“Fingers gettin’ cold, Luke?”
“Some. And that bullet in my leg don’t help none.”
“What about the other one?”
“Took a finger of skin off my ribs, Herne. That’s pretty shootin’, blind up there. You got a Sharps or somethin’? Sounds like a Fed cannon.”
“It’s a Sharps, Luke. Minute or so and I’m going to pepper that screen of yourn.”
“No. Give me a break.”
“I want the pendant you stole from the coffin, Luke. Where is it?”
“Cal’s got that as well. It was the Mex who robbed the girl’s corpse, and Cal took the necklace off of him. She kin of yours, Herne?”
“Yeah. So he’s got the plates and he’s got the pendant? That right?”
“Yeah.” There was a note of hope in the man’s voice. “That’s right.”
“Fine,” yelled Herne. “Means I got only one thing to say to you.”
“What?”
“Goodbye, Luke.”
Chapter Twelve
The fourth bullet killed him.
The powerful slugs of the long rifle tore great chunks of wood from the screen, opening it up and enabling Herne to see his target clearly.
Already slowed down by the wounds to his ribs and to his leg, Barrell wasn’t able to keep moving fast enough. The first and second shots missed, but they ripped away enough of the frail wall for Jed to be able to take an easy bead on the prone figure.
At the last moment Luke Barrell, his white collar a gleaming bull’s eye target for the rifle, glanced round and saw that his cover had vanished. He snapped off a couple of shots from his pistol and started to make for the safety of one of the heaps of wire and wood that littered the area at the top of the Norwich Hills mine.
Neither bullet came close enough to worry Jed, and he was able to squeeze the trigger of the Sharps. Blinking through the smoke of the shot he saw Barrell flung sideways by the impact of the fifty-five caliber bullet. The Colt flying from his hand and clanging away into the debris that peeked out among the snow.
“Jesus Christ!” he screamed, the cry bouncing and echoing around the lofty walls of the Pinaleño Mountains.
Herne had aimed for a safe body hit, not wanting to risk a killing head shot, in case he missed and the wounded bandit got holed up among the rubble. As far as he could judge, the bullet had struck the phony priest below the heart on the left side, angling down and landing up somewhere among the sack of intestines in the centre of the pelvis.
Barrell rolled about, legs kicking up the snow, hands grabbing at his body in an effort to stop the pain. Pain that paralyzed him, blanking out his mind to everything else. Making him ignore the fact that he lay less than a hundred paces from Jed Herne’s Sharps, helpless for the next bullet.
The fourth bullet.
Hissing softly between his teeth, Jed levered the shell into the warm breech, easing his shoulders and moving the barrel slightly against the boulders. Altering the angle to compensate for Luke Barrel’s new position.
Finger on the trigger, drawing breath. And holding it.
Although the bandit was still screaming, the breath bubbling through his bloodied lips, he was moving slower, boot-heels digging furrows through the ice and gray snow, puddling it crimson with his blood. His head was on one side, the eyes screwed close shut with the agony of the gut shot, unaware of anything.
The bullet hit him just above the right ear, killing him instantly, the body relaxing, arms hanging loose and limp, fingers opening wide.
“So long, Reverend,” said Herne.
Amazingly, the thick walls of the hut had prevented Cal Ryder, the leader of the gang, from hearing the gun battle outside. Smoke still curled from the small chimney, and the door remained firmly closed.
It crossed Herne’s mind that the man might be faking, but with no windows he could have no way of knowing what was going on. And it would be beyond the patience and curiosity of anyone not to at least peer out through the door to see what was happening.
Moving carefully, holding the reloaded rifle in his hand, Jed edged his way around the face of the slope until he was in a position to cover the door of the hut. There was a keyhole halfway down the right side, and a brass handle, now corroded to a dark green color.
Easing himself down among another heap of jagged red stones, Herne got ready to deal out the last hand of cards in a game that had already covered better than a hundred miles and cost the lives of a half-dozen people.
The bullet was perfectly aimed, hitting the door handle and exploding it into whining shards of metal. He rammed in another shell, and sent it winging after the first, ripping a chunk of wood as large as a man’s fist from the side of the door, startlingly white against the stained old timber.
“Luke?”
The voice was fuzzy, Cal sounding only half-awake.
A third shot actually made the door move, easing it open against the shattered latch. For a moment Herne saw the paleness of a face in the gap, then it was quickly pulled back.
“That you, Luke?”
“Luke’s gone to meet his Maker, Ryder,” shouted Jed. “Guess he’ll be waiting for you.”
“Who the Hell are you? You the one called Herne the Hunter?”
“That’s what they say.”
“You got Luke?”
“Sure did. Unless he’s fakin’ with half his head blowed clear away.”
“What do you want?”
“You.”
“Come on, Herne. You get paid for takin’ back these money plates. Not for killin’ me.”
“I get paid for the plates. You and the pendant you stole from the little girl’s body are just for me. Get that, Ryder, just for me!”
He emphasized his words with another bullet in the door, edging it open a few inches further.
“How you aim to get me out there?”
“I don’t. I aim to sit here and blow away that cover bit by bit. Then I’ll walk down slow and easy and start shooting inside the hut. Big fifty-five bullet’ll bounce a ways round stone walls like you got there.”
There was a silence. To help the time pass and convince Ryder of the truth of his words, Herne plugged three more shots into the door, aiming at the hinges this time. Shattering the top one.
“All right!”
“All right, what?”
“How about a deal, Herne?”
“I don’t figure that you got many cards in your hand, Ryder.”
“There’s hard and there’s easy. You know that better’n most.”
“What’s easy?”
“I throw out the plates and I come with hands up high.”
“The pendant?”
“I’ll throw that out now. Here it is. Show you I mean what I say. How about it?”
“Let’s see the necklace first. Followed by your guns.”
“Here it is.”
The pale light sparkled redly on the rubies in the small necklace as it flew through the half-open door and landed a few yards away in the snow.
Herne was ready for a trick, knowing that someone who led his gang like Cal Ryder did wasn’t about to come out slow and easy.
So when the gray figure erupted from the door, Jed was ready for him. Sighting and firing the big rifle quick as lightning, seeing the bullet strike home.
Strike home on the blankets!
While he’d been talking, Ryder had been quickly knotting three blankets together to make a rough dummy, knowing that Herne would be looking for someone making a break and might well snap off a shot before he would really see who ... or what... it was.
“God damn!” cursed Jed, frantically reloading the rifle, ducking as Ryder followed closely behind the dummy. He must have known that it would take Herne a few seconds to eject the spent shell and sight and aim again. Ryder came out shooting, the bullets from his pistol ricocheting among the rocks, sending splinters of stone and ice whistling alarmingly about Jed’s ears. Though there wasn’t any real danger at that range of a hit, Ry
der was good enough for Jed not to want to take any chances.
By the time he counted six shots fired and came up with the Sharps, Ryder was out of sight. But the snow betrayed his position. Tracks leading to the jumble of twisted equipment that surrounded the open hole of the deep shaft of the mine.
Leading to it and not leading away again the other side.
“What the Hell good has that done you, Ryder? One trap for another.”
“Maybe not.”
Herne’s eyes desperately searched the debris for a clue to exactly where the bandit was hidden, unable to spot him among the pools of deep shadow.
“I said that it could be not, Herne.”
“I hear you.”
“I can see you, and you don’t see me. You move from those rocks and I can pick you off like skinning a dead chicken. Easy.”
“You try a shot and I see you, Ryder.”
“Try moving, Mr. Herne the damned Hunter and you won’t see the flash. They say you don’t see the one that hits you.”
Herne didn’t reply, trying to guess from the pitch of Cal Ryder’s voice just where he was. Guessing that he must be near the middle, which meant close to the hole.
“I don’t hear you so good, Herne! You want to talk about a deal now?”
“Deal’s the same. I kill you now or the law kills you later. Makes no odds to me, Ryder. Figures you want to go on livin’ a whiles longer, so you come out and come out slow and easy. No tricks this time.”
“Good one, wasn’t it?” Cal Ryder laughed with what sounded like genuine amusement.
“Works once. Like all good tricks. It’s a long cold day here, Ryder. You’re not goin’ to be doin’ much movin’ round down there.”
“Nor you up there, Herne.”
Jed wasn’t able to work out just where the gunman was, or whether he was bluffing about being able to draw a fast bead on him. It was possible, and in the confusion of the escape from the hut he hadn’t noticed whether the bandit had been carrying a rifle or not.
Certainly he’d snapped off shots from a pistol.
“You got the plates there, Ryder?”
“Sure. You want to see them, Herne?”
Jed didn’t reply at first, wondering at the weight of the printing plates. If they were like any other plates he’d ever seen they’d be heavy. Damned heavy. With those and shooting off the handgun, it seemed doubtful that Ryder really had a rifle at all.
But you don’t get old taking too many chances.
“Yeah. Show me one of them.”
“I show it, then you talk about a deal with me?”
“After I see it, then maybe we get to talk. Just maybe we do.”
“That ain’t much,” said Ryder in a complaining voice, and Herne felt the elation of certainty that he didn’t have a rifle. And at that range Herne was more or less safe from handgun sniping.
“All you get, boy. Show me.”
It was obvious that Ryder was having second thoughts about the wisdom of revealing his position to a hidden marksman with a Sharps buffalo gun. The chill wind was biting through Herne’s clothes and nipping at the ends of his fingers. Too much of that sort of exposure and neither of them would be riding back to Tucson.
Concentrating all his energy he stared into the mess of iron and wood, trying to spot a hint of movement. There were some areas around the head of the shaft that he could see clean snow right out the other side. That narrowed it a lot.
When it came down to it, there were only a couple of pits of shadow big enough to hide a man. Without bothering to take too careful an aim Herne pumped a round into one of them, hearing the echo of the shot bouncing back to him from the sheer mountain wall across the canyon.
“Hey!”
“Close?”
“Damn it! I thought we was goin’ to have us a deal! You gotta trust me!”
“Sure. Like the folks on that train trusted you not to blow the whole damned shooting-match to Hell and back again.”
“I got the plates!”
“I don’t believe you.”
Another shot, this time into the other area of darkness. The shout later and less worried.
“Wait on there, Herne. Don’t get so damned all-fired impatient about this!”
“You got three seconds to show me those plates and then I start shootin’ again. Just three seconds, Ryder, to try and save your skin.”
“Here!”
Just to the left of where the first bullet had gone, very close to the edge of the gaping chasm, Herne saw a hand appear, holding a package wrapped in cream-colored leather.
At a hundred yards it wasn’t possible for Herne to make out which way Ryder was lying on the snow, or he’d have risked a blind shot at him, figuring to cripple him and then come in close and take him with the hand-gun.
“You see it?”
“I see it. How do I know what it is?”
“Hell! Damn it, Herne! You think I wrapped up a parcel of bread and jerky to try and fool you?”
“Open it and show me.”
The hand vanished out of sight again, and Jed Herne made his move. Trusting that the snow would cover the noise, he rolled out from cover and slid down the steep slope, his gray blanket flapping about his chest, aiming for a rusting truck off the cable railway that had once taken ore down the hill to the township.
He reached it without Ryder even suspecting that he had changed his position, and he was able to cat-foot around the side of the truck, pistol cocked in his left hand, and the Sharps braced against his right hip. Not a position that made for accurate shooting, but he was now less than thirty yards from the bandit’s hiding-place.
This time he could see the man’s arm, right clear to the shoulder, with a gleaming rectangle of heavy metal clutched in the hand. Herne was even close enough to make out the engraving on the printing plate. To see the shine of the pearl buttons on Cal Ryder’s fancy coat.
Tucking the Colt in his belt, Herne brought the rifle to the aim, sighting at the shoulder.
“You see it now, Herne, you stinkin’ son of a bitch bastard?”
“Yeah,” whispered Jed, T see it, Ryder.”
The rifle kicked against his shoulder as he fired. He immediately dropped it and drew the pistol with fluid ease, diving to his right to shelter behind an ice-crusted pillar of mangled iron.
“Ooooooh!” yelped Ryder, the plate dropping from his fingers, rolling back out of sight, unable to see where the shot had come from.
“Plenty more, Ryder,” warned Herne.
When the man answered, his voice was weak and shaken. “You stinkin’ double-crosser, Herne. You promised me we’d talk after I showed you those fuckin’ printin’ plates!”
“We’re talkin’, Ryder. I said nothing about not shooting you if I had the chance.”
“Why do you hate me so much?” The tone was one of righteous indignation, like a dowager at a New York theatre when she finds someone has taken her seat.
“Not for the train. Not for the plates. Not for trying to kill me. Well, maybe some for that.”
“What then?”
“That pendant belonged to someone that I ... that I loved. I killed the rest of your scum for that, and you’re about to go the same way.”
Ryder was silent for a moment, then he gave a great cry; a wordless bellow of anger and challenge. He leaped out from behind his shelter, standing poised on the very brink of the drop. Under one arm he held the plates, gripping them tight against his body. In the right hand he carried a pistol. A Colt much like Jed’s.
Streaking down his body from the top of his right arm was a ribbon of scarlet, soaking wetly through the smart black coat, dappling the snow as he moved.
Herne was partly behind cover, but Ryder’s move meant that he couldn’t see him clearly. He was forced to come out into the open, diving to his left, firing as he fell. Coming up into a shootist’s crouch, blasting off two more bullets at the bandit.
Blood gouted from three wounds.
Herne had
n’t missed once. Ryder never had so much as the chance to squeeze the trigger on his own gun.
The impact of the forty-five caliber bullets rocked him off his feet, and he teetered on the edge of the deep shaft. The gun fell away, landing in the trampled ice, but he still clutched the printing plates to him like a miser hoarding his gold.
His face was a bizarre mask of blood where the last shot had caught him on the turn, drilling a hole through both cheeks. Burning a weal across the top of his tongue, splintering teeth from each side of his jaw. The other two bullets had both hit Ryder in the chest, smashing ribs and lungs, one exiting and burying itself in one of the legs of the old derrick. The other remaining inside his body.
Ryder didn’t know all this.
All he knew was that the tall bastard with the old blanket blowing in the wind had just finished him. His mind began to blur and he aimed his empty right hand at the advancing figure, unable to understand why there was no explosion and no recoil.
“Give me the plates, Ryder.” The command floated in from a very long way off. Ryder shook his head. He seemed to be swaying on the edge of a great drop, and decided vaguely that this must be what dying felt like. Not aware that he was actually swaying on the brink of the deep mine-shaft, eyes blinking, body rocking backwards and forwards.
Herne thought of the three thousand dollars and called out again to the dying man. “Give me the damned plates!”
Cal Ryder shook his head to try and clear his fading vision, aware that he felt very cold. Seeing Herne close to him, reaching out.
He even tried a grin at the last, his voice bubbling painfully up through a cauldron of frothing blood.
“Up your ass, Herne,” he said.
And slid backwards into the pit, taking the printing plates with him.
Chapter Thirteen
Jed didn’t count the seconds, but it took a long time for the noises to stop. First, a wet thud as the corpse bounced off a ledge. Then another, deeper and quieter. Followed by the crash of stones and debris as they dragged on down after the falling body. Then smaller pebbles that clattered and tinkled on long after the rest of the noise had stopped.
Death Rites Page 11