‘Kind of lost your way in that mass of words, didn’t you, son?’ said the man at the table, casually pouring himself another shot from the bottle at his elbow. But his eyes never left the boy’s face, and he poured left-handed, his right hand staying close to the worn butt of his own Colt. Jed Herne had been around too long and lost too many friends to take any sort of challenge lightly.
‘I’ll kill you where you sit, you bastard!’
‘Talk a good fight, son. I’ll credit you with that. Not a lot of sense, but a load of lip.’
Two hectic spots of red burned high on the young man’s cheeks, and his mouth opened and shut convulsively. Herne looked at him sympathetically. Ever since the death of his own young wife, and the vengeance trail that he had ridden word had spread like a brush fire through the South-West that Herne the Hunter was back.
Jed Herne had been one of the deadliest of the set of killer gunmen that dominated that part of the country through the eighteen-sixties up to then, along with Hardin, Hickok, Josiah Hedges, Garrett and the others. Names painted in blood and feared everywhere. Then Herne the Hunter had vanished. Some said killed. Those few who knew said he was married. But it was one target less for the young punks across the frontier who still wanted to win a name for themselves.
Then he’d come back. Back on the streets, looking for money to eat and to pay for his bullets. And to pay for the European education of Becky Yates. Daughter of his neighbor whose wife had died in the same savage incident as Jed’s own beloved Louise. To remove her from the threat of death, and to keep her out of his hair and off his mind, Jed had sent her to a school in England. She’d been there for several months now, and he hoped would be there for another three years or so. Until 1888, when she would be coming on eighteen, and maybe capable of looking after herself.
Now he was down in New Mexico, fresh off the stage in Lordsburg. Looking for action. And finding the wrong kind in this glory-hunting kid. Trying to avoid killing the boy.
Who had finally fought himself and his nerves and was still standing near the table. Voice under control, fingers still close to the guns.
‘Mister Herne, I want you to do me a favor.’
‘Surely. All you have to do is ask.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Jed saw a tall man in worn trail clothes changing seats to bring him more directly behind where he was sitting. Herne held up his left hand to interrupt the boy.
‘Wait on a moment there. The fellow in the grey Stetson carrying the single-action Wesson rimfire. Like to see him, with his hands well above the table, find a seat away from ray back. Like an itch I can’t see to scratch where he’s just moved.’
Nothing happened, and he readied himself for instant action, suspecting he’d been tricked to a double set-up, with the kid as the decoy.
‘Some folks go for countin’. I don’t. I just say for someone to move, and if’n they don’t, I have to reason they’re not special friendly to me, and I kill them.’
As he snapped out the last word, he spun round in the chair, coming to his feet in a fluid blur of movement, his gun appearing in his fist, ready cocked, pointing at the man in the Stetson.
Whose hand hovered in the fatal no-man’s land between hip and holster. Eyes opened wide in panic and shock, set in a face that was white as paper.
‘Mister… don’t… please… I…’
‘Put your gun up, Mister Herne.’
Without moving a muscle of his body, keeping the gaping barrel of the Colt steady on the man’s throat, Herne answered the boy. ‘You give me a reason, boy. And make it a good one.’
‘He’s my Uncle. Brother of my Ma. She got to hear what I was planning to do, and I guess he was here to try and back-shoot you to save me.’
There was a deadly bitterness in the boy’s voice, and he looked away. The other man nodded quickly, and then realizing that was like an admission of murder, shook it again.
‘Wouldn’t have tried to kill you or nothing, Mister Herne. Aimed to wing you and save the boy.’
‘Out. Go on. Out! And don’t try that kind of damned stupid trick ever again. Or you won’t live to be buried looking neat and tidy.’
Never looking at his nephew, the man scuttled across the saloon, his boot-heels the only noise in the silence, through the bat-wing doors, that clattered for a moment or two after he’d gone.
Only then did Herne glance round at the boy, keeping the gun in his hand. Cocked and ready. ‘You reckon I’m going to be needing this, son?’ he asked, his voice calm and kindly.
‘No.’ Barely audible. Then louder. ‘No. You won’t be needing to use that, Mister Herne, and…’
Sensing the apology on the way, and not wanting it, Jed grinned, looking suddenly younger, and eased back the hammer of the Colt with his thumb, swinging it into the smooth holster with a gesture that he had used thousands of times.
‘Share this gut-rotting stuff, or your Ma have words about that as well?’
The tension had gone, and Herne could relax, letting the tight spring inside himself uncoil. Knowing from experience that the moment had been and gone. The boy would not now face him. Although he had nothing but contempt for the Uncle that let the lad face the gunman while he sneaked around to blast a hole in his back, he had helped him in a way. By giving him a chance to show his class and speed, which he knew would be infinitely superior to anything the boy could ever have seen before.
‘I’ll have a glass, if I might, Mister Herne. And I’m real sorry about...’
‘Friend of mine back in the Cavalry, named Nath Brittles used to say: "Never apologize. It’s a sign of weakness." Not saying he was all right, but better than part-way.’
‘Sure. But, you were just... amazing. I’ve never seen that kind of speed. I practice and practice. My finger wore clean through across the palm here, and the thumb, and the first finger. But I’ll never…’
‘That’s right, son. Guess you’ll never. I been around a long times, and I don’t see a lot of boys up and coming all feisty and ready to take me. Life’s too easy, son.’
The first glass slipped down easy as winking, while the saloon gradually returned to normal. Bottles chinking, and talk whispering back from the corners. Lordsburg hadn’t seen anything like it since Ringo had stepped down from the stagecoach with his guns blazing. Men were hurrying out, and returning, with more in tow, all wanting to take a look at Herne the Hunter, and tell each other the story of his speed over and over again.
But all that was stale to Jed, and he ignored it, concentrating on the boy. He’d already saved his life by not meeting him out in the street. Now he was trying to save him from himself.
‘But you must have started somewheres, Mister Herne. By practicing.’
‘That’s the difference between you and me, boy. By the way, what’s your name? Might have killed you and never known your name.’
‘That would have been something for you, wouldn’t it?’ asked the boy intrigued at the idea.
‘Guess so,’ replied Herne, not wanting to tell him that he’d killed more nameless men than the boy had seen summers.
‘I’m called Billy. Billy Joe Stewart.’
Solemnly, Jed reached across the table and shook the boy’s hand. ‘I’m honored to make your acquaintance, Billy Joe.’
‘Likewise, Mister Herne. And like I say, I’m powerful sorry about...’
Jed waved a cautioning finger. ‘Sign of weakness, you recall. Sign of weakness.’
Billy Joe blushed, and let his fingers play with each other across the table, to cover his embarrassment, like two pink crabs in a rock-pool. ‘You was goin’ to tell me about how you began as a gunman, Mister Herne. The way you gotten so fast.’
‘I didn’t practice much early on, boy. I guess you’d be about…eighteen or so, and spent most your life here in Lordsburg?’
‘I’m eighteen in three months, and I been to the west coast once with my Pa, before he passed on.’
‘I was just fifteen when I rode the Pony Expres
s with crazy Billy Cody. Twenty-three long years ago. Seems like it happened a hundred years back. Time I was your age I’d ridden a thousand miles with Quantrill in the War. Before my twentieth birthday, Billy Joe, I’d killed more men than I care to recall and was faster with a hand-gun than you’ll ever be. Indians. Mexicans. Feds. Officers. Some women. Maybe even some children. Times I’d lie awake in those hours when sleep wouldn’t come a’callin’ on me, and I’d try to recall some of them. And they all sort of faded.’
Unconsciously, his voice had risen with the recalled pain, and the saloon was silent again, everyone, listening as a legend sat in front of them and told them how it was.
‘I could remember…sort of parts…like a face here, with a mouth open. Maybe the way one man was shot through the eye. Or an Indian … Cheyenne, say or an Arapaho…falling with my bullet in his gut, screaming in his own tongue. Jesus Christ, Billy Joe! There was so much damned pain and death I can’t remember it. Won’t remember it. If I recalled a part of it, then I’d go out back of this filthy flop-joint and I’d take this Colt from its holster. Put the muzzle in my mouth and put a bullet through my brain.’
The last few sentences were almost shouted by the gunman, and he sat back, reaching for the bottle with fingers that weren’t shaking. Not so much you’d notice.
Dropping his voice. That’s why I’m fast, boy. That’s why I could kill you and ride on and never look back or ever think of you again.’
The boy sat and looked at the older man. Round about the age his Pa might have been if it hadn’t been for the feber back in sixty-nine.
Jed stared across at him, and half-laughed. ‘Guess I sounded off a mite there, Billy Joe.’
‘I’ll never forget it. Never. Not a word, Mister Herne. And I’m…’
‘Not sorry.’
Billy Joe grinned, wiping the palms of his hands across his trousers, wondering why he was sweating so much. ‘No. Not sorry. I’m…thankful to you.’
As Jed looked round the saloon, the conversation sprang self-consciously back to life. He leaned across the table, letting his voice fall so that it carried no further than the ears of Billy Joe Stewart.
‘You been lucky tonight, son. Most times the lesson you seen here would have been paid for you by you lying on your back in this place, with your eyes sort of misting over and cold running out of your stomach. You’ve had it easy. So stay lucky. Go home, Billy Joe. Stay home. Marry a good woman. Here in Lordsburg. Or anyplace. It don’t give a sweet damn where. Raise your kids and die of old age day after your hundredth birthday. And never forget the night back in eight-two you near died. No, don’t you tell me anything. Just go and good luck.’
‘Thanks.’ Still the boy hesitated, wondering whether to shake hands or what.
Herne settled it for him with a casual wave of the hand. ‘Vaya con dios, Billy Joe.’
The young boy nodded, and walked from the saloon, the guns still swinging from the hip, steeling himself not to look back. Herne grinned, and waved a hand to call for another bottle, which arrived at his table at the same moment as a hard-faced man in his forties. The stranger sat down without a word, and pulled out a picture of a woman. Beautiful, with a mane of black hair.
Helped himself to a drink from the bottle, still without a word, and leaned back, eyes on Herne, watching while he studied the picture.
‘Pretty.’
No answer.
‘You selling or buying, Mister?’
‘Take care.’
‘No. You take care. If you’re selling, then thanks a lot but no thanks. If you want to buy, then you start asking the right way or get off your ass and out of here.’
‘Nobody speaks to me like that.’ The voice was still cold and quiet. Like a reptile skin sliding over smooth ice. But there was a tightening of the skin round the eyes.
‘I do. Either piss or move away from the bucket. It’s not a game.’
‘Very well. You are Jedediah Herne.’
‘That’s not a question. You know it.’
‘I do. I want you to find this woman and bring her back to my home.’
The obvious question was who she was.
‘How much?’
‘Two thousand five hundred dollars. One quarter now, and the remainder on delivery.’
‘Alive?’
‘I believe she has been taken by a raiding party of Mescalero Apaches. Therefore it will not be easy. That money if you bring positive proof of her death.’
‘What if she’s alive?’
The man shrugged. ‘The same. It is of no consequence to me.’
Only then did Jed Herne ask the obvious question. ‘Who is she?’
‘My wife, Mister Herne. My name is Elisha Parsons.’
Chapter Three
It took the best part of a day for them to reach the Parsons spread. Ranging across a vast area of the New Mexico Territory, clean to the lower slopes of the Sierra Mogollon. During that time, apart from offering the basic information that Jed needed, Parsons never spoke a word. Riding hard and tall in the saddle, on a hard-mouthed bay stallion, looking neither to right nor left.
He had brought a half dozen of his hands with him to Lordsburg, and they were as silent as their employer. Still, it made little difference to Herne. He was never a great one for conversation, and his first impression was that the man was still shocked by the loss of his pretty wife. And that was something with which Jed could sympathize. God knew he could.
But he quickly realized that there was more than that. Something he could only just begin to see, let alone understand. Jed had met a lot of angry and bitter men in his life, but never anyone quite as cold and self-contained as Elisha Parsons. He had to be a few years older than Herne, but he’d never come across him before. Heard the Parsons name, of course, as one of the biggest ranchers in the area, but never met him, or, as far as he could recall, even met anyone else who’d met him.
With that kind of self-control and an iron will, he guessed that Parsons could have become one of the great gun-fighters, yet Herne had never even caught a bar-room whisper of the man using a gun. Maybe way back when he was winning his spread, but not for years. Parsons’ way was to use the lawyers. Buy up a little here. Divert a river there, and then pick up the dried remnants of land for next to nothing. Day or so later that land had water again.
So it had gone, until the lots of little started to join up and look a lot. Once you got to be that big, it was all too easy to carry on getting even bigger.
And the woman looked, from the picture, a whole lot younger than Parsons. Jed Herne saw nothing wrong with that. His own sweet Louise, more than a year dead, had been only a child of sixteen when they met and married, and he had been just a few days past his thirty-fifth birthday. That marriage, for its short life, had been a good one for both of them.
Despite the near-silence of the hands that rode back with them from Lordsburg, it wasn’t that difficult for Jed to get a vivid picture of the Parsons marriage. And it was an ugly picture.
Even before they reached the big house, Jed was ready for it. A great tomb of a house, with long passageways and huge rooms with high ceilings. Parsons a bitter man who had married youth wishing for sons, and had been given none. And a flighty wife who ran away at every chance, though the feeling seemed to be that old Lishe wouldn’t let her get away with it again.
The hands went off to their own quarters, and Jed and his new employer entered the house. Despite the blazing heat of the day, it was as cold as charity inside. Jed looked around, expecting to see servants.
‘We lost the right to keep slaves many years back, Herne. I will not have servants in my house while I am here, except for one man to wait on me. The rest work when I am out, which is much of the time.’
Jed went and sat down in one of the deep brocaded chairs by the empty fireplace, ignoring Parsons’ glare at him for his temerity. ‘I heard something about no more slaves too, Mister Parsons. And in passing, I’d like you to take a note that I am Mister Herne to you
.’
‘I see,’ was all of the rancher’s reply.
He walked slowly over and sat across the Persian runner from Herne. Although Jed had guessed there wasn’t that much in their ages, Parsons moved like a much older man. Stiff and steady, as if he feared a sudden movement might snap off an arm or a leg. When he was comfortable, he looked at the gunman. And raised an eyebrow.
‘What’s up?’
‘I was wondering, Mister Herne, if you were intending to try and find the woman by sitting there and hoping the Apaches would one day return her like a scythe or an axe that they have been borrowing.’
‘Mister Parsons, I’ve seen nothin’ yet that makes me like you. A lot that makes me not like you. But you’ve done a deal with me, and that’s the way it’ll be.’
‘I’ve asked around, Mister Herne. They tell me that you are the best. That’s what I need. I will not let that woman get away from me. I made her a promise, and I shall keep it.’
‘Your wife went riding with your ramrod, four days back. Out in the foothills near Pinnacle Canyon. Never came back. And the local Fort have gotten word from scouts that a few Mescalero bucks have taken two prisoners. Whites. That’s all you know?’
‘That is all. My wife has tried to leave me before. I am not concerned with why the … why she left me. I will have her back. This time I will keep her. There will be no more freedom and rides for her. As long as she remains my wife, she will not leave the walls of this house ever again.’
It was the nearest to emotion that Herne had seen from the rancher.
‘How you aim to keep her? Since we was both saying how you couldn’t keep slaves no more?’
Parsons smiled. Another first in their relationship. Herne couldn’t recall when he’d seen such an unpleasant gloating smile. Parsons got up and walked to a heavy cupboard near the shuttered window. Unlocked it and flung the doors open for Herne to see. Even in the dim half-light, Jed could make out what was in there.
There had once been a wealthy whore in New Orleans called “Whippin’ Heather”, and Jed had stayed with her a few times. Her specialty had been giving local shopkeepers and businessmen what she called ‘correction’. Which meant a good flogging, while the clients were kept in chains. In her bedroom, Heather had a cupboard about the same size as the one in Parsons’ parlor. With the same sort of contents. An assortment of snakeskin whips, and wrist shackles. Leg-irons. Neck collars of rusty iron. Manacles. Leg-spreaders. Spiked bars that fastened around the throat and made it impossible for the victim to lie down or feed himself.
Apache Squaw Page 2