Herne the Hunter 20

by John J. McLaglen

  She struggled and fought and when he hit her, the blood seeped back into her mouth. He burned and stabbed into her and jammed his wrist inside her open mouth to stop her screams. Within a pitiful few minutes he cried out himself and finished and fell across her. Christiane thought she should be crying but her eyes and her mind were dry as crumbled stone. She thought about the animals in the field and the barn and how she had watched them and wondered that this had been so little different.

  So little joy.

  Grice was drunk and asleep and snoring harshly.

  She rolled him onto his back and saw his thing, curled and flaccid and stupid and felt something that was almost pity.

  Down below she gathered her belongings together and saddled up one of the horses. She prised open the box where he kept his money and took precisely one half of the contents. She left him his rifle and took his Colt pistol and a box of ammunition. From the kitchen she took the sharpest knife. It never occurred to her to go home; they had got rid of her as a burden and she wasn’t about to impose herself upon them again.

  Christiane tucked her skirts into her drawers and climbed into the saddle; she had ridden astride before when no one had been there to watch and that was how she rode now. The moon was silvery thin between the tops of the trees and the tops of the corn glistened silvery white. East was the ocean and she turned west, knowing that she would feel the warmth of the sun on her back and knowing that it would be good.

  Four

  ‘Two things,’ said Herne.

  That all?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s all.’

  It was somewhere around ten in the morning. The sun was orange-red through a deep haze of cloud that drifted with the wind towards the hills that clustered to the north west. Behind where they were standing, a couple of men were doing their best to fix a fresh canvas onto the partly burned out wagon. The four girls were bundling up the last of their varied possessions and loading them as they could. The hammering from the wagon resounded inside Herne’s head like a stampeding herd of buffalo. The inside of his mouth tasted like a month-old horse blanket. His eyes were narrowed more than usual, wincing at the light.

  Opposite him, Mary Anne Marie looked about as fresh as a prairie flower. Her hair was coiled at the back and held in place with a ribbon of black velvet; her eyes were bright and her cheeks were glowing. She was wearing a cream colored blouse with a small ruff at the neck and a green and blue brooch in the shape of a bird over her right breast; her brown skirt flared over lighter brown, polished boots.

  ‘Two things,’ she repeated.

  ‘Sure. First, there’s Christiane.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘You know she ain’t in no state to make this journey.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘We’re talkin’ ’bout near four hundred miles, maybe more. I had a word with the doc an’ he says she needs rest to get over that beatin’ she took. Reckons she’s bad inside. The sort of treatment she’s goin’ to get bumpin’ up and down in one of them wagons is goin’ to open her up worse’n them fellers did.’

  Mary Anne Marie pulled back her head a little and stared at him. ‘You finished?’

  ‘That an answer?’

  She tossed her head and swung her arm round to point at the girls. ‘We been together long enough to care for one another. If we were callous enough to leave Christiane here, what d’you think would happen to her? Stuck in a place like this, with no friend to come near her when she needs help. D’you think the good women of this town will come rallyin’ round with soup and blankets? D’you think that doctor’s goin’ to treat her without she’s got money to pay his bills? We leave her here and she’s finished.’

  ‘And if we take her?’

  ‘Then she’s got a chance.’

  ‘I didn’t pull her out from under those boots to drive her to her death.’

  ‘Ain’t that for her to decide?’

  Herne made a sound midway between a grunt and a sigh. He glanced at the wagons, the girls, the ground; avoided looking Mary Anne Marie directly in the eyes.

  ‘She knows what might happen?’ he asked after a few moments.

  ‘She knows.’

  ‘An’—?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Herne nodded. ‘Okay. Only don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  A smile came to Mary Anne Marie’s eyes. ‘You goin’ to be doin’ that for four hundred miles?’

  ‘Doin’ what?’

  ‘Havin’ the last word, no matter what?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She smiled and looked past Herne up the street to where the sheriff was strolling towards them. ‘What’s your other worry?’

  ‘Who’s ramroddin’ this show, that’s my worry.’

  ‘That’s easy. You look after the route, the horses. You do whatever’s necessary to make sure we get to Sacramento in one piece. I’ll look after my girls.’

  ‘And if the two conflict?’

  ‘We’ll settle that when we come to it.’

  They looked at one another, each self-willed and unlikely to give ground easy. They were like two steers with their horns locked, neither one backing off.

  ‘Am I interruptin’ somethin’?’ asked the sheriff, stepping close.

  ‘Nothin’ that won’t hold,’ answered Herne, turning towards him.

  ‘When you fixin’ to move out?’

  ‘Couple of hours. We still got some supplies to get loaded an’ they got to finish recoverin’ that wagon. We should be out of your town by noon at the latest.’

  MacIntyre shrugged, ‘I wasn’t worried about that.’

  ‘Kind of puts you in a minority, don’t it, sheriff?’ said Mary Anne Marie.

  MacIntyre nodded: ‘Day I put on this badge, I signed up for the minority. Goes with the pay.’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Herne, remembering.

  ‘Which way you heading?’ asked the sheriff.

  ‘Through Diamond Valley and up towards Banning. From there we’ll loop round to Arrowhead Lake.’

  ‘San Bernadino?’

  ‘I guess so. After that we’ll ride through the San Gabriels if the weather holds. If it don’t then we’ll drop down towards the coast and pick it up from there. San Luis Obispo and Salinas, after that it’s Santa Cruz and we’re as good as home dry.’

  MacIntyre raised an eyebrow questioningly. It sounded easy enough when you ran through it that way. Only thing was, he couldn’t see them making ground at the same pace. They weren’t traveling through easy country and everyone they met on the road wasn’t going to be offering them something to drink and a helping hand. Then there was the little matter of Preacher Kenton and his two sons.

  MacIntyre scratched the back of his head under the brim of his Stetson. No, he didn’t think it was going to be an easy journey at all.

  ‘Wish you luck,’ he said, extending his hand.

  ‘Sure,’ said Herne, grasping him firmly. ‘Let’s hope we don’t need it.’

  ‘Far as the town’s concerned, ma’am,’ the sheriff said to Mary Anne Marie, ‘I got to say I’m glad you’re movin’ on. After what happened, I doubt but that there wouldn’t’ve been trouble again afore long. On a personal level, though, I’d say it was a pleasure to do business with you. You and them girls of yours.’

  He touched her hand for a moment and turned away, began walking back into town. Herne and Mary Anne Marie watched him go for several yards and then got back to their separate affairs. When the sun was almost directly overhead, the two wagons pulled slowly away from the little community of tents and shacks and began to draw out of town.

  ~*~

  The first few days were slow but pleasant enough. Mary Anne Marie took the reins on the lead wagon most of the time, Ilsa and Irma spelling one another behind. Herne rode ahead on the gelding, checking out the trail and keeping a weather-eye open for other kinds of trouble. They were close enough to the Mexican border still to run into one of the packs of border rats that made a living raidin
g both sides of the Rio Grande, rustling and robbing freight wagons and stage coaches. Any wild country throws up its own breed of desperadoes and Southern California wasn’t any different from the rest.

  Between scouting expeditions, Herne let the horse trot along beside the wagons, or tied it to the rear and sat up with one or other of the girls, swapping yarns and generally passing the time of day.

  The sun never seemed to get too hot those early days of the journey and though there were clouds enough building up to the east, they kept their distance back over the San Jacinto Mountains.

  The trail wound through a succession of small forests – white fir, piñon pine, ponderosa, cedar and Jeffrey. They made camp and ate around midday and again at dusk and Herne almost came to believe things were going to pass smooth as a ribbon of silk. Even Christiane wasn’t finding the trail as hard as had been thought. For one thing the pace was slow and careful, and for another she seemed to be mending quicker than the doctor had anticipated. She spent a lot of time laying on a couple of mattresses that had been stretched out down the center of the second wagon; otherwise she sat up front and enjoyed the company and the view.

  They were less than a day’s journey from Banning, passing along in the shadow of Tahquitz Peak, when Herne broke off in the middle of a sentence and swung his head to the left of the trail. It was only a moment, and then he was sitting back and finishing what he’d been saying, but he could tell from the concern stretched across her eyes that Mary Anne Marie had noticed his reaction. Stephanie stayed as she was, smiling, eager to pick up the story and carry it on.

  Herne nodded briefly and dropped to the ground, waiting till the second wagon had come level and unlooping the gelding’s reins from the rear. He swung up into the saddle and touched the animal’s flanks with his spurs, breaking through the tree line and disappearing from sight.

  Mary Anne Marie glanced down at the rifle which lay under her feet, flicked out the whip and picked up the pace just a little. She didn’t know what Herne had seen, but sure as hell it was something.

  Herne rode in and out of the pines before reaching a small clearing some thirty yards off the road. A small stream ran over a slab of reddish rock and filtered through thick, tall grass into a narrow channel that sped it away to the west.

  He checked the rifle in its scabbard, as much from force of habit as anything.

  What he had seen could have been a piece of glass or metal used for signaling, could have been a spyglass; there might be a harmless and natural explanation but it was safer to presume the worst. He moved the rein sufficiently to set the gelding in motion and steered her around the broad trunk of a ponderosa, whose summit pushed high above the level of the surrounding trees.

  A bird with black and white wings flapped by before him and landed on a branch with a squawk. A couple of red squirrels played tag from ground to tree and back to ground again.

  Herne drew the gelding to a halt and leaned forward, setting his hand over its broad nose.

  The noise he’d thought he heard had gone. There was no more sign of anything flickering amongst the trees. Maybe it was nothing after all.

  A further few minutes on and he found what he’d been looking for. Marks in the ground where a horse had been tethered, one of its shoes chipped and badly indented. He dismounted and walked slowly around. Soon he found the man’s bootmarks where he’d shinned up one of the trees to signal or to spy - perhaps both. He could almost smell a faint taint of tobacco smoke clinging to the air and, sure enough, his toe turned up a match end close by a clump of leaves.

  Herne remounted and made his way back to the trail, coming up to the wagons at a canter.

  His eyes asked Mary Anne Marie if she’d noticed anything and the shake of her head answered no.

  ‘Guess I’ll ride on ahead aways,’ he said, keeping his voice as noncommittal as he could.

  ‘Okay, we’ll see you in a while.’

  This time Stephanie noticed a tightening in the older woman’s voice and asked what was wrong.

  ‘Nothing. Why?’

  But Stephanie couldn’t say why. She shrugged and gave a funny little half-smile and shifted a mite closer to Mary Anne Marie on the bench seat.

  ~*~

  Herne put a quarter of a mile between himself and the wagons. He thumbed the safety thong from the hammer of his Colt and kept his eyes skinned. The trail twisted right and left and back again; ahead it rose up a steady couple of hundred feet towards a tumble of rocks crowned by a single, sparse pine, its branches bent and twisted by the constant wind.

  It was too good a place for an ambush.

  He wet his lips and turned back into the trees, riding carefully forward for another forty yards. Nothing, no one seemed to be up there with that solitary pine, but that didn’t stop the coil of his guts from tugging and churning like he was about to ride right into a hail of lead.

  Taking the wagons through the trees was near to impossible and letting them head straight up that slope nothing short of foolish.

  He needed time to clear his mind and the summit as well.

  Mary Anne Marie expressed no surprise when he told her to brake the wagons and wait for his say-so. There was surprise and alarm on the girls’ faces but none of them questioned the Tightness of what he’d told them to do. Herne slipped the Sharps from under the saddle and transferred it to his left hand. If there was a bushwacker stashed away up there then he just might be able to give him a taste of his own medicine. He left the gelding with the wagons and went ahead on foot, slipping into the pines and out of the girls’ sight.

  Once, he figured there was a man positioned up on the rocks for sure. A quick flicker of movement was enough to bring the rifle to Herne’s shoulder and he drew a bead on the side of the boulder that blocked off the base of the pine.

  One minute then two and there’d been no cause for him to squeeze back on the trigger. He lowered the long-barreled rifle and began to climb. It took him the best part of half an hour to clamber the rough-hewn way between boulders that took him around the hill at an angle and brought him up to the peak from the western side.

  The last thirty yards he shimmied on his elbows and knees.

  The top was bare.

  Just the twisted trunk that seemed to have coiled round and round upon itself and the green and brown branches pointed towards the ocean like a stiffened flag.

  A worn and roughened passage over almost bare rock and a perfect position for covering the trail from the south. One man with a rifle could have held off a small army from there, given enough ammunition. One man could have picked off the riders of the first wagon and likely the second without ever exposing himself to a return shot.

  But there was nobody there.

  Herne set off back down the trail to tell the women that it was okay to continue.

  ~*~

  ‘What did you see?’ Mary Anne Marie asked softly, pouring Herne’s coffee into the enamel mug.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What did you think you saw?’

  ‘Man with some kind of eye-piece, signalin’ maybe. Out in the trees.’

  ‘And up in the rocks?’

  ‘Didn’t see a damn thing. Not ever. No more’n a queasy feelin’ in my gut.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sometimes it pays off an’ others it don’t. All that happened was I scraped the skin off my knees an’ wore a few more blisters onto my hands. That an’ the horses got an extra blow.’

  Mary Anne Marie stood away, the coffee pot steaming slightly in her hand. ‘There’s nothing to worry about then?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  They both knew he was lying.

  ~*~

  At dawn they found out why.

  Herne heard a bird whistle and shuffle through the scrub close by the edge of the place they’d made camp. One of the wagon horses was getting restless up towards the trail. He knew these things without opening his eyes. His arm stretched out from beneath the blanket and he rolled over onto his back, yawned and blinked awa
ke.

  Immediately he saw the first man.

  Outlined against the first spreading light of the sun, head and shoulders etched dark, the barrel of the rifle at his right side a narrow black line.

  Herne rolled sideways, his hand reaching for his gun. The finger ends touched the leather of the holster and slid upwards. Before they reached the place where the reassuring smoothness of the butt should be, he knew the holster was empty.

  His fingers grasped at nothing and a raucous, sudden laugh broke across the morning.

  Herne pushed himself into a sitting position while the others came slowly, reluctantly awake around the grey embers of the previous night’s fire.

  ‘What’s goin’ on?’ Mary Anne Marie was halfway to her feet when Herne’s shout stilled her.

  She looked across the fire at him and he gestured for her to settle back down. The other women stared about themselves, startled, surprised, feeling the beginnings of fear.

  There seemed to be six of them, but Herne guessed they’d have left at least one more with the horses. The one who’d laughed-a harsh, cracked sound like a malevolent rooster -was a round-faced Mexican with a swelling belly and tarnished conchos sewn onto the edges of his leather vest and the brim of his wide sombrero. A drooping moustache hung around a fleshy mouth. Two pistols were pushed down into reversed holsters worn low below his hips.

  The man Herne had seen first-the one on the rock between the cedars-was squatting there with all the balance and patience of an Apache, which was what he was. A dark red bandanna was tied about his head, holding his long, black and greased hair flat over his ears. He held his rifle at an angle from chest to shoulder, his free hand resting on the knee of his off-white cotton pants. His face was dark and shadowed and totally immobile.

  Between him and the Mexican were a couple of wasted-looking whites with mean faces and lean bodies, both toting handguns they’d taken the precaution to have drawn and primed ready.

  To the other side of the Apache, back off Ilsa and Irma and staring at the two girls with unmistakable greed, were a pair of half-breed Mexicans, dressed much like their leader except that they had crossed bandoliers over their sagging chests. One of them had something hanging from the side of his belt that looked awful like a human scalp.