The Hanging (Herne the Hunter Western Book #17)

by John J. McLaglen

  ‘Mister?’

  The raider turned from the open door to the trembling man. ‘What is it?’

  ‘You really Herne the Hunter?’

  ‘That’s what I want folks to think.’

  ‘Then … Ba … Bart was right?’

  ‘Sure. If’n he’d kept his mouth sewn tight then you’d all have lived.’

  ‘All? I don’t un … No, mister. I won’t say a word. I swear it. You can trust me.’

  ‘Right now I trust you a little. With a bullet through the middle of your head then I’ll trust you a whole lot more.’

  The crack of the handgun reached the Widow Britton and she lay down again, deciding that it was the safest place to be.

  She was wrong.

  The killer put the muzzle of his pistol against her left ear and fired twice, the impact of the bullets bouncing the woman’s head on the wooden floor.

  Rising quickly the middle-aged man strode to the door, swung up on the back of the waiting stallion and led his men out of town.

  Stanstead Springs was less than a dozen miles from Denver and Herne was in the region within two hours of the raid, figuring on cutting the trail of both the robbers and the inevitable posse.

  He was more successful than he’d intended.

  Chapter Five

  The rains came that evening.

  Not the heavy sweeping rains of the south that wipe out roads and reduce visibility to three paces. Not the summer typhoons that drive rain in a man’s face so that he starts to think about how he might drown.

  The rains that came to Colorado that fall were long, drizzling showers. Freezing cold with flakes of heavy snow larded in among the sleet and hail. The wind picked up on the wetness and drove it into every gap in a man’s clothes, so that cold water seeped down your neck and filtered into your groin, running clean down to your boots.

  Herne heeled his stallion onwards through the endless drizzle, aiming to cut the trail of the posse and ride on alongside them, or behind them. Keeping on after the group of robbers.

  But he’d managed to get such a good start on the vigilantes that he found that he was ahead of them, instead of behind. The trail out of Stanstead Springs was already pocked with sullen pools of rain-dappled water, but the mud was still firm enough to show a good set of tracks.

  Five horses. Being ridden hard towards the towering mountains to the west. Already, dimly through the murk, it was possible to see the snow that topped off the high peaks. It would only be a matter of a few days before that snow came creeping lower, reaching the passes across to the distant sea.

  Herne was a good tracker, but the trail told him little. All horses were tiring. The spread of the hoof-marks gave that away. But it was hardly helpful. Few men, having just robbed a bank, were likely to move at a gentle trot. There was nothing especially distinctive about the tracks. But a couple of the mounts had lost nails from shoes, giving Herne enough to guarantee to pick out those horses from a thousand others.

  That was supposing that the rain didn’t wash away the trail completely. His guess was that the riders were around two to three hours clear of him.

  The shootist had been surprised to find that he wasn’t sitting in on the rear of the posse. There had to have been one. Had to have been. So where were they?

  Jed wasn’t to know that the killings in the bank had sent the township into a state of shock. If you’d been floating over Stanstead Springs in a balloon, it would have looked like a lot of chickens with their heads cut off.

  Nothing like the raid had ever happened, and the place wasn’t geared to react sensibly. There was a deal of scurrying hither and thither. Shouting and weeping. Men tripping themselves up as they hoisted coils of lariat aloft. Shots were fired into the air and the afternoon was filled with empty threats.

  In the end it took the intervention of the local priest, Father Henry Wyndham, to bring calm to the troubled seas. He came riding into town on his fat grey mare, his usually jolly face lined and serious. Dismounting and calling all the men together, urging them to remember their duty.

  ‘On this damp and drear day, let us not forget that we are men. Not animals. Not animals.’ The Reverend Mr. Wyndham had developed the habit of repeating words and phrases that he considered significant.

  ‘Let’s string em up!’ yelled Cyrus Blennerhassett, owner of a small local mine.

  ‘Let us learn Christian tolerance, brother,’ replied the priest. ‘And patience.’

  ‘Patience! Fuck patience, beggin’ your pardon, Reverend.’

  ‘There must be patience.’

  ‘Why?’

  Wyndham smiled at him. A smile filled with all the Christian virtues of charity and sweetness. ‘Because it is already an hour or more since the murderers left our town. And no progress has been made towards an organized chase. So, I suggest … ’

  ‘Suggest we go out and lynch them butcherin’ bastards!’ shouted John Howard, a storekeeper.

  ‘You always did have as much subtlety as a blunt mallet,’ said the priest, quietly.

  ‘So, what should we do?’

  ‘Patience. Let us go at this properly. The weather is closing in from the north. Get that breed to track for us.’

  ‘Iron-Eye Spann?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If’n we can sober him up first.’

  ‘Then we shall take food and water. Enough to last us a week or more.’

  ‘Then?’ asked Blennerhassett.

  ‘Then, Cy, we shall go and hunt down these men and mete out to them our own justice.’

  ‘Hang ‘em!’ came the cry from a dozen throats all around.

  ‘Yes.’ The minister nodded. ‘We shall surely hang them.’

  The rain kept on falling all through the night, heavy clouds whisking across the face of the moon, so that there was very little light to track by. Herne tried it for a couple of hours, then gave up. Knowing that there were twin risks of going on. One being that he might simply lose the trail and waste time at dawn trying to pick it up again. The second risk was that he might blunder into them in the darkness.

  So he stopped, keeping the stallion saddled and ready. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling knowing that he was the meat in a nasty sandwich. The robbers in front of him and a posse somewheres behind.

  The wind rose during the small hours of the morning, whipping the last orange and red leaves from the trees around, sending them spinning and dancing around the clearing where he slept. Every dry rustle and crackle could have been the footfall of an enemy and Herne kept jerking into wakefulness.

  It was a restless and uneasy night.

  The next day he knew that he was closing. The rain became more intermittent, finally stopping a little after noon. The sky cleared from the north and a watery sun eventually broke through the clouds. But it was still cold and Herne rode on, muffled up, forcing the horse faster than the animal wanted to go.

  The robbers were also going fast, but one man riding alone will always go that little bit faster than a group. Herne’s problem was that he didn’t really know the country well enough, and he couldn’t shake off the feeling that if there was a posse around and if they had a good tracker then it might be possible for them to strike other back-trails and overtake him. All the time he had the certainty that he was working around after the bandits in a long looping circle, gradually closing in on them. But if there was a trail that cut off the side of the loop, then he could be on top of the vigilantes before he realized it. It was an uneasy doubt.

  A doubt that became a fact that evening, when the last remnants of light were slipping away across the land.

  It was turning dusk when Jed Herne found the corpse. It was his horse that scented it, suddenly becoming skittish and awkward, sliding sideways along the trail, turning its head and tugging hard at the bridle. The shootist guessed something was wrong and reined in, clouting the animal hard between the ears to quiet it, nearly knocking it to its knees.

  He figured there was either a hunting animal arou
nd among the still dripping trees, or the horse had smelled men, somewhere close. Either way it could be bad news for him.

  ‘Easy,’ he whispered. ‘Easy now.’

  Dismounting and knotting the reins over a low branch of a nearby tree. Taking a deep breath, sniffing at the damp air. Feeling the cold in it and tasting something on his tongue. Not the freshness of the pines. A sickly taste that he knew better than most men.

  ‘Where?’ he said, to himself, turning and staring around him, scenting that wind. Walking forwards, among the low trees to the left of the trail, where the smell of death seemed strongest.

  The body was there, lying head down in the leaf-mould, a track in the mud showing that the corpse had been dragged out of sight by the ankles, furrowing up the mud with its face.

  What was left of the face.

  Herne nudged it over with his toe, seeing that someone had done a good job with a scattergun at close range.

  There was so little left that it was hard to tell the age of the victim. From the cut of his clothes he had probably been a mountain-man, one of that lonely and intrepid group who hunted and trapped in the utter-most limits of the great wilderness. His jacket was fringed buckskin, the pants of workmanlike denim. The nails on the hands were clipped short and clean, as though he was on his way back from civilization when he’d been killed. There was a Colt still holstered at his belt and a long-bladed butcher’s knife on the other hip.

  From powder-burns on the neck and jacket it wasn’t hard to tell that he’d been shot at very close range, almost certainly without any warning. Riding on his own, minding his own business.

  ‘Why?’ asked Herne. Puzzled by what seemed an utterly senseless murder.

  He found the answer a half mile further along the trail. Standing and disconsolately picking at the grass in a small meadow just off the trail. A couple of hundred yards beyond where Herne had seen another track snaking in from the left, redoubling his concern about just where the posse might be.

  But the horse took his attention. A bay mare, showing every sign of having been ridden hard and long. The saddle had been stripped off it, but the bridle and reins were left on. Not far from it there was a discarded saddle, decorated with some ornate bead-work and animal tails. Clearly the saddle of the mountain man.

  As the shootist stopped his own stallion whinnied, and the mare looked up, taking a few hesitant steps towards them.

  ‘Front near,’ said Herne, seeing the heavy limp of the abandoned animal.

  The killing of the nameless, faceless stranger back along the trail wasn’t senseless any more. One of the gang he was chasing had been thrown and his horse had been injured. The appearance of the tall man in his fringed jacket must have been like manna from the heavens to the robbers. Herne’s mouth tightened with anger as he visualized the scene. Out in the backwoods it was common practice for stranger to help stranger.

  The gang had taken advantage of that trust to shoot him through the head at close range, heaving the bloodied corpse among the trees.

  The mare tried to come closer but the shootist ignored it. Crippled like that it would die soon enough without his help.

  At that moment Herne guessed that he was probably less than an hour behind his prey.

  The shootist saw the effect of the bullet before he heard the boom of the explosion. A spray of watery mud erupted from the still earth, less than ten yards from where he was sitting, making his horse buck with shock. Then came the noise of the shot, and someone calling out in anger. What sounded like an apology. ‘Sorry, Reverend!’

  A priest?

  Herne didn’t have time to worry about that. His main concern was getting out of the place in one piece. The light had fallen fast and he knew that within ten or fifteen minutes he could be away and safe, secure from being tracked.

  More shots were coming his way, one of them striking the crippled bay mare in the flank, making it cry out like a wounded child, falling to its side. Struggling to get up. A second shot hit it near the eye and it rolled over, legs flailing.

  ‘I got his horse!’ someone yelled out from above and behind Herne. The side trail. He’d been right to worry about that possibility.

  ‘Come on!’ he hissed to his stallion, lying low over its neck, kicking in his spurs and heading it towards the fringe of trees that hung like a dark curtain to the north-east.

  More bullets tore up the earth around him, but it was never easy to fire downhill. The angles threw out even experienced marksmen. And to try it against a fast-moving target in minimal light laid all the cards in his hand. It would have been the worst of luck if Herne had been hit by the posse. He made it.

  To the extreme anger of the Reverend Wyndham, aimed at the nameless member of the posse who’d broken his orders and fired at the distant figure, Herne escaped. By the time the rest of the vigilantes had caught their horses again and readied themselves for pursuit, the figure in black had disappeared. Vanished totally into the misty darkness of the night.

  They found the dying horse and someone put a pistol ball through its head, at last ending its misery. They also tracked back, helped by Iron-eye Spann, and found the mangled corpse of the mountain-man.

  Leaving another item on the score of the bank robbers and their elusive leader, known to them all as Herne the Hunter.

  During the night the rains came down again with renewed vigor. Turning dry river beds into raging torrents and washing away whole sections of the trail. Herne lost track of the bandits the next morning. And the posse also lost contact.

  During the next five days the rains came to Colorado with a fearsome force. It seemed that one could hardly draw breath, the air itself was so dripping with moisture. Not a trail was passable for a hundred miles and everyone stopped where they were. The posse found shelter in an old mining camp, and Herne picked a place for himself a quarter mile away from them, creeping in at night, unseen and unheard, and stealing food for himself. At least drinking water was no problem for him.

  It also meant that the robbers wouldn’t be able to move. To try and press on in such treacherous conditions would have meant a certain accident with an animal slipping in the slimy mud that coated everything.

  So they all waited.

  The five bandits were camped only about six miles further north than the vigilantes, in a cave set high up, a couple of hundred yards from the main trail. They sat around and drank whisky, by a small fire, sleeping a lot of the time. Waiting for the weather to break so they could press on north.

  There were more banks waiting for them up north. Just two more, then they’d quit. Head across and down into California.

  So, for five, dreary, endless days, everyone waited for the rains to stop.

  Chapter Six

  On the morning of the sixth day the heavens cleared and the sun broke through again. Sending a great rainbow dazzling across the Colorado sky, blue spreading over beyond it from north to south, the wind carried away on the teeth of a freshening wind.

  In his cave the leader of the gang stretched and walked to the rim of the cliff, peering out. Spitting into empty space. ‘Looks like we better move on,’ he said to the other four.

  Six miles south the posse of eighteen men were also getting ready to move, urged on by the inexhaustible priest. Still sitting foursquare on his grey mare, encouraging the others as they headed northwards. Reassuring them that their prey would have had to check their progress as well. The rain hindered both the good and the evil.

  Watching them from a skirt of trees along the line of a bluff, Jed Herne readied himself to go. Feeling safer behind the posse than in front of it. It was child’s play to trail them as they tried to pick up the tracks of the bandits once more.

  He saw the big figure of the priest. He’d been close enough to the vigilantes to identify some of them. The blustering Blennerhassett and the turbulent minister. And the taciturn breed. A stocky man, his long hair tied back under a greasy hat, an old yellow Cavalry bandana knotted around his throat.

&n
bsp; So the procession began to unwind again, the robbers leading the posse, which in turn was being trailed by the shootist.

  The leader of the gang knew well enough that they were likely to be followed. The problem was that the horse of the dead mountain man was badly galled and was also going lame. All their ministering during the flooding rains had done little or no good and the smallest of the bandits was working up to a furious rage at the way he kept falling behind.

  ‘We got to do somethin’,’ he complained, in a feeble, whining voice, quite out of character with his quickness on the trigger of his precious Meteor scattergun.

  Just keep on, and we’ll look for a chance of betterin’ our ways. Maybe somethin’ll come along for us.’

  But they were moving too slowly, and that was the simple truth.

  Ezekiel Haroldson was seventy years old, give or take a few months. And his wife, Hebe, was even older. But she had come to the new country from Norway some sixty years ago. Orphaned on the boat over when typhus ran rife through the steerage passengers. So she didn’t know her age but thought that she was probably around seventy-five. It was a good enough guess.

  They’d always been great ones for moving around the land, since their hasty marriage back in 1834. It seemed that wherever they stopped they had children. Ezekiel was a traveling dentist, with a nice side line in removing kidney stones. He’d also cut hair or deliver babies. And sharpen knives or axes. Mend fences or fell trees. Patch up pans or dig wells.

  Of course, as he grew older it became more difficult for him to tackle the harder jobs. And Hebe was plagued with recurrent rheumatism in her neck and shoulders and hips, so that walking was uncomfortable. So a year back they’d decided that it was time to go and settle down and end their days in the sun and warmth of southern California. The family was widely scattered, but they knew they had at least one son and a couple of grandchildren out that way.

  The journey hadn’t been too bad, but they had been racing against the threatening weather for some days now, sadly hindered by the rains. The snows seemed to cover lower and lower each day, and Zeke was becoming seriously worried whether they’d get across the mountains before winter shut everything down for a thousand miles north and south of where they were.