Shadow of the Vulture

by John J. McLaglen

  There was a groan and a shout which was muffled by the same elbow coming in again. Herne squeezed the gun arm, pushing it away. Then he brought it down hard against the floor. Once. Twice. Three times.

  Still the fingers would not loose their hold. Herne jumped up into a crouch and let go with his right hand, bringing it hard and fast across the detective’s face. He stood taller, lifted his foot; brought the heel down on to the underside of the arm.

  This time once was enough.

  The fingers opened and let go of the gun as the man’s mouth opened in a scream of pain. Herne booted the gun away and then booted the mouth shut.

  He watched as the man crawled back and sat huddled against the front of the wardrobe, both hands held to his mouth. Blood was seeping down through his fingers and running under the cuffs of his suit and on to his white shirt. He pulled a hand away and spat. A gout of crimson splashed down on to the worn rug and something glistening white, probably a piece of broken tooth, came away with it.

  Eventually he looked up at Herne, who still had not moved. When the nervous tic moved his head, he lifted a hand to still it and when that moved back to his mouth it left a dark red streak across the pale forehead.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ Herne growled. ‘You said you was goin’ to tell me somethin’.’

  The detective looked at him. ‘I can’t, mister.’ The voice was quieter than before, but in the stillness of the room Herne could hear him easily enough. The only other sound was the gurgling sound the man made when he breathed.

  ‘The way I see it,’ Herne told him, ‘you don’t have an awful lot of choice.’

  ‘Mister, if it gets out that I’ve talked about a client, I’m never going to get another job.’

  ‘If it gets out that you’re dead, you ain’t goin’ to get too many jobs either.’

  ‘You wouldn’t...’

  Herne didn’t say anything. Just looked down at him. The man knew that he would. So he told him.

  ‘It was this feller from the west coast. San Francisco. Senator, he reckoned to be. Name of Nolan.’ He looked up at Herne. ‘That name mean anything to you?’

  Herne grunted. The name meant something to him, right enough.

  ‘What you goin’ t’do with me?’

  ‘You take on anythin’ else for Nolan? He hire you to do anythin’ other than follow me?’ Herne asked.

  The detective shook his head emphatically. ‘No. Just to tail you. Let him know by wire what you did.’

  ‘What you aimin’ to tell him?’

  The detective thought for a couple of minutes then said, questioningly, ‘That you caught the boat along with the girl?’

  Herne nodded. ‘Right. You do that and I’ll reckon we’re about square. That seem all right with you?’

  ‘Yes. Reckon.’

  Herne waited while the man made attempts to clean himself; he was going to walk down to the cable office with him to make sure the right message was sent.

  ‘Hey, detective,’ Herne said as they were walking along the street. What’s your name, anyway?’

  The man fished into his pocket and handed him a card. Herne looked at it: Tom Mitchell, it read, Private Detective. Then an address.

  ‘You got any kin?’ Herne asked him.

  ‘Sure. Wife and a little boy.’

  ‘What do they think about this job of yours?’

  Mitchell shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sometimes she worries ’cause I’m out of the house a lot, but mostly she seems to like it okay. It’s a good line of business and things are picking up all the time. I reckon that if things carry on the way they ’pear to be, it might become a regular family business. Why, be good to have my son take over from me when he grows up. Somethin’ to make a man proud, that would be, don’t you think, mister?’

  But Herne did not reply. He was thinking, though. Thinking about the son that Louise had lost the second it was born…and about the child that had been alive in her womb until…until those seven men had trudged, drunkenly, across the snow to her cabin.

  And one of those men had been Senator Nolan’s son.

  Herne had exacted his deadly revenge on Nolan’s son first of all. Since when the aged Senator had sent several men chasing Herne in an effort to get him gunned down. None had been successful, though one, Whitey Coburn, a former friend of Jed’s, had come mighty close.

  Maybe this was a chance to get Nolan off his back. At least with Becky in England he’d not endanger her life.

  Herne studied the cable and gave it back to Mitchell, who folded it neatly and pushed it down into his pocket.

  ‘You goin’ to leave it at that?’ Herne asked him.

  ‘Sure. You got my word.’

  He held out his hand and Herne took it. It was a strong hand and it gripped his own firmly.

  The two men walked together as far as Herne’s hotel. Herne stepped into the lobby and the other man walked on, heading back for his wife and son.

  Hell, thought Herne, she can tend to that cut mouth of his and treat him like a wounded hero, while all I’ve got is four blank walls and not even enough money to buy some more whisky. Not if I’m going to get any kind of train ticket out of here in the morning.

  He sat in the chair for a while but the thoughts which kept running back and forth through his mind disturbed him. So he pulled off his boots and most of his clothes and clambered into the bed. After a few minutes he got up again and fetched the Colt from his holster on the belt that was slung over the back of the chair. He laid it alongside the edge of the pillow and closed his eyes.

  All he wanted was morning and the first train that headed back west.

  Even in the midst of the city, Jed Herne’s internal alarm clock worked to perfection. Just as the dawn was breaking on the skyline, he rolled over on to his side and was awake. In the midst of that action, his hand had reached the short distance to the butt of his Colt.

  Herne blinked his eyes twice; sat up; rolled his legs over the edge of the bed and felt his feet hit the floor; stood up; shook his head; coughed; spat the tight ball of phlegm into the china bowl on the washstand; stretched his arms wide; yawned.

  Then he put down the gun and began to get ready.

  During his brief preparations Herne considered whether he should strap the gun on or not. He decided against it. Too many questions might be asked here in New York. He would stash it away and wait until the train had left the city far behind.

  Not many minutes later, he turned the large key firmly in the hotel room lock and moved into the corridor. Less than half a dozen paces along, towards the top of the stairs, he heard a door open behind him.

  Jed threw himself flat, right hand clutching automatically for the gun that was not there. Rolling fast, he saw a flash from the door at the end of the corridor and heard the sound of the shot fill the space between himself and the man who had fired.

  He covered this space as quickly as he could, his hand reaching lower this time, diving down for the weapon concealed in his boot. The room door slammed shut just before he reached it. Herne kicked hard. He pushed himself back against the wall, waiting for the bullet which he knew must come.

  Bayonet gripped firmly in his hand, he dived for the opening, sending his body rolling into the room. Another shot echoed round the room, but by now the man was panicking badly. Herne came up into a crouch, bringing his right arm back behind his shoulder.

  Mitchell stood in front of the wardrobe, mouth partly open, his gun pointing downwards. His head began one of its nervous little shakes: it never finished it.

  The blade of the bayonet pierced the side of his neck, a couple of inches below the jawbone. Pierced it and went right on through, holding him tight up against the wood.

  Herne stood to his full height and watched as the fingers of the detective’s right hand spread themselves outwards with agonizing slowness until finally they let the gun fall to the floor. He walked over and caught hold of the handle of the bayonet and pulled; it took a hard tug to free the point from the w
ood, but once done it eased smoothly through the flesh.

  Herne stepped back a pace as Mitchell’s body seemed to hesitate about falling. As though eventually realizing there was no longer anything to hold it up, it folded over on to the carpet.

  Herne cleaned the blade of the bayonet and replaced it inside the sheath he had had built into his boot, then began to go through the detective’s pockets. He found the copy of the previous day’s cable. And another...

  A cable had gone to Senator Nolan early on the morning of that same day. In it Mitchell had given full details of the school to which Becky was presently sailing.

  Herne stared at the slip of paper with dismay. He realized that if Nolan knew where the girl was and if he found out the second cable was a lie–as now seemed likely with Mitchell dead–there would be nothing to stop him making an attempt to get his revenge on Herne through Becky.

  He had known from the start that having the girl tagging along was a liability. She hadn’t meant to, but she had hamstrung his movements when she was with him. Now she was going to do the same from the other side of the ocean. Unless...

  Herne screwed up the piece of paper and let it drop to the floor. It bounced off the arm of the detective’s suit and rolled along his chest until it became stuck down in the blood that was still streaming from the gash in his neck.

  ‘Too bad.’ said Herne, ‘you should have stuck to followin’ folks around…not that you was much good at that.’

  He looked down at the pale face–even paler now. It had been a shame that he had been forced to kill him; he had even begun to like the detective in a funny sort of way. What the hell was a person like him doing taking out a contract on Herne’s life? He could guess at his orders: if he sails, let me know where for–if he doesn’t, then get rid of him before he leaves New York.

  ‘You’re a fool, Mitchell,’ Herne said to the dead man. ‘A fool who was just too damned greedy. Probably thought it would be somethin’ extra for that wife and kid of yours. And now all they’ve got is a blood-stained suit an’ a dead man inside it.’

  The detective had stood no chance. If Whitey Coburn had not been able to kill Herne, then Mitchell wasn’t even worth entering for the race. Not that Nolan cared about that. He didn’t mind how many lives he bought with his money and then threw away again. When you had that amount of money, lives were cheap.

  Herne knew that Nolan wouldn’t stop wasting them until he had got the revenge he wanted. There was only one thing left for him to do: he would have to kill Nolan himself. And how many others on the way to him?

  Jed Herne sighed, turned and left the room. Killing never stops, he mused.

  Chapter Two

  It was cold in the train. Cold and likely to get colder. Herne sat huddled back in his seat, rubbing his hands together to keep the blood circulating through them. At least he was out of New York, but this wasn’t a whole lot better. Not yet, it wasn’t.

  He thought about the distance he was going to have to travel in order to reach his next goal. San Francisco. It meant travelling all the way across the country, from one coast to the other. Long. Difficult. Expensive.

  As it was, he had only been able to buy a ticket as far as Kansas City. And that was less than half of the overall journey.

  He knew that there were two ways in which he could get the money he needed to make the rest of the trip. He could stop off along the track and hire out his gun. It was something he had done often enough in the past. Hell, it was his past! Running money; riding shotgun; hunting men for bounty; fighting for the cattlemen against the sheepmen; for the sheepmen against the cattlemen. Using his Colt .45 for anyone who could pay the price that it fetched.

  Only now he was getting old…old for a gunslinger. Although his reputation lived on in some parts. Places where the mention of the name of Herne the Hunter still inspired awed expressions and somewhat exaggerated tales of his exploits. But most men would look at him now and pay him what they reckoned him to be worth on face value—and that was precious little. The big money would go to fresh-faced young punks who strutted around like turkey cocks, a pair of six-guns tied to their thighs and shiny black leather gloves with the ends turned back. Punks that Herne knew he could take before they had cleared leather.

  But the men who were hiring out didn’t know that.

  So there was another way. Possibly better, certainly quicker. He could stake the few dollars he had left and try to win what he needed. There was usually a poker game or two on long journeys like this. Gamblers seemed to love playing on trains. It was even known, Herne thought sourly, for them to hire their own train especially for that purpose.

  The train that had become snow-bound close to the Herne homestead, that had been a gambling train. The men who had got themselves drunk enough to tramp through the snow, they had been gamblers.

  Eventually, thought Herne, they had lost.

  But then, so had he.

  He got up and, still rubbing his hands together, walked down the train.

  There was a game in progress in the dining car. Four men playing so far; a couple of others hovering about deciding whether or not they should join in.

  Herne stood with these for a few minutes, assessing what was going on.

  They were playing five-card stud. The dealer was a tall, very thin man of about forty. From the way he was dressed, Herne guessed that he would claim he was younger. He had a white shirt on, with frills down the front and on the cuffs. A dark blue cutaway coat over gray trousers. Although it was warmer in the dining car, Herne didn’t think he could be all that hot. But he was the kind of man who would rather wear a shirt like that and suffer the cold than put on something less flashy and feel warmer.

  He dealt the deck with professional flourish, giving each card a final, deft flick as it spun away across the table. From the size of the pot that was by his right hand, he was getting a good share of whatever luck was going.

  Either that or his dealing was even more professional than the others realized.

  The man who was losing fastest and heaviest was a good few years younger than Herne and played with a kind of desperation which made his losing seem both more important and more necessary. He didn’t shape up as though he had ever been a good player of cards and now he was getting so involved that whatever skill he might have possessed was thrown away.

  The other two men looked as much part of the fixtures of the train as the seats and the cuspidor in the comer of the carriage. Short, balding, fiftyish; neither of them won too much nor lost too much; they just played the game as though the minute they stopped the train would stop also.

  Herne looked at the loser. Sweat was starting to run down his face in lines which became darker and darker as they picked up the dirt from the journey which layered his skin. He was calling for cards in a voice that was altogether too loud. Making bets without calculating the odds with any intelligence. Pawing his cards greedily, like a child that is hungry.

  Nothing that he did could disturb the dealer’s rhythm. He just kept on dealing.

  The loser wagered five dollars on a pair of sevens and looked astonished when it was beaten easily by the dealer’s own hand.

  Any hand would have been sufficient to break him: it just so happened that this was the one that did it.

  ‘No!’ He yelled and crashed a closed fist down on to the tabletop, close to the cards he had turned upwards the moment before. The cards lifted a little into the air, then fell back, sliding across each other’s smooth surface as they did so. In the middle of the table, coins rattled and rolled against a heap of dollar bills.

  Nobody moved. The man who had shouted stared across at the dealer, whose expression had remained unchanged. Poker players who know what they are about can control their faces in most situations; those who don’t play well usually don’t have any self-control either.

  The younger man proved this point by hammering the table and shouting again. ‘You bin winnin’ and winnin’ and winnin’. It ain’t right! There
ain’t no way you could do that, time after time. No fair way!’

  This time there was movement. Nothing sudden. Nothing that might send the scene too far too quickly. Those who were standing watching and who had been there when Herne arrived edged themselves away from the table. The two anonymous players began to push their chairs cautiously backwards, careful to keep their hands well in sight.

  The dealer didn’t move at all.

  The young man looked wildly around him, appealing for some support and knowing that he wasn’t about to get any.

  ‘You bin playin’ this game fer long enough. You all seen what the hell’s bin goin’ on here. This man’s bin cheatin’ us ever since we pulled out of New York. You gonna let him get away with it?’

  His voice was high-pitched, strained. His eyes ranged round the assembled company in desperation. No one met his face; they looked at the floor, the ceiling, out through the window at the passing view.

  ‘Well? You gonna let him cheat you out of your money or what?’

  He must have known he was playing another losing hand, but with the fatal drive of a man who is born to lose, there could be no drawing back.

  The train hiccupped over a bad link on the track and the piles of coins that had remained standing toppled over noisily.

  The dealer brushed an invisible speck of dirt from the frill on the front of his white shirt and looked across at the man who was creating the disturbance as though he should be dealt with in the same way. His mouth opened lazily:

  ‘It appears to me that these gentlemen have not been losing excessively. There is only one player in this game who has lost continually and that, sir, is yourself. I would have the temerity to suggest that the reason for that may be found in the fact that you are not a good player of the cards.’

  The loser looked as if someone had slapped him in the face. He brushed away the beads of sweat gathering on his forehead with his arm. He looked very worried.

  ‘Don’t you…don’t you…! I bin playin’ poker fer long enough to know what I’m doin’. An’ I bin playin’ long enough to know when I’m bein’ cheated. An’ that’s right now!’