Then the Apache who was wearing the girl’s dress crossed from left to right in front of the rig. He pulled in his pony in front of the brave with the whiskey bottle and held out his hand. The other shrugged it away and returned the bottle to his mouth. It was not the response that the first Apache had wanted; he urged his pony’s side into the drinking man’s mount, jogging the bottle from his hand.
Both Indians stared down at the precious fire water dribbling out on to the greedy earth.
The Indian with the dress reached down from the side of his mount and scooped up the almost empty bottle. By now, everyone else had stopped and was watching. They saw the brave hold the bottle high above his head and empty the remaining whiskey in a faltering stream; then he whirled it round his head and threw it far behind him.
The other Apaches watched him intently but nothing was said.
Jesus, thought Herne, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen an Indian throwing away good whiskey. Bet it ain’t for no Christian motives. They got a better reason for keeping sober.
As everyone watched him, the Apache wheeled his pony round and began to trot off towards the hills to the south, the folds of the gingham dress jutting out strangely on either side of his cotton trousers.
Herne’s fingers edged slightly higher along his thigh, unsure of what the rest would do. In a moment they answered him; the four who had been riding at the front led off after the disappearing brave, followed by three from behind.
Which left the Apache who had been drinking. He sat astride his pony, head lowered as if he were a small child sulking. Herne expected a sudden outburst of anger — some violent reaction.
The brave pulled on the rope in his hand and his pony reared high under him. Then he let out a loud whoop and caused his mount to paw the ground several times. Another cry and he galloped off, curving wide of the line of riders, moving towards the hills as if determined to arrive first.
Herne spoke to Becky quietly and evenly. ‘Move on easily, least till they’re out of sight.’
When the Apaches had become lost from view in the hills, Herne urged the horse and gig into a faster pace, eager to put distance between themselves and the Jicarillas. They did not see them again.
Nor, for the next few hundred miles of their journey, did they see another Indian that close. From time to time, Herne caught sight of a single brave outlined on the horizon. Once or twice, he loosed his Sharps, his single shot .55 rifle, from its place beneath his knee, but he had no call to use it.
Their journey took them north through New Mexico, following the line of the Rio Grande. Alone, Herne might have tried to cross the Sacramento Mountains and find a more direct and quicker route, but with Becky with him such a course was impossible.
They camped south of Santa Fe and Herne rode in for supplies. He did not fancy going into that cattle town with a young girl to protect as well as himself For so far there had been no sign of Coburn, yet the albino must be on their trail by now. Not only that, a town like Santa Fe would be likely to have its share of young gunslingers out to make a quick reputation for themselves. Herne was known in Santa Fe: well known. And these youngsters would not be drunk and stupid like that kid back in Phoenix. They would be sharp and good . . . maybe good enough.
Yet when he got back to Becky he could see that she looked tired out. Travelling between sixty and seventy miles a day was enough to exhaust the toughest woman, and Becky as Herne kept telling himself- was still but a child.
He looked across the camp fire at her frowning face as she drank her coffee.
‘Becky, you look pretty bushed. Couple of days from here, three maybe, we’ll put up in a hotel. Rest for a while. Then the last bit of the journey.’
‘You don’t have to do that for me, Jed,’ she protested.
Herne stood up and threw the coffee grounds into the fire.
‘I ain’t doing it just for you. Hell, my back gets as sore as anyone else’s, I guess.’
He poured what was left in the coffee pot over the dying flames and went over to his bed roll. Yes, he thought, a real bed would sure be a good thing. Just for a couple of nights.
For a short while they journeyed alongside the Atchison-Topeka railroad. Although no train passed them, both were independently thinking of another set of iron rails and wooden sleepers those which had stretched their way close to the homes of the Herne and Yates families. And although neither of them spoke of these thoughts, it was obvious from the nature of the silence between them that their minds were fixed on the same place, the same time.
The railroad forked north in one direction; the Pecos River forked south. Herne and Becky headed straight on across the open plain. On either side, as far as the eye could see, sprawled the flat grasslands. Herne was reminded for a while of the magnitude of his task, of the possibilities of failure.
He wiped the sweat from his brow and erased the thought from his mind. The vastness of the plains might make him feel small, but that was something that no man had ever been able to do. He had never backed down from a fight worth fighting, had never lost once started. And the depth of the loss that he felt, the horror of what had happened to Louise, swept any shadow of a doubt from his mind.
Soon they reached the Canadian River and took to its southern bank. Another day’s riding would see them in Amarillo.
It was the usual wide main street, compounded of mud and dirt driven down by the ceaseless flow of horse traffic. On either side, the narrow boardwalk ran at a variety of levels. A succession of one and two storey buildings fronted on to the street: General Store, Billiard Hall, Drapers, Haircuts and Bath, Saddlers, Rooming House and Restaurant.
At the centre of Amarillo, a small track road crossed the main street and formed the junction that was obviously the meeting place for the town’s out of work, drunk, or just plain lazy. Men sprawled against the sides of buildings, or sat on rickety chairs propped back from the boardwalk. A few horses were tied to hitching rails and flicked their tails lazily at the flies.
As a town, it looked neither prosperous nor active.
On one corner of this junction was sited the Bank; diagonally opposite was the Red River Saloon. It was the only building in sight which looked in any way impressive. The hitching posts outside were new, the bat-wing doors seemed to have been recently polished and from the balcony swung a freshly painted sign: ‘Dave Bronson welcomes all patrons’. Above that there was another board, an older sign which proclaimed: Red River Saloon and which had also been recently repainted in bright red.
The newcomer was obviously out to impress the citizens of Amarillo. Herne wondered how successful he had been. Leaving Becky in the rig, Herne pushed through the doors and entered the saloon. Certainly, business was far from booming. But it was still afternoon.
The bar was to the right and ran the full length of the room. On the mirrors behind it, an artist had painted the outlines of several naked women in reclining postures. Again, above the mirrors, Dave Bronson had fixed a placard with his own name on it.
Herne wondered just what the uncertainty was which drove the man to ram his identity down everyone’s throats so forcefully. He was soon to find out.
‘Good afternoon, stranger. What can I do for you?’
Herne looked across the bar and saw the saloon owner coming towards him. He was a small man, nothing over five foot four, and thin. But it was not a thinness which denoted weakness; rather he was wiry and instantly gave the impression of being alive and vital.
He was wearing a three-piece suit in an expensive-looking grey cloth, with pearl buttons down the front of his waistcoat. A large watch hung prominently from a silver chain over his right side. His hair was brown and cut short. The face was narrow, with high cheekbones, and he sported a neatly trimmed beard and moustache. The end of the beard jutted forward slightly as he spoke.
‘Just rode in, I guess. You aiming to stay long, sir, or are you only after something to slake your thirst?’
‘Well,’ replied Herne. ‘I�
�ll take a quick beer, but I’ll be wanting a room, too. Rather, I’ll be wanting two rooms.’
Bronson poured him the beer from behind the bar and passed it across the polished surface.
‘You ain’t travelling alone, then?’
Herne shook his head. ‘Nope. Got a young girl with me.’
He paused for a second as the saloon owner raised his eyebrows in a quizzical expression. He carried on quickly.
‘She’s a . . . an orphan. Ain’t got no-one else to look after her. We’re heading towards the Mississippi. Been traveling a mighty long time without a good rest.’
He drank the slightly warm beer and felt the dust begin to disappear from the back of his throat. But the man would not be put off so easily.
‘You taking her to folks down on the Mississippi? She’s got relations down there, or something like that?’
Herne put down the glass and nodded. ‘Uh-huh. Something like that.’
‘What sort of . . . ’ ,
Bronson was going to take the conversation further but he was stopped by the look in Herne’s eyes. It was a look he had if seen before and it was a look which meant that he was pushing too far. When you worked in saloons you got to know it well. Some folks liked to talk a lot to strangers and some didn’t. This big one, he didn’t.
Only thing was, thought Bronson, there was usually a reason for not wanting to say very much. A good reason. Being by nature a curious man, Dave Bronson thought he would like to find out more about this couple who were making the long journey together across country. But he sure wasn’t about to ask outright.
When he had first seen Herne come in, his eyes had gone to the Colt .45 strapped to the man’s leg and had assessed that he was a man who knew well how to use it. Not a man to cross in any way - unless you were very sure of the odds. Or very foolhardy.
Bronson’s eyes flickered wide of Herne to take in the young man who had just appeared from the doorway by the bottom of the stairs. Herne, himself; had no need to turn. He had already seen the door open in the mirror and had watched the youth step through into the main room of the saloon. There was something he had liked about the way he had come into the bar; careful yet quick, moving almost on his toes, alert to any possibility.
Herne was sure that the boy had taken him in, in just the same way. One thing he didn’t like was the double-holstered gun belt; you couldn’t use two guns accurately at once, so why wear them unless it was to create an impression?
He wondered how accurate he would be with just one of his Colts? How fast he would be? It was a natural reaction for a man like Herne: every man you met was sized up as a potential enemy and the information was filed away inside your head until the moment it mattered.
‘Matt.’ Dave Bronson’s voice called across the room. ‘Matt, this here gentleman’s got some baggage outside and I reckon he could do with a hand to fetch it in. Think you could oblige?’
In the mirror, Herne saw the boy grimace and set his mouth strongly in an expression. that showed he wasn’t prepared to be anyone’s servant.
‘I’m busy,’ he growled back and strode towards the door.·
Bronson muttered, more to himself than to Herne, ‘Kids!’ So making impressions runs in the family, Herne thought.
As the younger Bronson got to the door he stopped, his hand on the top of one of the wings. The two men, watching him, were uncertain of the reason. Then they saw Becky’s head of long dark hair over the door. At first it seemed as if neither of them would move. But Matt Bronson, stepped backwards, holding the door open so that Becky could pass through. She hesitated a moment longer, then walked into the saloon quickly, her eyes lowered to the floor, away from the young man’s gaze.
Herne turned to meet her and the bat-wing door swung to behind her.
Becky went to bed early that evening, leaving Herne to his own devices. It was a situation he had known well in the past. A few tots of whiskey, a hand or- two of poker, then off to the creaking bed of one saloon girl or other. An hour or two into the morning, he would rise from the sweat and stink of the bed and climb into his clothes, finishing the night alone. The only way I can get any real sleep, he used to say.
Jed Herne had used to say a lot of things: before he met Louise.
On their first night together, he had not wanted to turn away from her but habit was strong within him and, when he was certain that she was sleeping fast, he had gently rolled over on the mattress so that he was facing the door to the room.
He had been surprised when, almost immediately, he had felt her slim, soft arm slide round his body and come to rest on his breast. She had moved over towards him and curled her legs into the same shape as his own. Herne had placed one of his hands on hers and, like that, had slept.
In the middle of that first night, he had gradually grown aware that her middle finger was teasing his nipple erect. He had stretched his legs down straight and rolled over to face her. In the moonlight that came through the window, he could see her face: young, smiling, waiting, his.
Since her death he had often reached unconsciously for that hand in the night only to awake to remember its absence. Sleeping alone was bad enough but waking up alone was worse.
For a man who had spent his life as a loner, ever since the death of his mother at the time of his birth and his father’s desertion soon afterwards, the time with Louise had affected him in a way he had not thought possible.
Now the sour sweetness of bought love in upstairs rooms would have to satisfy him, though he could not envisage finding anyone else as good, as sweet and loving as Louise had been. After all, he had waited well past thirty years of his life to find her — what chance was there of finding someone else like her now? And all the while he grew older.
Herne finished off his drink and walked out on to the boardwalk, now crowded with passers-by. He knew that he had to stop his mind from returning to Louise with such constancy. And yet it was his memory of her that was driving him on.
What would he do after he had tracked them all down and avenged his wife’s cruel death?
The only thing he knew, he guessed, go back to hiring out his gun. But the number of people ready to hire men to do their killing for them was gradually becoming smaller. And with so many youngsters wanting to move in, the chances of getting hired became less and less.
Take Whitey, for instance, having to take a contract to hunt down and kill one of the few men he would ever have named as a friend.
Herne wondered which of his friends he would be called upon to gun down in order to earn a living. He thought again about Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. They had been friends —as far as anyone could be a friend to Billy. Yet in the darkness of Pete Maxwell’s room Pat had killed the Kid just last year.
He walked along the main street, eager to shut such depressing thoughts out of his mind.
He suddenly became aware of a scuffle going on across the way, outside one of the smaller saloons. It looked like there were three men arguing and pushing one another. The light was dim and Herne could not see too clearly what was happening, but it appeared that two of the men were getting increasingly angry with a third.
Suddenly, a shot rang out and Herne saw one of the men stagger backwards, career off the post on the edge of the boardwalk, then fall headlong down into the anonymous darkness of the street.
The other two squared up to one another and Herne could see the gun clearly now. He freed the hammer of his Colt and began to cross towards the scene, stepping quietly and carefully, not wishing to draw attention to himself.
As he came nearer a number of men appeared in the entrance of the small saloon, talking excitedly about what had happened. Yet behind him, Herne could hear little evidence of movement: the shot had gone largely unnoticed in the noise of the night’s celebrations.
Herne recognized the one with the gun as the young Matt Bronson from the Red River Saloon. The man he was facing looked like a Mexican and held a striped blanket over one arm.
Herne
stopped and waited to see what would happen. The faces in the doorway watched also. It was now between these two: everyone knew that and accepted it.
‘You kill him!’ said the dark man. ‘You kill my amigo. Why you do this?’
‘I kill him because he asked for it. He called me a coward. No-one calls me a coward and lives.’
The phrases must have sounded strong and courageous to the boy, but to Herne they sounded empty and flat. Yet in that boy he could in so many ways see himself, could hear himself mouthing the same vain threats so many years before.
‘Now you point your gun at me. You want to kill me, yes?’
Bronson slowly released the hammer of his gun and slid it back down into the right holster.
‘Okay?’ he asked.
The other man said nothing, then, ‘I can take my amigo away?’
‘Sure,’ replied Bronson. ‘Only make sure you don’t bury him where there might be any decent folk lying in the ground.’
The man tensed visibly and stared at Matt Bronson, then he seemed to relax and look down at the body curled in the street. Bronson shrugged his shoulder slightly, as if dismissing the whole affair from his thoughts. He began to walk back towards the saloon and the faces in the doorway disappeared.
The man with the blanket bent over his dead friend. Herne watched him kneel down, then saw the shape of a gun emerge from the folds of the blanket.
His right hand flew to his Colt, a word of warning ready on his lips. It was not needed. In the doorway the boy turned abruptly, drawing his gun as he did so. In the same movement he fired. The kneeling figure jerked backwards, as though suddenly thrown into life, then collapsed across the body of his friend. United again so soon.
Herne slid his Colt back into his holster and stared at the boy in the doorway: again he had a vivid sense of looking back into the past.
Matt Bronson holstered his own gun and looked at the figure of Herne in the middle of the street. If he recognized him, he gave no sign. He turned away and went through, the doors of the poorly-lit saloon.
River of Blood Page 4