It began to rain as Jed Herne ran from the burning church in Fort Yuma, and it continued to rain for most of their journey eastwards back to their spreads in Tucson.
Yates had the horses ready and they galloped in silence through the driving wall of water, not even stopping to put on their slickers.
It was April 25th when they finally got close to Tucson, coming in from the south, through Robles Pass, skirting the Roskruge and Tucson Mountains on their left. The deluge had finally cleared up on the twenty-third, and the sun now baked the ground hard again. Flash floods on the way had led to detours, but there had been no sign of Apaches.
On the way Yates had asked Herne to at least stick with him until they· got back to their homes. The next man they had intended to go for was the dude from Memphis, Barton Duquesne. But first they had other things to do. Both had agreed that it was senseless to try and keep their spreads going. Herne intended to leave anyway, now that Louise was no longer there to provide him with a reason for sticking down roots and Yates was finding that life wasn’t all that hard for him without Rachel. They’d always intended to move westwards, and they had a fair amount of money salted away. That money was being fast whittled down by Yates’s life-style. Cards and women had already more than cut it in half. But there was still enough to live it up on, and selling the spread should make a little more.
They both had friends in Tucson who would arrange for the two properties to be sold. Prime land close to the railroad should fetch a good price, particularly as they had signed a document agreeing to sell the two parcels together, and that way make more money.
Then there was Becky. Despite Jed’s pressing, Wild Bill had refused to send any kind of message to his daughter, claiming that she was in good hands with Rosie, that there was nothing at all to worry about.
It was near evening when they got to the outskirts of the in town, the sunset behind them throwing the jagged mountains into red-tipped silhouettes. Yates spat out a stream of tobacco juice, wiping his hand over his stubbled chin. He’d drained the last bottle of whisky dry a day and a half back and his temper was beginning to fray.
‘Hell! It’ll be full dark when we get back. Maybe those cowboys’ll hear us coming and reckon we’re rustlers and blast us out of the saddle.’
‘There won’t be no sheriff poking around. That’s to the good. We don’t know what’s been going on here after we wiped out that Nolan boy. Maybe his Pa’s got men after us.’
‘I don’t give a sweet damn about that. I just want to get me home. Get things moving to sell out, then head after this Duquesne.’
‘A thousand miles, Bill. That’s a mighty long trail. Maybe you should spend some time with your daughter first. I stand by what I said back in Yuma. As far as the revenge is concerned, you and I are through. I’m not going on with you. I know the names, like you do, and I’m going to be riding after them. If’n you get there first, then that’s fine with me. I just want to see all of the bastards dead. The way I do it and the way you’ll try it are a long way apart. For me it’s the dying I want. For you it’s everything that comes first. So we go alone. After we’re through here — maybe on the morrow, then we part.’
Waiting until it was dark, they rode easily round the edges of Tucson, avoiding the lights and the noise, though Yates figured there’d be no charge laid against them.
‘Town’ll be behind us, Jed. Stands to reason that they will.’
‘I seen enough of human nature to doubt that. If this Senator Nolan’s as powerful as they say, then he’ll be doing a whole lot of work to get us hung.’
‘That ain’t justice,’ complained Yates, spurring Cleo to a canter up the long ridge towards their spreads.
‘Come on now, Bill. Since when was justice something that depended on pointless little things like right and wrong? You know as well as me that there’s some folks that robs you with a six-gun and there’s others that’ll rob you with a pen. A lawyer’s the sort of man who performs best when he’s got a bag of gold jammed in his pocket.’
Yates sniffed, and they rode on in silence.
They finally reached their homes around nine o’clock, waiting up on the ridge to make sure the houses weren’t being watched. Their ramrods were eating together in the Herne cabin, and they seemed to have been making a fair job of managing the small spreads for them. But they also had two pieces of news.
One of the pieces of news that they gave the two men was bad.
The other was very bad.
First came the bad news.
There was a telegraph form that one of the cowboys had picked up in Tucson the day previous. It was from Phoenix, and it was addressed to Yates.
It read: ‘Regret your wife’s sister, Rosemary, passed away yesterday. She was in no pain. Funeral is tomorrow. Telegraph instructions regarding your daughter Rebecca.’ It was signed: ‘Mrs. Diane Pearson.’
‘That’s the lady lives with her. Fine-looking woman. On her own since her husband, Frazer, got poisoned in a Chinese restaurant ten years back in Frisco. She’ll be just dandy looking after Becky.’
And as far as Yates was concerned, that seemed the end of the matter. But Herne stood up and walked over to the chair where he was sitting, helping the cowboys demolish two bottles of cheap whisky.
‘Damn it, Bill. She’s not a damned pet that you can leave here and there when it suits you. She’s your daughter. Your only child. Now Rachel’s gone, she’s your responsibility. You can’t leave her with some kind neighbor and walk away from it.’
‘Well . . . Look, Jed, if’n we’re carrying on with this feud, then I can’t be having a brat trailing on my coat-tails all the time, now can I?’
It was a fair point. But the key word was if.
‘But that’s the whole point of what I’ve been trying to drive into your thick skull since we left Yuma. I’m the one who’s going on with the trail. You can do what you like. Move from here and go west. Set up a little ranch with what you got left and take the girl. Start a whole new life. I mean it, Bill. You are not coming with me.’
It took time for the idea to soak into Yate’s befuddled mind, but it finally penetrated, and he agreed with extreme reluctance to telegraph the good Mrs. Pearson in the morning telling her that he would be out to Phoenix on the first train to pick up his daughter.
But there was a condition. Herne was genuinely fond of Becky Yates and he was concerned as to the sort of life she would face with her father. Time was that Wild Bill Yates was as good a neighbor as a man could wish, but that one night had changed him. Turned him along a downhill path, well-lined with violence and debauchery.
Herne finally agreed that he would at least travel to Phoenix with Yates to pick up Becky, but that he would then set off after Barton Duquesne.
The worse news came idly, in passing. Almost as an afterthought from the older of the two men they’d left behind to watch over their property. Spitting casually out of the open door across the porch, he looked up at the white trails of cloud blowing in shreds across the face of the new moon.
‘Hey. All that whiteness up there done reminded me. You recall that fellow, Charlie?’
Charlie nodded. ‘The tall skinny one. Sat that horse like he was sewn into it. Sure.’
Strangers were few and far between. The spreads lay off the main trails, and were closest to the railroad. Herne looked up with interest.
‘What stranger? What did he want?’
‘Well. We told you ’bout the sheriff coming out here? Saying that as far as he was thinkin’ he was glad you done what you done, but that he was getting leaned on from somewhere further up the line ?’
‘Yes. That was what we figured all along. That’s why we decided to sell up now. Those letters I gave you will take care of all that. But if the sheriff and the marshal are both letting it go less we go and spit on their badges, then who else is there? Not vigilantes? His voice was disbelieving.
‘Folks round here all liked Louise and Rachel!’
‘Not exactly vigilantes. Sort of bounty-hunters, I guess. Only not the common bounty.’
Herne banged on the table, feeling the prickling round the back of his neck that spoke of big trouble. Getting close. Closer. ‘Come on! What the Hell did he want and who was he?’
‘Seems that the Pa of that rich kid you gunned down in the Doc’s is out to have you both a’dancin’ on the air. He’s hired some guns to get after you.’
‘Yeah, I see what you mean ’bout the whiteness, now,’ interrupted Charlie.
Herne looked at the two men. There was something in his eyes that made Charlie speak, the words tumbling over each other in their hurry to spill out.
‘Ten days back. Must have come in from the west by train. Fresh horses. Ten of them. Meanest bastards you ever saw.’
‘I doubt that,’ said Herne calmly. More calmly than he felt. A private posse was always bad news. And when it was paid for by a wealthy and influential man like a Senator, then they were in it deep.
‘It weren’t so much the meanness of them all. It was the guy who rode at the head of them.’
‘What was he like? Young or old?’
‘Oldish. Begging your pardon for it, Mr. Herne, but he seemed much of an age with you. Sort who’d have fought in the great war.’
A man like Nolan would have gone for the best that money could buy. That would be why it had taken them so long to get to Tucson. They’d have been waiting for . . .
‘What was he like?’
‘Tall. Very tall. Weighed ’bout . . . let’s see. I reckon round one-fifty. But really tall. Topped me by near a foot.’
Charlie stood a half inch under six feet.
‘And?’
‘Dressed in ordinary sort of clothes. But all made in black. Like a preacher he was.’
‘But not him, Charlie. He weren’t like no preacher at all, was he?’
Charlie shook his head, agreeing with his friend. ‘Sure not. Not like a preacher. Longish hair but no beard or moustache.’
‘What color was his hair?’ This was the question that mattered, although Herne half knew the answer already. That prickling wouldn’t have come for any ordinary gunman.
‘That was it. His hair! My Lord! I still see that hair in my dreams. I once saw a woman selling silk thread in a store in Buffalo. And she took it out in the street to look at the texture. And the wind blew it about. Like that it was. As soft and pure as blown silk.’
‘The color, you son-of-a-bitch!’ Herne grabbed Charlie by the front of his denim shirt and lifted him, big man though he was, clean out of his chair in one hand.
Gasping for breath the cowboy tried to speak, but naked fear had seized his tongue and he couldn’t talk till Jed dropped him back again.
‘My Lord! You didn’t have no call to . . . I’m telling you, I’m telling you,’ he went on as Herne reached again for his throat. ‘White it was. White as the snow.’
‘And his eyebrows.’ interrupted the other man. ‘And his face an all. White as a carved bone. Eyes that blazed like the fires of Hell in the Pit itself .’
Herne relaxed. Now it was told there was no call for more tension. ‘Did he say when he was coming back?’
‘Yeah. Day after tomorrow. But seems like you know him?’
‘I do Charlie.’ Jed laughed, his eyes catching those of Yates, frightened by the outburst of barely-controlled rage.
‘That is . . . I knew him. Name’s Coburn. Isaiah Coburn. Most men call him Whitey, but not to his face.’
‘He sure knew you, Mr. Herne. Is he a kind of old enemy?’
‘No. No, Charlie, I’d say that he was about the nearest I ever did have to a friend.’