Vigilante!

by John J. McLaglen

‘The doctor’s across the street. You should have gone there, not here. You should have—’

  Herne’s eyes closed a final half inch, his head shot back and he fell forwards, bouncing from the door frame into the woman. She tried to catch him, the gun still in her hands, but he fell through her arms and spread himself across the threshold.

  With a sigh, she put down the pistol and bent over, pushing her hands under his arms and pulling him slowly inside the house. When she had done that she went back upstairs and got dressed. She sat on the side of the bed, looking at the sepia photograph of her husband that she kept in a frame on her dressing table.

  After a while she got up, straightened her dress and went downstairs and over to the far side of the street. Ten minutes later she returned with the doctor. Together they managed to lift Herne up the stairs and get him onto a bed.

  Herne slept fitfully for the remainder of the night and the following day. During that evening he woke for no more than five minutes, trying to remember where he was and how he had got there. When he fell asleep again he slept soundly through that second night.

  The morning when he woke again was gray and overcast. A month later in the year and folk would have started preparing for the first falls of snow. He woke suddenly, his right hand immediately moving upwards, reaching towards the bedpost for a gun that didn’t hang there. The attempt to spread the fingers of the hand made him jump with sudden pain.

  At that moment the door opened and Rachel Fairfax came into the room.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said, relief beginning to show itself on her face. She was carrying a bowl of warm water, a towel and a cloth.

  ‘How—?’

  She set down the bowl on the table at the side of the room. ‘You remember coming here don’t you? Half naked in the middle of the night!’

  Herne remembered: it only needed her to say that to bring it back, the events one after another, like reading a dime novel about Buffalo Bill or Wild Bill Hickok.

  He tried to move but the effort made him wince and he lay back again, becoming aware of aches and bruises all over his body. He lifted his right arm slowly and examined the curled fingers. He tried to move them but it was difficult and painful.

  She sat on the edge of the bed beside him. ‘I know what you’re thinking. At least, I think I know, but it will take time.’

  He looked into her face and after a moment she turned her head away. ‘I brought some water for you to wash,’ she said, standing up. ‘If you use your left hand you can make a start on that yourself. I’ll fetch you some breakfast. It’s a long while since you’ve eaten.’

  She lifted the small table over to the bedside and left him alone. Herne swished the cloth around in the water and half-squeezed it out, then began to wash his face and body. He was amazed at the number of marks that told of the beating he had sustained.

  ‘There’s something I wanted to ask you—’ Rachel began, later in the day.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Why did you come here?’

  ‘To you, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Herne looked at the wall and then back at her face, the lines that were starting to spread from the corners of her eyes, her soft, wide mouth. ‘I couldn’t think of where else to go.’

  She smiled and the dimple appeared on her right cheek. ‘That won’t do. Doctor Douglas is right across the street. You must have known I’d have to fetch him in anyway.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking straight.’

  ‘Straight enough to get here.’

  Herne glanced away again, looking down at the floor with its woven rug on polished boards. ‘All right. I wanted to see you again.’ He said it as much as a challenge as anything else.

  She smiled again and pulled a strand of hair. ‘Looking like that?’

  ‘Perhaps looking like that was the only way I’d ever have dared come.’

  Her expression changed, facial muscles tightened.

  ‘I know what happened to your husband,’ Herne said. ‘I know who killed him.’

  She went white. He thought she was going to get up and leave, but she didn’t. Instead she said quietly: ‘And I know what happened to Joanne Taylor’s brother-in-law.’

  ‘That was an accident!’

  She stared at him.

  ‘He pulled a gun on me and came at me from behind. He was about to shoot me in the back.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What the Hell else could I do?’

  She reached forward and patted down the sheet, then stood up. ‘You’ll tire yourself. The doctor says the only way you’ll mend is by getting plenty of rest.’

  He held up his right hand: ‘And what did he say about this?’

  ‘It’ll mend.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A couple of weeks.’

  ‘That’s impossible. It’s too long. It—’

  ‘That was what he said. He’s the doctor, not me. Argue with him when he comes. You only want it better so you can do more killing.’

  Herne looked at her: ‘I want to kill the man who killed your husband.’

  ‘And is that the reason? Because he did that?’

  ‘There’s a whole lot of reasons. One more important than the others.’

  She set her hand on the door handle. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘He deserves to be killed. It’s the only thing he’s worth. And it’s got to be slowly.’

  She turned away disturbed by the hate in Herne’s face. When she was outside he called her back.

  ‘How many people know I’m here?’

  ‘Don’t worry. Just the doctor and myself – and that friend of yours who got shot.’

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘That’s the one.’ She motioned for him to lie back down. ‘You rest now. The quicker you get better the sooner you can get out of here.’ Her face hardened. ‘And do what you have to do.’

  Charlie came over to see Herne a few days later. When he put his head slowly round the door and peered into the room, all Herne could do was laugh.

  ‘What’s the damned matter with you?’

  ‘You seen yourself lately?’

  Charlie flushed but came on into the room nevertheless, shutting the door to behind him. He’d got hold of some different clothes since Herne had seen him last. A shirt in an orange check and a yellow patterned waistcoat over it. Obviously he’d gone so long without shaving he’d decided to grow a beard and moustache and they were at present a sort of brown fuzz around his mouth. None of those were as noticeable as what sat on his head.

  ‘Where the Hell d’you get that?’

  Charlie flushed some more and reached up to touch the brim of the black bowler hat on his head. ‘This, you mean?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Herne grinned. That.’

  ‘Met this drummer. He told me they was the best thing a man could wear. New line he was carry in’, he said. ’Sides, I wanted somethin’ different from that blasted hat Drummond made us wear.’

  ‘This drummer,’ asked Herne, ‘he a feller round thirty? Wears neat suits and talks a powerful lot.’

  ‘That’s him,’ agreed Charlie, surprised. ‘You know him?’

  ‘Met him. Didn’t buy nothin’ from him, though. Least of all a bowler hat!’

  Charlie took it off and looked at it with admiration. ‘I reckon it’s a fine hat.’

  ‘I’ll agree it’s better than them hats of Drummond’s.’ He looked at Charlie thoughtfully. ‘You sure you’re through with him?’

  ‘You’re blasted right!’

  ‘How much through?’

  ‘Enough to sit in with you for a few hands.’ Charlie’s eyes narrowed. ‘You are goin’ to get back at them bastards, ain’t you?’

  Herne nodded. ‘You bet! Soon as this hand of mine’ll do what I want it to, we’ll get ’em. But good!’

  Chapter Eleven

  Rachel Fairfax knocked quickly on the bedroom door and entered. Herne was sitting up in bed, restlessly leafing through an old mail-order catalogue t
hat she had lent him. She was carrying clothes over one arm, boots in the other.

  ‘You’ll be needing these.’

  He glanced at the clothes; looked harder at her face. ‘They’re your husband’s, ain’t they?’

  She dropped the pile on the end of the bed. ‘They were. Ain’t no sense in keeping them till they fall to pieces. Locking away things like they was memories. It don’t do any good.’

  Standing beside him, she reached out and touched his arm. ‘Who was Louise?’

  Herne jumped, startled, as if someone had just walked over his grave. Her grave. ‘She was my wife.’

  ‘I thought so. When you were lying there, all in a fever those first days. You talked about her a lot.’ She moved her hand away. ‘Not that it made sense of course. It came out all jumbled up, the way things do when a person’s like that. But her name was clear enough. You kept on saying it again and again. You loved her a lot didn’t you?’

  Herne nodded. ‘I guess I did.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, turning away towards the door. ‘I know.’

  But Herne didn’t know if she was talking about him or about herself.

  He pushed back the covers and swiveled round, setting his feet to the floor. After a few moments he stood up and reached among the clothes. Soon he was dressed in blue pants, a red shirt that was a mite tight round the shoulders, a leather waistcoat and a pair of boots that pinched slightly at the toes. He knotted a purple scarf about his neck and went out of the room.

  At the bottom of the stairs she called to him and he went for the first time into the small room she kept for a parlor. It was what he would have expected: neat and clean but warm.

  ‘You’ll be needing these.’

  She handed him a yellowing Stetson that fitted more or less exactly and then she pulled open a drawer and lifted out a gun belt. As he was strapping it on, she reached into another drawer and lifted up some linen and drew out the pistol which went with it.

  In a sudden flash, he recalled the way Louise had made him set his gun aside when they had married.

  ‘Here.’

  He took the Remington from her, automatically testing the balance in his hand. The barrel seemed a shade heavier than the Colt, likely due to the extra piece of metal slanting beneath it. The butt was smooth, its wood reddish and not seeming much handled. There were five shells in the chamber.

  ‘There isn’t any more ammunition, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That’s okay. I’ll buy some.’

  She took a small wad of bills from behind her back and handed them to him.

  ‘I can’t.’

  But she placed them in his left hand, smiling. ‘Yes, you can. You’ll pay me back some day.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘How’s your hand?’ she asked.

  Herne glanced at it. ‘It’ll shape up. Another day or so an’ it should be workin’ like new.’

  The dimple showed: ‘Take care till then.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘After that you’ll be all right. I can feel it.’

  Herne nodded and said his thanks again. He had arranged to collect his horse from the livery stable and then meet Charlie on the outskirts of the town. They had plans to make, things to do: time was running out. For Nate and the rest of Drummond’s vigilantes.

  They looked down at the shack and the stream that ran right past it, the trees that surrounded it on two sides. At the front the land led up to it evenly, hardly a slope. There was only one piece of high ground and that was the one they were on then, almost opposite the trees and a good quarter of a mile away.

  ‘You sure that feller in the store’ll lend me a Sharps?’ Herne asked.

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘What d’you tell him you wanted it for?’

  ‘Day’s huntin’.’ Charlie grinned.

  ‘That’s about right,’ said Herne as he set his horse moving. ‘That’s about what it’ll be. We need to cut them down to size some an’ the best way is to pick a few of ’em off. This seems the perfect place to do it.’

  They found a group of steers five miles south, nearer to the Circle D ranch. Rounding them up wasn’t any problem, maybe thirty head. They drove them hard, leaving lots of tracks and making sure they could be easily followed. There was plenty of good grazing land down by the shack and stream and they could keep the cattle there long enough.

  Just until some of Drummond’s men picked up their trail and came riding in.

  Herne and Charlie spent the night in the shack, huddled under old blankets. Every day now seemed darker than the one before it and it seemed for sure that snow was coming early that year. Herne kept thinking about the Taylor woman and wondering where she had gone. Rachel hadn’t any idea; no one had heard any news. If she’d had any sense she would have stayed in Powderville or gone on to some other town, maybe up the river to Fort Keogh. He just hoped she hadn’t been fool enough to ride back out to their ranch and try to stay here, just her and the child.

  He thought about Rachel, too, about what she’d done for him and the fact that, almost blindly, he’d sought her out when he was in trouble.

  ‘What you thinkin’?’ Charlie would ask from time to time but Herne would always reply, ‘Nothin’.’ He didn’t want to start talking about it to Charlie or anybody else.

  The morning was colder, the air raw. Herne got up to the hill early and set up watch, chewing on a piece of dried meat and occasionally sipping at the canteen he’d filled at the stream.

  It was two hours before he saw them coming. A pall of dust that rose up into the overcast sky. A column of men riding in twos. He signaled down to Charlie and got himself ready. He wished that the Sharps was his own, just like he wished the pistol at his hip was his own Colt.

  But they would have to do.

  He traced the riders’ approach with pleasure, savoring every moment, every yard.

  They stopped a mile back along the plain, their formation and appearance readily identifying them. The front pair split off and moved aside, while the following couple rode ahead to check things out. Herne held his breath, hoping that they would find nothing to make them suspicious, praying that they would not sense that anything was not as it appeared.

  The men rode on until they were four hundred yards away from the shack. They stopped and talked, nodding and pointing. The steers bunched together, a few of them drifting towards the trees, others going down to the edge of the shallow stream. After a few minutes, the pair rode back.

  Herne smiled grimly and waited for them to make their way in: eighteen men.

  He sighted the Sharps on Nate, moving the long barrel slowly to the right. He could have blown him clear out of the saddle even from that range. But that wasn’t what he wanted. Not for Nate. It would have been too easy, to impersonal.

  Next he lined up Jo-Bob, then Billy, then One-Eye. It wasn’t the time for them either. He’d given Charlie clear instructions about which men to leave alone if it were humanly possible.

  For now it was to be men like Rob, Tom, Henry, Cole – riding with his wounded arm loose by his side.

  They were almost at the shack, several of the riders with their Winchesters drawn from their scabbards. He heard Nate call out a warning and a couple of shots sank into the shack door. Herne started to squeeze back on the trigger. One of the riders threw up his arms, letting the rifle sail out of his hands. The sound of the Sharps brought heads round towards the hill.

  Herne saw Rob lash out at his horse and begin to ride towards him. What he thought he could do at that distance Herne didn’t know. He doubted if he could even see the spot where he was aiming from, only the general direction.

  He let him cover ten yards before he fired. For seconds nothing seemed to have happened but then Rob’s mount was galloping forward without a rider and Rob himself was on his back, fingers clutching at a gashed hole that drove down through his chest.

  Herne heard Nate’s agitated, angry shout and a volley of rifle fire was directed at th
e hill, but for the Winchesters the range was too vast. Some of the riders turned their horses round and made for the trees behind, seeking shelter.

  Herne grinned and waited. The first pair was close to the beginning of the thicket when Charlie’s Winchester rang out. He wasn’t as accurate as Herne but that didn’t matter. One of the men swung to the side, shot through the arm. The second man escaped unharmed but went wide to the left anyway.

  Tom and Henry jumped down from their mounts and made a run for the shack. Herne dropped Henry, the nearest of them, with a shot through the right arm which carried on through his side and lodged up against the inside of his ribs.

  Tom just got inside before Herne could push a fresh shell into the Sharps. All right. He was in – now he’d have to get out. Across the clearing Charlie was firing into the group of riders who milled around in front of the shack. Herne heard first Nate’s shrill shouts of command, then Billy’s bellow of frustrated rage. Shots were fired at both trees and hill but none of them seemed to be having any effect.

  Herne shifted his position, moving low along the side of the hill. A horse went down, hit by one of Charlie’s stray shots and its rider was hurled headlong. He rolled over and over and finally picked himself up in time to hear Nate give the order to retreat. Desperately he jumped up on the back of someone else’s mount, clinging on to the man’s shoulder and the back of the saddle.

  Herne knelt with the Sharps to his shoulder, biding his time. Waiting ... waiting ... waiting until the angle was exactly right.

  He was certain the shot would find its target before it happened. He watched carefully as the rear man of the pair doubling up jolted forward and almost immediately bounced back, trying to hold on to the man in front for support. But the rider in the saddle was slipping forwards himself, struck by the same shell which had passed through back and chest and on into his own hip. As the first man came off the still galloping horse and crashed onto the hard ground, the second one clung desperately to the animal’s neck, almost losing balance completely but just managing to hold on.

  As the other vigilantes galloped out of range, Herne looked back down at the hut. As far as he knew Tom was still holed up inside and unhurt.