For one fragment of time Sheriff Patrick Ryman thought that he was going to vomit. Acid bile rose in his throat, nearly choking him. And part of his mind refused to believe what was happening. Could this really be the man on the wanted flyer? He didn’t bother to read the description. Man said his name was Jed Herne. The Hunter. That was the name on the bill. Clear and black. Letters that seemed to come clean off the pale paper like fire.
Fat and aging though he was, there’d been times when Ryman had been a lethal gun. Fast and accurate, even though the years had whittled away the needlepoint of his reflexes.
In that supreme moment he reacted quicker than he’d ever done. Everything coming together like oiled cogs. Pushing Herne with his hip, sending the taller man off balance. Hand down for the Remington, sliding it from the holster. Thumb on the hammer, dipping his right shoulder as he turned to face Jed.
‘Bastard!’ he snarled.
Ryman had never been much of a lawman for the “Dead or Alive” side of the trade. Dead was easier.
The shootist hadn’t realized for a vital splinter of frozen time what was happening. Only catching a glimpse of his own name decorating the bottom half of the flyer, then he was stumbling sideways, banging his right leg against the desk, so that he couldn’t make an easy draw. The fat lawman was faster than he had any right to be, and the Remington was coming up, cocked, and Herne hadn’t any doubts that Ryman would pull on the trigger.
The bayonet still lay on top of the roll-top desk, hilt towards him.
The two men were less than three feet away from each other. Ryman started to grin, knowing that there was no way he could miss.
‘Thousand dollars,’ he started to say.
Getting as far as: ‘Thous… .’
The stranger had punched him. But it wasn’t that hard a blow, low down, a hand’s span above the gunbelt. Making him gasp for a moment, checking the action of his pudgy index finger on the short trigger.
Herne twisted the bayonet as he tugged it across from left to right, slicing through the shirt, skin and flesh. Spilling acres of blood on the polished floor of the office.
‘Oh, sweet Mary,’ gasped Ryman, feeling the wetness and a bitter chill across his belly. Like being caught in an old blue Norther on a February evening.
He clapped his hands over the gaping wound, everything else forgotten in the sudden shock and pain.
Herne reached out with his left hand and gently took the pistol from the unresisting fingers. Laying it on the desk, on top of the pile of notices.
‘You killed me, you dumb bastard. You fuckin’ killed me.’
The words came gritting out, each one torn painfully from the deeps of the lawman’s throat.
‘Nearly. Damned near.’
Ryman spun away, staggering towards the closed door. Heading for the street. Herne looked past him, through the trim lace curtains, seeing a pair of poke-bonneted women chattering by the windows. Ignorant of the deadly conflict inside the lawman’s office.
The shootist kept his own pistol holstered, guessing that one shot would bring the whole of Pueblo falling in on his head. And with that wanted flyer there for all to see, it wouldn’t be more than a few minutes before he was dangling out with the strange fruit on the town’s hanging tree.
He stepped after the stumbling man, trying to avoid slipping in the glistening pools of crimson that dappled the floor. Closing in on Ryman, reaching with his left hand and grabbing at a fistful of the lank, thinning hair. Tugging him backwards, bracing him with a knee in the lower part of the spine.
‘Please …’ gasped Ryman. It wasn’t a word that ever came easily to his lips, except when he visited some of the young boys who peddled themselves around the border towns.
Jed Herne had never been very big on mercy.
He drew the edge of the bayonet across Ryman’s throat, opening him up from the angle of the jaw-bone on the left, clean through to behind the right ear. Hacking apart the big artery, so that the remains of the lawmen’s life-blood jetted through the still air. Splashing all the way over on the far well, masking the glass front of a case of chained Winchesters.
The body dropped so quickly that he barely had time to let go of the big man’s hair, allowing the corpse to slump at his feet. Ryman’s legs carried on twitching for several seconds and the fingers opened and closed, spasmodically, nails scraping at the planks like the claws of mice at midnight.
It stopped.
And the room was totally silent. Outside Herne could still hear the heels of the women’s shoes, clicking along the boardwalk. A few dry leaves were whirled along the street by the rising wind, rustling against the door of the office.
He stooped and wiped the Civil War bayonet across Ryman’s shirt, slipping it back into the scabbard in his boot. Straightening and walking to the desk. Bending to read the flyer with greater care.
A thousand dollars. Dead or alive. Jed Herne, known as “Herne the Hunter”. Aged forty-five. Black hair to the shoulders. Silver in places. Tall. With a Colt Peacemaker. Dressed in black. With gang of four. Two brothers, one with scarred face. One small man. And a black. Robbed the bank at Northfield in Minnesota and killed a cashier and a deputy.
Herne immediately remembered Jesse. A whole host of memories came flooding to him of the pale-faced kid who’d ridden with Quantrill. His brother, Frank. The Youngers. Cole, was he still up in Sweetwater Penitentiary?
Now someone else had done the same First National Bank.
And others. Small towns, each one further west than the last one. The most recent only a week ago. Forty miles or so east of Pueblo. Which had to mean that the gang were likely to be somewhere in the area.
Near the bottom of the poster was the list of men that they’d killed.
Herne put the flyer back down on top of the pile, hissing between his teeth. There’d been other times and other places when he’d been wanted by the law, with hired killers on his trail. But that had been years back. Now he was older and less in the mood for running. But once they found the body of Sheriff Ryman there’d be a posse out after him. And it couldn’t be too long for two and two to get added together and finish up at four.
He thought about burning down the jail to help conceal the murder of the lawman, but the building was partly of stone. It might be better to quietly leave and lock up. That way it could be all day before they suspected anything was wrong.
Too many people had seen him. The bar-keep. Other men in the saloon. Folks in the street.
The old man in the livery stable. Jed remembered that he’d even told him his name. The black stallion had been put in its own stall and there was a piece of paper nailed to the door. The old-timer had painstakingly spelled out “Herne” on it.
It was just a matter of time.
There was nobody out back in the cells. He left the body exactly where it was, the blood already starting to congeal, losing its freshness under a dull skin. Jed looked around the office, wondering whether or not to take the flyer. Finally deciding not to. There wasn’t much point. They’d come out after him whatever he did.
He flattened himself against the door, squinting sideways through the curtains, seeing the street was quiet. A rickety buckboard had just rattled by, driven by an elderly woman wearing man’s pants tucked into working boots. She was smoking a stained clay pipe, the wind tugging away the smoke.
He took the key off the chain, opening the door and closing it quickly behind him. Turning the key in the lock and pocketing it. Walking away towards the stable as though he had every right to be there. Nobody watching him would have guessed that he’d just cut the throat of their elected sheriff.
As he went past the saloon he saw the bar-keep out on the porch, working at sweeping the dust out the door with a long-handled broom.
It was around three in the afternoon.
Eighteen miles out of Pueblo a group of five men in linen duster coats were pushing on northwards at a fast canter. Their leader was tall, with a black hat. Long hair that was touched with grey. They were in a hurry.
Trying to make sure they kept an appointment at a bank the following noon.
The three whiskies were working well in the bartender’s stomach, bringing a flush to his cheeks and a slight fuzziness to his tongue.
‘Hey, mister!’
Herne stopped in his tracks. Hand reaching down in an automatic reflex to check that he’d slipped the cord from across the hammer of the pistol.
‘What?’
‘You find the sheriff?’
‘I didn’t … Yeah. I found him.’
‘How was he?’
‘Sleeping when I found him.’
‘What about when you left him?’
Herne summoned up a thin smile. ‘Guess he was still sleeping.’
The bar-keep looked around to make sure nobody could overhear him. ‘Fact is, mister, that fat old bastard spends most of his damned time sleepin’. That and eatin’ and fartin’ and carryin’ on shameful with young boys.’
‘That so?’ The shootist wasn’t surprised.
‘Yeah. I hate the stinkin’ son of a bitch.’
Herne waved a hand as the man pettishly threw the broom down and walked back inside the saloon.
The shootist carried on towards the stables, thinking about the way the town seemed to feel about Sheriff Ryman.
‘Yeah,’ he said to himself. ‘Seems like to know him was to love him.’