Death School (Herne the Hunter Western Book 14)

by John J. McLaglen

  Words failed the old lady. This was something beyond any of her fears. All her life out in the bleak dry lands of Arizona, she had been terrified that one day she would be attacked, and perhaps killed. But it had always been the savage Indians that peopled her nightmares. The Mescalero and Chiricahua Apaches. Not five well mannered white children.

  The albino kneeled down by her, his long hair a misty veil of white that hung across his face. The eyes were red. Pits of fire in channels of wind-hollowed bone.

  ‘Tell us where you keep your money and we’ll go right away,’ he whispered.

  ‘Money?’

  ‘Yes, you fuckin’ slut. Tell us.’ The bare heel of the oldest boy cracked across her face and she heard her nose break. It smashed her head back against the counter and she again blacked out.

  ‘Just tell us, and we leave you. ma’am, I surely hope you believe that we’ll kill you easy as winking if’n you cross us.’

  ‘We surely will.’ It was the twin boys, kneeling on opposite sides of her, like bookends. It was difficult for Sarah Hersham to see properly. But they seemed to have shining metal fingers. Gleaming and pointed. Only when one of them poked at her shoulder, making her cry out with the pain, did she realize that all of the children were carrying knives.

  ‘Those are Indian blades,’ she gasped.

  ‘Surely are, ma’am,’ said the girl. ‘The warriors we took ’em off are deader than crow bait. It was the only way of gettin’ free from ’em. And here we are. The ponies are in a draw a couple of miles back in the hills. When we get some dollars together, we aim to head west to the coast. See what’s what out yonder.’

  ‘I have no money,’ sighed Sarah.

  ‘Sure you have. Wrinkled-faced old bitch like you with dried dugs and a place like this must have some money salted away. No safe. So where the fuck is it?’

  ‘I’ll never tell you. No matter what you do to me, I’ll never tell.’

  They were only children.

  Even though they’d lived with a local tribe of Apaches for several months … more than a year in the case of the girl and the oldest boy, they still didn’t have the kind of skill that they needed.

  All they wanted to do was hurt the old woman enough to make her tell them where her money was hidden. But they took things too far too quickly. So that the white pain blanked out her voice and her mind. To stop the noise they had to gag her, stuffing a length of cotton cloth into her gaping, bloodied mouth. Ramming it in, foot after foot, until she started to inhale it into her lungs and then it was too late.

  Their flensing knives pecked at her clothes, slicing away the expensive green bombazine, nicking her skin open. Dappling her naked helpless body with dozens of small cuts, across her face and stomach and breasts and arms and legs. The twins particularly working hard to persuade her to tell them about the money.

  But it stayed safely where it was, in the hideous kid boots. One thousand six hundred and thirty-nine dollars.

  They found seven dollars and forty-two cents in the small oak till with the brass lock and they took that. And they stole clothes. Taking it in turn to try on pants and boots while the others carried on torturing the old lady with their stolen knives.

  Sarah Hersham didn’t understand what was happening to her. The first sharp pain became dulled by repetition and her body felt warm. She wasn’t aware that she was naked, though in normal times she would have fainted clean away at being seen without her street clothes on. It didn’t matter to her.

  There was something in her throat, choking her, and she fought a minute for breath. But that required a great effort and it didn’t seem worth it.

  She died with her nostrils filled with the sweet cloying scent of crushed peppermint candy.

  The five children set a fire in the store before they left quietly out the back, walking along a narrow ravine that led them to their ponies. Looking back once as the blaze caught and crackled out in orange tongues through the roof, the flames bright against the darkening sky.

  They paused and grinned at each other, the first sign of emotion that they had shown. The girl giggled to herself, sucking a thumb.

  ‘Like roastin’ a hog, ain’t it?’

  The albino boy was wearing a hat several sizes too large for him and he pushed it back, seeing the column of smoke racing towards the heavy clouds. ‘Guess we skinned most of the old bitch’s bristles off of her first.’

  ‘Sure did,’ replied the older boy.

  ‘We’d best go,’ said the girl, turning her back on the fire.

  It took the people of Tyler’s Crossing a half hour to get themselves sufficiently organized to do anything about the fire. There wasn’t enough water to fight the blaze and it had caught too firm a hold on the dry wood. Within the hour the store was a gutted pile of charred and smoldering timbers, the ashes shimmering in the intense heat.

  It wasn’t until later that they finally found the blackened corpse of Sarah Hersham.

  And they never found any trace of the sixteen hundred and thirty-nine dollars.

  As the five children were heeling their ponies away from Tyler’s Crossing to the south and west, leaving the fire behind them, so Jedediah Herne was riding slowly towards the township from the north, keeping ahead of the gathering storm.

  They didn’t see him and he didn’t see them.

  Not then.

  Chapter Two

  Ralph J. Abernathy ran the gun shop in Tyler’s Crossing and was also the duly-elected sheriff for the township, with responsibility only to the nearest Arizona Territory marshal, and he was three or four hundred miles away. Abernathy had been the law in Tyler’s Crossing for eight years, and in that time there’d only been three killings, all of them involving folks off wagon trains, passing on through. Most of the time, it was a law-abiding settlement. Of course, there were always the Apaches. But they were a fact of life, like the heat and the wind.

  Now, all of a sudden, he was presented with what seemed to be either the oddest suicide he’d ever heard of, or a brutal killing of one of the senior citizens of Tyler’s Crossing. And on top of that he’d seen a man ride in on a black stallion only an hour or so after the inferno had been first seen. A man who was a shootist and killer. Sheriff Abernathy might not have been the sharpest lawman west of the Pecos, nor was he fast on the draw. But he was honest and he was no fool.

  The stranger had booked himself in at the saloon across the street from his office. ‘The Round The World’ used to be run by the mad Irishman, Paddy Janson, but he’d lost out in an argument with three Indians a mile west of the town. His brother, Nick, had arrived from Austin, Texas, and kept the saloon going on the same lines as before.

  Sarah Hersham hadn’t been what you might call popular in Tyler’s Crossing. Not truly liked. But she had been one of the oldest residents, and a regular church-goer, That had to count for something.

  Now she was dead.

  From what they’d been able to tell after the fire, and after the rain that had turned black ash to sticky mud, Sarah had been unclothed when she died. There were bits of her corsets charred under the corpse. And the underside of the corpse wasn’t as badly burned. Sheriff Abernathy knew knife marks, even on burned flesh. He’d seen bodies after Apaches had been there. That had been his thought at first, and that had been the immediate whisper through the little town. Indians. But not like that. In a store in the town in the middle of the day.

  ‘Got to be some bastard after the old lady’s money, is my opinion,’ he’d guessed. And that was before the discovery of the length of blackened cotton rag stuffed down her throat. That wasn’t the way of the Apaches.

  Robbery meant strangers. Local folks knew that the old lady had a few dollars stashed away ready to go back East and join her kin. But they also knew that it was madness to kill and torture her like that. There would have been a dozen better times and places.

  ‘Strangers,’ thought Abernathy, reluctantly strapping on the big center-fire four-fifty Tranter that he used in his offici
al capacity. It was a lot of gun, but Ralph J. Abernathy was a big man, tipping the scales at two-sixty the last time he’d weighed himself.

  The sun was back, striking against the tight shirt over his shoulders as he stepped out into the late afternoon heat. Feeling the heels of his boots sink through the crust of dry sand into the wetter earth beneath. Taking a deep breath and easing the belt over his hips.

  The shadows were lengthening from the west and he licked his lips, wondering whether he might risk a glass of beer before he spoke to the stranger. Deciding that it wasn’t worth it. Better to be completely sober and hope the shootist would be drunk by now.

  Abernathy was disappointed. The stranger was sitting alone at a corner table, nursing a shot-glass of liquor. When the sheriff threw a glance at the bar-keep, raising his hand to ask whether the man had been drinking heavily, the answer was a negative shake of the head

  Bounty hunters and hired guns didn’t respect a lawman who was timid, and most of them carefully avoided trouble with local sheriffs. That knowledge had given Abernathy a feeling of moderate confidence in knowing how to handle drifters.

  He walked over to the corner, spurs jingling, hand resting easily over the polished butt of the Tranter. The retaining leather thong over the hammer slipped free. Just in case.

  His first shock was the age of the stranger. In a land where there were few men over forty who hadn’t settled down into steady employment, the shootist was certainly past that age. Long black hair, graying at the temples and above the ears. But a big man. Abernathy guessed him at a couple of inches over six feet, and weighing a muscular two hundred pounds. He didn’t look up at the sheriff’s approach,’ hands folded in his lap, seeming to be almost asleep.

  ‘I’m Abernathy. Lawman of Tyler’s Grossing. You’d be …?’

  He allowed the question to dangle. Waiting for the answer, conscious that everyone else in the ‘Round The World’ was listening.

  His words hung there and then died in the flat, beer-laden air.

  ‘You hear me?’

  At last the man looked up and Abernathy took a half step backwards. He’d seen a few hard men around Tyler’s Crossing, but this stranger was something else. Lines etched around the eyes and mouth. Deep-set eyes that seemed to look clean on through the sheriff right into the empty spaces behind his soul. He shivered as though the cold wind from the north had driven around his neck.

  ‘I hear you, Sheriff.’

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Herne.’

  The name rang a bell with Abernathy. Somewhere near the back of his mind. There’d been a nickname. A top gun from years ago. Ridden the Pony Express with little Billy Cody. Ridden with Quantrill in the bloody days of the War in Kansas. He and that white-haired shootist, Coburn. And with crazy Bonney in the Lincoln County Range Wars.

  Herne.

  ‘I heard of you, Herne.’

  ‘Most folks call me Jed. I don’t take kindly to Herne. Jed. Or Mr. Herne, Sheriff.’

  There’d been talk of this man Herne getting himself wedded and then his wife was shot or killed some way. Revenge murders from Herne. Then the word he’d been butchered in a bar brawl in New Orleans. Talk, just talk. ‘

  ‘Sure.’ It wasn’t going the way that Abernathy wanted. Somehow control of the conversation was slipping away from him.

  ‘What can I do for you, Sheriff?’

  ‘Holy Jesus Christ! Herne the Hunter.’

  Ralph J. Abernathy felt as though someone had slipped a razor through his genitals. Herne the Hunter. In Tyler’s Crossing. In his town.

  He had spoken more loudly than he’d intended and the bar had fallen utterly silent. Jed sat still and looked up at the aging lawman, wondering which way he was likely to play it. He’d seen too many sheriffs in one-horse settlements with two-bit jobs, finding the presence of a top gun was beyond their control. Unnoticed by Abernathy, Herne allowed his right hand to slip casually off the table out of sight.

  ‘Holy shit! What do you want here in Tyler’s Crossing, Herne? … Mr. Herne?’

  Suddenly there was the extra chill of wondering whether Herne the Hunter might have some link with the brutal slaying of Sarah Hersham. It was one heck of a coincidence if he hadn’t.

  ‘I’m moving on through, Sheriff. Here for tonight, and in the morning I’ll be gone.’ Jed didn’t want trouble. Never went out looking for it, unless someone paid him a hatful of dollars for his time.

  ‘Well, now, I’m not so sure that I want you to go that fast. There’s a question or two I’ve got for you.’

  Abernathy hoped that nobody noticed his voice was shaking. Also, he was conscious of the rivulets of sweat coursing over his stomach. And the wetness of the palms of his hands. The saloon didn’t seem to have enough air in it.

  ‘Ask away. But don’t figure on my stain’ here longer than I intend to.’ It was calmly said, but the threat was as blatant as a slap across the cheek.

  ‘Like hell you … No …’ The last word was a whisper, locked in the lawman’s throat.

  His own hand had gone for the Tranter, fast as he knew how. Before the pistol was even clear of the worn holster, he was peering unbelievingly into the shadowed barrel of Herne’s Peacemaker. The triple click of the hammer being thumbed back almost drowned out the beating of his heart and for a dreadful moment he thought that he was going to lose control of his own bowels.

  ‘I told you,’ said Jed quietly. ‘You ask and I’ll tell you. But not with you tuggin’ at that cannon like a maiden aunt pullin’ on her corsets. Sit down, and have a drink. Guess you don’t want any killin’ on a quiet afternoon?’

  Abernathy grinned feebly. Drawing in a great sigh of air with the joyous certainty that he wasn’t going to die. He’d see out the day, not end it kicking and coughing up his guts in the damp sawdust. That was a good feeling.

  He pulled up the chair and eased himself into it, watching Herne holster the pistol in an easy, fluid movement,

  ‘Well, Jed,’ he began, ‘it’s like this …’

  Chapter Three

  It wasn’t a specially interesting story for Jed Herne to hear. But he had the rest of the day to kill, and Sheriff Abernathy seemed an honest and decent man. Unusual in lawmen in Jed’s experience. So he sipped at a beer and listened.

  An old woman murdered sounded at first like a brace of local Apache braves earning a reputation by carrying out a surprise killing. But the more the sheriff talked, the more Herne agreed with him that it didn’t set right. Had to be Mexicans or whites. There hadn’t been any Mex bandits up that way for eight or nine years and no word of trouble along the river. So that left whites.

  ‘She didn’t have a lot of money?’

  ‘Folks whispered about a heap of thousands. I’d be surprised if she had much more than a thousand,’ said Abernathy slowly.

  ‘I seen plenty of grave markers for men and women that people figured had money. But why in the afternoon? Why burn it down ? Doesn’t sound much to me like regular mean bastards.’

  ‘It don’t, Jed,’ agreed the lawman. ‘Someone walked in and messed her around and killed her. Easy as that. Kind of like child’s play.’

  ‘No strangers? Train passin’ near? Stock disappearin’ from corrals?’

  ‘Nope. Not a damned thing.’ Abernathy was feeling more and more at ease. Here he was sitting in the saloon in his own town, feet on a spare chair, swapping talk with one of the most famous guns in the land. Herne the Hunter. There were folks said he was among the best. Others put it more simply and said that Jedediah Travis Herne was the best.

  ‘Guess there’s nothing I can do for you,’ said Herne, trying to show some regret. Not that he truly cared for some old shopkeeper in a place like Tyler’s Crossing. She was no kin to him. And she had no friends nor kin to pay him to try and track down the killers. Money wasn’t flowing freely in Jed’s direction, and a good ripe bounty would have been a pleasant thing to have fall in his hands.

  ‘I’m aimin’ to have me a scout around bef
ore the sun goes on down, Jed. You ... you wouldn’t …?’

  Herne had nothing better to do.

  They found the tracks in the draw outside the settlement. Protected from the rain by an overhang. And not just horses. Feet. And everything combined to present them with a puzzle that genuinely intrigued Herne, making him wish that there had been some money in the chase. It would have been better than some of the jobs he’d done. Tracking down three hands who’d gotten themselves drunker than skunks and raped their boss’s wife near Abilene. It had taken him four hard days to track them down and less than ten seconds to kill them all when they figured three of them would be faster than one of him.

  The light was dimming all around them when Herne finally straightened up, feeling the stiffness in the small of his back as he did so. Shaking his head in bewilderment.

  ‘Guess that’s all we can do, Sheriff,’ he said.

  ‘Damn it!’ muttered the lawman, easing the pistol in his holster. ‘It don’t signify, Jed.’

  The tall shootist looked around. ‘Let’s see what we got here. Five unshod ponies, and that means Indians, more than just maybe. Five sets of tracks. Small men, women, or children. Couple most grown and the rest younger. Two sets of tracks damned nearly identical. Closest I ever saw. Like they was near the same person. All barefoot. They get off and tie their horses to this mesquite here. Go into town along that draw there to the back of the store.’

  ‘And come out the same way wearin’ shoes,’ exclaimed Abernathy. He’d always figured himself a fair tracker, but the lean gunman had him licked every which way,

  ‘Comin’ out we know a mite more. One’s a girl. Not full grown. One little boy. Looks like he’s wearin’ boots too big for him. Another boy, older. Maybe sixteen or so, I’d guess. Walks like he hasn’t been in shoes for a whiles. And the two that are near the same. Boys. Maybe fourteen or so. So close that I’d put a dollar on the line and say they could be twins born.’

  ‘Why? And how? And where in perdition have the Devil’s spawn gone to?’