Herne felt a figure rushing towards him, and a hand tugged at his bridle. Having just cut down a man brandishing a sickle at him, Jed was ready for the new attack. He lashed out with his boot, feeling the toe thud home twice, but there was still the grip on the reins.
The clouds of smoke from the guns had been overshadowed by the choking fumes from the burning buildings, as the whole town was put to the torch, covering the moon and reducing vision to a few feet.
A third time he kicked out, seeing the glint of a knife aimed at him. Letting the saber hang from the cross-belt he wore, Jed fumbled for the Tranter.
But the cocking lever caught on the edge of the holster and he dropped the gun in the dirt.
‘Bastard!’ screamed a voice at him, high-pitched with the fear and tension of the fight. Parrying the knife with his foot, Jed managed to draw the familiar Navy Colt from the belt and blasted off three shots at his unseen assailant. Feeling the hand disappear from the bridle.
Right behind him there was a burst of fire from a blazing house, momentarily illuminating the street. Herne glanced down to make sure his assailant was no longer a threat,
Not with half his head blown away he wasn’t,
He was a boy of about twelve years old.
‘Jed! Help!’
It was Whitey’s voice. Urgent.
Herne stood in his stirrups, looking round the milling town, jerking the reins as a dog ran by, its entrails dragging in the dust. Then he saw Whitey, half out of the saddle, being attacked by a half dozen women and old men, using pans and lengths of wood to beat him down.
‘Hey!’ yelled Jed, spurring forwards, whirling the heavy cavalry saber round his shoulders, his horse, knocking most of Whitey’s enemies away from him.
A blood-dulled butcher’s knife was waved at him and he cut down at the face behind it, his own keen blade slicing through the old man’s nose, splitting his wire-framed spectacles into neat halves, the blood spurting up and dappling his trousers and arm.
There were other memories.
An elderly man with a neat line of bullet holes stitched across his body, wandering among the shambles singing We Will Gather At The River in a quavering monotone.
A Union soldier in uniform trousers, crawling along the burning boardwalk with a saber stuck through his back, wedged in his spine, with the point tearing a furrow of splinters from the timbers as it protruded out of the dying man’s belly.
Herne chasing a man round the back of a barn having seen him shoot down one of the Raiders from a first-floor window. Killing him with one shot in the back of the head from the Colt, and dismounting for a moment to reload the warm gun. Seeing into a barn where there was a group of the Confederate irregulars gathered round something in the straw. Curiosity on Herne’s part as he walked in, greeted with a grin by the others. Seeing what was happening and barely resisting the temptation to gun them down.
A woman spread-eagled in the dirt, blood around her thighs showing how she’d died, the hilt of a Reb bayonet still visible among the gobbets of wet crimson. And her daughter still alive, hands pinned to the floor with other knives while Quantrill’s men took their pleasure of her. The man on top of her, spending his lust in her, with the pale moons of his buttocks thrusting obscenely in the light from the fires was Red.
And the child could not have been more than eleven.
It was that moment that finally restored Herne to his senses.
Walking slowly out to his horse, seeing a weeping woman kneeling in trampled and bloodied earth, her arms round two more young children, trying to protect them from the ravaging madmen who were destroying the town of Lawrence to satisfy one mil’s whim for revenge.
There was a deep cut across the woman’s face, peeling back her lips showing the whiteness of broken teeth. The eyes that turned to Jed Herne were quite insane and he pulled out his pistol and shot her through the head, taking away her crazed pain.
And the children she had been trying to protect?
They felt nothing.
They were both already dead.
He reached Whitey Coburn, standing quietly by a burning barn, slaking his thirst from his water bottle. The white hair of the albino was stained with smoke and ashes, and splattered with fresh blood.
He looked up as Jed approached him and managed a slow grin. A tired grin.
‘Jesus, Jedediah. I was beginning to think that you’d gone forever.’
‘No. I guess not.’
‘Thanks for savin’ me from those women, Jed. I sure appreciate that.’
It was close to dawn, and the sky was lightening, though a huge pillar of smoke rose towering above them like a big black cloud hanging over the smoldering remains of the town, the air heavy with the stench of burning human flesh from some of the one hundred and forty-two men, women and children that Quantrill and his Raiders had butchered during the four hours of the raid.
‘Whitey?’
‘Yeah, brother Jedediah?’
‘I’m for movin’ on.’
Coburn sniffed, wiping his sleeve across his mouth, looking at the grime and sweat on his coat. Staring around at the desolation that had been a thriving settlement of two hundred souls when the sun had set the previous night
‘We didn’t get nothin’ out of it, Jed. Not a damned thing.’
‘Maybe a little older, Isaiah.’
‘Sure. Been bad doin’ here. Not what I looked for at all.’
Herne nodded. ‘Me neither. I don’t take to murder and burnin’ folks. Not even if they helped the Jayhawkers and tried to lynch Quantrill.’
‘Probably had it comin’,’ commented Whitey, sourly,
‘You comin’, then?’
‘I guess.’
For a long moment they looked at each other, the bitter smoke shrouding them from the rest of the town, hearing the occasional shot or scream, still lingering over die desolate ruins.
Herne coughed. ‘Yeah, why not? Come on, Whitey. Let’s go get us some clean air.’
Together they rode out of Lawrence, heading south and west, put of the War.
It was the middle of that afternoon before the pillar of black smoke finally vanished from their sight
Chapter Fourteen
Twenty years—
So many deaths. Most of them hardly recalled now, but some of them as fresh and painful as yesterday. So many of those who had been involved in the Lawrence raid were now dead. Even Whitey Coburn, the best and only true friend that Jed Herne ever had, was now gone.
William Clarke Quantrill had been gunned down in a thunderstorm in Bloomfield, Kentucky. Shot by a band of Union guerrilla soldiers, commanded by a deserter no better than himself.
Jim Lane, the reason for the raid, also dead, killed by his own hand when that long black cloud had settled over his brain and remorse became too much.
Most of the guerrilla bands were gone, their leaders killed, before the end of the War. Bloody Bill Anderson blasted down in a Union ambush.
But the Lawrence massacre remained one of the worst deeds in the history of the country. So heinous was it that four days after the raid, with the dead only just buried, General Thomas Ewing of the North issued Order Eleven. Its purpose was simple and the thinking behind it ruthless but accurate.
Clear the border country of western Missouri of every living soul, and you cut the throat of the Confederate irregular forces. The four border counties were totally cleared of all habitation in fifteen days, with families herded off their own land with no time to sell up. Grain was confiscated and fields burned.
The Union established garrison towns but only a handful of the inhabitants of the region were allowed to stay on there. As the farmers moved out, so the Jayhawkers moved back in, burning the houses so that western Missouri became a total wilderness.
Frank James carried on riding with the gang and was reunited with Cole Younger and little brother Jesse in their years as bandit raiders. But Frank was never actually convicted of any of their crimes and lived to a ripe age a
nd died a natural death.
Dingus, as he was called, was killed by Robert Ford on the third of April, eighteen hundred and eighty-two. Shot in the back.
Cole Younger robbed and stole with Jesse and Frank and his own brothers, Jim and Bob. Brother John, the fastest gun, was shot by lawmen in eighteen seventy-four. Then came the fateful raid on the bank of Northfield, Minnesota.
After it, all three Youngers were taken prisoner and jailed for life. Bob died in the penitentiary in eighteen eighty-nine. Jim was released with Cole in the first year of the new century and was to kill himself in October of the following year.
Cole Younger finally died in nineteen sixteen at the age of seventy-two. When he died there were found to be seventeen bullets remaining in his body. He was a very remarkable man.
The names and faces of his friends and enemies had passed before Jed Herne’s eyes as he faced the man called Red in the rain, lit by the flames of the burning cabin. And he remembered Red, now. Remembered the atrocities that he had seen him commit.
Staring down at him as he floundered at his feet, crying like a baby, what remained of his hair still smoldering on his blistered skull.
The gun lay where it had fallen, rain splashing on it, in the mud only a few paces from where the big man crouched, fingers buried in the dirt, rain pattering on his back, hissing on the part of his vest that still glowed red with charred ashes.
‘Mister! Please…’
‘Get up, Red. Up on your feet.’
‘No.’
Then I’ll shoot you where you are. Like the damned dog you are.’
Slowly, realizing that he had escaped the flames of the cabin, the man rose unsteadily to his feet, swaying with the effort. Eyes peering through the darkness at Herne.
‘Don’t I know you?’
‘We rode together once. But that was in another place. Another world, Red.’
‘You’re Herne the Hunter. Jedediah Herne. That’s who you are.’
That’s right.’
‘We ... with Quantrill. Ain’t that right. I recall it now.’
‘So do I, Red. I recall it like it was yesterday.’
‘More than twenty years, Jed.’
As he became aware of who his pursuer had been, so the man grew more confident about his survival. Believing an old friend wouldn’t shoot you down in cold blood. Not just like that.
‘You one of them bounty hunters. And I heard you got wed. That right?’
The flames were still roaring, despite the heavy rain that soaked both men. Jed kept his pistol aimed at the man in front of him. Squinting against the brightness of the building. Remembering the main street of Lawrence. Recalling the bam and the dead woman.
The young girl.
‘I said that—’
‘I heard you.’
‘You ain’t goin’ to kill me. Not two old Raiders like you and me, Jed.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Hell! We must be about the only two still alive and kickin’ from that night Come on, Jed. You give an old friend a break. Huh?’
At that moment part of the roof gave way, its timbers burned through, collapsing in a thunderous crash and a great towering column of white and yellow sparks that whirled out all around the two men.
Facing it, Jed was blinded for a moment, putting his left hand to his eyes to try and protect them from the fiery cascade.
In that moment, Red made his move, making a desperate try for life.
He dived for the gun, falling flat in the mud and wriggling on his side, cocking the pistol and starting to bring it round to cover Jed. But Herne saw the flicker of movement, even through the smoke and flames.
He fired first. The bullet hit the moving man just below the ribs on the right side of the body, lancing through him and exiting without touching any bones.
Red screamed at the pain and rose to his feet, intending to try and run for it, snapping off two shots at Herne to distract him. Neither of them came anywhere close and Jed stood very still and sighted along the barrel of his pistol. Squeezing the trigger twice more.
Both bullets hit Red in the body, near the centre of the chest. Driving him backwards, sliding in the wet earth, the gun flying from his fingers, hands flailing at the night air as he fought for balance.
Herne watched him falling. Back towards the burning cabin. Saw him reach the place where the front wall had been, catching his heel in the burning timber. Drop out of sight, rolling on his shoulder and side. Saw him trying to get up again, but the two bullets had struck too deep and he was dying.
‘Nooo!’ The scream went on a long time. Rasping out after the clothes were all ablaze, and after the skin must have bubbled and burst
The scream was finally stilled only by the collapse of the rest of the roof, burying Red in a torrent of blazing shingles and smoking beams.
Herne stood still for several minutes, watching as the fire died away, having consumed all the dry wood very quickly, subdued by the rain that still poured down from the great bowl of the Kansas sky. And he looked at the shapeless mound that had been Red. A man who’d ridden with him and with Quantrill so many years back in Lawrence.
He thought about the past
And the little girl.
Finally he mounted his horse and rode away through the cleansing rain, feeling it cool on his face. He looked back once and saw, ghostly in the night, the pillar of smoke that rose grey from the ruins of the cabin.
After that, he didn’t look back again’
There wasn’t any point.
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If you’ve enjoyed this book , read the rest of the series:
Herne the Hunter
1. White Death
2. River of Blood
3. Black Widow
4. Shadow of the Vulture
5. Apache Squaw
6. Death in Gold
7: Death Rites
8: Vigilante!
Massacre! Page 12