The Hanging (Herne the Hunter Western Book #17)

by John J. McLaglen

  Ryman smiled and laughed a lot, like fat men are supposed to do. Folks around Pueblo liked that. Good for a town to have a nice-natured lawman. Course, there were some panty-waists who said that Ryman’s smile never got any further than his mouth and that the eyes remained like little chips of pale blue Sierra melt-water, buried in pork fat. But they only said it to close friends. There’d been several cases of folks who talked opposition to the Sheriff suffering some real nasty accidents.

  ‘You the law?’

  Ryman never once missed a beat in his rocking, the chair squeaking a little on each forward swing. He wore a big Stetson pulled down over his forehead and he’d been watching Herne since the shootist left the saloon.

  ‘I didn’t hear you.’

  The lawman sat up at that, pushing back the brim of his hat with fingers still greasy from his lunch-time order of spare-ribs.

  ‘You talkin’ to me, mister?’

  ‘If you’re Ryman, then I am.’

  ‘See this badge, son.’

  Herne nodded. He’d met good lawmen and bad. It didn’t take much to make out that Ryman was one of the bad ones. Lazy and careless. Probably a predictable mix of bully and coward.

  ‘That means that if’n I say jump then you jump. I say for you to go and you’d better be gone.’

  Herne nodded again. Dollars weren’t that plentiful and he was looking for the chance of picking up a decent bounty. For that he needed the cooperation of the local lawman.

  ‘Now, son, I want to know if you need my help or if you’ve just come to pass the time of day?’

  ‘I need your help, Sheriff Ryman.’

  If eating a little crow would help bring in some money, then Herne wasn’t above eating a little crow. He stood and waited while the fat man preened himself. Easing himself sideways in the chair and letting out some gas. Ryman’d hoped silently, but it didn’t work out that way. He grinned sheepishly.

  ‘Sorry, son. Good job you was standin’ upwind of that one. Sheeit! Enough to kill cattle at fifty paces, huh? You new in Pueblo?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Passin’ on through?’

  ‘Soon. After your help, I figure.’

  ‘Then just tell me what it is. Sheriff Patrick Ryman never turned away an honest man.’

  ‘I’d appreciate a look at the latest flyers you got in.’

  The lawman sat up straighter. ‘Now wait a moment there, mister.’

  Herne saw the questions coming and got his retaliation in first. ‘I’m a bounty-hunter. You object?’

  Regardless of his lack of sensitivity, the lawman had something of a nose for danger. This tall, middle-aged man with the graying hair wasn’t an ordinary drifter. If he had been then Ryman would have thrown him in the jail faster than a bear with a bee-sting on his ass. And while that drifter was in the Pueblo jail he might find himself doing things he’d never expected.

  The sheriff didn’t have much interest in ladies, and that was the truth.

  ‘I don’t say I love hired guns, Mister. But you can assist us regular guys every now and again, and that’s kind of a help.’

  ‘Then you got some flyers?’

  ‘Sure. I work on a half and half split.’

  ‘We can talk about it later, Sheriff.’

  ‘Maybe we should talk now.’

  ‘Later.’ Herne never had split any bounty money with any lawman and he wasn’t about to start in Pueblo.

  Ryman felt control was slipping away from him and he stood up. Stretching, barely managing to stifle a capacious belch. Hitching at the tight belt, curling his lips defiantly to show the stranger what he thought of him. The weight of the Remington Frontier forty-four at his hip reassuring him. He was a practiced peace officer and figured himself more than a match for any trail-bum coming through. Even though there was something about this tall man in black.

  ‘Want to come inside, Mister…? What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Didn’t.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Herne. Jedediah Travis Herne. Some folks call me Herne the Hunter.’

  Sheriff Ryman was interested. ‘Sure. I heard of you. Word was you was dead. Old Chink butchered you with an axe, near Placerville. Way I heard it.’

  ‘You heard it wrong,’ said Herne, rubbing his finger across the side of his nose. ‘Can we see …?’

  ‘The flyers? Sure. Come along in.’

  He fumbled for the keys, tugging out the short round-linked chain. Fitting the key into the lock of the main door. Turning it with pudgy fingers and kicking the door back so that it banged against a small table. The office smelled of drinking. Stale drinking.

  ‘Welcome, Mr. Herne. Oh,’ holding his stomach and leaning over the roll-top desk.

  ‘What’s wrong, Sheriff?’

  ‘Damned stew and beans I ate. Given me …’ breaking wind with a sigh of contentment. ‘Better. Hey, you like pictures?’

  ‘On flyers?’

  ‘Hell, no. Only some good old boys formed up a vigilante posse a few months back, after a pair of cattle rustlers. I was out in Denver havin’ my teeth fixed at the time.’

  He was rummaging through a drawer of the desk, panting with the effort of bending over. The Remington banged against the wood, gouging out a splinter of white wood.

  ‘Damn it to …! Ah, here it is. Look at these here daguerreotypes I had done.’ Handing three rectangles of pasteboard to Herne. ‘I was going to have some cards sold of the hanging, but the fellow was having his store painted brown at the time. But I got them and when he’s done he’s promised me some more of ’em.’ He was close to Herne, his breath sour against the side of the shootist’s stubbled face.

  The pictures were all of a hanging. The first showed two men, faces blurred from having moved, indistinct in poor light beneath a cluster of pine trees. But Herne could make out that the pair had their wrists bound behind their backs and they were surrounded by a group of heavily-armed men, hefting rifles and shotguns. All grinning at the camera like they’d just found the mother-lode.

  The second of the pictures was more clear. The horses were gone and the men had backed off a little giving the photographer a good shot of the two bodies dangling from the branches. One of the rustlers had his feet still kicking out for life.

  ‘Look at this third one. That’s Big Bob Friedlander on the right. See why they call him Big Bob, huh. Other’s Cherokee Jim. Look at the fuckin’ pecker on that Big Bob, boy!’

  Jed threw it down on the desk. It was common enough knowledge that a man’s penis became engorged with blood when he was hanged, and this produced a considerable erection. It was supposed to be the reason why so many women attended lynchings.

  The posse had stripped the pants off the cattle thief called Friedlander so that it would make a better picture and one of the vigilantes was posing in front of the corpse, pointing the barrel of his Winchester at the man’s genitals to draw attention to them. Not they needed any help in getting noticed.

  ‘Jim dandy, ain’t they? Now, I was lookin’ for some flyers.’

  Herne dropped the slips of card on the desk-top, barely bothering to hide his disgust. His was a violent, brutal trade, and he’d killed more men than most. But he didn’t often take pleasure in it. Course, there’d been exceptions to that. Mainly the animals that’d raped his wife, way back on that Friday in March of ’eighty-two.

  ‘Got me some new ones in.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Day ’fore yesterday. Maybe day ’fore that. Time slips by when you get older, don’t it?’

  Jed nodded. At least that was something that he could agree with. Days seemed to move on faster and faster. But, when he looked back at his career, days and months and years seemed to merge and blur.

  So many dead.

  He wondered what new victims this pile of ‘Wanted’ posters would bring him. As long as they paid well, he didn’t much mind. Easy or hard? He preferred easy.

  ‘Here they are, Mr. Herne. Knew they was some plac
e around.’

  The flyers were still wrapped in a pouch of oiled paper, tied around in strong brown cord, knotted and sealed with red wax. Addressed in an angled, neat hand to the Sheriff, Pueblo, Colorado.

  ‘Got a knife, mister?’

  ‘Sure. Here.’

  Herne slid the honed-down bayonet from its sheath inside his right boot and handed it to the lawman, hilt first. He’d carried the weapon since the War, when he and Whitey had ridden with Bloody Quantrill. Finding the balance of the blade perfect for his uses.

  ‘Hey, cuts like a razor through a whore’s tits, don’t it?’ grinned Ryman, slicing the string apart, peeling back the wrapping. Laying the bayonet on the top of the desk. Herne let it stay there a while, eager to read through the pile of posters.

  ‘Now, let’s see. You come round here and we’ll take a look together.’

  He motioned the shootist round the other side of the desk, moving back slightly to let him through. Laying a casual hand on Herne’s arm. That wouldn’t have bothered Jed, but it was accompanied by a slight pressure from behind. Ryman was so close to him that the lawman’s beer-gut squeezed in against his buttocks, snug as two bugs in a bearskin rug.

  There’d been times when such a clumsy approach would have brought the Sheriff a pair of broken knees, but Jed was feeling more mellow.

  Besides, he needed a look at the flyers.

  So, he simply edged himself away from the pressure and stood a half pace to the side. Ryman didn’t seem to be offended and he merely grunted.

  ‘Here we go, then. Stop me if’n you see something that looks interesting, Mr. Herne.’

  There were about twenty of the bills. From all over the west. Wanted men from El Paso to Billings, Montana. From Williamsburg in Virginia clean across to Carmel in California.

  ‘How ’bout him?’

  Herne read through the brief details. ‘One-finger Mike Harrison. Bank clerk robbery and suspected murder. Fifty dollars for information as to his whereabouts.’

  The shootist shook his head. ‘That’s just a piece of small-time chicken-shit, Sheriff.’

  ‘Couple of breeds robbed a store. Forty apiece.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Small-nose Burton. Beat up on a bordello owner in Natchez. Supposed to be heading this way. Another fifty. Not big enough.’

  ‘No.’

  There were seven more left.

  The top three were all deserters from the Cavalry who’d robbed some Indian trappers up in Dakota. There was fifty a man from the civil authorities and another fifty each from the Army. Herne took those out and put them on one side. They weren’t much but they were the best that he’d seen so far.

  Two from the bottom Sheriff Ryman turned one over that had bigger and blacker lettering than any of the others.

  ‘How’s ’bout this one? Bank robbery.’

  The words stood out. So did the price. “One thousand dollars.”

  ‘Raid over in Minnesota and four other banks. Five killings.’

  The name was on the bottom of the poster, along with a description of the wanted man. Jed was still reading the details of the raids and Ryman saw the name first.

  ‘Holy fuck! It’s for you. For Herne the Hunter!’

  Chapter Three

  For one fragment of time Sheriff Patrick Ryman thought that he was going to vomit. Acid bile rose in his throat, nearly choking him. And part of his mind refused to believe what was happening. Could this really be the man on the wanted flyer? He didn’t bother to read the description. Man said his name was Jed Herne. The Hunter. That was the name on the bill. Clear and black. Letters that seemed to come clean off the pale paper like fire.

  Fat and aging though he was, there’d been times when Ryman had been a lethal gun. Fast and accurate, even though the years had whittled away the needlepoint of his reflexes.

  In that supreme moment he reacted quicker than he’d ever done. Everything coming together like oiled cogs. Pushing Herne with his hip, sending the taller man off balance. Hand down for the Remington, sliding it from the holster. Thumb on the hammer, dipping his right shoulder as he turned to face Jed.

  ‘Bastard!’ he snarled.

  Ryman had never been much of a lawman for the “Dead or Alive” side of the trade. Dead was easier.

  The shootist hadn’t realized for a vital splinter of frozen time what was happening. Only catching a glimpse of his own name decorating the bottom half of the flyer, then he was stumbling sideways, banging his right leg against the desk, so that he couldn’t make an easy draw. The fat lawman was faster than he had any right to be, and the Remington was coming up, cocked, and Herne hadn’t any doubts that Ryman would pull on the trigger.

  The bayonet still lay on top of the roll-top desk, hilt towards him.

  The two men were less than three feet away from each other. Ryman started to grin, knowing that there was no way he could miss.

  ‘Thousand dollars,’ he started to say.

  Getting as far as: ‘Thous… .’

  The stranger had punched him. But it wasn’t that hard a blow, low down, a hand’s span above the gunbelt. Making him gasp for a moment, checking the action of his pudgy index finger on the short trigger.

  Herne twisted the bayonet as he tugged it across from left to right, slicing through the shirt, skin and flesh. Spilling acres of blood on the polished floor of the office.

  ‘Oh, sweet Mary,’ gasped Ryman, feeling the wetness and a bitter chill across his belly. Like being caught in an old blue Norther on a February evening.

  He clapped his hands over the gaping wound, everything else forgotten in the sudden shock and pain.

  Herne reached out with his left hand and gently took the pistol from the unresisting fingers. Laying it on the desk, on top of the pile of notices.

  ‘You killed me, you dumb bastard. You fuckin’ killed me.’

  The words came gritting out, each one torn painfully from the deeps of the lawman’s throat.

  ‘Nearly. Damned near.’

  Ryman spun away, staggering towards the closed door. Heading for the street. Herne looked past him, through the trim lace curtains, seeing a pair of poke-bonneted women chattering by the windows. Ignorant of the deadly conflict inside the lawman’s office.

  The shootist kept his own pistol holstered, guessing that one shot would bring the whole of Pueblo falling in on his head. And with that wanted flyer there for all to see, it wouldn’t be more than a few minutes before he was dangling out with the strange fruit on the town’s hanging tree.

  He stepped after the stumbling man, trying to avoid slipping in the glistening pools of crimson that dappled the floor. Closing in on Ryman, reaching with his left hand and grabbing at a fistful of the lank, thinning hair. Tugging him backwards, bracing him with a knee in the lower part of the spine.

  ‘Please …’ gasped Ryman. It wasn’t a word that ever came easily to his lips, except when he visited some of the young boys who peddled themselves around the border towns.

  Jed Herne had never been very big on mercy.

  He drew the edge of the bayonet across Ryman’s throat, opening him up from the angle of the jaw-bone on the left, clean through to behind the right ear. Hacking apart the big artery, so that the remains of the lawmen’s life-blood jetted through the still air. Splashing all the way over on the far well, masking the glass front of a case of chained Winchesters.

  The body dropped so quickly that he barely had time to let go of the big man’s hair, allowing the corpse to slump at his feet. Ryman’s legs carried on twitching for several seconds and the fingers opened and closed, spasmodically, nails scraping at the planks like the claws of mice at midnight.

  It stopped.

  And the room was totally silent. Outside Herne could still hear the heels of the women’s shoes, clicking along the boardwalk. A few dry leaves were whirled along the street by the rising wind, rustling against the door of the office.

  He stooped and wiped the Civil War bayonet across Ryman’s shirt, slipping
it back into the scabbard in his boot. Straightening and walking to the desk. Bending to read the flyer with greater care.

  A thousand dollars. Dead or alive. Jed Herne, known as “Herne the Hunter”. Aged forty-five. Black hair to the shoulders. Silver in places. Tall. With a Colt Peacemaker. Dressed in black. With gang of four. Two brothers, one with scarred face. One small man. And a black. Robbed the bank at Northfield in Minnesota and killed a cashier and a deputy.

  Herne immediately remembered Jesse. A whole host of memories came flooding to him of the pale-faced kid who’d ridden with Quantrill. His brother, Frank. The Youngers. Cole, was he still up in Sweetwater Penitentiary?

  Now someone else had done the same First National Bank.

  And others. Small towns, each one further west than the last one. The most recent only a week ago. Forty miles or so east of Pueblo. Which had to mean that the gang were likely to be somewhere in the area.

  Near the bottom of the poster was the list of men that they’d killed.

  Herne put the flyer back down on top of the pile, hissing between his teeth. There’d been other times and other places when he’d been wanted by the law, with hired killers on his trail. But that had been years back. Now he was older and less in the mood for running. But once they found the body of Sheriff Ryman there’d be a posse out after him. And it couldn’t be too long for two and two to get added together and finish up at four.

  He thought about burning down the jail to help conceal the murder of the lawman, but the building was partly of stone. It might be better to quietly leave and lock up. That way it could be all day before they suspected anything was wrong.

  Too many people had seen him. The bar-keep. Other men in the saloon. Folks in the street.

  The old man in the livery stable. Jed remembered that he’d even told him his name. The black stallion had been put in its own stall and there was a piece of paper nailed to the door. The old-timer had painstakingly spelled out “Herne” on it.