Herne slowed the horse to a trot, reaching sideways and down and patting it appreciatively. Not as responsive as the bay, the near-black mount that he had led out of the corral probably had the edge for speed. They were yards gained which might yet be significant.
He went on until the pine was around two hundred yards off, then dropped from the saddle. He used the rope that hung from close to the saddle horn to hobble the horse, then slipped the new Winchester from its scabbard. The walnut stock and the wood at the center of the rifle both shone, the grain showing clearly through. The blue-gray metal of the barrel gleamed. Herne fished a box of shells from one of his saddle bags and slid them into the magazine. He worked the lever and slotted the first shell into the chamber, noting that the action was a touch stiff and unyielding. Doubtless it would ease with use.
Herne flicked up the rear sight, just behind the hammer. Squinted through it, along the length of the barrel. When his finger squeezed back on the trigger that seemed a fraction stiff also. The recoil of the rifle jarred against his shoulder.
Herne worked the lever again: again: he fired ten shots in all. Carefully he reloaded, filling the magazine rather than leaving it less than half full.
He unhobbled the horse and rode it down to the tree.
At the center of the trunk, at the height of the average man’s head, there was a large, uneven hole torn away where the majority of the shells had landed. Two had obviously struck somewhat to the right and high, but none had missed the central point by more than six inches.
Herne nodded to himself, not displeased, although he knew that he would have been more accurate with his own Sharps. Not, he had to admit, as rapid. A frown crossed Herne’s face; already he had set aside his rifle and his horse, the Montana Peak hat that hung from his saddle horn he knew sat uneasily on his head; the duster coat that was strapped at the rear of the saddle was awkward and cumbersome.
Herne felt like he was letting his identity slip away from him, piece by piece. At least he still had his own Colt .45 – the one thing he would never agree to part with, even for an hour, less. He felt it was an extension of himself; was himself.
He turned slowly, hearing a couple of men approaching. It was Nate and the youngster with the freckled face.
‘Heard shootin’.’
Herne took hold of the horse’s rein. ‘Figured I’d best try that Winchester. Look foolish havin’ to use it an’ findin’ it shot a foot high.’
‘Reckon so,’ answered Nate. ‘How’d it show up?’
Herne stepped away. ‘Take a look for yourself.’
Nate did so and whistled, the note as strange as his laugh. The kid just stared, not quite certain of what Herne had done. ‘How many slugs you put in there, mister?’
‘Eight in the middle. Those two flaked a way a mite.’
Nate laughed: ‘See what I was sayin’ afore, Jo-Bob. You got a lot of growin’ to do afore you can take on the likes of us.’ He pointed down. ‘Him an’ me. Ain’t that so, Herne?’
‘Happen so.’
Herne noted that Nate had classed them together and wondered how right that was. How fast the man might be? How accurate when it mattered? Maybe one day he’d need to find out.
‘You headin’ back?’ Nate asked.
‘Yeah.’ Herne climbed into the saddle and swung the horse round.
The three of them were within sight of the tower of the ranch house when another rider came headlong towards them, driving his mount for all it was worth, the ends of the rein lashing over and over.
Twenty yards off he hauled it in, turning behind the three of them and coming up alongside.
‘Nate. Jo-Bob.’
‘What’s ridin’ up your tail, Tom?’ asked Nate.
‘Couple of the boys took sight of a bunch of rustlers out towards the hills. Close by the trail to Baker. Six of ’em they reckoned. Rode back in for help.’
Nate grinned and looked across at Herne. ‘Good thing you tried out that Winchester when you did. Looks like you’ll get to use it right soon.’ He set his spurs into the horse’s flanks. ‘Let’s ride!’
The sun was near central in the sky by the time the posse reached the area where the rustlers had been seen. It hung there like a pale yellow disc, almost overpowered by the blue of the sky that surrounded it. The horizon was flecked with scuds of thick, dark gray cloud but everywhere else was clear. Clear and cold.
A narrow valley twisted itself between three hills, an even narrower stream running round the foot of it. Here and there were clumps of green scrub and the crest of one of the hills held a pair of spruce, their branches permanently bent in one direction by the wind.
To the south-east it was possible to see steeper hills rising behind, over in the direction of Medicine Rocks.
‘They was down by the stream, just far enough along to get cover of that rise there.’
Nate followed the out-stretched arm and sucked in his lips. ‘Charlie, Cole, go down and have a look around. Likely you won’t find much but a mess of tracks. The rest of you separate and circle round. If you find any sign, fire a shot.’
He looked back at Herne. ‘Best take Jo-Bob with you. He’s gotta start learnin’ some time.’
Jo-Bob flushed and turned his head aside, but followed on after Herne anyway. There wasn’t anything much else he could do.
The pair of them dropped down behind the first hill and rode wide around it, coming up the slope of the furthest one and slowing to a walk, examining the ground. If there had been as many as half a dozen men, and if they had succeeded in running off a number of cattle, it shouldn’t be too hard to find which way they went.
In less than ten minutes Herne and Jo-Bob were stopped short by the echoing crack of a rifle.
‘That’s it!’ called the youngster, excitement already showing on his freckled face. ‘We’ll soon get the bastards on the run!’
Herne turned his horse around and followed Jo-Bob in the direction of the shot. He could remember how it had been. Recall the days when each chance of action had sent the adrenalin flooding through his body, had made his nerves and senses razor sharp. How he had loved the fresh excitement that each chance of danger brought with it.
He could remember it but he couldn’t feel it. Not over this. Not over a few head of Drummond’s cattle. A few out of how many? Thirty five thousand?
Herne bit the inside of his lip and concentrated on the forty dollars that would be coming to him at the end of the month.
‘Looks like they got ten, fifteen head. Five riders I’d reckon it. Trail leads due south of here.’
Nate paused, looked around the men. ‘Henry, you an’ Rob ride wide on either side. If any of ‘em skedaddles off from the main bunch you stand a good chance of pickin’ ’em out. The rest of you, keep your eyes peeled. We don’t want to head into no bushwackin’. An’ when we catch up with these bastards, don’t kill ‘em outright. Ain’t so much fun watchin’ ’em on the end of a rope if they’s already dead!’
Nate threw back his head and gave out his maniacal laugh, letting it echo up and around the hills.
The trail tended to become lost in the long grass and the riders followed it with difficulty, at one point losing it altogether. They stopped and spread out again, looking to pick it up. When they did Herne had his doubts but there didn’t seem any point in arguing. Likely they were now chasing nothing much anyway.
They rode along the ridge of a long hill that was dotted with spruce and pine, the column in single file now. Twenty men outlined against the blue of the sky, their high hats and long coats identifying them instantly to anyone who was looking.
It was mid-afternoon when Nate raised his hand and brought the line of men to a halt.
‘Way I recall, the Taylor place is ’bout a mile ahead.’
‘You reckon that’s where they’re headin’?’ called out Charlie, his hand already resting on the stock of his Winchester.
‘Don’t see nothin’ else for it. No other place round this way. Where else could they be goin’?’
It wasn’t a question that expected an answer but it got one anyway. ‘Seems to me,’ began Herne, edging his horse forward along the ridge, ‘there could be other ways of lookin’ at it.’
Nate stared at him a moment or two before saying coldly. ‘That so?’
Herne knew that everyone’s eyes were fast upon him, waiting to hear what he had to say, anxious as to what would happen next but impatient that their raid on the Taylor place had been halted.
‘For one thing. I ain’t so sure this trail we picked up’s the one we want. For another, I don’t see how you can be sure whoever it was was making for that place down there. If I was cuttin’ out cattle I’d keep ’em movin’, get ’em up into the hills back of here.’
Nate swung his own horse further out of the line; the red spots high on his cheeks were brighter than ever. He stared at Herne and made an obvious play of moving his hand to the side of his belt, just above the butt of his pistol.
That’s sure a mouthful. For a newcomer in this outfit. ‘Cause I told you to look out for Jo-Bob back there, don’t mean I’m expectin’ you to be givin’ any advice to me. You understand that?’
Herne sat tall and easy in the saddle. He didn’t think Nate would push it all the way, but if he did he reckoned he could take him.
‘I hear what you say,’ he said.
‘Another thing,’ Nate went on, the tone of his voice becoming flatter and colder with each word. ‘You seem to know one Hell of a lot about rustlin’. One Hell of a lot. Folk might think you was more interested in rustlin’ than catchin’ up with the miserable scum that does it.’
Herne cleared his throat and spat sideways to the ground. Looked at Nate full and long before he spoke. ‘Man wants to catch himself a bear, best he knows how the bear lives, where he goes.’
It was very quiet; just the wind moving the smaller branches of a nearby pine and something scuttling through the scrub down to the right of the ridge. Nate let his hand move away from his gun, away from his belt. Without another word he moved his horse back to the head of the line and set it in motion.
Herne took his own place, unhappy about what had happened but not seeing any way in which it could have been avoided. One thing he was certain of, Nate wasn’t going to let things rest as they were. He couldn’t afford to have his authority challenged in front of the rest of the men. Not in an outfit that was as tightly disciplined as this one.
Herne knew he would have to be on his guard – and when the shooting started he’d have to watch his back as much as his front.
Above the Taylor spread, Nate brought them to a halt once more. The ranch house was a single building with a sloping roof, something which set it apart from most timber-built places in the territory with their flat roofs which were easier to build.
Obviously the Taylors had taken their time. In their own smaller way they were as determined to build a place that would last as was Drummond.
The sides of the frame house had been reinforced with split logs and there were heavy shutters at the windows. To the side, someone had begun to build an extension and there was a pile of store-bought lumber waiting to be used.
At one side of the place there was a small corral containing three horses; at the other side a garden had been worked out of the ground and there was signs of vegetables and flowers having been grown.
A hammock was slung between one end of the ranch house and a small but sturdy apple tree at the garden’s edge. Smoke spiraled up from the round, tin chimney, a blue-gray smudge drawn on the sky.
Nate rode away down off the ridge and pulled the Winchester from its scabbard. He glanced quickly at Herne, but paid him no more regard.
‘Let’s hit ’em! Hard!’
The twenty men went down the side of the hill fast, two lines now and spreading out as they neared the bottom so as to surround the small ranch house below. They went through a clump of firs that were tight together and then round an outcrop of whitish rock. Grass gave way to dirt and then became grass again, shorter and stubby.
A little over a hundred yards off a shot sang out from the timber house.
The horse immediately in front of Herne shied violently and he pulled hard on the rein so as not to collide with it. A second shot came from the house and several rifle shots cracked in rapid reply. Herne galloped fast across the front of the place and swung round behind the corral.
Most of the other riders had taken similar action, some of them now out of the saddle and crouching low. A volley of rifle shells tore into the woodwork, ricocheting off it at all angles. Patches of yellowish wood showed through where the surface had been torn away. Herne levered his own Winchester as another volley sounded round the circle of Drummond’s men.
If there was a response from inside, the sound of it was lost in the confusion of shooting.
‘Hold up!’ Nate’s voice sounded above the temporary lull, One more shot was fired and then nothing.
Nate was thirty yards to Herne’s right, ducked down behind the corner post of the corral and out of direct line of fire from the windows.
Herne had got a good look at the shutters on his way past and noticed the way thin slots had been left to take a gun barrel. It was a good method of defense against Indian attack, but he didn’t think the Taylors had Indians in mind.
‘Hey, Taylor! You hear me?’
There was no reply straight off and Nate called out again: ‘Taylor! I said, d’you hear me?’
‘Yeah!’ The reply was muffled and only just carried to where the circle of men waited.
‘Why don’t you come on out here?’
‘And get gunned down?’
Nate laughed: ‘Who said anythin’ ’bout that? You started the shootin’.’
There was another silence and then Herne heard a sound like a bolt being drawn back. The voice was clearer this time, louder.
‘What else can you expect when you ride in on a man that ways?’
‘Come on, Taylor. You knew who we were.’
‘All I seen was a lot of men ridin’ fast. Only natural what I did.’
‘Not if you ain’t got anythin’ to feel guilty about.’
‘What sort of foolishness is that? Guilty, Hell!’
Nate stood up and took a few paces towards the house. ‘Step out then. Let’s talk open. No hard feelin’s.’
Herne could see that Nate’s right hand was firm on the butt of his pistol, the Winchester held out at an angle in the left. He wondered how much Taylor could see.
‘What about it?’
‘I’d be a damned fool to walk out there under them guns of yorn.’
‘You ’d be a bigger fool to stay where you are. If we don’t shoot that shack of yours to pieces, we could burn it to the ground an’ you know it.’
‘I’d make sure a lot of you got dead in doin’ it.’
Nate went forward again, taking his time, his voice pushing away at Taylor’s confidence, wearing him down. Opposite the house and back in the trees, Herne picked out two men with rifles raised. The minute Taylor showed himself fully—
‘Killin’ any of us ain’t gonna help you none. You can’t hope to get all of us. What’d happen to your place then. That wife of yours ... ain’t she got a kid?’
Nate was level with the end of the house now. Beyond him Herne could see that Jo-Bob had come in soft to the apple tree and was leaning against it, his rifle at his shoulder. Herne knew the kid must be itching to use it.
‘Taylor? There can’t be more than three of you inside at most. You come out and talk, you’d save a lot of trouble for yourself.’
Herne could almost sense the thoughts that were going through Taylor’s mind. He had moved himself wide of the corral now and could see that the door was open by some six inches: could see the leveled guns that Taylor could not see but could only guess at.
As he watched the door swung open further. One foot, two. Herne wanted to call out but didn’t. Stayed where he was. The door half open, a man stepped out into the afternoon light. Herne recognized him as one of the two men from the wagon, that first time he’d come across Drummond’s men riding like a black cloud across the land.
He saw the mouth open and start to speak but the word was never finished, never heard. Two rifles sounded almost simultaneously and Taylor’s body was hurled back against the door, slamming it shut. He struggled to bring up his own weapon but it never got more than half way there.
He came back off the door with pain already creasing his face and took three shaky steps towards where Nate was standing, his pistol drawn.
None of Drummond’s men had fired again and there had been no shot from inside the house, although a rifle barrel still showed through the slit in the right-hand shutter.
The top of Taylor’s left arm was darkening with blood as it pulsed through his shirt and coat; a moment later it began to drip from the tips of his curled fingers to the dirt below.
He bent at the knees and folded down slow,
Nate laughed and carefully aimed his pistol, cocking back the hammer.