losses, and was reasonably sure he’d come up with the answer. He looked across the room at young Pinner.

  ‘Tell me about the deaths, Lieutenant. How you figure they was down to me?’

  ‘Well…I arrived as we agreed, and placed my men in a wide circle around the entrance to the Canyon. We had arrived without being seen. At fifteen minutes after five, at the time decided, we opened heavy and concentrated fire. In time they came and returned the fire.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Couple of dozen. One Eye has only that many braves.’

  ‘Your losses?’ asked Herne with deceptive gentleness. ‘How do you lose that many?’

  ‘I was waiting for you to fire the place before making my withdrawal. To give you the best chance I could to rescue the lady.’

  ‘Damn noble. Except that you knew that there wouldn’t be a fire. We talked about it last night.’

  Corwin stood up, pointing at Herne. ‘That’s a lie, Mister. I’ll have you…’

  ‘Have me what, Major? Painting your stones? Or polishing your parade-ground so it gleams?’

  ‘I... I waited as long as possible, and that gave some of the Mescalero braves a chance to get high up the cliffs and direct their fire downwards. That was how the losses came.’

  Pinner was lying. Herne knew it.

  ‘Lieutenant Pinner?’

  The young man looked across the room at him, uncertainty in his face. ‘Yes?’

  ‘From the top of the back entrance it’s possible from one spot to see the mouth of the Canyon where your men were placed. Did you know that?’

  ‘No. No I didn’t.’

  Jed was about to gamble. ‘I saw where you’d put your troopers. You want to tell the Major how far from the Canyon you’d put them?’

  Tar enough.’

  ‘How far’s that?’

  Pinner was silent. Major Corwin looked from his face to Herne and back again, unable to understand what was going on.

  Herne ignored the other men, speaking directly to the young officer. ‘You told me something Nathan Brittles used to say, about apologizing. He also used to say that it was a big man that made no mistakes. And a bigger one who admitted it when he made one. Better you tell them, son.’

  Pinner cleared his throat, pulling himself up to stand at attention. ‘Mister Herne is correct, sir. I regret to say that I brought my men in too close. Within a hundred yards of the hostile Indians. They could easily climb and fire over our cover. Which they did. I never thought of it as it was dark when we took up positions.’

  ‘You friggin’ young…! I would have thought that any wet-eared puppy would have been more careful!’

  Herne interrupted him. ‘I would have thought Major Corwin that any officer worthy of the name would not have delegated such an important mission to an inexperienced officer. Most Commanding Officers would have done it themselves!’

  Corwin looked as though he might explode. ‘Damn your nerve, Herne! I was otherwise engaged this morning, or I would have been there. And if you make suggestions of cowardice, then I think you owe me an instant apology. I was not the one who sneaked in behind the corpses of my brave men and came running out again, carrying a naked bitch who should have known better than to get herself caught. You have done nothing but run like the braggart you are. A braggart and a stinkin’ coward!!’

  For a moment, like glass beads on a curtain, the words hung suspended in the space of the crowded hot office. Herne had known many men in his life who would have reached for their guns at words like those. And murdered the stubby Major in hot blood.

  The temptation was there. He felt it surge through him like a flood tide, but he checked it. Pleasant though it would be to put a bullet through that crimson turkey-face, the other men were all carrying side-arms. He couldn’t kill them all.

  Slowly, so there wouldn’t be any misunderstanding, Jed rose from his seat, taking care to keep both hands well away from the Colt. Took the two steps that brought him face to face with Corwin, and lashed him open-handed across the mouth, knocking him back in his chair with the force of the blow.

  ‘No coward, Major,’ he said, stepping back instantly, so that the officers moving in to restrain him found themselves foolishly stranded in mid-stride. Corwin sat still, the color driven from his cheeks, apart from the weals of Herne’s fingers scarlet on his skin. The power of the slap had caught the side of his nose and a thin trickle of blood ran down, splashing on the neat little plan.

  ‘I’ll... I’ll... have you...’

  ‘Nothing.’ Jed sat down again, looking round the office, meeting the eyes of every man there and holding each glance until the other looked away. ‘All these men know you for a fool. A liar. A braggart. An inefficient petty coward. Every man at Fort Gilman must know that. And if they don’t, then I’ll find a way of tellin’ them before I leave.’

  ‘If it weren’t for my rank I would call you out for that,’ blustered Corwin.

  Pinner interrupted him. ‘Beg your pardon, sir, but I don’t recall any specific bar on an affair of honor for a man of your rank. Not for such a great insult.’

  If looks could have slain, Pinner would have slumped dead on the floor. ‘Thank you very much, Lieutenant. I shall not forget that.’

  ‘You won’t fight me?’

  ‘No.’ Corwin looked down at his desk, seeing the blood and reaching for a linen handkerchief to try and staunch the flow. Ignoring everyone else in the room.

  That’s all, then. I’ll leave you. Make sure all’s ready for me before dawn, would you, son?’

  Pinner nodded, half-smiling at the tall man. 'I'll see to it, Mister Herne. Thanks a lot.’

  As he reached the door, Herne paused, looking back at the frozen, uncomfortable tableau of officers. ‘One other thing, gentlemen. I guess you’ll have no more trouble with One Eye. Send out a patrol tomorrow to West Wind Canyon, maybe under Lieutenant Pinner. Nobody’s goin’ to be there to stop you taking the place.’

  ‘Why?’ It was the grey-haired Captain. A man close to Herne’s own age.

  ‘While I was gettin’ the lady out, I found time to send nine of the Mescalero braves to their happy huntin’ ground.’

  ‘Nine!’

  ‘Including One Eye himself. Good night, gentlemen.’

  He closed the door firmly behind him, then paused on the wooden verandah, waiting to hear what happened in the Major’s office after his departure. He stood there for a full two minutes, and there was nothing. Not a sound.

  A long empty silence.

  Herne went for a walk around the compound before turning in for the night, to clear his head and get some fresh air after the sweaty confines of Corwin’s office. Nobody came to speak to him, and he finally walked back towards his own hut at around midnight.

  There was a note under the door. Unsigned, but he guessed it was from young Pinner. ‘Even a coward can arrange a killing. If a sentry saw someone leaving around dawn, and he’d been told it might be an Apache stealing a horse, then a bullet in the back would clear a lot of things. Make sure you’re away by five when there’s a guard change. Please burn this.’

  Herne sat there for four or five minutes, trying to decide what to do. It wouldn’t be that hard to go quietly across and kill Corwin. Slit his throat and make it look as if an Apache really had got into Fort Gilman. But maybe it would be better to let him stay alive. Make him look
the damned fool he was.

  A grin crawled on to Jed’s face, and stayed there.

  Before turning in he took the metal dish that had held a scanty supper of bread and beans, and placed the note on it. Lighting it and watching it smoke away to a blackened wisp so light that he was able to blow it to the floor and crush it under his boot-heel. Then he took off his shirt and loosened his belt, climbing on the bunk, making sure that his Colt hung on the nail by the head of the bed, turned so that the butt was ready to his hand.

  He would need to wake around three, he decided.

  It was just before ten to three when he blinked awake, checking that the shutters were across the windows before lighting the smoky lamp. Tugging on his shirt and buckling on the heavy gun-belt. Stepping quietly to the door and peering out across the sleeping Fort. The sentries paced their regular beat along the cat-walks, pausing every now and again to stare out over the barren, empty land.

  ‘Leaving, Mister Herne?’

  ‘Right, Mister Pinner. And my name’s Jed to those I number among friends.’

  ‘And my name’s Cyrus. Like my Pa. I want you to know, Jed, that I’m not shamed by my Pa. Sure he did a lot of things that weren’t by the book, but he did what he thought he had to, and that’s not a bad code for a man to live by.’

  Herne could have stopped to argue that one through, but it wasn’t the time or the place. He stepped into the pool of darkness under the slope of the roof and whispered for a few moments to the young officer, who began to laugh. So amused that he had to bite his sleeve to bring himself under control.

  ‘Terrific. You kicked him in the gut in that office and showed him up for what he is. That’ll really finish him as far as Fort Gilman is concerned.’

  ‘Maybe as far as the U.S. Cavalry is concerned, as well,’ said Herne. ‘Now let’s go. I’ll get the horses and what I need from the stables, and you get Mrs. Parsons.’

  ‘I know where she is and I can get to her without anyone else seeing.’

  ‘Fine. No need for you to get dragged into all this. What about the sentry?’

  ‘Sergeant Quincannon’s on the gate until five. Good man. Hates Corwin’s guts like poison. He’ll let you and the lady through and swear blind he didn’t see nothing wrong.’

  ‘And the paint?’

  ‘Got the key to the stores. I’ll bring it out for you.’

  Pinner began to move away, when Herne called him back. ‘Best you do what we said, and then get back to your bed. Sleep tight and wake late. That way there won’t be a thing that Corwin can do to link you with what’ll have happened. And, thanks a lot, Cyrus. Good luck.’

  The Lieutenant shook his hand firmly, and vanished off into the blackness. The last Herne heard was his voice, floating in from beyond the hut. ‘Take care not to step on the Major’s parade-ground. You know how touchy he is about that.’

  And a faint laugh.

  ‘Why we have to creep away like this?’

  Emmie-Lou’s voice had the rasping, querulous tone of someone wakened too early. Herne stepped in close and put his hand over her mouth.

  ‘Because I say so, and that’s all. Now keep your mouth shut until we’re clear and away from here. Understood?’

  She reached up and moved his hand. ‘Yes. That’s very clear, Jed. If you want to get me back even earlier and get your money an hour sooner, that’s your concern. I shan’t speak another word.’

  Herne nodded sourly. ‘Startin’ now. Mount up.’

  The Fort had provided a bay mare for her, and his own stallion had been watered and fed. The Squaw’s dress had disappeared and had been replaced with a sensible long skirt and blouse in dark blue. The property of the wife of a doctor who had come to the South-West fresh from qualifying back in Boston the previous month. And had both died of cholera within a week of their arrival. Her blistered feet wore the riding boots that the same lady had brought two thousand miles in her baggage, and had never worn.

  ‘Wait here. I’ll be about five minutes. Got a visit to make to the stables, and a mite of writin’ to do. Then we’ll move.’

  Emmie-Lou sat the mare in the blackness, the only noise the patrolling boots of the sentries, and the occasional snicker from the horses. The sliver of moon was hidden by shreds of cloud racing across it, giving only the palest of glows. The parade-ground was a perfect, immaculate square. For a moment she thought that she saw someone moving on it, but when she stared hard, there was nobody there.

  The blackness and the cold made her think of the home that she would be seeing tomorrow. No, it was already today. There was only the long ride across the bleak land through the heat and sun towards the Parsons’ spread. Lishe would greet her, and pay off Herne the Hunter. And he’d ride away after his next damned bounty, and the door would close. She felt tears flooding her eyes and wiped them away with the sleeve of the blue blouse.

  It was so unfair. She had less than a day to try and persuade the grim-faced gunman to change his mind, and she knew with a bitter heart that there wasn’t a lot of chance of that. But she’d sure try.

  Minutes dragged past, and then Herne was back at her side, swinging easily up in the high saddle. She smelled an odd mixture of manure and paint, but didn’t question him. She knew enough from her marriage that the age of chivalry existed only in books. Lishe had shown her that too many times.

  ‘We ride. Come on.’

  ‘But that’s across…’

  He touched her arm, and she winced at the power in the grip. ‘Remember what you said. Ride where I say and keep your lips well buttoned. I know what I’m doin’.’

  The torch at the gate showed them the way out, and they rode silently past the saluting figure of Sergeant Quincannon. His massive figure straight as a ramrod, his battered face creased in a smile. Herne nodded to him as they rode through the open gateway. Hearing it creak closed behind them as they headed away east.

  The shock killed Corwin.

  He already suffered from very high blood pressure, and the horror that greeted him when he was called from his bed just after sunup was too much for him. The blood pumped through his body too fast. His face grew redder and more swollen. His fingers tore at his collar, and froth hung at the corners of his mouth. Purple veins sprang out across his forehead, and his eyes rolled in their sockets.

  With a piercing scream of inarticulate rage, the little Major spun about like a child’s top, and fell to the packed earth, landing on his face with a noise like a rotten apple breaking.

  He was dead by the time they got him to his quarters, though there was no doctor there to certify him. It fell to the farrier, as an expert in animals, and the two senior officers to write that their Commanding Officer had died from: ‘A falling fit, brought on by a shock.’

  Everyone knew who’d done the dreadful deed, but nobody ever mentioned the name of Herne. Pinner got his transfer, and Fort Gilman became a tight-knit fighting establishment. Within two days West Wind Canyon had been cleared of the shattered remnants of One Eye’s band, and the narrow entrance closed for ever with dynamite.

  Knowing Corwin’s fanatical devotion to his parade-ground, it was the obvious place for a gesture of revenge. When Corwin came out into the orange-pink morning sunlight, he saw that its smooth, immaculate surface was torn up by hoof-marks, as though a pair of horses had been trotted repeatedly backwards and forwards over it.

  And right in the center of it was a pile of manure, carried from the stables in a couple of buckets, neatly heaped into a miniature pyramid. Protruding from the middle of the heap was a pole. The handle of a broom, with a piece of paper tacked to it. It was the writing on this paper that toppled Major Corwin from anger to fatal apoplexy.

  It said: ‘Question: What is the connection between this pile and the orders of the cowardly Major Corwin? Answer: They both come from a horse’s ass.’

  It wasn’t signed, but it didn’t really need to be. From then on in Fort Gilman was a corner-stone in the continuing legend of Herne the Hunter.

 
Chapter Nine

  The sun was baking the land, pushing the temperature well over the hundred mark. It bounced back off the rocks and sand, roasting the two riders as they slowly made their way away from the Sierra Mogollon towards the center of Parsons’ spread. It made the stock of the Sharps rifle burning hot. Danced off the small golden ear-rings that Emmie-Lou wore. Herne had noticed them before, and had been surprised that the Apaches hadn’t ripped them off. Then he’d recalled that her hair had been long and loose and would have hidden them. They were tiny wheels, with the initials ‘E.P.’ at their center.

  Lishe Parsons clearly believed that all of his stock should carry his mark.

  Emmie-Lou had kept her word. Not only had she said nothing at all while they were still within the confines of Fort Gilman, but she had said nothing since. Twice Herne had asked her if she wanted a mouthful of water from one of the canteens, and each time she had simply nodded mutely, and taken it from him without a word of thanks.

  In some ways he was grateful, not having to resist her attempts to persuade him to release her, but in some ways he was disappointed. There were things about the girl that he liked, setting aside her obvious desirability. From what he’d seen of her husband, she was one of life’s losers. There was nothing even remotely likeable about Elisha Parsons.

  In all his days as a bounty-hunter, Jed had never once thought of himself as a hired killer. In most every town along the border there were men who would kill. Kill anyone you cared to point the finger at for as little as ten dollars. But Jed was only for hire for legal purposes. Bring in a wanted man, or hunt a robber. Now he was bringing back a stolen girl. To him it was a job like any other. Only a little different from trying to return a rustled herd.

  But it was a little different.

  ‘Contract’s a contract,’ he said to remind himself, hardly aware he had spoken his thoughts out loud.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You spoke. I heard you.’