Vigilante!

by John J. McLaglen

  The small form of the child was squashed between them.

  Herne felt it struggle and kick out. The child was crying now as well.

  ‘Be quiet!’ Herne said loudly. ‘Be quiet,’ he repeated softly. ‘Stop screaming or else they’ll kill you too. Think of the child and stop screaming.’

  The blue eyes blinked.

  ‘I’m going to move my hand away and I don’t want you to make another sound.’ Herne looked hard at her. ‘Do you understand me?’

  She nodded almost imperceptibly and slowly he released her.

  ‘Try to quieten the boy.’

  He stood beside her, blocking her from the others, listening to her talking to the child. Nate had had another pail of water thrown over Taylor, but it didn’t look as if he had much left in him.

  ‘Admit it! Admit it, you thievin’ bastard! Just so’s we won’t hang the wrong man.’ Nate shrieked laughter into Taylor’s face and turned his head towards Herne.

  ‘Okay, you wanted to see we got the right one, how’s this.’

  He went close to Taylor and put his pistol to the man’s bleeding head, the end of the barrel pressed to his forehead, directly above and between the eyes.

  ‘You did it, didn’t you? You an’ that brother of yours. You ran off them cattle of ours?’

  Taylor closed his eyes. Nate glanced at Henry, who twisted his arm right up between his shoulder blades. Taylor’s head nodded up and down, pushing against Nate’s gun.

  ‘See that?’ called Nate to Herne. ‘See that? He done it, right enough.’

  Nate flicked the gun away and holstered it. He looked around the land that surrounded the ranch and finally found what he wanted. A tree with a single broad branch which came out at a right angle. Up on the ridge, outlined against the darkening sky.

  Nate pointed: That’s the one for us. Right up there where she can see it.’ He turned to Henry and Cole. ‘Set him up on a horse. Get him up there double quick. An’ you, Jo-Bob, let that rope of yorn get a taste of doin’ a rope’s work. Why, son, this time we’ll let you slip the knot round his neck yourself. Time you got to hang yourself a man!’

  Herne put his hand to Taylor’s wife’s arm and led her towards the doorway. ‘You don’t have to see this. Get in there with the boy. Lock it behind you.’

  Inside the doorway she turned. Herne caught a glimpse of a newly-made chair, a long table with plates set out upon it, a small hand loom.

  ‘Can’t you do anything to stop them?’ she asked.

  Herne shook his head.

  She looked aside, then shut the door in his face. He waited until he heard the bolts being slid into place and walked back to his horse.

  Taylor was already being led away from the ranch. They had tied him roughly into his saddle and he was slumped forward over the animal’s neck. The horse’s brownish coat was already spotted and smeared with blood. Moans of pain were jolted from Taylor’s open mouth with each step the horse took.

  Herne followed on behind the strange procession, thankful that he had saved the woman, at least.

  At the top of the hill little time was wasted. Rob and Tom untied Taylor and hauled him down from the saddle, while Jo-Bob shinned up the tree, rope in his hand, a smile of sheer happiness on his face.

  When the noose was dangling from the branch, Nate slapped at Taylor’s face, trying to bring him round. The best he could achieve was a mixture of cries and glances, between which the man lapsed into semi-consciousness again.

  Nate stepped back: ‘For Christ’s sake, get the bastard back up on that animal – before he dies on us!’

  Rob and Tom lifted him back into the saddle, Tom cursing as the side of his face was bloodied with the pulped mess that hung down from Taylor’s left shoulder.

  Jo-Bob was lying flat along the branch, arms reaching down. He slipped the noose about Taylor’s neck and wriggled forward a few inches until he was in a better position to tighten it. As the knot slid up over Taylor’s Adam’s apple and began to strain against the skin, a dribble of spit fell in an elongated stream from Jo-Bob’s lips and spilled down onto Taylor’s angled face.

  ‘You got that rope good and tight now?’

  ‘Yes, sir! Yes, Nate! Tight as a virgin’s arse! Jo-Bob hollered so loud at his own joke that he came close to losing his balance and falling from the branch.

  Take it easy there, son. You see that rope stays good an’ steady when it matters most.’

  Nate moved his horse round until it was coming level with the animal on which Taylor sat, his body held by both noose and Tom’s and Rob’s hands.

  He took off his hat and held it in his right hand, behind the rump of Taylor’s horse. ‘Here he goes, boys, another damned rustler on his way to Hellfire and perdition!’

  And he slapped the animal hard.

  It shied up and Taylor’s body bucked sideways: then with a whinny it galloped away down the ridge in the direction of home. Taylor was jerked high and wide, his legs apart, right arm reaching up as if in a desperate attempt to claw the noose away from his neck.

  There was a constricted, choking sound and a noise close to tearing of flesh and the body danced and bobbed and above it the freckled face of the kid looked down in wonder and delight.

  ‘See that old bastard go!’

  ‘Yeah! Look at him dance!’

  ‘Reg’lar two-step.’

  Through all of the shouts Nate’s high, off-key laugh sounded the loudest. Then the jigging movements stopped. Taylor’s body spun slowly round, describing parts of a circle that became smaller and smaller.

  The stench of urine and excrement was growing stronger by the minute.

  ‘I done it!’ called down Jo-Bob. ‘I done it, didn’t I?’

  ‘You done it,’ said Herne coldly. ‘You done it and I hope you’re right proud!’ He pulled lightly on the rein and let the horse walk away along the ridge.

  ‘You want I should cut him down?’ called someone.

  ‘Hell, no! Why take the trouble? Let him stay where he is. Come mornin’, when that missus of his gets out of the house, or when that brother comes home, they’re gonna see what we done. That’ll serve to stop ‘em from running off Circle D stock.’

  Charlie approached Nate, glancing up at the late afternoon sky. ‘We goin’ after them steers now, Nate?’

  ‘No. Too late. ’Sides, we got the best part of what we come for.’ He raised his voice. ‘Get mounted up an’ into line. We’re movin’ out.’

  ‘Hey, Nate!’ one of the riders called out when they were half a mile along the ridge. ‘What happened to Billy and One-Eye?’

  Nate looked over his shoulder, a grin flashed across his pale face. ‘While we was gettin’ Taylor hanged, I sent ’em back down the hill. Told ’em to pick out anythin’ they fancied out of the stock.’ He laughed. ‘Any kind of stock!’

  Herne had a sudden vision of the two Nate had mentioned. One-Eye was just as his name suggested, except that the name didn’t prepare you for the way the empty socket had been shredded down his face by the blade of a bayonet and still showed vivid pink. Billy weighed more than a couple of hundred pounds and boasted that he could stun a steer with a single blow of his fist.

  They were the ugliest, most brutal of the bunch and Herne knew that Nate had sent them on purpose, knowing what they would do. He realized too that it was in part Nate’s way of getting back at him for the attention he’d paid to the woman.

  Without a word, he swung the horse out of line and set off down the hill, riding diagonally between the single trees and clumps of scrub. It passed through his mind that he was risking a bullet in the back but he thought Nate had other, more elaborate plans for him and that this was just the beginning.

  On the level ground that led up to the ranch house, Herne slowed. The two men Nate had sent down were-mounted up and ready to move out. They were coming through the corral gate, each leading one of Taylor’s horses.

  ‘See Nate sent you for some, too.’ Billy shouted to him.

  ‘To
o bad there ain’t no more decent horses to go round,’ called One-Eye.

  ‘Yeah, but there’s somethin’ inside that’s waitin’ an’ still warm!’

  The pair of them guffawed and it was all that Herne could do to stop himself drawing his Colt and dropping them both there and then. But they could, would, wait.

  He ignored them and hurried to the door of the ranch house; it was pushed to, but not shut. Herne swung it slowly open. Stepped inside.

  The interior of the room was dark; the window shutters were still fastened tight. Only the dim evening light that showed through the door laid a rectangle across the boards, the pieces of furniture. By the far wall, the loom lay smashed, kicked into small pieces. The long table had been turned onto its side.

  Taylor’s wife was huddled into the furthest corner. Herne stood where he was, looking at her, letting his eyes become accustomed to the light.

  She was sitting with her knees drawn up into her chest, legs spreading outwards. The bottom of the dress had been torn, a single rent from hem to waist. At the top it had been ripped clear of one shoulder. Her white undergarments were gathered into a screwed-up ball and pushed between her legs; they were white no longer.

  Herne moved towards her and she flinched, pressing back against the two sides of the wall. He stopped, thought to speak but there weren’t any words that were suitable.

  Memory raped his mind: the winter of eighty-two. Just two short, long years ago. Snow thick on the ground. Footsteps deep within it, marking the way black. Laughter of drunken men. Fists hammering at the locked door, finally splintering it wide. Hands seizing the young woman’s body. Tearing her clothes. Pulling. Clawing. Voices raised in drunken excitement. The plundering of a body that had been so lovely; lovely, young and pregnant.

  Herne had not seen it, any of it. Only when he had returned home the next day had his wife, half out of her mind, told him what had happened.

  And then she had taken her own life.

  She had hanged herself in the barn while he slept.

  Louise Ann; nineteen.

  For an instant Herne saw the tightening of the rope, the constriction of the throat, the awful lolling of the head.

  The picture changed to a woman’s frightened, violated body.

  Herne closed his eyes and saw Louise’s face: opened them and saw the face of Taylor’s wife. Looking now he could see the swelling on her left cheek, the trail of dried blood that ran from her nostrils down onto her mouth. Her bottom lip was cut at the corner. Her eyes looked at him, the fear fading from them and a sense of futility replacing it. Futility and resignation.

  Herne looked away.

  ‘The child ... where is he?’

  Her eyes flickered, her head moved a little to one side. When her mouth moved no words were spoken. She didn’t know.

  Herne began to search the room. He found the child curled up underneath the base of the rocking chair, asleep. Gently he got down onto his knees and lifted the boy out, holding him in his arms and smoothing a patch of dirt from his face.

  Neither of the children Louise had carried for him had lived.

  He took the child across the room and handed it down to its mother. At first she made no attempt to take it, but when he insisted, she reached out for it and then hugged it to her.

  The child began to cry.

  There was still nothing that Herne could bring himself to say: nothing that he could do. He walked back over to the door and turned towards Taylor’s wife a last time.

  Even in the darkness he could see her face above the child’s head; the eyes that were unable to cry; the accusation that his own sense of guilt made him read in their emptiness.

  He shut the door behind him and stalked across the ground to his horse, swinging heavily up into the saddle. Above him, on the hill, the darkness had claimed Taylor’s body where it hung from the branch of the tree.

  Chapter Seven

  To Herne’s surprise no mention was made of what he had done. The attack on the Taylor place and the lynching of Art Taylor was hardly mentioned. Whatever thoughts Billy and One-Eye might have had about the way he rode down on them, they kept them to themselves. Or, at least, they stayed silent on the subject when Herne was around.

  Once or twice he came into the bunkhouse when One-Eye was in mid-sentence and his arrival cut the conversation dead. Herne assumed that the man had been regaling his friends with the saltier details of what had gone on with Taylor’s wife.

  They had obviously been ordered not to do or say anything which might provoke Herne’s anger and so he let them be for the present. There would be a time when a fresh cause would present itself, Herne was sure, and when it did he’d know what to do. Temper cooled, he could wait.

  As for Nate, he avoided saying anything directly to Herne, giving out general instructions and making sure he wasn’t alone with Herne at any time.

  Jo-Bob no longer sought advice.

  Herne let it all be, did his work; rode out onto the prairie with small groups of men, policing the Circle D stock. For two weeks it was quiet.

  The nights began to draw in and the mornings were gloomier and darker. The days were cold. Most of the men wore gloves when they rode, wool coats even under the long dusters. Whenever they spoke, clouds of breath hung on the air.

  The only other rider that Herne had much time for was Charlie. Charlie was in his late twenties. Somehow he’d journeyed up north from around the border area between Texas and Mexico. As a kid in San Antonio he’d got involved in a shoot-out between some cowhands and a gang of Mexicans and before he knew what he was doing, he’d killed a couple of men. Greasers. One with the flat of an iron shovel and the other with the chipped blade of an axe that he hurled smack into the Mexican’s face. Like he said, telling it to Herne, with them bustin’ in on him and waving their guns around he hadn’t had a whole lot of choice.

  After that he’d lit out, hitting the trail north, punching cows, riding herd, up through Oklahoma Territory. Band of Kiowas had taken it into their heads to attack the herd and in the mess that followed Charlie had got himself lost in the Cherokee Outlet. An arrow-head embedded in his right shoulder and an old Starr pistol that one of the other hands had kept from the War between the States.

  The pistol still hung at Charlie’s, hip – a double-action Starr Army .44.

  He’d stayed close on two years in the Cherokee Outlet, running with a gang of outlaws that preyed on stage lines and wagons on their way north into Kansas. By the time he figured it was right to move on again, his name was on more than a few wanted posters.

  Charlie had gone west over the mountains and into Colorado, spending time in Aspen as deputy sheriff and in jail in Leadville for cheating at poker. Lucky not to have been shot down or strung up for that one.

  Finally he travelled up through Cheyenne country and heard about Drummond and his private army. He didn’t fancy being a vigilante much but it paid steady wages and there were always those wanted posters if he went back south.

  That business at the Taylor spread that time,’ Charlie began when the two of them were patrolling the land north along the Powder River. That weren’t right. Not accordin’ to my lights, it weren’t.’

  Herne glanced sideways at him and nodded briefly.

  ‘I ain’t sayin’ whether Taylor’d bin rustlin’ or not. Maybe Nate was right an’ he had. But that stuff with his wife—’ Charlie looked at Herne and shook his head. ‘Listenin’ to what them two had done to that woman ... weren’t right.’

  They rode another mile or so before Charlie spoke again. ‘When you went down there ... was she ... was she all right?’

  Herne waited several moments before speaking. ‘Okay. As okay as she could be. I guess if Taylor’s brother got back to her she’d be all right.’

  ‘You figurin’ on settlin’ with Billy an’ One-Eye for that?’

  ‘They tell you to ask me?’

  ‘Blast, no!’ Charlie looked hurt.

  Herne’s face set grimly. ‘One day
,’ he said quietly. ‘One day.’

  ‘Only thing is,’ Charlie went on a while later, ‘that Nate’s got a mean way with him. After you arguin’ it out with him that way I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t try to get back at you. If I was you I wouldn’t rest too easy at nights.’

  Herne almost smiled. Thanks, Charlie. I’ll remember that.’ He touched his heels to his horse and flicked at the reins.

  ‘Come on, let’s move a little!’

  The pair of them let the animals stretch out to a gallop, slanting down towards the river and riding fast beside the line of birch trees that bordered it. Flashes of silver and gray went past the corner of their vision, pale sunlight flickering up from the surface of the water.

  When the horses slowed naturally, they led them down to the river’s edge to drink, dismounting and squatting themselves so as to splash the cold water up into their faces and slake their thirst.

  ‘If it ever comes to a showdown between you an’ Nate,’ said Charlie, standing up, ‘it wouldn’t worry me a lot if that bastard got shot plumb through his evil head!’

  Herne looked up at Charlie and grinned: ‘Thanks again, Charlie. I’ll remember that, too.’

  Three days after their conversation together, Herne and Charlie were sitting on the top rail of the corral fence, watching Cole trying to get a saddle over the back of one of the new string of broncs that Drummond had bought. Every time Cole got almost within reach, the chestnut would throw up its hind legs and shy off to the side, turning a circle on the end of the head rope attached to the fence post.

  Nate’s voice sounded out from close by the front of the ranch house. ‘You two men, get over here fast!’

  When they reached Nate, Drummond had appeared on the terrace behind him. The bearded face looked down at Herne and nodded slightly before turning in the direction of the corral.

  ‘Got word there’s a couple of kids messin’ with the stock out towards the southern boundary. From town, most likely. Rob caught sight of ’em when he was driving Mrs. Drummond back from Powderville in the buggy. Naturally, he didn’t want to start anything right then, not with Mrs. Drummond there. Why don’t you two mount up and take a ride down there? Most of the other men are busy over Baker way. Shouldn’t be anythin’ you can’t handle.’