‘All of ’em?’ said Sheriff Abernathy, unbelievingly.
‘Yeah. I didn’t stop to count the pieces, but there looked about enough there to account for what the children said.’
‘Oh, God. Oh, my God,’ repeated the lawman, putting his hands to his mouth as he thought he was about to begin praying.
The discovery of the victims of the Mescalero massacre didn’t bring them any nearer to finding the missing daughter of Senator Jackson. It had been obvious to Herne in that single glance that the carnage had been so thorough that there was no hope of any of the children being able to identify the girl from the shambles.
‘Will we go on into the town, now?’ asked Aaron, squatting on the ground with the other children. Barely visible in the early morning dimness. Only Caleb’s shock of white hair standing out.
‘I guess so. If’n I find that you’ve been holding out on me, boy, then I’ll kill you.’
‘Jed!’ exclaimed the sheriff.
‘I mean it. I know these murdering kids are lying to us. There has to be a reason. If I find it out and if it’s real bad, then I’ll kill them. You better believe that I mean it.’
There was an awkward hush between them all. For a second Herne thought that little Cal might speak up, as he looked at Jed, opening his mouth. But Mary simply rested her hand on his arm and he closed it again.
Dawn was coming close by the time that they were all near to the tottering remnants of the township of Houghton’s Bluff. The shells of the buildings that remained, spectral and stark in the pale light. They watched for a half hour, hidden by a curve on the trail leading into the settlement. There was a board leaning drunkenly to one side.
‘Houghton’s Bluff - Fastest Growing Town in the Arizona Territory,’ it said, with a population figure painted neatly beneath it. The thickness of the paint showing how many times it had altered. There was a peak of two hundred and forty-eight. Then the shrinking figures written underneath with less and less care. The numbers changing in leaps. Finally to three. The figure nearly obliterated by a set of bullet holes that had splintered through the board.
‘Fastest shrinking town in the Arizona Territory,’ said Herne, bitterly,
It was a little after five, by the sheriff’s battered silver half-hunter, when Jed was finally convinced that they might as well move. There had been no trace of life in the town at all. The Mescalero were hardly likely to have butchered their prisoners, and then stuck around to see who came.
If it hadn’t been for the wind carrying the noise away from them, Herne knew they’d have heard the sound of the killings. It just wasn’t possible to torture and mutilate so many people without the screaming being heard. No matter how careful you might be with gagging them. From the state of the corpses, it had been obvious that they had died during the previous evening. The Mescalero band - what remained of it - must have left along the back trail through the ghost town.
Probably not long before Herne reached the ruined mine.
Gradually, the answers were coming to all his questions. But there was still no hint about the two big ones. The whereabouts of Susannah Jackson, and who was behind the children and their carefully prepared pack of lies.
‘You got that, Ralph?’
‘Yeah. Sure. I got it.’
‘Certain?’
‘Come on, Jed. I might not be Wes Hardin, but I can remember a little plan like this’
‘Then that’s fine.’
It was a simple plan. Not knowing what was going on in the town, Herne didn’t have a lot of choice.
It was obvious that the children were involved, so the farther out of the way they were kept, the easier he’d feel. The lawman was to stay at the edge of Houghton’s Bluff and guard them. Nobody had any doubt that the kids were killers, and needed careful watching. Jed had considered leaving them tied away, back on the trail. The only thing that stopped him was the fear that they would be freed by someone without his knowledge. This way, he at least knew where they were.
Just as he had back at the mine, so he began to pick his way slowly along the edges of the township. It was an eerie experience, and it again stirred the memories of the day when he’d cleared the Nelsons out. That was the corner where the little one had come screaming at him. And that was the spot that he’d blown the arm off Walt Nelson. Now it was gone.
The miners and the whores and the shopkeepers. All packed and left, years gone. Just the dried bodies up in the small cemetery away at the top of the town. There used to be an arched gateway there when he’d been in Houghton’s Bluff, but ants and weather had brought it low.
Looking along the steep hill of the main street, Herne could see that time wasn’t far off when the whole place would be gone. Few of the houses or shops remained in anything like whole condition. Windows had gone. Doors fallen from rusted hinges. Shutters swinging loose in the wind. None of the signs left hanging in place and all the paint weathered and peeling. The horse-trough a pile of warped planks, the hitching-rail by the nearest saloon just two dried stumps of wood. Along the way Herne could see what had been a half-built church. Like many others all through the West, it had stayed the same way. The fervor and belief that had led the decent people of Houghton’s Bluff to try and erect a house to God all running away. And pursuit of fast dollars and quick-turned tricks took its place so the whore-houses and drinking-places flourished while the church remained a shell with half a steeple.
Jed saw the irony of what had happened. The half-steeple remained while the brothels and saloons were fallen.
It had always been a one-street town. At its height there had been the suggestions of a couple of cross-trails, going back one block. But it hadn’t lasted and it was back to the one street. Stretching away up the hill, out of Herne’s sight.
He stood near the bottom and counted on up. Twenty-nine buildings still more or less standing. About as many had vanished, leaving behind piles of dusty lumber. The wind was rolling great balls of tumbleweed along the street, and he kicked one away from his boots. Biting his lips as he tried to decide what to do next.
There wasn’t that much choice. All he could do was move on. Go clean through the township and make sure there were no corpses. No Mescalero braves.
And nobody else.
Only one of the saloons was still standing. The ‘Bloodline’ it had been called. A tough place that ran its average of a knifing once every couple of days and a shooting twice a week. There’d been a black piano player, called Sam who knew only one tune real well. He’d play it again and again, the noise vanishing into the shouting and screams and the clatter of glasses.
One of the batswing doors was still in place and Herne walked in. Pushing it open so that it creaked, letting it drop behind him. The place was wrecked. The long mirror vacant, with only gleaming splinters of glass hugging its edges. There had been a flamboyant painting of a nude woman lying on a sickly green sofa. That was gone, torn shreds of canvas showing where it had been ripped from its battered gilt frame.
The furniture was also gone. The spread-leg chairs and chipped tables. The bar was still there, its top hacked and mutilated. The ornate staircase was missing most of its treads, the golden cherubs that had been the owner’s pride and joy headless and bullet-torn.
The sun was now well up, throwing dusty rods of yellow light fiercely across the room. By the scorch marks against one of the side walls it looked as if someone had tried to light a fire. With everything being so dry and dusty it seemed a minor miracle to Herne that the whole town hadn’t gone up in a burst of flames.
He blinked out into the main street, easing his hat back over his forehead. Looking back to make sure that the lawman was doing his stuff. There was no sign of Abernathy or the children.
There were only a few places to check out, including the old sheriff’s office and jail. The only stone building in Houghton’s Bluff and the only one that looked to be comparatively untouched by the ravages of time and the climate.
Herne felt profoundly uncomfortable. Not knowing why he drew the Colt again, looking around him. Tasting the silence and listening.
But it was a ghost town. Nothing moved. There was nobody there. Just the shades of dead memories and old hatreds and loves. There had been a Mexican whore, Jed remembered. A pretty little girl who wore a red garter around her plump thigh. Since his wife’s death, Herne had taken his pleasures sparingly, when he felt the need in him. And most times he would pay for that need in dollars rather than with any personal commitment,
It was cheaper that way.
He’d decided to cover the left side of the street, then come back again from the graveyard down the other side, past the church and the jail. He’d just begun to walk to the next standing building, past a vacant lot, when the bullet hit the dirt a couple of feet from his feet. Kicking up a spray of dust, followed immediately by a second shot, and a hoarse voice.
‘Don’t move, Herne!’
Jed froze, the pistol still in his hand, not turning. Sensing that the shot had come from behind him and slightly above. That meant the balcony over the sheriff’s office. Good position.
‘Come right on in, said the spider to the fuckin’ fly. I waited Herne. Waited. Pay you back. For Pa and the brothers. And for me and my arm.’
That was it. The missing piece.
‘Hello, Walt,’ said Herne quietly.