Geronimo! (Herne the Hunter Western

by John J. McLaglen

  ‘How many are there? I can’t see that kind of distance.’

  ‘I make it ten. No. There’s a rearguard. See him?’

  Distant through the haze of the sun the woman saw a tiny black silhouette, at least six hundred yards off from them, wearing what looked like a golden sombrero.

  ‘Bastard,’ said Herne’, his voice a faint ripple of sound. Carola heard the click of the rifle being cocked and saw Herne reaching forwards, putting a dab of spittle on the front sight. Taking a deep breath and holding it as he aimed the heavy gun at the distant bandit.

  ‘He’ll be gone, Jed,’ she whispered, but he took no notice at all of her.

  The Sharps boomed out, making her wince, waving her hands to try and clear away the pall of powder smoke that obscured the target. The Mexican had been so far off, barely visible, that she never believed that it was humanly possible for any sharpshooter to hit him.

  There was a moment of waiting, while the heavy bullet hummed away, on its classic rainbow trajectory, with Herne aiming high, to allow for the fall of the round.

  ‘Blessed Jesus,’ she sighed, seeing the Mexican throw up his arms, toppling sideways from his horse, rolling in the dirt and not moving again. ‘That was the finest shot I ever saw.’

  Herne looked at her as though he was going to reply, then he simply spat in the dirt, standing up like a great cat uncoiling in the sun. Reloading the rifle and starting off down the hill again. The woman followed him, pausing to look around the mountains, wondering in passing why they had ever begun this crazed odyssey after the mythical Geronimo. Now the bandits had kidnapped her husband and brother-in-law.

  All for nothing.

  She sighed. ‘All for nothing,’ she said.

  ~*~

  Geronimo waited until the white man and the woman had disappeared before he waved his rifle above his head, signaling to his handful of warriors that it was safe to stand. He was barely two hundred paces from Herne, and his men had been even closer. But his orders had been not to interfere.

  Nachez, second son of Cochise, spoke first to his leader. ‘The bullet was truer than any I have ever seen. Further and straighter than a diving hawk.’

  Geronimo nodded, face impassive. ‘It was good. But it may be the white man was trying to shoot at the horse of the Mexican.’

  There was smiling from the Chiricahua. Patiently awaiting their instructions.

  Geronimo carefully laid his rifle down in the dust and looked around him. ‘The large hats of El Poco have taken two of the whites. The woman is nothing. Weak and nothing. Too skinny for any true Apache to favor with his body. But the man?’

  ‘You know him?’ asked one of the older warriors.

  ‘Do you not?’ asked Geronimo.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah me, then I am older than ... It was many summers past but I will not forget him.’

  ‘He is a great fighter?’ asked Nachez.

  ‘His bravery is as the lion facing his hunters. He is a white man whose word I would trust as long as the waters flow and the great sun travels across the skies.’

  ‘He will chase the Mexicans?’

  ‘If he does then we will be near. There will be a mighty killing, my brothers.’

  ‘We will kill him?’

  Geronimo hesitated. ‘I do not know. He is a great warrior. I have known him.’

  Nachez asked the question, his voice low and full of respect. ‘His name?’

  ‘They call him Herne. Herne.’

  Chapter Nine

  Carola Ray wasn’t sure that she’d heard him properly. ‘What?’

  ‘Guess you caught what I said.’

  ‘But I don’t believe what I heard. Say it again, Jed.’

  ‘I said, and listen good, that now your husband is trapped like that, my contract dies with him.’

  She was almost in tears. ‘But he isn’t dead. He isn’t damned well dead!’

  ‘Not yet. But real soon.’

  ‘Won’t they spare him?’

  ‘Like we spared his men?’

  ‘That was you! You, damn you, Herne!’ For a moment he wondered if she was going to attack him, but the rage eased and she started to sob, sinking to her knees in the hot sand, shoulders shaking.

  ‘That’ll do no good, Carola.’

  ‘I know he and I have had bad times. Plenty of them. But Thad’s not a wicked person. And poor Isaac …’

  ‘Poor Isaac’s a helpless, useless drunk and the world’s a better place with him off of it.’

  ‘You unfeeling dog, Herne!’

  ‘No. I feel, lady. But mostly I feel for myself. Not men like Isaac.’

  ‘I was with you Lying with another man while my own husband was being captured by brigands.’

  ‘Make a good tale for your papers, won’t it? How your loving man was taken by heathens. Shame he won’t get a chance to write his side of it.’

  Jed was being deliberately hard to her, trying to get her angry, so that she wouldn’t just collapse. He wasn’t that interested in saving the Rays, but he was prepared to try and get Carola out of the region with him.

  ‘Oh, God!’ she cried in anguish. ‘You must help me, Herne. Jedediah, please!’

  She reached out and gripped him by the legs, pressing her tear-slobbered cheeks against his dusty thighs, hanging on so tightly that she nearly felled him. Strangely he found her begging was arousing him, but he put that thought from the front of his mind.

  ‘My contract was with Thaddeus, to try and take you to Geronimo. Haven’t seen much of the money he promised, and the balance isn’t going to be coming now.’

  ‘I’ll pay you.’ Still holding him, her fingers biting into his legs.

  ‘What with, Carola?’

  ‘I’ll lie with you again. Many times as you want. I’ll do anything. You know I’m good. I am, am I not? You know?’

  ‘Sure you’re good. But you’re a middle-aged lady, Carola I’m a middle-aged shootist. What the Hell do we want with each other? Maybe a moment to hold on each other and fight the years back. That’s all.’

  ‘That’s all’ she repeated, incredulously. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes. That’s honest. You’re good, Carola. One of the best I never paid for.’

  He pushed her away hard, levering the edge of his palm under her nose to break her grip, pushing so that she fell on her back in an ungainly sprawl of skirt and legs, face reddened and eyes swollen with crying.

  ‘Jed—’

  ‘I had me whores from Mexico to Canada and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Ones on the Pacific side weren’t too terrific and there was damned little romance from them on the Atlantic. But you got what you paid for. An hour’s honest fucking and no strings tied on. Their two ups to your one down. No strings.’

  ‘I’ll do anything. Use my mouth on you. If you want to you can …’

  Her voice carried on, its upper-class accent making the listing of obscene atrocities sound bizarre, like a shopping-list from an exclusive Knightsbridge store. Herne stepped away from her, blanking his mind off from her words. Finding them exciting, but not wanting to give an inch to them.

  ‘You’re wasting your breath, Mrs. Ray. I signed to find Geronimo. Looks like that contract’s kind of broken now.’

  ‘What of me?’

  ‘I’ll take you out with me. Head back for Nogales. Take around eight, ten days. Careful with the bandits and the Chiricahua around. Then you go home.’

  ‘Home. Where the Hell’s that?’

  ‘Maybe go back to your country home in England.’

  Carola stood up, staring at him. Suddenly giving out with a short, barking laugh. ‘You believe that horse shit? Yes, I do it well, don’t I? The class and the county. I was born the youngest of fourteen in a filthy slum in a city called Birmingham. Brummagem ware, that’s me. You talk of whores ... Well, I know about that. Started upping my skirts for a farthing to allow fumbling old men to touch me when I was seven years old. Penny bunk-ups when I was eleven. A florin a suck in Londo
n when I was fifteen, ‘round Seven Dials. Promenading the theatres for a guinea when I was eighteen. I rose in my profession.’

  ‘The writing?’

  ‘I married. A writer from the great Times. The good old Thunderer itself. He knew what I’d been and thought I could be saved. He was right. But I ruined him with my dress bills and thievin’ from him. I was the best little picker of pockets …Wipes and watches. Lace and money. Then he died. Threw himself off old Waterloo Bridge after I’d bankrupted him. Left me a good bit of learning and skill with words. He’d taught me that. Then I drifted. Always did well, Herne. Always.’ She paused to wipe her nose on the sleeve of her blouse.

  ‘What about Thaddeus?’

  ‘Met him. Liked him. Married him. Didn’t want to get a lonely old whore, livin’ in one room with piss-stains on my drawers, did I? Now he’s gone, and you won’t help me.’

  ‘I didn’t know. But it doesn’t change things. Not at all.’

  ‘You cold-hearted son of a bitch, Herne,’ she said, but there was little anger in her voice. Just a chilling desolation.

  ‘Maybe. Life’s looking after yourself. Then your kin and then your friends. If’n you have any.’

  ‘You got no friends, Jed?’

  ‘Friends? No. Not one. Hundreds of faro dealers and cheap shootists and Indian agents and whores know me. No friends.’ He thought back to Whitey Coburn and his miserable ending. ‘No friends. Not anymore.’

  ‘But you were married? I heard about it.’

  ‘Yeah. Now there’s no wife. No kin. No friends. There’s just me.’

  ‘You agreed to help.’

  ‘I have. And that’s the end. And now we’d best be moving.’

  ‘I’ve got more money. In an account safe in New York.’

  ‘So you won’t starve.’

  ‘I’ll give it you. All of it.’

  He stopped and turned to face her, wondering whether she could be trusted. Deciding that she probably couldn’t.

  ‘How much is all of it?’

  She paused, and he knew in that instant that she was lying to him. ‘Five thousand dollars, Jed. It’s all yours if you can try and save Thad and Ike.’

  ‘Five thousand. To go against a dozen Mex bandits. Not a lot’

  ‘To try.’

  He nodded. Deciding then that he didn’t mind anyway about her lying. ‘Trying comes cheaper. I’ll do it, Carola. We’d best go now.’

  Together they rode off after that fading column of reddish dust, she locked in with her success at fooling him. Herne locked in with wondering why he was doing it anyway.

  ~*~

  It was late evening before they stopped, and by then Carola Ray was more exhausted than she had ever been in her life. Her legs were sore and her back ached as if she was enduring the worst period in the history of womankind. The sun had cracked the skin on her cheeks and her head seemed to be swelling with the heat.

  Herne had refused every appeal for a break, pushing remorselessly onwards, picking the stoniest parts of the trail to avoid betraying their progress. Though he didn’t think El Poco would expect to be chased by one man and a woman.

  In turn, the shootist rarely looked behind him. If he had paused and watched carefully, he would have spotted the faintest movement of dust and once the flashing of mirrors from hill-top to hill-top.

  Geronimo was on the move as well.

  ~*~

  ‘I’ll leave you here with the horses, Carola,’ said Herne, smelling the night air. Catching the trace of cooking that he’d noticed a quarter mile back.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Must be up in the next canyon. Been there once. Called Lost Woman Canyon. Good place. But not so good that I couldn’t maybe get in and out again. Problem is, got to be done tonight.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Come on, lady. If they kill Thad and Ike, it’ll be tonight. If they’re alive now, the chances of them still breathing come dawn are about as good as a hound pissing a melon.’

  ‘Oh. Then .... It has to be now.’

  ‘Right. I’m goin’ in over the hills. Should be there when the light’s failing. If there’s a guard, I’ll try and take him out.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Then we see which way the cards lie. Might be aces. Might be deuces. That’s the game, Carola.’

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘You get the difficult part. You wait.’

  ‘If you don’t come back then what ...’

  ‘North. Head back north. Travel early and late and keep out of the sun near noon. Look for water and keep on towards Nogales. You might even make it.’

  ‘Jesus, Jed. I. Oh, I don’t know what to say or anything.’

  He smiled at her. ‘Happens, ma’am. Good to know you, Carola. Wait and I’ll be back. If n you hear nothing pullout by noon. Take both horses. Kill one if you have to. If there’s shooting, head out an hour and a half after the first shot. Understood?’

  ‘Yes. Kiss me, Jedediah Herne.’

  He stooped over her, holding her tightly, laying his head to one side and pressing his lips against hers. Feeling the tip of her tongue snaking out between his own lips and he pulled away.

  ‘No. Not if’n you want Thad to have a chance.’

  ‘I do, Jed. And thanks.’

  ‘Thank me when I come back.’

  The light was already poor, and he’d only gone a few paces before his tall, lean shadow had disappeared into the surrounding blackness. It was only then that Carola Ray began to shake.

  ~*~

  ‘They are close to the Canyon of Big Rain,’ said the warrior, squatting down at Geronimo’s feet.

  ‘What they call the Canyon of the Lost Woman,’ mused the stocky chieftain. ‘That is where the Little One has his camp. It is time that we visited El Poco.’

  ‘We do not have enough warriors here,’ said Nachez, doubtfully. ‘Just four hands of us.’

  ‘How many of them? The one called Herne has killed three. No four. There can be no more than two hands of them left.’

  ‘In the canyon where they are is a good place to fight us,’ argued another of the Chiricahua.

  ‘We are not old squaws that we fear such things,’ snorted Geronimo. ‘There is a great debt of blood with this El Poco and our people.’

  ‘Aye, truly,’ agreed Nachez.

  ‘Then we shall go. At first light we leave women and children here and we move against the Mexicans.’

  ‘It will be a good day,’ called one of the younger Apache braves.

  ‘Truly,’ nodded Geronimo, stolid face splitting into a grin of anticipation. ‘A good day for men to fight. And die.’

  Chapter Ten

  Lost Woman Canyon was around five hundred feet long, carved by rain and wind out of the Sierra Madre range, surrounded by high mountains. Walls of orange rock, hewn into weird shapes, clawed upwards from the trail, soaring nearly two hundred feet high at their peak. There was a narrow mouth to the canyon and it widened to a flat arena at its further boxed end.

  It had been given its name when a train had passed by there, eleven years before. Among the wagons had been moon-faced John Rockburgh and his whining wife, May-belle. And there had been a card sharp, Big Ed Fisher, riding with the train on his way out West. Ed and Maybelle had gotten to be kind of close friends. Too close for the liking of John Rockburgh. Eventually, when they were camped in the canyon, then without a name, he’d found Maybelle lying out among the boulders with Big Ed on top of her, his white buttocks pounding like pistons on the Pacific Railroad.

  Rockburgh’s trade was that of cutler and that evening he was carrying one of the most choice items in his line. A two-handed cleaver that he hoped to sell to cattlemen who did all their own slaughtering, as it could easily take the head off a full-grown bull in one blow.

  Ed Fisher’s neck was nothing like that strong.

  His wife, eyes squeezed shut as she moaned her passion for the lusty gambler, had little warning. There was a dull clunk, much like an axe b
lade striking a lofty pine tree, and then she was showered with something that was hot and sticky and salt to the taste as it splashed in her open mouth.

  All Maybelle had time to do was sit up, pushing the decapitated corpse of her lover off her, and then Rockburgh struck a second time. Another clean, powerful blow, that sliced her head off her shoulders even more easily than Fisher’s.

  With two bodies and two skulls, Rockburgh was presented with something of a dilemma. But being a practical man he solved it by carefully burying the remains beneath a pile of stones, telling everyone else on the train that he regretted his wife had run off with the sharp.

  Since the adultery had been common knowledge to everyone else, nobody bothered to ask him why he was dappled with fresh blood. Or why Maybelle and Fisher had seemingly run off into the Arizona desert with no spare clothes, no food, no water and no horses.

  It became a joke among settlers passing by to refer to the canyon after the double murder. Lost Woman Canyon.

  Even though Maybelle Rockburgh wasn’t really lost She was there all the time.

  ~*~

  El Poco had often camped in the region over the last four years, though he sometimes worried about the local Apaches combining together to attack him there. He didn’t know the story behind Lost Woman Canyon. Had never heard of John Rockburgh and probably wouldn’t have been interested in the cutler (who, incidentally, drowned a year later up on the Washita River).

  The dwarf, born Jesus Maria Diego, might have been amused by that. Death made him laugh a lot.

  ~*~

  Night came folding itself over the Territory, bringing a merciful release from the sweltering oven of the day. As Jed walked closer he carried the Sharps rifle at the trail. He wasn’t sure yet whether he’d be needing a long gun against the bandits. Wasn’t even sure whether he’d need a gun at all.

  If the Rays were both dead already, there was little to be gained by a pointless and unrewarding revenge against El Poco. It might be pleasant to try and shoot him down from cover, but not if it was going to put Herne’s own life in jeopardy.

  The shootist made little effort to creep along quietly. The Mexicans were still some distance away from him. And if they had sentries out they’d likely be either high on the cliffs or near the narrow opening to the canyon.