Vigilante!

by John J. McLaglen

  He could remember it but he couldn’t feel it. Not over this. Not over a few head of Drummond’s cattle. A few out of how many? Thirty five thousand?

  Herne bit the inside of his lip and concentrated on the forty dollars that would be coming to him at the end of the month.

  ‘Looks like they got ten, fifteen head. Five riders I’d reckon it. Trail leads due south of here.’

  Nate paused, looked around the men. ‘Henry, you an’ Rob ride wide on either side. If any of ‘em skedaddles off from the main bunch you stand a good chance of pickin’ ’em out. The rest of you, keep your eyes peeled. We don’t want to head into no bushwackin’. An’ when we catch up with these bastards, don’t kill ‘em outright. Ain’t so much fun watchin’ ’em on the end of a rope if they’s already dead!’

  Nate threw back his head and gave out his maniacal laugh, letting it echo up and around the hills.

  The trail tended to become lost in the long grass and the riders followed it with difficulty, at one point losing it altogether. They stopped and spread out again, looking to pick it up. When they did Herne had his doubts but there didn’t seem any point in arguing. Likely they were now chasing nothing much anyway.

  They rode along the ridge of a long hill that was dotted with spruce and pine, the column in single file now. Twenty men outlined against the blue of the sky, their high hats and long coats identifying them instantly to anyone who was looking.

  It was mid-afternoon when Nate raised his hand and brought the line of men to a halt.

  ‘Way I recall, the Taylor place is ’bout a mile ahead.’

  ‘You reckon that’s where they’re headin’?’ called out Charlie, his hand already resting on the stock of his Winchester.

  ‘Don’t see nothin’ else for it. No other place round this way. Where else could they be goin’?’

  It wasn’t a question that expected an answer but it got one anyway. ‘Seems to me,’ began Herne, edging his horse forward along the ridge, ‘there could be other ways of lookin’ at it.’

  Nate stared at him a moment or two before saying coldly. ‘That so?’

  Herne knew that everyone’s eyes were fast upon him, waiting to hear what he had to say, anxious as to what would happen next but impatient that their raid on the Taylor place had been halted.

  ‘For one thing. I ain’t so sure this trail we picked up’s the one we want. For another, I don’t see how you can be sure whoever it was was making for that place down there. If I was cuttin’ out cattle I’d keep ’em movin’, get ’em up into the hills back of here.’

  Nate swung his own horse further out of the line; the red spots high on his cheeks were brighter than ever. He stared at Herne and made an obvious play of moving his hand to the side of his belt, just above the butt of his pistol.

  That’s sure a mouthful. For a newcomer in this outfit. ‘Cause I told you to look out for Jo-Bob back there, don’t mean I’m expectin’ you to be givin’ any advice to me. You understand that?’

  Herne sat tall and easy in the saddle. He didn’t think Nate would push it all the way, but if he did he reckoned he could take him.

  ‘I hear what you say,’ he said.

  ‘Another thing,’ Nate went on, the tone of his voice becoming flatter and colder with each word. ‘You seem to know one Hell of a lot about rustlin’. One Hell of a lot. Folk might think you was more interested in rustlin’ than catchin’ up with the miserable scum that does it.’

  Herne cleared his throat and spat sideways to the ground. Looked at Nate full and long before he spoke. ‘Man wants to catch himself a bear, best he knows how the bear lives, where he goes.’

  It was very quiet; just the wind moving the smaller branches of a nearby pine and something scuttling through the scrub down to the right of the ridge. Nate let his hand move away from his gun, away from his belt. Without another word he moved his horse back to the head of the line and set it in motion.

  Herne took his own place, unhappy about what had happened but not seeing any way in which it could have been avoided. One thing he was certain of, Nate wasn’t going to let things rest as they were. He couldn’t afford to have his authority challenged in front of the rest of the men. Not in an outfit that was as tightly disciplined as this one.

  Herne knew he would have to be on his guard – and when the shooting started he’d have to watch his back as much as his front.

  Above the Taylor spread, Nate brought them to a halt once more. The ranch house was a single building with a sloping roof, something which set it apart from most timber-built places in the territory with their flat roofs which were easier to build.

  Obviously the Taylors had taken their time. In their own smaller way they were as determined to build a place that would last as was Drummond.

  The sides of the frame house had been reinforced with split logs and there were heavy shutters at the windows. To the side, someone had begun to build an extension and there was a pile of store-bought lumber waiting to be used.

  At one side of the place there was a small corral containing three horses; at the other side a garden had been worked out of the ground and there was signs of vegetables and flowers having been grown.

  A hammock was slung between one end of the ranch house and a small but sturdy apple tree at the garden’s edge. Smoke spiraled up from the round, tin chimney, a blue-gray smudge drawn on the sky.

  Nate rode away down off the ridge and pulled the Winchester from its scabbard. He glanced quickly at Herne, but paid him no more regard.

  ‘Let’s hit ’em! Hard!’

  The twenty men went down the side of the hill fast, two lines now and spreading out as they neared the bottom so as to surround the small ranch house below. They went through a clump of firs that were tight together and then round an outcrop of whitish rock. Grass gave way to dirt and then became grass again, shorter and stubby.

  A little over a hundred yards off a shot sang out from the timber house.

  The horse immediately in front of Herne shied violently and he pulled hard on the rein so as not to collide with it. A second shot came from the house and several rifle shots cracked in rapid reply. Herne galloped fast across the front of the place and swung round behind the corral.

  Most of the other riders had taken similar action, some of them now out of the saddle and crouching low. A volley of rifle shells tore into the woodwork, ricocheting off it at all angles. Patches of yellowish wood showed through where the surface had been torn away. Herne levered his own Winchester as another volley sounded round the circle of Drummond’s men.

  If there was a response from inside, the sound of it was lost in the confusion of shooting.

  ‘Hold up!’ Nate’s voice sounded above the temporary lull, One more shot was fired and then nothing.

  Nate was thirty yards to Herne’s right, ducked down behind the corner post of the corral and out of direct line of fire from the windows.

  Herne had got a good look at the shutters on his way past and noticed the way thin slots had been left to take a gun barrel. It was a good method of defense against Indian attack, but he didn’t think the Taylors had Indians in mind.

  ‘Hey, Taylor! You hear me?’

  There was no reply straight off and Nate called out again: ‘Taylor! I said, d’you hear me?’

  ‘Yeah!’ The reply was muffled and only just carried to where the circle of men waited.

  ‘Why don’t you come on out here?’

  ‘And get gunned down?’

  Nate laughed: ‘Who said anythin’ ’bout that? You started the shootin’.’

  There was another silence and then Herne heard a sound like a bolt being drawn back. The voice was clearer this time, louder.

  ‘What else can you expect when you ride in on a man that ways?’

  ‘Come on, Taylor. You knew who we were.’

  ‘All I seen was a lot of men ridin’ fast. Only natural what I did.’

  ‘Not if you ain’t got anythin’ to feel guilty about.’

 
; ‘What sort of foolishness is that? Guilty, Hell!’

  Nate stood up and took a few paces towards the house. ‘Step out then. Let’s talk open. No hard feelin’s.’

  Herne could see that Nate’s right hand was firm on the butt of his pistol, the Winchester held out at an angle in the left. He wondered how much Taylor could see.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I’d be a damned fool to walk out there under them guns of yorn.’

  ‘You ’d be a bigger fool to stay where you are. If we don’t shoot that shack of yours to pieces, we could burn it to the ground an’ you know it.’

  ‘I’d make sure a lot of you got dead in doin’ it.’

  Nate went forward again, taking his time, his voice pushing away at Taylor’s confidence, wearing him down. Opposite the house and back in the trees, Herne picked out two men with rifles raised. The minute Taylor showed himself fully—

  ‘Killin’ any of us ain’t gonna help you none. You can’t hope to get all of us. What’d happen to your place then. That wife of yours ... ain’t she got a kid?’

  Nate was level with the end of the house now. Beyond him Herne could see that Jo-Bob had come in soft to the apple tree and was leaning against it, his rifle at his shoulder. Herne knew the kid must be itching to use it.

  ‘Taylor? There can’t be more than three of you inside at most. You come out and talk, you’d save a lot of trouble for yourself.’

  Herne could almost sense the thoughts that were going through Taylor’s mind. He had moved himself wide of the corral now and could see that the door was open by some six inches: could see the leveled guns that Taylor could not see but could only guess at.

  As he watched the door swung open further. One foot, two. Herne wanted to call out but didn’t. Stayed where he was. The door half open, a man stepped out into the afternoon light. Herne recognized him as one of the two men from the wagon, that first time he’d come across Drummond’s men riding like a black cloud across the land.

  He saw the mouth open and start to speak but the word was never finished, never heard. Two rifles sounded almost simultaneously and Taylor’s body was hurled back against the door, slamming it shut. He struggled to bring up his own weapon but it never got more than half way there.

  He came back off the door with pain already creasing his face and took three shaky steps towards where Nate was standing, his pistol drawn.

  None of Drummond’s men had fired again and there had been no shot from inside the house, although a rifle barrel still showed through the slit in the right-hand shutter.

  The top of Taylor’s left arm was darkening with blood as it pulsed through his shirt and coat; a moment later it began to drip from the tips of his curled fingers to the dirt below.

  He bent at the knees and folded down slow,

  Nate laughed and carefully aimed his pistol, cocking back the hammer.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Hold It!’

  Herne levered the Winchester and raised it in one fluent movement. Not quite at his shoulder, absolutely steady, from that angle impossible to tell if it was aiming at Nate or at the kneeling shape of Taylor just beyond him,

  Nate snarled and whirled round at the double sound of voice and gun. His cheeks were drawn in under high cheek bones: his face as white as death.

  ‘What the—!’

  ‘You want to find out, don’t you?’ said Herne clearly. ‘About these rustled steers? You want to know?’ His finger remained quite still on the trigger, feeling the smooth pressure of the metal. ‘ ’Sides, I thought you was agin’ hangin’ dead men. That’s if he needs hangin’.’

  Nate’s face was paler than before: the patches of red on his cheek bones burned bright with anger. The remainder of the men were walking or riding in slowly, not wanting to tip Herne into action.

  When Nate spoke his voice was so quiet that few other than Herne could hear him, but for him there was no mistaking the scarcely bridled fury that lay under it. ‘Someday, someday soon, you’re goin’ to realize you just made the biggest mistake of your damned fool life!’

  The last word hissed out into the air like a snake’s tongue and with it Nate wheeled round and went for Taylor. He grabbed at the front of his shirt and hauled him almost to his feet, clubbing round savagely with the barrel of his pistol and whipping him across the side of the face.

  There was a sickening crunch of bone and the sound of tearing skin and the gun sight lashed through Taylor’s cheek a second, then a third time.

  Taylor cried out and fell backwards but Nate held him fast and brought the gun up a fourth time. He tilted it back in his hand and clubbed down on the other side of Taylor’s face with the butt end, letting his left hand open and Taylor fall away.

  The man slumped to the ground and squirmed his arms about his head, drawing his knees up into his stomach.

  Nate moved in close and yelled at the house. ‘Get out here now or I’ll finish him off. Now!’

  As Herne watched the door opened and a woman stepped out, holding a child of less than two in her arms. Herne recognized her long fair hair, falling loose on both sides of her shoulders. She wore a red and white gingham dress, the color of the checks faded with age and constant use. The child, fair-haired like herself, appeared to be a boy.

  She lifted a hand and touched the child’s cheek, gently. There was little fear in her face. Perhaps she genuinely wasn’t afraid; perhaps she had passed fear and left it behind, knowing that only the final acts could happen now. There was little in her stance or expression which showed feeling for the man who lay wounded and beaten on the dirt before her.

  ‘That all?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was soft and calm, resigned.

  Nate pointed: ‘Jo-Bob, you check.’

  The rifle barrel was still poking through the shutter; a few moments later it disappeared and Jo-Bob came out with it in his hand. He pointed it up at the fading sky and pulled the trigger; the hammer clicked and that was the only sound it made.

  ‘Whole thing’s empty.’

  ‘An’ there’s no one else in there?’

  ‘Uh-uh.’ Jo-Bob grinned and came towards Nate. ‘I did good, though, didn’t I? Real good. You said only to wing ’im and that’s what I done. Got the bastard plumb in the arm!’

  Nate advanced on the woman. ‘Where’s the other one? There’s two of ’em, ain’t there?’

  She looked back at him, her face showing nothing of her feelings. ‘He went out to fetch some strays.’

  ‘Damned right he did! Circle D strays!’

  ‘No!’ She was louder now, suddenly more intense. ‘That ain’t true. We got stock enough of our own.’

  ‘That ain’t the way we see it.’

  She stared at him, her hand ruffling the child’s hair. ‘I guess you see what you want to see.’

  ‘Tracks lead right here.’

  ‘What tracks?’

  ‘My men spotted rustlers this mornin’. Followed ’em to this place.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’

  Nate moved closer to her and Herne thought he was going to strike out at her with the pistol. But he swung it round on his finger and let it fall back into his holster. Then he turned his back.

  ‘Charlie! Get some water from that trough! Wake him up!’

  Charlie hurried over and filled the wooden pail and threw the contents over Taylor’s face. While the injured man was coming round, Nate rounded on the woman.

  ‘Which one is he anyhow? S’posin’ it makes any difference. Share you, do they? One after the other.’ Nate leered into her face. ‘Or do they give it you both at the same time?’

  She flailed at him with her free hand and he pulled his head away.

  ‘You bastard!’ she cried. ‘If I were a man I’d shut your filthy—’

  The howl of laughter from Nate drowned the end of her threat. On the ground, Taylor was sitting up, reaching gingerly towards his shattered arm. Herne reckoned both slugs had gone in above the elbow, more or less pulping the arm apart
. He couldn’t see that there would be much left under his clothing other than smashed sinew and blood-soaked flesh, that and the remnants of chipped bone.

  It wouldn’t be long before the constant heavy loss of blood caused him to faint away once more.

  ‘Get him up!’

  Cole and Henry hurried forward, their long off-white coats flapping about their legs. They pulled him to his feet by his good arm and his fair hair and held him there.

  ‘Where’s your brother?’

  ‘He’s ... he’s up yonder, bringin’ in some—’

  ‘Rustled stock!’ Nate interrupted.

  ‘No ... no ... some of our cattle went off—’ His voice, weaker with every word, faded to silence.

  ‘Wake him up!’ ordered Nate and Cole yanked his head back by the hair while Henry reached round and slapped him in the face, striking him where the blood still ran from the gun-whipping he’d received from Nate.

  For the first time the woman screamed; maybe it was the first blow she’d seen struck; maybe before she’d been just sheltering the child, not looking.

  Taylor’s eyes flickered, shut, stayed half-open.

  ‘You an’ your brother rode onto Circle D range this mornin’ and ran off a dozen of our stock and brung ’em back here. Now he’s pushed ‘em back into the hills along with whoever else helped you do your damned rustlin’.’

  Taylor’s mouth opened and his tongue moved between his lips; there was a harsh gurgling sound and a gout of blood flew from his mouth and landed directly in front of Nate, splashing onto his boots.

  ‘Bastard!’ Instantly Nate jumped at Taylor, punching him hard in the stomach, bringing up his knee into the man’s groin.

  Taylor’s wife screamed again and this time she carried on screaming.

  ‘Shut that bitch up!’ Nate called over his shoulder. Before any of the others could move, Herne dug his heels into his horse and went past where Nate was standing and jumped down alongside the woman.

  He set one hand on her shoulder, the other firmly over her mouth. Beneath his fingers he could feel the movement of her face muscles, the harsh exhalation of breath. Her eyes stared up at him over the top of his hand, blue and frightened, a mixture of fear and hate. Whatever the source of her former calm, it had gone.