Shadow of the Vulture

by John J. McLaglen

  When they finally broke apart, Herne said, ‘I thought you’d changed your mind about me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I thought you’d used me for what you wanted, then when you heard about what happened at the Newman place you’d turned against me like everyone else. Not that I’d blame you for that. I didn’t like what I did either.’

  Rosie pushed herself against him. ‘Jed, I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t think any the worse of you for what happened out there. I was sure there were reasons, things you didn’t bother to explain because you figured it wasn’t anybody else’s business. But most folks thought you were wrong and I couldn’t risk losing custom by showing what I felt for you in front of everyone. I’ve got to survive here after you’ve gone, Jed Herne. And by morning you’ll only be a memory and a good yarn to tell in exchange for a beer or two.’

  Herne raised his fingers to the back of her neck and stroked it gently underneath her hair. He had not acknowledged to himself that he had wanted her there, but now that she was standing pressed against him, he knew it to be so.

  It had been a long time since he had had a woman–any woman. And a woman like Rosie...

  ‘I’ll say one thing for you,’ he said, ‘you’re not afraid of being honest. With me anyway.’

  She kissed him again. ‘That’s easy with you, Jed. I know you’ll soon be gone and it won’t matter. Nothing I say or do will matter. We’ll never see each other again.’

  Herne moved her backwards in the direction of the bed. They lay down alongside each other and he ran his hands along the smooth material of her dress, the shiny surface of her leather boots.

  ‘You see, Jed,’ she said softly into his ear, ‘it isn’t every day a man like you comes to Charity…and a woman has to make the most of her opportunities in these parts.’

  Herne grinned. ‘Which parts are those?’

  Rosie pushed her tongue deep inside his ear and reached both hands downwards.

  Herne was dressed and ready to leave when he realized that she was awake. She rubbed her eyes and pushed back the hair that had tumbled across her face.

  ‘You were going without saying goodbye weren’t you?’

  ‘Yep. Reckoned we said that a-plenty last night.’

  Rosie smiled. ‘You’re right. We did.’ She pulled the covers back over her naked body and curled up.

  Herne opened the door. Suddenly she sat up. ‘Jed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘One thing I want to ask you. Who’s Louise?’

  Herne stepped out into the passageway and shut the door firmly behind him.

  Chapter Eight

  The final stage of Herne’s journey to the west coast promised to be the most pleasant. There were two reasons for this. First, he knew that he was getting closer to Nolan. Second, as he was preparing to change trains on to the Central Pacific in Utah, Herne recognized a man he knew. Standing ahead of him, buying a ticket for San Francisco, was Wayne Pardoe, resplendent in an elegant cutaway coat.

  Herne waited until the gambler had finished his transaction and had turned to walk away from the booking office. He called his name and watched with some surprise as Pardoe looked up anxiously, as though expecting an enemy rather than a friend.

  When he was certain that it was the latter, Pardoe broke into a broad smile. ‘Why, Jed Herne, I never rightly imagined I’d see you in this place! I thought you would have been down in ‘Frisco long before me.’

  Herne grinned. ‘Some things take a little time. People and places have a sneaky way of stopping you from doing what you want as soon as you’d like.’

  ‘Looks like we’ll be travelling down together.’

  ‘Looks like.’

  The gambler seemed well pleased. ‘Couldn’t have turned out better, Jed. Maybe I can even persuade you to play a little poker on the journey?’ There was a roguish twinkle in his eyes.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ replied Herne. ‘This is one train journey I intend to make without being put off less than halfway down the tracks.’

  Pardoe laughed. ‘That surely was an unfortunate incident.’

  ‘Sure was,’ Herne agreed.

  ‘Tell me,’ asked Pardoe, ‘how was that little town you went to visit? What was it called now?’

  ‘Charity,’ said Herne. ‘It was one hell of a place to spend Christmas. Still, it turned out pretty rosy in the end.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ said Pardoe, slapping him on the back. ‘Real glad to hear it. We’ve got us a few hours before the train leaves, Jed. Let me buy you a drink.’

  The two men went off in search of the nearest saloon.

  The building they found made many a place look like a palace. But it was the first one they came to. The two men stepped warily over the prostrate body of a daytime drunk and went on in. Whether the doors had been taken off to help ventilation problems or if they had been removed in a fight, it wasn’t clear. They just weren’t there.

  The inside was badly lit, even though it was pretty bright out on the street. The bar was down at the far end of the room, so that you had to make your way through a maze of tables to get to it.

  The barkeep gave the impression that he resented any kind of interference with his normal occupation–which seemed to be picking his nose with one eye tight shut and the other as wide open as he could get it. Maybe, thought Herne, he was practicing some new kind of sideshow for the next time the circus hit town.

  Both men leaned forward on the bar and waited for him to stop his excavations. Or, at least, to postpone them for long enough to serve them a drink.

  They were being a mite optimistic. He carried on quarrying away with all the zeal of a miner who has just hit pay dirt.

  Herne suddenly felt uncomfortable–not due to what the man was doing, but because of the position of the bar. It meant that his back was to the door. And there wasn’t a mirror above the bar that enabled him to see what was happening behind him. He turned around and rested his back on the edge of the counter. The open doorway looked like the light at the end of a long dark tunnel.

  Pardoe was still staring, fascinated, at the bartender. He couldn’t believe such devotion to one’s own nose.

  Herne called over his shoulder, ‘What does a man have to do to get a drink around here?’

  There wasn’t any answer.

  Pardoe looked straight at the man. ‘You aren’t deaf, friend, I trust? You heard what my companion asked?’

  Still the man said nothing. The bulging nostril moved with the pressure of the finger scraping around inside it.

  Suddenly Herne whipped round, his gun gripped firmly in his hand. ‘See this?’ he demanded, thrusting the end of the barrel close to the barman’s head. ‘Well, if you don’t get your goddamn finger out of there right now and serve us, I aim to jam this gun right up that nose you’re so fond of. And if you want it cleaned out, well, I’ll do a good job of that by squeezing the trigger.’ He pushed the Colt even further forward, so that its tip was against the end of the man’s nose. ‘You got that?’

  The barkeeper got it. He removed his finger, wiped it slowly but carefully over the front of his grubby shirt, then shifted a couple of paces along the bar. what’ll it be, gents?’

  Pardoe heaved a sigh of relief. ‘A whisky for my friend and a brandy for myself.’

  ‘Sorry, gents. Can’t do that.’

  ‘What the hell do you mean, you can’t do that?’ stormed Herne angrily.

  ‘Just can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Pardoe.

  ‘We ain’t got no whisky and we ain’t got no brandy.’

  ‘This is a saloon, I suppose?’ enquired the gambler sarcastically.

  ‘Sure is.’

  ‘Then you do serve liquor?’

  ‘Sure do.’

  ‘But not whisky or brandy?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘May I be so bold as to enquire what you do serve?’

  ‘Beer.’

  ‘That’s all?’ asked Pardoe in amazem
ent.

  ‘Yep. Only got beer.’

  The gambler looked away in disgust. Herne ordered two beers. Having waited so long, he didn’t want to walk out again without having got some satisfaction.

  They took the glasses of frothy liquid over to an empty table. The bartender went back to his favorite pursuit of picking his nose.

  ‘How many saloons you been in in your whole life?’ Herne asked when they were sitting down.

  Pardoe shrugged his handsome shoulders.

  ‘Hundreds, likely?’ Herne persisted.

  ‘That would be a reasonable approximation.’

  ‘All right. Tell me this. You ever been in one as miserable as this one?’

  Pardoe laughed and sipped at the beer. He made a face. ‘Good God. Even this stuff tastes foul!’ He set the glass down quickly and returned to Herne’s question. ‘Not many as bad as this. Though there have been times when I’ve been down on my luck and I’ve spent evenings in cantinas where you could have scraped the vomit off the floor with a knife.’

  Herne nodded behind them. ‘You’d better tell our friend down there. It sounds the sort of place he’d really feel at home in.’

  The two men laughed so loudly that the other people in the bar turned their heads round to see what was happening. They weren’t used to the sounds of laughter in that dismal place.

  When both of them had calmed down, Herne said more seriously, ‘Tell me to mind my own business if you like, but when I called your name back there in the booking office, there was something not right about the way you reacted. As though you were expecting trouble. That so?’

  Wayne Pardoe stretched out his legs under the table and pushed his body back in the chair. ‘Well, you noticed correctly. It isn’t worth keeping a secret, so I’ll tell you what happened. Between Kansas City and Denver, I got to playing a little poker. More than a little, actually, we kept going near enough all the way. Didn’t even bother to sleep as far as I can recall. Players came and went along with their luck, but there was a constant group that kept going all the while.

  ‘Two of these started out really well. Father and son. Reckoned they’d sold a ranch and were heading out westwards to buy a larger one. They had a lot of money, anyway. Like I said, at first they added to the pile they’d already got. It wasn’t till we were getting nearer to Denver that things began to change. I put it down to tiredness on their part. Their concentration went and luck went riding off with it.

  ‘By the time we were pulling into Denver they were holding a lot less than they’d started with. Anxious not to stop there, they asked for a continuation in the town. I agreed. Couldn’t think of a good reason for not doing so.’ He paused and looked over at Herne. ‘That might have been a mistake.’

  ‘You lost?’ Herne asked.

  ‘My good friend, if I had lost then there would not have been a problem. I won.’

  ‘And that was bad?’

  Pardoe nodded and smiled grimly. He picked up his glass of beer but before he set it to his lips he remembered what it tasted like. He put it down again hastily.

  ‘I am afraid to say that I cleaned them out. Both of them; every last cent they had.’

  ‘I don’t imagine,’ said Herne, talking slowly, ‘that they took much to that.’

  The handsome head moved from side to side. ‘No sir, they did not.’

  ‘And now they’re aimin’ to get their money back.’

  ‘I suspect that to be the case. You see, Jed, it is unfortunate that I do have a tendency to win a whole lot more than I lose. Now as far as I am concerned that is fine, but others don’t see it that way.’

  ‘Like those who are doin’ the losing.’

  ‘Especially those who are doing the losing.’

  ‘And these two, they’re coming after you?’

  Pardoe said, ‘According to what I heard. I didn’t stay around to find out if it was true. One man I can handle, but two is stacking the odds too heavily against me. Both of them looked as though they would know one end of a gun from the other.’

  Herne shook his head. ‘Funny it should be a father and son.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Back there in Charity. Met up with another pair like that.’

  ‘What happened to them?’ Pardoe asked.

  Herne looked at him. ‘Guess they weren’t lucky either.’

  The platform which ran alongside the rail track at Ogden was far more substantial than the one back in Charity. So was the town it served. So were the people who used it

  Herne and Pardoe stood in the midst of a sizeable crowd of waiting men and women. Some of them were there for the same reason as themselves–to get on the train west. Others were there to meet folk who were due to arrive. Most of them were dressed up in their best clothes and whereas Pardoe fitted in well, Herne was feeling a little out of place. He was wearing basically the same things as he’d left New York in. Baths hadn’t exactly been a regular feature of his journey. Now, when he lifted his arms, the smell of his own sweat was no longer the friendly, welcoming smell that a man’s sweat should be. Even Herne winced as the odor assailed his nostrils.

  He took good care to stand to the windward side of the smartly dressed gambler.

  It wasn’t too long before the train came into sight from the east, steam rising high into a dull January sky. It would stop long enough to take on water and a new crew, then leave with a lot more passengers and baggage.

  Herne looked along the carriages of the train as it pulled in, seeing the faces of people anxiously looking for those who were supposed to be meeting them. Pardoe’s eyes were claimed by a beautiful young woman who could not have been more than eighteen. She was wearing a smart green suit and a neat little hat with a half-veil. She rubbed her slender hands together inside kid gloves as she waited for the train to pull to a halt

  The gambler wondered if the man she was so evidently waiting for was worth it. He looked again at her face and felt a twinge of jealousy run through him. It was one of the problems of the life he led which kept him permanently on the move. He supposed that Jed Herne’s life followed much the same pattern. He wondered if he had ever been able to find a woman of his own and settle down. He determined to ask him whenever the next opportunity arose.

  But now Herne was grasping his arm and talking quietly and quickly. ‘That pair you mentioned might come lookin’ for you. Was the father a tallish feller with jet black hair and a stubbly face? The son a few inches shorter, but with the same dark hair? A suggestion of a limp?’

  Pardoe gasped in astonishment. A worried frown crossed his brow.

  ‘Heavens, Jed! You got the both of them off exactly. How did you know?’

  ‘I knew because a couple like that just this minute got off the train.’

  The gambler followed Herne’s pointing finger. Although his view was partly obscured, there was no mistaking the two men as being those who had sworn to get their own back on him. Even if it meant taking their money from his body after he was dead.

  Herne saw to his surprise that the gambler had already freed the derringer from beneath his coat sleeve.

  ‘You’re not aimin’ to use that toy here, with all these people milling around?’

  ‘Not unless I have to. But I certainly aim to be prepared and ready.’

  Herne pushed him in the direction of the train. ‘You get on board as fast as you can and hope they don’t notice you in the crowd.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’ve got a horse that’s supposed to be being put on the train at the far end. I want to make sure about that. You take my advice and do as I say.’

  The two men separated. Herne pushed his way through embracing families and would-be travelers who were clamoring around the steps at the ends of the carriages.

  The platform was a hubbub of voices—but not loud enough to cover the shout that rose up from the center of the platform.

  ‘It’s him! There he is. The lowdown cheatin’ bastard!’

  He
rne swung round swiftly. In front of him everything seemed frozen into a still tableau. Greeting and parting were halted in mid-kiss or mid-sentence. Several heads swiveled in the direction of the person who had called out. They saw a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man standing a few feet in front of a rather smaller, slightly mirror-image of himself. Both men were wearing short wool coats; both were evidently armed. The one who had shouted was pointing in the direction of the train.

  On the steps, halfway between the wooden planks of the platform and the shelter of the train, was the neatly attired figure of Wayne Pardoe. The bright white lace of his cuffs and shirt front shining out like beacons.

  Then all was pandemonium.

  The older of the two men drew his gun and fired at the gambler. It was a hasty shot and a long way off target.

  That made no difference.

  Women began to scream and shout out, joined by the angry voices of men. Everyone was pushing everyone else, trying to move without knowing where they wanted to go. All they did know was that they had to get away. Fast.

  The entrance to the ticket office was jammed. People tried to find alternative ways of leaving the station. Cases were knocked over or tripped over. More shots rang through the tumult. It wasn’t easy to see who was firing at whom, but Herne guessed that the two ranchers were busy taking pot shots at the side of the train. Pardoe seemed to have jumped on board.

  The two men continued to fire, although it didn’t seem possible that they could hope to hit the gambler they were out to get.

  A woman’s voice screeched out in sudden and violent pain.

  For a couple of seconds, all movement halted once more.

  Herne saw a young woman sink to her knees, clutching at her breast. She looked deathly pale, an expression of total horror on her lovely face. Her head drooped forward, the dark veil of her dainty hat falling over her tear-scarred eyes.

  There was movement again. Only now it was even more urgent. Individual voices rose up out of the general melee, one across the other:

  ‘That poor girl’s been shot...’