Massacre!

by John J. McLaglen

  Herne took off his hat, brushing the trail dirt from its crown, wondering if it would all be over before sun-down, or whether it would go into another day. He was confident that Red wouldn’t live to see another sunset after this one. He was close to him, and the way the horse’s trail wandered from side to side it was obvious that both rider and mount were in the last stages of exhaustion.

  The reddening sky to the west reminded Herne yet again of the last time he had ridden through this part of Kansas. Twenty-one years back.

  ‘Almost to the damned day,’ he said. His voice making the ears of his horse prick back. And it had been a beautiful summer evening like this one.

  Then there’d been the smoke and the dying and the long screams.

  And then the silence.

  In the quiet, Jed stiffened in the saddle. A horse had snickered, somewhere ahead of him. About a hundred paces. Maybe more or maybe less. Maybe where that grove of trees stood guard over a muddy pool. Right by that cabin with the damaged roof.

  He tethered his own mount to a stump of tree, near enough to the thread of orange water for it to drink if it wanted, and with the pale remains of the summer grazing for it to nibble at. After a moment’s thought Herne took the Sharps with him, ready for a long shot if the man called ‘Red’ heard him coming and broke for it. One thing was certain. If Red was in that cabin ahead, then Herne would take him. Even if he rode for it now, the trail wound on ahead, giving a chance of a clear shot at less than a quarter mile. And Jed Herne wouldn’t miss a mounted man at that range with the long buffalo gun.

  He decided to approach from the north, circling round across the narrow river. Mud splashed over his boots, dappling the bottoms of his trousers. For l moment Herne wondered whether to remove his spurs. But there was a breath of wind ghosting through the trees, rustling their branches. The faint jingle of spurs wouldn’t be heard above that. Not from inside a cabin.

  There was a small rise that gave a fine sight of the little house. From its crest, Herne could also see further along the trail, towards the cluster of wooden-framed houses that was the rebuilt township of Lawrence. He wondered idly as he wriggled forwards whether there were still folk living there who’d been around during the War. Deciding there probably were. After all, Quantrill’s Raiders hadn’t killed everyone in Lawrence.

  Not everyone.

  Jed had never ridden that way after the War. It might have been better than twenty years, but people had long memories where murder was concerned. He might be safe from the law, but Herne hadn’t lived to be forty years of age without learning that a law-book never stopped a bullet.

  Living was difficult enough with every young boy in every cow-town from Dakota to the Rio Grande wanting to make himself a name as the man who finally gunned down Herne the Hunter. So you took care. Jed remembered something that his old friend Whitey Coburn had once said: ‘living is just the mistakes you don’t make.’ Whitey had said.

  But he was dead now.

  The chilling memories of the past came gibbering up to Herne as he lay and stared at the cabin, and he shook his head to clear them away. A man got to living in the past, he’d likely wake up dead in the present.

  The place looked like it had been abandoned a few months ago. There had been a small garden at the back, with the choked remainder of the flower bed. That meant a woman. No man would waste time and energy on growing something that couldn’t be eaten. It could have been a home for a family that had come to Lawrence to work, and had found it too costly to buy a house in the town. Then things had maybe gone wrong.

  Half-hidden in a grove of stunted trees, close by the shadowy pool, Herne was sure there was the mound of a grave. No. Two graves. One long and another one small. A child’s grave. With two head-boards that had weathered and fallen in the dust. That could be the reason for the empty cabin.

  But right now it wasn’t empty.

  Herne could catch the sound of the horse stamping its feet round the far side of the hut, and there was the gleam of a light in the darkness of the building, shining with a golden glow through the open shutters. And there was the noise of someone singing quietly to himself.

  Before he made his attack, Herne crept on his belly all around the cabin, checking out the windows and the door. The roof and the horse.

  ‘One door. Barred by the lock. I can cover it from that ridge. Windows on three sides. All in sight from up yonder, No way up on the roof. Walls solid.’

  The habit of talking to himself had come when Herne was a whole lot younger and riding the line up in Montana. The snows had come and he’d been on his own in a small cabin for eleven weeks. When the thaw came he’d been left with enough food for three more days.

  He lay and watched as the sun began to sink further towards the land, throwing longer shadows from the trees. The Sharps was ready at his shoulder, in case the man called ‘Red’ showed himself at the window. But the singing had stopped and no figure passed between the lamp and the dark square of the window. For a moment Herne wondered why the man bothered to have a lamp lit so long before night, but he quickly shrugged it off as irrelevant.

  If Red wasn’t going to present himself, then it was down to Herne to set the ball rolling.

  He carefully brought the gun to the aim. Like most great shots, Jed kept both eyes open to fire. His left elbow was supported on the firm earth and his right hand forefinger touched the trigger, taking up the first pressure.

  It wasn’t a difficult shot at all, but Herne wanted to make sure that he hit where he wanted. His finger tightened on the trigger, the knuckle whitening. It was a hard pull. There’s no reason at all to have a light trigger on a rifle like you need on a hand-gun.

  Tighter.

  The Sharps exploded with a burst of black-powder smoke that obscured the cabin. The stock kicked back against his shoulder with a satisfying impact, the concussion sending the fifty-five caliber bullet hissing on its way.

  A first-class shot like Jed Herne could reckon on hitting a man nine from ten at better than a quarter mile. So it was easy to be certain of hitting a horse at less than a hundred paces.

  It was a neat shot, even so. The bullet hitting the tethered animal a fraction above the right eye, bursting through its brain and killing it instantly. Knocking it off its feet like a pole-axed steer. The horse went down all in a heap, legs kicking out in the reflex of dying, hooves rattling against the side of the cabin, a last scream of fear and pain tearing from its throat.

  It took less than ten seconds for Herne to reload the long gun, and ready it again for shooting. Quick as he was, Red was quicker. There was a blink of movement at the door as it swung open. A head peered out, the amber light of the setting sun gleaming off the hair. Hair that looked more grey than red to Herne. Then the head was withdrawn and the door slammed shut again.

  ‘Don’t bother me none,’ said Herne quietly.

  Without his horse, Red wasn’t going anywhere.

  Neither was Herne.

  ‘Hey!’

  It was fast becoming dark. Already the pool had disappeared into blackness, and the wind was still rising, disturbing the larger branches of the trees, blowing dust off the trail towards the cabin. A sliver of moon had appeared in the clear sky.

  Herne knew what the man trapped in the cabin would be thinking. Would the night work for him or against him? Under the cover of blackness his pursuer could creep right up to the window and slaughter him. That would be the way he would think. Herne would have laid money on it. He was trapped, so he’d be worried about being killed where he waited. But to the man doing the waiting the night brought the worry that his prey might manage to slip away under its cover. Not that it was a worry that seriously concerned Herne. As soon as the light slipped away a mite more he’d crawl down there, closer, so that he could cover any break out.

  ‘Hey, out there?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You find Kid?’

  ‘Where you left him.’

  It was a southern voice all r
ight. Maybe from somewhere in the Mississippi delta. Herne set his mind back again to the War to see if the voice rang any bells in his memory. But it didn’t. There’d been so many men that he’d met during the fighting. Mostly dead now.

  ‘You expect me to surrender myself up to you, mister? That it?’

  ‘No, Red. I expect you to die.’

  ‘You got me at an advantage, mister. You know me and I don’t know you.’

  ‘It don’t signify.’

  A laugh from inside. Where the glow of the lamp seemed brighter against the gloom around. But Herne still couldn’t see his target. He guessed he was sitting on the floor, hugging his gun, probably beneath one of the windows.

  ‘Signifies to know the name of the man aimin’ to shoot me down for a fistful of dollars.’

  ‘What’s a few dollars more or less?’ shouted Herne, keeping the rifle on the cabin, his nerves stretched ready for a trick move.

  ‘Ain’t you goin’ to tell me?’

  ‘Stick your head out the door and I’ll tell you,’ called Jed.

  ‘Likely I will,’ laughed Red.

  There was a silence between the two men for the next quarter of an hour or so. Herne shuffled closer, until he was within pistol range of the cabin. But he still didn’t know where Red was hiding. He had to find some way of bringing him out of the cabin into the open.

  The oil-lamp threw a square of yellow light out of the window across the withered remains of what had once been the garden. Herne settled himself down just beyond the furthest edge of it, waiting his chance. Trying to figure out a way of making that chance.

  ‘Hey, out there!’

  What is it?’ Herne kept his voice low so that Red wouldn’t know how close he’d come.

  ‘I’d pay well if’n you’d forget about this bounty and ride on out.’

  ‘I guess you would at that.’

  ‘Heard of shootists’d take gold to change sides on the hunt.’

  ‘I heard of ’em too,’ said Herne, dryly.

  Another silence. Somewhere out in the woods there was a rustling from an animal, stalking its prey. Herne ignored it. There were no bears in Kansas and precious few cougars.

  ‘Well? What d’you say?’

  ‘I say that I heard of shootists that’d betray their given word.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I ain’t one of ’em.’

  ‘Do I know you, mister? I’m damned sure I know your voice. You ever been in this neck of the woods before? Maybe years back?’

  Herne nodded his answer in the darkness. Unseen by Red. He couldn’t say why he didn’t give the man his name. He wasn’t ashamed of it and he didn’t figure that Red would be going anywhere to talk about it. Maybe it was just the oppressive spell of being back in Lawrence. A place he’d never thought that he’d see again.

  Nor did he really think he’d ever cross trail with any of the men he’d ridden with. The Youngers had been in jail for nearly eight years now, and Dingus was dead these two years. Gunned down hanging up a picture in his own home by that dirty little coward, Bob Ford.

  The sky was clouding over and Herne could smell rain coming in on the wind. If there was to be a real storm then it might give Red the chance he needed to make a break for it. And the running would start all over again.

  The cabin must have had cracks in the floor and the wind made the lamp flicker and dance. Giving Herne the idea of how to get the man outside.

  It was too close for the Sharps, so he laid the rifle on the ground and drew the forty-five Colt pistol. The first spots of rain falling on his hand as he thumbed back the hammer, hearing the triple click of the smooth action. Steadying his right wrist with his left hand for greater accuracy. Drawing a bead on the glowing centre of the light.

  And firing off three shots in rapid succession.

  Apart from the slug that had finally killed the man without a name and the shot that killed Red’s horse, they were the first bullets of the hunt.

  Jed heard the smash of the breaking window and saw the crystal glitter of the splintering glass. The lamp went out and he caught the sound of Red’s voice. But it was impossible to tell whether it was raised in fear or pain or anger or shock.

  Quickly, using the blackness, Herne crawled back up the ridge, through the tendrils of the dead garden, pulling the Sharps with him. To a position where he could cover the door and the windows. The rain was falling more heavily and he could even hear it pattering on the dry shingles of the roof.

  The man inside the hut fired off four or five shots, so close together that it was impossible to count them, but none of them came anywhere near Herne. He guessed that Red imagined the shooting out of the lamp was the signal for an attack of some kind. He was wrong.

  The reason for the shots at the light were about to come clear to Red.

  The total blackness of the cabin was suddenly broken by a glimmer of gold and yellow. Brightening fast to tongues of red and orange.

  ‘Jesus Christ!! You bastard!!’ yelled Red as the fire from the spilled oil set its teeth to the dusty timbers of the cabin floor. Taking a hold that no amount of beating could break.

  Herne set himself ready, knowing that it was now only a matter of time. And not a lot of time at that. With the wood as bone dry as tinder, it wouldn’t take more than four or five minutes to turn the cabin into a raging inferno.

  Few men knew as well as Jed Herne how buildings burned in a Kansas summer.

  Once there was an angry volley of shots from inside, aimed through the broken window. And once Jed saw the man appear briefly, silhouetted against the flames, waving a cloth of some sort. As if he had belatedly decided to try and beat out the fire.

  Herne snapped off a couple of quick shots at Red, but thought he’d missed. The man ducked and didn’t reappear for better than a minute.

  ‘Come on, Red!’ shouted Herne. ‘Time’s runnin’ out for you!!’

  There was an unintelligible reply from inside the blazing building. The blaze was taking hold of the timber frame of the cabin, licking at the edges of the windows. Flames creeping out like fiery serpents beneath the door. As Herne watched it, the fire broke through the roof shingles, racing along the edges of the wood, making a roaring noise that swelled above the noise of the rain.

  It couldn’t be long, now.

  There was a cry from the heart of the inferno. It started off like the beginnings of a rebel yell, then turned into a shout of mindless anger. And finished as a scream of terror and pain.

  Herne cocked the pistol, and stood up, oblivious to the beating storm that sent water trickling down his face, hissing among the flames.

  Red exploded through the broken window, gun in hand, engulfed by fire. Flames raced about his body like a demon in a child’s book, and his hair was smoking on his scalp with the intense heat. And the shrill scream rose higher and louder until it seemed impossible that a human throat could sustain such a sound.

  ‘God Almighty!’ breathed Herne, appalled by the horror of the sight. Breathing in the stench of smoldering flesh that was carried on the wind.

  The man stumbled to his hands and knees as he landed, crouching like an animal, the scream sliding away down the scale to a bubbling moan.

  It was the massacre at Lawrence all over again. Only a half mile away from where it all happened. And twenty years behind.

  As Herne stood with his pistol braced his mind froze at the memory, racing back through the long years of killing. To a summer’s day in Kansas.

  To the month of August.

  And the year of eighteen hundred and sixty-three.

  Back…

  Chapter Three

  Jed Herne lay face down in the long grass, peering over the edge of the ridge across the Kansas plain, watching the band of armed horsemen that were hunting him. There were fourteen of them, and they’d been hunting Jed and his partner for a day and a half. If they caught them then they would hang them from the thickest branch of the nearest tall tree.

  ‘Keep down, Jed,
’ hissed a voice at his elbow’

  ‘I surely am, Whitey,’ he replied.

  ‘They must have found our trail.’

  ‘Guess so.’

  Their pursuers had halted in a group. Barely a hundred yards from where the two boys were hiding.

  Though neither of them had yet reached their twentieth year, both Jedediah Herne and Isaiah Whitey Coburn topped six feet. Jed weighed in around one-eighty pounds, but Whitey was barely one-forty, and thin as a lath. Both of them wore plain shirts of blue cotton, stained around the armpits and across the centre of the back with dark sweat. Both carried thirty-six caliber Navy Colts in holsters on their right hips, tied low like the shootists that they’d seen and admired.

  Jed was a good-looking boy. Tall and strong. Nothing that special to distinguish him from a dozen other farm-boys of the same age. Until you looked close at his face and saw that the eyes were a damned sight harder and colder than most.

  Whitey Coburn didn’t like anyone calling him by that nickname. Except for Jed. Even though it was justified. Hell, was it ever justified!

  Isaiah Coburn was an albino. That means there was no color in his body. His skin was pale as parchment and his hair hung across the top of his shoulders like a veil of white fire. Those were the things you noticed first about the gangling boy. Then, like with Jed Herne, you looked at his eyes.

  They blazed among the frontal bones of his skull like red pits of coal. Most of the time they simmered in a sullen glow, but when he was angered, Whitey’s eyes flared crimson in the dark sockets of wind washed bone.

  ‘Ain’t been hunted like this since I was a brat of fifteen,’ whispered Herne.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Ridin’ with Billy Cody for the Pony Express.’