Till Death (A Herne the Hunter western. Book 15)

by John J. McLaglen

  Up towards the rise of the land slope and then suddenly the man appeared over the ridge, outlined, flat, against the opaque sky.

  Louise started and her fear communicated itself to the horse. The man was astride his own mount, watching her. It was several moments of panic before she recognized him.

  The horse slowed under her and she pulled on the reins, bringing it back under control, wheeling round to where the man waited.

  ‘I scared you.’

  ‘No, it was my fault. I was silly.’

  ‘I did and I’m sorry for it.’

  Herne’s voice was strong and gentle. The eyes he looked at her with were calm. Louise noticed that his hair was more kempt than when she’d met him that day outside the store, the stubble freshly shaved from his chin. He wore a bottle-green wool shirt under a tan leather vest and both looked to be new. His wool pants were grey with leather stitched into the insides of the legs for protection when he rode.

  He still wore his gun, safety-thong looped over the hammer.

  Herne raised the fingers of his right hand to his hat brim and pushed it back a shade. ‘You often come out ridin’?’

  Louise smiled quickly. ‘You should know,’ she replied, half-turning her head away.

  ‘Meanin’?’

  ‘You’ve been watching me for the past four days. Keeping your distance and watching.’ She was refusing to look at him at all now, her eyes fixed on some determinate object out across the sagebrush.

  Herne could think of nothing more to say.

  ‘I didn’t expect you, here, so close.’

  ‘You mind?’

  The answer came slowly. ‘I minded being watched.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It made me feel ... I don’t know…’ Her shoulders shuddered beneath the blue coat she wore. ‘Dirty.’

  ‘But still you came again.’

  Her eyes this time showed anger. ‘Why shouldn’t I ride here? I always ride here.’

  She could tell he was trying not to smile at her anger. She wanted to turn her horse away and ride off back home and leave him there. Stupid, stubborn man!

  ‘Why are you watching me all the time?’ she asked. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Waiting for you.’

  She didn’t understand: she didn’t want to understand: she did.

  ‘What on earth for?’

  Herne did smile and Louise thought it was a smile she liked, it made his face look suddenly open and honest - and younger.

  ‘You know,’ Herne said.

  Louise whirled her head away and called to her horse, giving the reins a quick jerk and setting off down the slope. She kicked at the animal’s sides, back into fast trot, not looking round because she knew he would still be there, against the skyline, watching her.

  Watching her.

  I know why, thought Louise as she rode. I know. I know.

  ~*~

  The Hondo had a thin film of ice, like milk, at its edges. The wind blew from the east from dawn past dusk. Herne was wearing a heavy wool coat when Louise saw him, squatting down close by the river bed, and apparently doing nothing. His hat was jammed tight down on his head, a scarf emerging from under the brim and covering his ears.

  Louise dismounted fifty yards short of the river and led her horse by the rein. Frost still lay here and there and the ground was slippery for both of them.

  She looked at Herne’s back, knowing he must be aware of her presence, but he didn’t move. Only when she was standing next to him did he look up.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Louise asked.

  ‘Waiting for you.’

  ~*~

  The Christmas dance and social was held in the preacher’s house, it being the biggest in town and the one folk – some folk, those who’d been converted and baptized – were most used to coming to.

  Louise and her mother spent days making decorations from paper and painting them, old lengths of ribbon were pressed into service, dresses that Louise had grown out of and which were too worn to be handed down to one of the town girls were cut into strips.

  When they weren’t tending to the decorations, they were in the kitchen, baking. Meat and potato pies, all manner of pies using fruit they’d bottled in the summer, cakes with icing, cakes without, biscuits and soda crackers and jellies and trifles and custards.

  Louise’s mother had made her a new dress, white with lace at the collar and cuffs and around the hem. It was buttoned up to the neck with tiny pearl buttons, belted quite tight at the waist. The skirt flared out and Louise had managed to persuade her mother that she could use potato starch on one of her petticoats – as long as her father didn’t know.

  On the night before she set her hair in curls, using her mother’s tongs, and set it in coils of paper.

  She was more excited at the prospect of this Christmas dance than she had ever been. Only alone in her bed, the candle snuffed out and her father’s cold kiss fading from her cheek, did she allow herself to think why this might be.

  There was to be music. Mose Baker, in addition to his skill with the barber’s scissors and the undertaker’s embalming fluid, could play more than a few tunes on the fiddle. The blacksmith, a Swede whose real name no one could pronounce so they called him Swede, could play the mouth organ. Harding’s mother, not wanting her offspring to fall short of a second line in case he grew too tall to carry on the family tradition, had taught him the basic chords of the tenor banjo.

  The three musicians arrived early and made a space for themselves in the corner of the long, low room and began tuning up. After a while they started to run through the tunes they could play: reels and polkas and two-steps and lachrymose waltzes.

  All of the food was arranged on two groaning tables along one wall.

  Louise sat in front of the small mirror in her parents’ bedroom and stared at her face in the mirror and asked it questions to which she could get no answers.

  The first guests arrived early in the evening, sometime after eight, and Louise went running downstairs to greet them, her mother and father already standing there, formally, just inside the door. There was a long pause during which no one else arrived and she was terrified nobody else would. Her father carried in a bowl of hot punch from the kitchen and assured those present that there was almost no alcohol in it, almost none at all. What there was, he assured them, was slipped in by his wife when he wasn’t looking. Louise laughed politely with the rest, glad to see her father in such a good mood.

  After a little more than an hour, more visitors arrived and then more still and suddenly the room seemed full to overflowing and her parents had left their posts by the door and were mingling and talking. Louise stood close to the musicians with a glass of fruit cup in her hand, tapping her feet to the music and watching what she could of the door.

  When they struck up a polka, her father called for silence, quieted the band, waved his hands and insisted that some space was cleared at the center of the room so that he could dance with his only daughter.

  Louise blushed and turned her head.

  Her father stood before her and bowed from the waist and asked her if she would honor him with the pleasure of the next dance.

  Cole Baker beat time with his fiddle bow and foot and launched into the polka. Louise stepped inside her father’s arms and they were whirling, jumping around the floor, his feet sure but heavy, her own scarcely touching the floor, and he seemed to lift her from one step to another.

  The company let father and daughter have the first dance to themselves and applauded when it was over.

  Harding called a reel and the guests took their partners.

  Louise stepped away, hot and flushed, and through the excitement of arms and bobbing heads she saw Herne. He must have come in when she was dancing with her father.

  He stood a little way inside the door, looking around the room as though he had yet to see her. He was wearing a dark suit with a watch chain strung across the matching vest-both had been borrowed from
Harding’s store that day. His hair was brushed and he stood with his hat in his hand.

  Louise thought he looked lost. She wanted to go over to him and set him at his ease but she dared not.

  When the reel finished, the fiddle player announced a short break for refreshment and repairs to one of his strings and the people clapped and moved towards the food tables. Herne became lost in the crowd which almost at once seemed to expand to fill the entire room.

  She saw the little storekeeper push his way between the assorted bodies and then pull Herne away so that they might talk.

  Someone next to her began a conversation and Louise turned politely and listened.

  The party went on around her, everything happening so fast and yet not connecting with her at all. Her mind hummed with an excitement that was altogether different: her skin hummed with it.

  ‘Louise Ann,’ said her mother, stopping and touching her daughter’s arm, ‘I’ve never seen you looking as lovely.’

  Just six bars into a waltz she felt another touch on her arm and she knew it was him. They slid into the middle of the crowd, Herne holding her almost at arm’s length.

  He’s holding me, Louise thought, annoyed, as if I were china that might break.

  As the dance continued and couple wound around couple, they moved closer together. She could feel his fingers on the small of her back, each one of them separate, identifiable, there. His breath across her face as he shifted his head from side to side. His suit jacket was slightly rough beneath her hand. Through it she could feel the warmth of his body. And the hand which held her own…

  The music had stopped and they were, for seconds, stranded in the middle of the floor.

  She was aware of him giving a slight bow in front of her and saying something she failed to understand and turning away. She willed her legs to move but knew they wouldn’t. She closed her eyes and found she was walking, too, back to the side of the room.

  ‘Who was that?’ her mother asked. Her father knew.

  ‘Did you invite that man here?’

  Her face was stung into redness as if he had slapped her.

  ‘No, Father.’

  He moved his arm in such a way that she thought he was going to hit her.

  ‘If you are lying to me—’

  ‘William!’ said his wife, shocked.

  He took hold of Louise’s chin with his hand and turned her face so that it was looking up at his own.

  ‘Do you know who that man is?’

  Louise could feel her body shaking and she couldn’t answer.

  ‘Because I do. That man you were dancing with is a gunfighter, a killer—’

  ‘No!’

  Yes! Louise, you have seen him kill.’

  Louise’s mother wrung her hands and turned away. Now she remembered that morning in Lincoln when they had been visiting the store.

  ‘… an outlaw who lives by violence.’

  ‘No, Father.’

  He let go of her face and the white marks of his stern fingers were impressed upon her skin.

  ‘No, what, child?’

  ‘He is not an outlaw.’

  ‘He lives by the gun.’

  Louise clenched her fingers tight inside her hands. ‘He is not wearing a gun now.’

  Her mother turned back to them. ‘William, people are beginning to pay attention. Can’t we discuss this—’

  ‘There is nothing to discuss. I will not have a man like that under my roof.’

  ‘Fa …’ the word faded on Louise’s lips.

  Her father strode across the room to where Herne was standing.

  ‘You are not welcome in my house.’

  Herne looked the preacher in the eye and held his stare for several moments. Those folk in that part of the room quieted their conversation and tried surreptitiously to see what was going on.

  Herne spoke quietly: ‘I’ll talk with you again.’

  Before the preacher could contradict him, Herne strode out of the house.

  ~*~

  The preacher had the back of the wagon loaded with planks and he was carting them beyond the existing main street of Hondo, to the place where he intended to build his church. By the time it was ready the street would have expanded that far and the community with it: a church would be needed. His wife would then have the large room in their house to devote entirely to teaching the children who came to her for an hour each day to learn to read and write - and those he shared with her for bible study.

  A light fall of snow covered the ground, dusted the planks.

  The sky was the color of oatmeal.

  The preacher saw the horse and then, standing some distance off, Herne.

  Anger caught in his throat and he reached towards the driving whip beside him on the seat. This gunman, this squalid murderer was defiling the chosen ground for his church. He drew the team to a halt and hauled back on the brake.

  ‘I’ll help you unload.’

  ‘No.’

  Herne shrugged. ‘Heavy work for one man.’

  ‘You’ve no right here.’

  ‘Why not?’ Herne looked around. ‘I didn’t see no sign.’

  ‘God’s sign is here.’

  ‘Because you say so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that gives you the right to put me out? To judge? That it? That what your Bible tells you?’

  The preacher pointed at him accusingly. ‘You are a hired killer. You live by that gun you wear.’

  Herne slowly, deliberately unbuckled his gun belt and laid it to the ground.

  ‘What does that prove?’

  Herne stepped closer to him, away from the gun. ‘Why wear your black? What does that prove? That you’re a holy man?’

  ‘It’s my heart that’s holy.’

  ‘An’ mine ain’t, that what you’re sayin’?’

  ‘Your soul is damned.’

  Another pace. ‘Don’t it say nothin’ in that book you carry round with you ’bout folk changin’ their ways? Don’t that religion of yours allow for that?’

  The preacher nodded. ‘The lost lamb is more welcome back into the fold than any other.’

  Herne looked at him. ‘I don’t know nothin’ ’bout lambs. I got somethin’ more important to ask.’

  The preacher stared back down, stone-faced. ‘I want your permission to come courtin’ your daughter.’ The preached seemed for a second to reel back, the next moment the long tail of the whip was flying through the air towards Herne’s face. Herne thrust up his left arm and caught at it, letting the whip coil around the sleeve of his thick coat. The fingers of Herne’s other hand seized the whip and tore it from the preacher’s grasp.

  Harvey stumbled forward in the front of the wagon, almost losing his balance and tumbling down over the harness.

  Herne threw the whip aside. He was close to the preacher now, close and angry. T asked you, I asked you right. Now I’ll tell you this. I want Louise for my wife an’ I think she wants me. I don’t know. I ain’t asked her, not yet, I thought that should wait till I spoke with you. I wanted this to be right. For her. I hoped you’d see reason but it looks like reason ain’t one of your strong points. So you’d best listen: you forbid me to see her, talk with her, try keepin’ her locked in the house and soon as I know what she wants, I’ll take her away from you.’ He moved back a step. ‘Just take her is all.’ He pointed a warning into the preacher’s face. ‘You think on that a while.’

  ~*~

  Louise lay on her bed, head buried in her mother’s lap, her mother’s hand gently stroking her hair. The girl was quiet now, almost still. She had sobbed herself to silence.

  Her mother thought and thought and through the window she saw the sky grow darker and darker. She heard her husband moving around below, his step slow and heavy as though he had suddenly become an old man. She knew that he was sad enough to break.

  When she was sure that Louise was sleeping, she slid out from under the girl’s head and quietly went to the door, softly walked down the
stairs. Her husband’s eyes met hers and he knew before she spoke what she was going to say.

  ~*~

  The ice on the river had been thick just a week earlier. Louise had walked on it, Herne sitting astride his horse and smiling, warning her that he wasn’t going to dive in after her if she fell.

  ‘Jed?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You did mean what you said?’

  ‘’bout the weddin’?’

  ‘About … about your gun.’

  Below her the ice gave an almost inaudible creak.

  Herne sighed, nodded, got down from his horse. ‘Louise, we talked about it and talked and I gave you my word. The day we get married, this Colt goes away in some drawer and I’ll not take it out.’

  She smiled at him, suddenly radiant again, tried to run off the ice and almost slipped. They both heard the ice groan.

  ‘Hey, Louise!’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  She skipped on to the river bank and ran into his arms.

  All those weeks and he had never kissed her – well, he had kissed her, but not that way, not the way Louise sensed that he should, would.

  ‘As long as I’ve got you,’ Herne said, pressing her tight against him, ‘I’ll not wear a gun.’

  She wriggled away from him, her face flushed with the wind and the crisp air. ‘You’re wearing one now.’

  Herne laughed. ‘We ain’t married yet.’

  ‘Soon,’ she laughed back at him, happy. ‘Soon. In the spring.’

  Soon, she thought, in the spring.

  Her father had been persuaded so far and no further. He still refused adamantly to perform the ceremony himself. A preacher was being sent for from Lincoln. And when the wedding was over, they would go away. Herne had told Louise of a piece of land he knew to the west, in Arizona. Near enough to Tucson for them to be able to get whatever supplies they might need, far enough distant for Herne to lay low and let people forget him, forget his reputation. Begin a new life.

  Soon, thought Louise, soon.

  And she spent the weeks searching every branch for signs of bud.

  Chapter Nine

  The letter came through on the stage from Lincoln, but it had taken a detour there from Mesa. Seth Sheperd’s hand was shaky and small but the message was clear enough: the Latham brothers, Ezekiel, Damon and Howie, escaped from the state penitentiary, February 3rd, along with their cousin, Billy Dean Latham. Another cousin, Mason, was shot and killed by prison guards after helping them to make their escape.