The Black Widow

by John J. McLaglen

  ‘Good night, Mister Coburn.’

  ‘Call me “Whitey”, Miss Rebecca. The world’s divided into those that I’d kill to hear call me that, and those that I really like to use the name. And it’s not too equal a division, neither.’

  ‘All right, Whitey, and you must call me “Becky”, like Jed does. Now we’re friends. Good night.’

  ‘Good night, Becky.’

  Herne kissed her gently on the cheek. With the protection of the shelter, it was no longer necessary to cover up one’s head and face against the cold, and she looked unbelievably young and vulnerable lying there, eyes closed as his lips brushed her cheek.

  ‘Night, Jed.’

  ‘Sleep tight, Becky. Wake bright.’

  She closed her eyes, intending to lie there and listen in to the men talking, trying to learn a little more about life. And a little more about Jed Herne.

  Although it was only a little past seven at night, she was asleep within a couple of minutes.

  ‘Spunky little bitch,’ said Coburn, expertly making a roll-up in one hand, running his pale tongue along the edge of the paper to seal it.

  ‘Yeah. She’s seen a lot of death. Worries me, Whitey. I tell you that. It’s not right a girl just turned fifteen should be faced with all this.’

  ‘Not right neither a girl like her should have her Ma screwed and then butchered by a gang of sons of bitches. Nor have her Pa gunned down in the back in the puke and sawdust of a bar.’

  Jed had filled his friend in with what had been happening since March, and Coburn had listened quietly, occasionally nodding his head. A couple of times asking a question.

  ‘Not surprised you’re finding the punks comin’ out the woodwork once they hear Herne the Hunter’s back on the road spitting death around. We both been around too long for that. Each one wanting to be the kid who laid Whitey Coburn or Jed Herne up there in Boot Hill. I’m tired of it, I tell you that. I’m about ready to quit and get a spread like you did.’

  ‘How come you never came visitin’ me and Louise up there? I was kind of hurt.’

  ‘Jed...’ Coburn passed him the cigarette, thin as a straw, and paused for a moment while he took a draw and handed it back. ‘From what I hear that young lady married you and saved you from dyin’ in the dust. You was goin’ too long, and takin’ too many chances. I reckon you’d sort of outlived your life. Isn’t that right?’

  Herne nodded, poking the fire with the toe of his boot. ‘Maybe. You see so many good men gunned down that you begin to wonder why not you as well. And that’s just the first step along a road. Once you lose faith in your own skill, then you’re finished. That was when Louise came along and showed me how to live different.’

  ‘That’s it. That’s why I didn’t come. I was, and still am, a gunman. I never went away like you. Maybe I never will. But if I’d ridden by, some poor bastard’s blood all over my hands, you reckon your little lady’d have made me welcome? No. She’d have given me water for my horse and a bite to eat for myself, and she’d only have been happy when my ass vanished round the next bend in the trail. Then she’d have been able to sit back and know that you hadn’t taken a hankerin’ to go and follow me.’

  ‘Guess you’re right, Whitey. Louise could never take to violence. That’s why it was so much worse for her ... what happened that day ... was so bad ...you know?’

  There was a long silence, broken by Coburn putting a few more sticks on the fire as it sank low,

  ‘Jed? When I caught young Becky, and she got a touch of the vapors, first thing she said, before you even turned up out the snow like a white Wendigo, she told me that she was on her way to come and help you. Seems she’s got a little derringer in her saddle. On her way to tackle Whitey Coburn and his gang of desperadoes. And the whole Stanwyck army if need be.’

  Herne laughed quietly, the noise penetrating to the girl’s dreams, making her stir, and roll over, still locked fast in sleep.

  ‘She’s got the guts of her Ma. Her Pa was different. There was something rotten about Bill Yates. I’d wondered about it, but he wasn’t a bad neighbor, and he kept it buried. Now and again it’d sort of spark through. On top he wasn’t bad, but there was nothing to back it up.’

  Coburn chuckled. ‘Puts me in mind of that vigilante marshal in Durango. Back in the early seventies. Posted us both out of town, with his white affidavits.’

  Herne smiled too at one of the host of shared memories. ‘Thought those damned affidavits were some kind of magic potion to scare us away.’

  ‘Posted the whole damned town. Every damned door and wall. “Whereby by the decision of the good and upright citizens of Durango the below-named are declared hereby posted on this white affidavit as being not welcome. Isaiah Coburn and Jedediah Herne. And if I catch them in town I shall crap my damned britches!” Yeah!’

  ‘Remember his face when we rode in that morning, and took him for a walk with us? Your rope round his neck, and made him take down every one of his posters with his bare hands.’

  ‘Then we got that Chinee cook out the saloon and got him to boil them all down into a kind of thick sludge. Got a table from the saloon there and sat the poor son of a bitch marshal down in the middle of his own main street in front of those fine brave vigilantes and helped him eat the whole shooting-match.’

  Both of them laughed at the memory, until Herne’s face hardened. ‘That was an easy one, Whitey. What about that Mount Abora place?’

  For the next hour and more they talked about the target, pooling what little information they had. Herne summed it up.

  ‘Twelve men. Some of them double as servants and guns. There’s two who are just servants. All the way from London, England, they say. Butler and a housekeeper. The mother, who they reckon eats horseshoes and spits out the nails. And the two boys.’

  Coburn nodded. ‘That’s what I hear. That’s the bad news, but the good news is that I reckon not many of their men are worth a candle in a hurricane. Mostly young punks like we took down the valley this afternoon. They shouldn’t be the real problem. No, that’s gettin’ in the place. Like a fortress, they say.’

  Gradually, as they sketched in the plans of the house, a sort of a possibility appeared. The trouble was there were so many blank areas in their map, where they had no idea what they’d find in there. But that would come later.

  ‘So that’ll be it,’ said Whitey, leaning back, and stretching his boots out to the fire which was now smoldering down to a few glowing cinders.

  ‘Yeah. Let’s get us some sleep. I’m going out for a leak.’

  Herne climbed stiffly across the small shelter, pulling up his coat collar as he went outside, but the snow had miraculously stopped. The night was as cold as charity, but clear and sharp. The stars points of glittering light. A sliver of moon hung low down over the hills.

  When he came back, still buttoning up his trousers, Coburn lay out by the fire, half asleep.

  Pulling a blanket from the roll, Jed threw it to his old friend. ‘Get turned in, Whitey.’

  ‘Jed?’

  ‘Yes?’

  “The girl?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘You heard what the kids said. Nolan’s got a contract out on her too. But not with me. As long as Nolan’s alive then it’s not just you he’s after. You’ve got to get her somewheres well away from his arm. And it’s a mighty long arm.’

  ‘I been doin’ me some thinkin’ along just those lines Whitey. I heard there’s some good places out in Europe. A place called Berkshire near London, England. Damn pricey, but I reckon it might be worth it. Keep her away a year or so, until things blow over. Or... ’

  The options he left dangling involved the both of them too closely for either of them to want to discuss them. Within a day either or both of them might be dead. Lying under the snow like the five young men only a half mile or so from where they camped. And even if they survived against the Stanwycks, then what?

  ‘Good night, Whitey.’

  ‘Night, Je
d. Good to be out on the trail again with you. Real good.’

  There was a silence for a few moments, then Herne sat up.

  ‘What in the name of God’s that smell? Someone set fire to your feet?’

  Coburn also sat up, moving a little further from the dying fire. In the pale light, they both saw the wisps of smoke curling up from the soles of his boots where he’d left them too near the ashes.

  ‘Damned cold tonight.’

  ‘That smell, put you in mind of anything, Jed? That and a fire?’

  ‘Not of anything I care to recall. Though we could do with that sort of heat right now.’

  ‘Went back to that part of Kansas, near where Lawrence used to be. Brought it all back. Must be near on twenty years ago we took that place apart.’

  Jed counted on his fingers. ‘Nineteen. We were a fine couple of soldiers back then. Both wet behind the ears. Full of fire, and reckonin’ that old W. G. Quantrill was the finest damn officer anyone could have.’

  ‘Cole and the Youngers. Frank and Jesse. Not many of us left above ground now that rode with Quantrill in them hot summer days.’

  ‘I feel ashamed to think back on some of the things I done back in them days. And Lawrence was one of the worst.’

  Whitey lay back again, wrapping himself in the blanket, the mane of silver spread out around him like the hair of a drowned man. ‘Close to two hundred men, women and children we slaughtered that August day. Burned the town down to ashes. They were bad days in the War, Jed. Worst in Kansas and Missouri than anywhere else. Brother killing brother, while the father waited to kill whoever lived.’

  The smell of burning leather faded from the shelter, and with it the scent of the memories of their fighting days in the Civil War.

  Herne felt himself slipping into sleep when Coburn interrupted him again.

  ‘Jed?’

  ‘What is it, Whitey? We got to be up early tomorrow, you know.’

  “Yeah. But I was just thinkin’. Why the Hell is it that we old men keep thinkin’ so much about the past?’

  Herne lay silent for a while before replying. ‘I guess it’s because we don’t have a lot of future.’

  Chapter Five

  Wednesday, October 11th, started sunny, with the kind of blue sky that seems like it’s going to be there forever. All the way round the horizon there wasn’t a single cloud to be seen, not even hanging on the jagged peaks of the tall mountains to the north and west.

  Tired out after the excitement of the previous day, Becky slept in late. When she woke she found a healthy fire warming the shelter and a narrow path of trodden snow marking the way Jed and Whitey had gone to get water and more wood from among the trees.

  The two of them were sitting out on large stones, heads close together, and the albino was drawing something in the snow with the pointed end of a long stick. They both looked round as soon as she made a move out of her cocoon of blankets. She noticed that both of them made the instinctive drop of the right hand towards the holstered pistols, checked unconsciously as they saw what it was had disturbed them.

  ‘Good to see you, Becky,’ grinned Coburn, no longer the frightening figure she had once thought him. He had washed his face and combed back his hair so that it hung in silver waves over his shoulders.

  ‘Coffee’s good and hot, Becky,’ said Herne, pouring out a steaming mug for her.

  ‘You should have woken me,’ she complained, feeling for some obscure reason insulted.

  ‘Didn’t need to. We been talkin’ about supplies. Whitey here could go down the store safely in Lone Pine, get us some basics and be back not long after midday. Might be we can finish up here before nightfall, but we got to reckon the dice aren’t goin’ to sit up and beg for us. So we might be here for a few days. Another foot or so of snow on top of what fell yesterday, and we could be in a heap of trouble.’

  ‘I’ll take my horse down. Say that me and my friends are moving on. It’ll be a while yet before folks get concerned and come lookin’ up here. Not before the spring thaw, I guess. So I’ll be goin’ now, and pick up the horse.’

  ‘Doesn’t he have a name?’

  ‘No. Never got round to it. Once rode clear across the desert on a horse with no name. Foundered under me a half mile from water. If’n I’d given him a name, then I’d be sitting here remembering him and how sorry I feel about the way he went. Too many people to recall without concerning myself with animals. Now,’ he stood up, stamping his feet to get the circulation going. ‘I’ll be getting going. You do that patrol, Jed, and we’ll talk when I’m back.’

  Without a wave or a backwards glance, Coburn walked off through the frozen snow, his heels kicking up a tiny spray of white at every step. Becky watched him go, looking out of the corner of her eye at Herne. Seeing a certain look in his face she had never seen before. Not since the death of Louise. Something that was close to being affection. Something that she’d never sensed when he looked at her. The thought made her feel jealous and possessive, aware that the years that lay between the two men represented a past that she could never share.

  Leaving her with the horses and the shelter, Herne went off on a similar patrol to the previous day, but with a new lightness of heart. There was no longer the threat from Whitey Coburn. His old friend turned enemy was again turned, for a time, friend.

  There had been moments during the last night, when Herne had considered drawing his Colt and putting a bullet, without any risk, through the back of Coburn’s narrow skull. He knew that if they both survived the coming battle against the Stanwyck private army, that he and Whitey would have to face each other in a fight that must end in a killing. That was as inevitable as the sun lurching up from the eastern sky over the plains.

  But the odds against him, locked up beyond the blue lake in Mount Abora, were too great. Stacked higher than he liked to think about. So Whitey would equalize them a little. And afterwards... ?

  That would be a shot to call when the time came for the calling.

  He noticed that there was the faintest blush of ice round the fringes of the lake, like spittle hanging at the corner of a madman’s mouth. Fronds of white, blending into the snow that lay crisply on the shores of the deep water. Herne skirted the open where his footmarks would be clearly visible to anyone with a telescope, remaining under the cover of the trees, treading softly and carefully.

  If their provisional plan was to work, then his care in surveying the land immediately nearest to the walls of the house would be crucial. It would mean the difference between success and lying bare-boned and bloody in the snow.

  He avoided the camp-site where Coburn and his gang had been living, guessing that the scent of fresh blood would have attracted any predators in the area to snuffle and root among the corpses. There would be enough trouble with human animals.

  Gradually the trees thinned out, and the top end of the path faded away into nothing so that he had to thread his way among the low branches. He guessed that the guards around the house had never found the narrow trail up from the lake, failing to backtrack it because of the odd way it vanished at that end. Whatever the reason, it worked in his favor, meaning that there was a way up and also a way down, other than the corkscrewing main trail to Mount Abora.

  Within three hundred yards of the house, Herne dropped to his knees and squatted down, peering ahead. He could just catch glimpses of the gray walls. He stayed like that for a full quarter hour, watching for signs of the patrolling sentries, checking his pocket-watch to time the intervals between their patrols.

  It fell in with what both he and Coburn had separately thought. Generally in pairs, the sentries walked around the outside of the huge house about once every three-quarters of an hour. There were never less than four men on patrol at any one time and the delays made Jed suspect that they did more than just cover the area immediately closest to the house. They must be patrolling some way into the grounds on the far side nearest the main trail.

  It began to look as though there wasn’t
even the suspicion of the back way up towards Mount Abora, over the hills and down past the lake. So, if they depended entirely on the twisting, overhung road across the valley and up over the ridge to Lone Pine and the outside world it meant that Whitey’s purchases in the store there would be as vital as they’d hoped.

  Finally, before returning to their camp, Jed decided to test out just how close he could get to the house, and whether it was possible to move clear round it. Waiting until the next pair of sentries had walked by, their feet crunching through the snow that lay thicker on that side of the valley, Herne began to step cautiously between the trees.

  He was so used to the location of the tree roots, sticking up in gnarled shapes among the whiteness, that he very nearly stepped on the small pile of twigs between two particularly large mounds. Stopping dead in his tracks, with one foot actually raised in the air, Herne looked around him.

  The nearer set of roots was from that jagged pine on the right. And the next heap of snow covered the roots from that tree ahead. So what was concealed in the snow between them?

  The splintered tree had been hit by lightning within the last year or so and a longish branch lay against the trunk. Jed reached out and took it, shaking off its thin covering of snow, holding it by one end. It was about eight feet long, near as thick as a man’s wrist. Gently, he laid it down among the twigs ahead of him. Carefully pressing the further end of the branch into the snow.

  Clang!!

  The noise was stunningly loud in the peace of the forest, sending a bird noisily squawking out into the blue, echoing around for seconds. The branch was jerked from Herne’s hands, and he took a step back, eyes raking the surrounding wood to see if the noise had attracted any unwanted attention.

  But nothing moved, apart from the bird now circling lazily on a thermal way up high. Knowing what he was going to see, Herne moved forwards and tugged at the nearer end of the branch, freeing it from the explosion of snow and earth that had covered the further end.

  The steel claws of the trap had buried themselves deeply in the wood, leaving great white gouges and splinters. Jed tugged experimentally at the branch, but the trap was staked down deep in the earth. Hammered home with a sledge so that no amount of pulling would ever shift it.