The weapon fell away and bounced down the steps on to the floor. Herne’s bullet had penetrated her breast and severed the artery close to the heart She landed face downwards and the blood from her body seeped into the thick pile of the carpet.
All around Herne women were screaming at the tops of their voices; men shouting and cursing. A group rushed through from the neighboring gaming room and yelled for an explanation.
Several prominent citizens of the city ran for the door, pulling on their clothes as they went.
Herne turned suddenly at a movement in the corner of his vision. By the gaming room door a man in a striped shirt and fancy waistcoat was releasing a Derringer from its holster just behind his hip.
Herne thumbed back the hammer and brought round the gun. He fired once, taking his time. The gambler rocked back against the door jamb, a playing card fluttering down from inside his shirt sleeve.
He moved his hand towards the wound high in his chest but the action was unfinished.
“Anybody else feel like chippin’ in?”
Herne turned a slow, full circle, Colt primed and ready. There were no takers.
It was then that he noticed the girl.
She was on the floor behind where he had been standing. What was left of her. She had taken most of the force of both barrels of the shotgun. Her beautiful face was beautiful no longer. It hardly existed.
Where there had been fine bone structure, perfectly painted lips and eyes, now there was only a bloody pulp matted with hair and fragments of buckshot.
The upper half of her orange satin slip was stained deep, deep red.
Two of the other girls were kneeling alongside her mutilated body, holding each other and sobbing hysterically.
Herne straightened and looked above them. On the balcony which ran to the left of the single flight of stairs stood Floyd Toomey. His bulbous face was as pale as death itself, both hands gripping the silver painted rail until it shook.
Herne smiled a wry smile of satisfaction and began to climb the stairs.
“Which room, Toomey?”
The lips moved but were unable to speak; his eyes flickered like frightened birds. Herne followed his gaze and prodded Him with his gun.
“Get movin’.”
Herne pushed the fat man into the room and shut the door. Almost immediately there was a movement underneath the mass of bedclothes. Herne jumped fast and pulled the sheets and blankets clear and on to the floor.
Two naked girls were huddled on the bare bed, one black, the other white. Neither looked older than fifteen.
“Get out!”
Herne reopened the door and locked it behind them. Then he put up his gun. He wasn’t about to be in need of it.
Toomey was half-sitting, half-lying, oh the bed, his eyes tight shut as though it were a nightmare and he would wake up and it would all be over.
It would be over soon enough but he wasn’t about to wake up.
Herne pulled him round and hit him full in the center of his face. Blood spurted from the nose and Toomey lifted his arms instinctively. Herne kneed him in the stomach and then punched him in the face again. Harder. The nose splintered and broke under the impact of the blow.
“First I want the money!”
Toomey didn’t even bother bluffing. He pulled a bulging wallet from inside his coat and let it fall on to the bed. All the while he was wincing and groaning with pain; the drops of blood that fell steadily from his face were patterning the yellow silk bed linen.
Herne took his and Whitey’s due from the wallet, then counted out a thousand dollars more.
“That’s the bonus you spoke of.”
The podgy hand reached for the wallet and what was left of the money. As the fingers closed around it, Herne reached down to his boot.
“Now there’s one more payment you got to make.”
Toomey turned, startled, seeing the bayonet in Herne’s hand.
“Whitey was my friend. A good and true friend. You sure can’t pay enough for gettin’ him killed, but sweet Jesus you can do your best!”
“Noooo!”
Floyd Toomey let out a high-pitched squeal and scrambled along the bed towards the far wall. Herne reached out for him with his left hand and jerked the fat body back into the center of the bed. As feet and hands waved up into the air, the bayonet blade drove down hard into the squealing, wriggling center.
“Aaahh! Aaahh!”
Herne slid the blade back through the excess of flesh. Then he pushed up the flabby chin and cut Toomey’s throat from ear to ear in a single, sharp curving stroke.
Herne stood and looked down at the bed. He pulled the satin sheets over the body and watched the yellow change color. A dead weight of flesh and bone wrapped in expensive whore house linen.
There was nothing more for Jed Herne to do.
It was a long journey from New Orleans north to New York. Long and cold. Herne spent much of it staring through the train windows, watching bayou change to open plain, plain to hills and back again. He fought to control his thoughts but it was difficult.
He saw the worn hands in front of him as they rested on his thighs, saw his reflection in the glass against the passing landscape. A face that seemed deeply lined, hair that hung past his shoulders and was greyer than he had noticed before.
In two days Becky would step down from the gangplank of the ship bringing her back from England. Back from a year in which she had finished her schooling. Had grown, perhaps, from a girl into a young woman.
Her mind and body matured.
Jed recalled the sudden touch of her lips upon his when she had bade him good-bye. No hand had been able to wipe that away.
And what would happen now?
How would they live, Becky and himself? Would their lives continue to be bound together or would she build a life of her own, independent of him?
Half of Herne wished he could be without the responsibility of looking after her, caring for her as though she were his own daughter. The rest of him was jealous at the prospect of her becoming someone else’s. Father or lover.
Herne stared through the window of the train once more. The lines of silver birches paraded themselves alongside the track, each one reflecting for an instant the flare of the orange sun.
Herne closed his eyes and the image of Whitey’s stricken, dying face filled his mind.
He opened them and it was still there, outlined by a halo of flashing flame.
Herne cursed aloud and brought his clenched fist down hard on the table before him. He got up from his seat and went off to the buffet car in search of a bottle of whiskey. A bottle of Jim Beam in which to toast his friend’s memory.
The sails of the ship fluttered like so many giant birds as they were reefed ready for coming into harbor. Jed Herne hunched his shoulders against the cold and pulled the hat down over his face. He leaned back against the wall at the end of the dock, keeping well clear of the others who also waited for their relatives and friends on their way from Europe.
Soon it was close enough for him to be able to pick out the name written about the prow, to see the slight figure of a girl leaning over the deck rail, looking as though she could scarcely wait for the ship to dock.
Herne glanced upwards as thick flakes of snow began suddenly to fall from out of the grey sky. He looked at the pale, searching face of the girl.
Winter had come and so had Becky.
Piccadilly Publishing
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Death in Gold Page 13