Powderville looked more or less the same as any other small cow town in the north-west. It didn’t have the railroad running through it so there hadn’t been any major boom in business, but the Northern Pacific ran its rails west from the Mississippi and passed close enough to ensure a share of prosperity.
The railway came out of the Dakotas and followed the valley of the Yellowstone until it met up with the Bozeman Trail, close by Virginia City. The nearest it got to Powderville was the point where it bridged the Powder River, just south of where that river ran into the Yellowstone. That was close on eighty miles due north.
It was dusk when Herne reined in his bay horse on the hill above the town and gazed down. Here and there, the lights of kerosene lanterns picked out scenes of activity. Some shone close to the edge of town, shining through the canvas of tents that had been set up there by folk who couldn’t afford better. Families with men who were likely looking for work.
Like himself, Herne thought, ’cept that he didn’t have no family. A memory twisted inside his mind, tight like a noose. He shook his head, as though that would free him from it. Below, the wail of a young child set up and was followed by an adult shout and the sound of someone being hit; Silence for several seconds and then the child’s cry once more, louder and more agitated than ever.
Herne looked along the length of the main street, picked out easily by the line of lights that he guessed to be the saloons and shops, likely a restaurant and some kind of hotel. Beyond these and to the right, raised up, the sails of a windmill were outlined starkly against the violet of the sky.
Herne shook the reins and spoke softly to the horse and it started off down the hill.
There was a boardwalk on either side of the wide street; hitching posts that began and ended apparently at random. Herne passed a barber’s with its owner standing close to the plate glass window, white apron tied over his belly, forlornly looking for custom. His eyes held Herne’s for a moment in the half-light and then looked away. Next door was a building with a sign outside that read: Funeral Parlor. Herne hazarded a guess that they were both run by one and the same man.
He smiled sourly at a tale he’d heard one time about just such a man who, whenever the burying side of his business was getting slack, let the open razor slip a little in his hand when he was shaving a customer. True or not, it was a good story.
Another sign on the other side of the street announced The Cattleman’s House. The wide bat-wing doors were pushed open as Herne watched and a man hurried out into the early evening, walking briskly up the street. A lantern hung from an iron bracket to the right of the doors, lighting up both the entrance and the sign that had been painted above it.
Thirst tugged at Herne’s throat: it would have to wait.
He rode on past and found the livery stable, a small corral out front and a high barn set back from the street. Herne rode the bay through the open doors and dismounted. The man who came towards him, pitchfork in hand, favored his left leg. He was a foot shorter than Herne and squinted up at him for a few moments before speaking.
‘Got a free stall down to the back.’ His voice was thin and reedy.
Herne looked past him and could see at least four stalls that were empty, but he didn’t argue the point.
‘See he’s well watered and fed. And give him a rub down. He’s come a good way.’
The liveryman looked up at him with narrowed eyes. ‘Think I can’t see that? I know my job, mister. Likely better than you know yours.’ He looked Herne over, taking in the patches on the wool coat and in his loose-legged pants, the scuffed leather of his boots. ‘That is, if’n you got a job.’
Herne was about to reply but decided it wasn’t worth it. What difference did some old man’s fool talk make?
‘You’ll be wantin’ him in the mornin’?’
‘Most likely.’
The man nodded, then scratched at his cheek, rubbing at the stubble of his beard. ‘I’m here an hour before sun-up. Every day of the year. Rain or shine, I – ’
But Herne had already turned away and was walking back towards the street, leaving the old man’s mumblings behind him like so many fall leaves.
The bat-wing doors swung easy. Herne went through them fast and stepped to one side; stood still. The usual half-silence fell; faces turned towards him.
Herne let them look, scanning the interior of the saloon himself. The bar was at the back of the room; beside it to the left a flight of stairs led up to the first storey. Tables were scattered around the bare boards before the bar, only a third of them occupied. Lined up along the wall to the right were a faro wheel and a high table that looked to be for dealing black jack. Neither were in use. The opposite wall was fitted out with three large, rectangular windows. There were four lanterns: a small pair at either end of the bar; two larger ones hanging from the ceiling close to the center of the room.
Herne surveyed the faces, letting his eyes rest on them just long enough to make them turn away, back to their glasses of beer, their cards.
Cowboys, mostly, in their twenties and early thirties; a couple of older men sitting by one of the windows playing dominoes. There’s wasn’t a woman in the place.
Herne unbuttoned his coat and walked through the tables towards the bar, taking his time, letting the shape of his holster tied to his leg be clearly seen.
‘Beer.’
There were two men tending bar, one thin, the other fat, both under six foot by four or five inches. They exchanged a quick glance and then the fat one came forward and poured Herne’s beer, wiping the glass on the striped towel he kept over his shoulder before he did so. When he went back to his place leaning against the shelves of bottles and glasses Herne noticed that the man’s stomach wobbled as he walked.
Herne sank the beer in a succession of fast swallows and without drawing breath.
‘Whiskey.’
The pair exchanged the same hasty glance and this time the thin one reached behind him and took a bottle from the shelf. He picked up a small glass, wiped it with a cloth that hung over his left arm, and poured a good shot into it.
Herne threw back his head and emptied the glass. The whiskey was raw and rough and burnt the back of his throat. When it reached his stomach it was warming, good. He tipped some coins onto the bar counter.
‘Can I get some food here?’
‘Steak and potatoes – ’ offered the fat man.
‘Ham and eggs – .’ said the thin.
‘Meat pie and beans – ’
‘Chicken – ’
Herne raised his hands, palms open, stopping the alternating list of suggestions. ‘Fine, get me steak and potatoes with a couple of eggs on top of the steak. A whiskey now and another beer when the food’s ready. Okay?’
He glanced from one to the other; both nodded. The fat one’s stomach heaved, maybe at the thought of Herne’s order.
Herne pointed down to the coins: ‘Take what it costs from that.’
When he settled himself at a table by the right hand wall, Herne had two dollars and fifteen cents left. He’d likely get a room for the night with breakfast thrown in for a dollar; seventy-five cents for his horse; twenty-five for a bath and shave. That left him fifteen cents this side of poverty.
The steak tasted as good as Herne-could remember eating in the last couple of years and he thought that was as well – it might be a Hell of a time before he sank his teeth into another.
He was mopping up the remains of egg yolk and slightly bloody gravy when two more men came into the saloon. Young, neither of them more than eighteen; could have been brothers. They nodded and called out to a few of the other cowboys on their way through to the bar. One of them, the one with a shock of sandy hair, looked hard at Herne and there was a tenseness about the eyes when he did so. A tightening of the muscles.
The cowboy who had ignored Herne leaned with one elbow on the bar and ordered a couple of drinks. He was still wearing narrow shotgun chaps, fringed at the sides with leather. His gun belt was worn high and the holster was reversed on the left side; it could have been for a reverse draw with that hand, but since he was resting on the left elbow and not bothering to keep it free, Herne guessed he would make a cross-draw from the right.
Sandy had his holster too high for a speedy draw as well, the butt of the pistol closer to his elbow than his hand. Like most cowboys, slick gunplay wasn’t a part of their lives. They were more likely to keep handguns for rattlers or jackrabbits. A man wore one because other men did; because not to do so was a sign of weakness.
The air inside the saloon was thickening as coils of cigarette smoke drifted up towards the ceiling and lay there like a misplaced gray carpet.
Herne drank what was left of his beer and coughed sharply into the back of his hand. The two newcomers looked over at him from the bar and exchanged words; they called the thin barkeep over and asked him a couple of questions.
Herne looked in front, able to see them from the corner of his eye. He wondered why they were so anxious about strangers; what, if anything, they had to be frightened of.
Herne had a little of his whiskey left and he sipped at it, reluctant to finish it and go in search of a bed. Riding alone, a man got lonely and craved comfort, a warm belly to fold your arms around, lay your head against. Even though it didn’t appear that The Cattleman’s House offered any such ladies, there was doubtless some establishment in town that did.
Herne laughed at himself, thinking what comfort he would be able to buy for fifteen cents.
The fat barkeep wobbled over to his table and cleared away his plate and empty beer glass. ‘Anything else?’
Herne shook his head and sat back, letting the chair go up onto its rear legs. For a moment, the man seemed as if he were about to say something else, but he thought better of it.
So Herne sat there, nursing his almost empty glass while men came and went, the overall number scarcely changing during the best part of an hour.
The couple by the bar didn’t move far; they appeared to be drinking steadily, their voices getting louder and louder. Herne could pick up the odd word, the alternation between anger and amusement, but little more. It didn’t seem to be of any special interest. If the sandy one hadn’t looked at him so keenly when he’d come in, he wouldn’t have given them a second thought. If –
The bat-wing doors swung open fast and stayed that way as a group of half a dozen men came slowly in. Herne allowed his chair to ease back down until all four legs were on the ground. As he did so, his right hand let go of the whiskey glass and started to slide cautiously towards the edge of the table.
This time the silence in the room was total.
The men were standing in a loose group between the doors and the first batch of tables. Five of them were wearing the high-peaked Montana hats; the sixth was tapping his against his leg with the left hand. The long coats hid any handguns they might have been wearing, but four of them carried rifles, the metallic gleam of the Winchesters taking a reflection from the two large kerosene lanterns at the center of the room.
The two who lacked rifles had coils of rope hanging from their shoulders.
Herne glanced in the direction the men were now looking – the pair standing at the bar had straightened up; Sandy’s face was showing the same tenseness Herne had noticed earlier.
‘Matthews!’
‘What you want with us?’ Sandy’s reply was meant to be hard and uncaring but his voice sounded hollow in the stillness of the saloon.
‘You know damn well what we want! You bin warned more times than enough!’
‘Hell, you say!’
Sandy’s companion tried to calm him down; he put his hand to Sandy’s arm but it was shrugged off.
‘Should have listened when you was told.’ The speaker was still tapping his hat against his leg and continued to do so as he freed the coil of rope from round his other arm and flung it forward. The rope hit the top of an empty table and bounced onto the boards in front of the cowboys’ feet.
‘Jesus!’ called Sandy’s companion. ‘You ain’t?’
The man who had thrown the rope laughed out loud; it was a laugh that ran through Herne’s body, keening and off-key. It made it clear that what was going to happen was going to be enjoyed. By the owner of the laugh at least.
Herne let his hand move halfway off the table and a pair of rifles lifted towards him. Nothing definite, simply a warning. Herne let the hand rest where it was: this was no play of his. Not as long as he was left alone.
The laughing man glanced over his shoulder. ‘Get ’em, boys!’
As soon as the men began to move, the cowboy beside Sandy made a dash for it. He knew there was no way in which he could make it to the doors so he ran at the first window. A rifle came to a shoulder but no shot was fired. Herne watched as the cowboy ducked his head down and thrust up his arms, aiming to dive headlong through the plate glass and make his escape.
He was five feet away and his feet had left the floor at the start of his desperate leap when the blast roared out. Both barrels of a shotgun from the other side of the window, from someone who had been standing guard in the street.
Already airborne, the cowboy’s body was lifted higher, hurled up and back and seeming for a couple of seconds to be suspended; finally it crashed down on a chair, splintering the seat and snapping off two of the legs. The dead man’s arms were stretched wide, one leg twisted sideways underneath the other, the upper one twitching several times before it was still.
The pellets had ripped the cowboy’s face and chest to pieces. Lines were torn bloodily across his face which with each succeeding moment became less recognizable as anything that had been human and had contained human features.
The flesh at the front of his body was shredded through, lines of red and pink merging with traces of the dark blue of his shirt and the brown of his coat.
Once again it was silent inside the saloon.
Herne watched as Sandy made the beginnings of a move towards the gun at his hip; at least three rifles would have blown his life away before he could have got the weapon leveled.
Herne finished his whiskey.
‘Pick up the rope!’
Sandy blinked, took a couple of uncertain paces forward, clearly scared that he would be cut down as soon as he moved, then bent to the floor and lifted up the coil of rope.
The spokesman for the group of armed men laughed; the same weird, keening laugh as before. Herne looked at him more closely. Around six foot, his body was wiry, maybe a hundred and forty – fifty pounds. His face was thin with high cheekbones that pressed against the skin and left a reddish blemish where they touched. The nose was prominent, hooked at the center and slightly twisted, like as if it had been broken when he was younger.
When he spoke, it was from the left side of his mouth. ‘Bring it over here!’
Two of the riflemen moved sideways to cover Sandy’s progress forward. He got as far as the table in front of the leading rifleman and stopped. The rope was in his right hand.
His right boot was less than six inches away from the blood that curled from his dead partner’s head. He stood there for a moment and then looked down at the shattered body. His head jerked forward and his body seemed to buck at the center. The hand holding the rope went to his mouth and the other hand clutched the heaving stomach.
‘Christ! He’s gonna throw-up!’
‘Chicken-livered bastard!’
Sandy’s right arm straightened like a whip and the coil of rope slashed into the laughing man’s face and sent him staggering back with a yelp of surprise. At the same time, Sandy kicked out at the table and drove it into the nearest two men. He feinted to run forwards then dropped.
A rifle shot sang out and the shell ripped into the wall not too far down from where Herne was sitting.
Sandy came up in a crouch and he had his gun in his hand faster than Herne might have figured. He snapped off a shot that didn’t seem to hit anyone particular and tried for the door.
Automatically two of the men swung aside, letting him past.
‘Stop the bastard!’
Sandy was less than six feet away from the bat-wing doors when a Winchester slug made a hole right through the calf of his left leg and sent him crashing into the wall alongside the door.
He winced and cursed and brought up his gun arm and fired at the same time that a second shell struck home, this one entering his right side low down and deflecting upwards off a couple of ribs, exiting just beneath the shoulder blade.
The pistol in his right hand toppled forward and hung there, reversed, from his index finger.
Back and forth, back and forth, back ...
The gun bounced up from his knee and finally slid several feet along the boards. Sandy’s head fell forward and sideways, mouth open.
‘See if he’s alive.’
No one moved fast enough.
‘I said, see if he’s alive!’ The voice was near screaming-pitch now.
One of the men lifted Sandy’s head and pulled back an eye-lid, then put a hand over his heart.
‘Yeah, he’s okay.’
The laugh was close to a coyote’s howl when it smells the meat of a prey.
‘That’s fine. Just so’s he’s live enough for us to take him out and hang him!’
Herne felt something go cold at the back of his neck; a wave of disgust washed through his stomach. Whatever the man had done ... but like before, it still wasn’t any of his damned business.
You don’t step into somebody else’s shit when you can step around it. Not when it meant facing up to six guns at least ... and not when the only money you had left in the world was fifteen cents.