Silver Threads Read online

  The big man had been thrown clear, lying half on his side a few paces away, struggling to get to his feet, face a mask of dirt-caked horror. Hands reaching out towards the gunman.

  As he knelt there, the rain that teemed from the darkening sky washed away the mud and Herne recognized him. Despite the terror, he recognized him. Up to that moment Jed had been about to take him prisoner, to find out the story behind the killings and the thefts.

  Now there didn’t seem much point.

  So he shot Mayor Julius Daley twice through the chest, watching as he rolled over, kicking and coughing, the bright colored blood diffused to pink by the rain, mingling with the mud and dirt.

  When it was done he walked across, reloading as he did so, kicking the other bodies over to see the faces. Two he vaguely recognized from the town. The third was Hempstead, the clerk, his brains all leaked away in Drowned Squaw Canyon alongside the mayor.

  Jed stood in the downpour for some time, wondering about the way the robbery had ended.

  ‘Ended,’ he said to nobody in particular. ‘Hell, I figure it’s not even started.’

  Chapter Eight

  It hadn’t been how he’d expected it.

  ‘Shall we gather at the river?

  Not at all like Herne had thought it might be.

  ‘The beautiful, the beautiful river?

  It hadn’t been possible to harness up all the teams, so he’d heaved every single one of the bodies in the back of the leading rig, and tied his stallion on behind. Riding it on to Wild Rose City, arriving well after dark.

  ‘Shall we gather at the river?

  There had been an incredible commotion and he’d had to fire a couple of shots in the air to hush the crowd that had gathered around the wagon, staring in unbelieving horror at the tangled, mud-sodden bodies. Four of them respected members of the community. Herne hadn’t even been sure whether they’d believe him, but there was enough evidence, once he got them to listen to him. The pistols with empty chambers, the bullets matching up with the number of wounds to the guards from the Old Number One ore train.

  ‘That flows by the throne of God?

  Only a day later the funerals were taking place in the cemetery behind the Sowren mansion. Fairly quiet occasions for the three commoners and something more grandiose for Julius Daley, mayor and brothel-keeper of Wild Rose City. The entire family were there, as was what seemed like the whole population of the Dakota township.

  The rain had come and gone intermittently, turning Main Street into a slippery trail of gray-orange mud, where the horses fought for a footing as they hauled up the coffins to their last resting place. Many of the mourners also showed streaks of dirt on their best clothes where they’d fallen on their way up.

  ‘Yes, we’ll gather at the river, That flows by the throne of God.’

  Even high up above the town, Herne could clearly hear the rumbling of the Clearwater as it surged angrily through its bed. The rains had swollen it to unrecognizable proportions in the last three days, and it now threatened the entire lower part of the town.

  At an ordinary time that state of the flooding river would have kept everyone’s mind full. But now Wild Rose City had other matters to keep it talking.

  Or, perhaps, to keep it silent.

  The priest had at last finished, and the burials were over. Jed turned on his heel and began to walk away from the gravesides, when he felt a hand on his arm.

  ‘Mr. Herne.’

  ‘Yes?’

  The sisters stood close together, side by side. Eliza towering over Lily, both dressed in long trailing dresses, with black bonnets and veils that covered their faces, so he couldn’t see more of them than the glittering of their eyes.

  ‘We wish to talk to you again, Mr. Herne. When we first heard the tidings of the men you had slain, I confess that we were... How shall I put it?’

  Lily interrupted her. ‘I think we were shocked by it, sister.’

  ‘Yes, shocked.’

  ‘And stunned,’ added Lily. Eliza nodded. ‘And stunned.’

  In case Herne had missed the point of how they had felt, Lily muttered: ‘Yes. Shocked and stunned.’

  They had fallen into step with him as they walked towards the house through the rows of grave markers. Herne was uncomfortably aware that the two brothers of Julius Daley were walking behind him. And the Sowren boys behind them. The rest of the congregation seemed to have melted away into the misty air.

  ‘He was a good boy, Julius,’ said Eliza. ‘Real kind to animals.’

  Herne thought of the six dead men with bullet holes leaking their lives away in Drowned Squaw Canyon, and he kept quiet.

  ‘You must have thought we didn’t believe you, Mr. Herne?’ said Lily, her fat hands stuffed into black cotton gloves that gripped at his arm.

  ‘No, Ma’am,’ he replied.

  That wasn’t what he’d thought. They’d appeared on their porch, like strangely distorted images of each other, facing him as he’d walked up the hill with Sheriff Daley. The fat lawman had been silent. Clearly fighting a desire to wipe Jed off the earth with a hail of bullets, but fearing his aunts too much.

  They’d listened to him, both watching him, ignoring the small crowd that had clustered around them. Taking no notice at all of the wailing that was coming up as three women in Wild Rose discovered that they were widows and eleven children began to understand about losing fathers.

  Neither Eliza nor Lily had said a word to him from that moment on until they followed him from the graves, one each side, like uneven brackets. They had gone into the house and closed the door after he had finished his account of the bloody massacre, leaving him with Sheriff Daley. After three or four minutes a servant had come out with a sealed envelope that he had handed to Jedediah on a silver salver. Inside was a short note.

  ‘Mr. Herne. We are distressed by what you have done but we must have time to think about the repercussions that will follow. We wish you to remain in our employ for the present until after the interments then we will discuss the matter further.’

  It wasn’t signed. It didn’t need to be.

  Until the burials they had both remained in their rooms and Herne had eaten alone in the dining-room. Seeing and hearing nothing of either of them, though he several times caught raised voices from their rooms. The remaining Daleys and Gawain and Joab Sowren also visited the mansion several times for long discussions with their elderly relations. Once it was Zimmerman who came up, with the lawman to keep him company. Staying so close to the nervous little manager that Herne wondered whether he was actually guarding him.

  And now they seemed friends again with him. As near to being friendly as they ever got.

  ~*~

  Instead of going into the house, they had walked with him around the garden, pausing by a hand-carved bench that overlooked the town, the valley and the far-off mine.

  He noticed that the relations had disappeared into the lowering house, and he was alone with the ladies.

  ‘There,’ said Eliza Sowren, sweeping out her arms in an untypically grandiose gesture, embracing the whole horizon, the Black Hills, topped with low cloud, stretching out into the far distance.

  ‘Mighty pretty, Ma’am.’

  ‘It is. I recall when Papa was becoming ill; do you not remember, Lily, how ...?’

  ‘I do, sister, dear. Indeed I do.’

  Again Jed noticed their strange ability to speak to each other without words, as though they knew just what the other was thinking.

  ‘Beg pardon, Miss Sowren,’ said Herne. ‘But I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Eliza, skittishly, tapping him on the arm with her gloves. ‘He brought us both up here and showed to us this most wonderful vista and he said to us that one day all of this would belong to us and that we were to cherish it and let nobody ever take it away from us. It is quite beautiful, is it not?’

  It is,’ he replied, with absolute honesty, wondering what else they were going to say.
Whether they were going to mention his amazing recovery from the illness. Or his disappearance from the room. Or maybe just how he happened to be out there in Drowned Squaw Canyon at the very moment their nephew Julius and three members of the honest citizenry of Wild Rose City were carrying out a heinous robbery and multiple murder.

  There were a lot of questions and he didn’t have an awful lot of answers.

  Still, time was passing and nothing too ghastly had happened. He stood there with the two old ladies, viewing one of the finest horizons it was possible to imagine.

  The sun was breaking through the clouds and here and there he could see the shafts of light, like golden spears, cutting down from heaven to earth, reflecting back off the wet rocks of the hills all around.

  He could see the white lace of several waterfalls plunging down sheer faces of stone, and make out the misty pounding of the Clearwater far below them. It looked as though the spell of bad weather might be finally coming to its end and spring was going to set her green teeth to the land once more.

  ‘Why?’

  He found himself taken aback by the snapped question, coming to his surprise from Lily.

  Much of the shock stemming from the fact that ‘Why?’ wasn’t one of the questions that he’d been waiting for from them.

  He’d been looking to hear ‘Who told you?’ or ‘How did you know?’ But not that flat ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Lily,’ he said, stalling to buy himself time.

  ‘I’m sure you are, Mr. Herne, yet strangely my sister and I are not at all sorry.’

  ‘That is correct, Lily,’ continued Eliza. ‘We are not sorry at all about dear Julius and Mr. Hempstead and the other two. Not at all.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Absolutely not sorry. Indeed, Mr. Herne, I should go so far as to say that we are pleased that you have so skillfully removed the canker from our midst.’

  ‘Your nephew is dead, Miss Sowren.’

  ‘Yes. And I am pleased ...’ she paused and corrected herself. ‘We are pleased, that poor Julius has been checked in his career of evil, and that he will no longer be able to contaminate the good people of our town. It is a blessing that you have so skillfully wielded the surgeon’s blade against him.’

  Lily nodded to her sister, who continued the same thread of conversation.

  ‘We are delighted. For Julius and the others now sleep in the arms of Almighty God, where there is neither pain nor wickedness. Nor want nor corruption. We are gentle people, my sister and myself, Mr. Herne, and we are sorrowful that the evil thing came from a member of our family. But he erred from the straight and narrow path of virtue and you were there as the angel with the blazing sword to steer him back into the fold of sweet Jesus Christ, our Lord.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Eliza.

  ‘Amen,’ added Jedediah, feeling that it was called for.

  ‘So you can leave tomorrow.’

  ‘What?’

  It was as calm and flat a rejection of his services as Jed had ever encountered. Eliza smiled at him icily.

  ‘Yes. You’ve done what we asked you to do, Mr. Herne. Admirably. You have stopped the robberies of silver ore from this part of the Dakota Territory and you have not only tracked down the villains responsible for these outrages...’

  ‘You have succeeded in single-handedly slaying them all,’ concluded Lily.

  ‘Every one,’ added Eliza.

  ‘And so we feel it would be better for you if you were now to leave.’

  ‘And for the town.’

  ‘Pick up the pieces.’

  ‘Heal the scars.’

  ‘Balm upon the suffering.’

  ‘Pay you off.’

  ‘With bonus.’

  ‘Excellent job.’

  ‘Give you references.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ echoed Lily.

  ‘You are everything that we learned you were, Mr. Herne,’ smiled Eliza, chilling him with her approbation.

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘And more.’

  ‘Indeed, sister. Everything, and so very much more.’

  It was unnerving. Like watching a ball being bounced very fast between two children, and Herne felt his head spinning.

  ‘So you want me out?’

  It wasn’t quite the phrase that he’d intended to use, but it conveyed the flavor of what he meant even better. Jed could see that by the look that flashed between the sisters.

  ‘We don’t understand what you mean, Mr. Herne,’ said Lily Sowren.

  ‘Are you implying that we have... ?’

  ‘I’m not sayin’ nothing, Ma’am. Just that I see you want me out of the way.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘So’s you can get on with bringin’ this pretty little town back to something like it was. That’s all I mean to say.’

  The temperature between them rose by twenty degrees. They both looked in at him and favored him with a smile. Though he felt that there was something going on between them. That they were speaking to each other and that they were both pleased with what he’d said.

  ‘Of course. Will you be able to leave today?’

  ‘I guess I’d like to stay one more night with you, if that’s not too tough. And make a fresh, bright start first thing at dawn.’

  ‘Excellent. We will dine together and then you can retire early. I’m sure you don’t want to go running about on your last night with us.’

  Herne wasn’t sure whether that was a simple statement or whether there was the shadow of a threat lurking somewhere behind it. Either way, it didn’t matter much’ He was going to do what he wanted to do, anyway.

  ~*~

  He found the note when he returned to his room. In the rush and bustle around the graves, someone had managed to get close enough to him to push it into a jacket pocket. It was obvious who it was.

  ‘It’s not over and you’ve touched the top that’s all and it’s got to be stop or it’s for nothing and I will tell you tonight.’

  There wasn’t a signature.

  Didn’t need to be. Jed recognized the frightened scribble of Robert Zimmerman, mine manager. He was careful to take the note and slip it beneath the flower-decorated chamber-pot under the bed, knowing it would be safe there until the next morning.

  He was so careful that he was inexcusably careless.

  So involved in the hiding-place that he never noticed the eyes of the painting on the wall. Not canvas eyes.

  Flickering human eyes!

  Chapter Nine

  The food was excellent.

  The Sowrens and the Daleys managed to put on a good show of hospitality towards the man who had killed Julius. Keeping up with the idea that they were relieved that Herne had come along to Wild Rose City and lanced the swelling of evil and corruption that had festered for so long, invisible and unsuspected in their midst.

  The ladies were better at it than the men, who found it harder to veil their hostility. Jed could see anger lurking in their eyes, beneath the mask of light conversation.

  But the jarring note was struck by Zimmerman.

  Herne could hardly believe that the little man was going to survive the evening. There were great gray bags under his eyes, and he coughed constantly. Blinking so fast that it was obviously a nervous tic, and he hardly said a word all during the meal, unless he was directly addressed by either of the old ladies. His suit was crumpled and stained and his hair matted and greasy. He looked as if he hadn’t slept for a week. He carefully avoided even looking at Herne, toying with the food on his plate and sipping at the red wine in the crystal goblet at his elbow.

  Jed realized that it would be difficult for them to snatch a few moments of private conversation. He was sensitive to atmosphere—it went with the job—and he was conscious that they were both being watched. He guessed that the Misses Sowren must have realized that someone had tipped him off about their nephew and his gang of desperadoes, and that someone just might have been
Zimmerman. But they could only be suspicions. They couldn’t have any proof.

  By now his own thoughts, ridiculous as they had at first appeared, were hardening to an amazing near certainty.

  The whole family must be involved. It was obvious that the two old ladies took no active part, but they must have had their own ideas about what their nephew had been doing. Herne guessed that the ladies simply closed their eyes to it and pretended it would go away. Doubtless they had been genuinely shocked when he had presented them with such irrefutable proof of Julius’s wickedness.

  His personal feeling was that Sheriff Daley was probably the prime mover in a conspiracy, and he also suspected that his brother and both the Sowren boys were in on it. If they’d shut their eyes to their nephews, it followed that Eliza and Lily would not want to know about Gawain and Joab.

  All he could do was sit tight and watch. The whole atmosphere of Wild Rose was getting to him. Its prim and clean exterior, hiding the Lord only knew what secret sins and black cruelty. The first impression had been washed away by his time there and he felt a great temptation to do what he’d said. He’d been paid. They were happy. All he had to do was pack his saddle-bags and ride out on his stallion at dawn.

  And never look back.

  The evening finished early. After they had listened to Miss Lily punishing popular songs for an hour, both ladles stood, one resplendent in pink, the other in purple, and announced that they were retiring.

  Zimmerman stood with the rest of them, looking wildly round the room as if he was hoping for an avenue of escape. Eliza caught the glance and smiled at him.

  ‘You will stay here for the night, Robert.’

  ‘Oh, but ...’

  ‘I shall hear no “buts” from you. I insist. You can have the east room, beyond mine. I will instruct the servants to air the bed for you.’ Seeing his mouth gaping open. ‘No protests, now. You know that we have always been a big happy family, Robert. You will stay.’

  The smile stayed there, glued in place. But the golden glow of the polished oil lamps was not enough to illuminate the deeps of her eyes, perched uneasily astride the top of her bony nose.