The lizard darted across the ground, paused, lifted its head and flicked its forked tongue out into the air, pulling a passing insect back into its mouth. It scurried over the earth, pulling itself forward by its long, bent toes, their hooked nails digging down into the surface. The long, thinning, rounded tail swung behind it from left to right and back again.
It stopped again next to the man’s leg, not knowing that was what it was. Its body was dark yellow, mottled with brown spots. A black and white pattern, like a collar, circled behind its head.
The lizard took another flying insect with a deft pass: inspected with its black, beady eyes the mound it was now on. The feel of the naked flesh was strange to it. The limb had looked like a rock but it didn’t feel the same.
It scuttled upwards, pausing to dart its head down into the patch of dark hair at the middle of the body, between the legs. Then on again, stopping and starting with nervous movements.
It tried to taste the lines of dark reddish-brown where blood had dried on the skin but it was no use. Sitting on the side of Herne’s swollen, battered face it watched and calmly waited, then caught a fresh insect on its black tongue.
Inches away from its head a fold of puffy skin moved gradually and an eye appeared. For a moment the two tiny, round eyes of the lizard stared into it, before it had jumped off the head and hurried over the open ground in the direction of the rocks.
Herne lay like that for what seemed to him a long time, making no attempt to move, his body so numb from the beating he had received that the cold of the early evening was hardly affecting him. Just two eyes that could barely see through the swelling flesh that surrounded them staring at the fading gray-blue of the sky.
When eventually he tried to roll over a pain ran through him that made him cry out. His entire right side seemed to be on fire. Fire. He paused, remembering where he was, what had happened.
Herne started to lever himself up into a sitting position, but immediately pulled away his right hand, wincing. He fell back to his side and rolled over, slowly, pushing himself up with his left arm. When he was finally sitting he examined his right hand.
The skin had been stripped from the knuckles of the central fingers. Something hard and sharp had dug into the flesh, exposing the bone. Around the knuckles, on either side, there was dark purple bruising. He tried to move his fingers, to open or close the hand, but found he couldn’t.
He knew why they’d done it: knew that in the end it wouldn’t make any difference. There was nothing that was going to save them.
He gathered his strength and stood up; after a moment or two he took a couple of steps. Fell down. Tried again; succeeded in making several more shaky paces. The burnt-out building was black and still; the bodies still hung from the curve of tall trees and now there were three of them, the old woman along with the others.
Something else to avenge.
At last Herne was feeling the cold. The evening wind was biting into the cuts and grazes that peppered his body.
He staggered towards the trees and looked at the two lynched men. He knew that it would not be possible to wear their pants, not after the loosening of the bowels that comes with death.
If he raised his arms as high as they would go he might be able to reach the bearded man’s coat and pull it off. He could get his left hand to the bottom of the coat, his fingers, just, to the hem of the sleeve. After five minutes, he had the coat in his possession. There was a bullet hole surrounded by dried blood on the left-hand side. Herne put the coat on with difficulty and turned away, heading for the spot where he had left the horse.
Each step jarred him and several times he had to stop and rest, rather than fall over. Most of the pain was in his back, around the kidneys; there and in his face and right hand.
It took him a long time to reach the place where he had left the horse hobbled and for much of that time he didn’t think he was going to make it.
But make it he did – and the animal was still there. Whoever Nate had sent out to look for it – and certainly he would have done that – hadn’t been any too careful.
Fine! It was time they made a mistake.
Herne had made one himself, becoming so engrossed in what he was watching take place that he had neglected to guard his back. He would be careful not to make another.
Only able to use the fingers on his left hand he untied the blanket from behind the saddle and wrapped it around his waist so that it covered the lower part of his body. It took him a long time to get the horse unhobbled and untied and when he was ready to go almost all light had disappeared from the sky.
He pulled his wracked body onto the animal’s back and turned its head. The journey back to Powderville would be tortuous, seemingly without end. But there was no doubt in Herne’s mind as to where he had to go, what he had to do.
There was cloud but not heavy; stars and the ghost of a moon showed him all that he needed to see. The main street of the town was deserted, not even a dog stirred: silence save for the tread of his horse. Herne was barely focusing; corners, sides of buildings seemed to shake as though something was making the earth tremble.
He reined in outside the rooming house and got down to the ground, steadying himself with the horse’s mane. Looped the rein over the rail. Walked unsteadily to the door. Stood there swaying.
The first knocks were so weak that he could hardly hear them himself. After that he hammered with what strength he could summon, hitting the painted woodwork with the inside of his left fist, with his forearm, his shoulder.
Eventually there was a light showing and noises of someone moving around inside.
A voice.
Herne slipped and leaned against the door, his eyes closed inside their swollen lids.
Footsteps.
‘Who is it? What d’you want at this hour of night?’
He tried to speak but all that came out were sounds rather than words.
‘Who is it?’ Louder now, but more worried also. ‘Who is it?’
Herne’s mind turned slowly. She did not know his name, he had never given it. There’d be no point in giving it now.
‘Open … let me in!’
He pushed himself away from the door with his left arm; it was a deliberate, pained action. The bolts on the other side of the door were slowly slipped back. A key was turned and the door opened; that was slow, too.
Rachel Fairfax was standing there in a dark brown woolen night-gown, underneath which the hem of a white nightdress showed clearly about her bare feet. There were paper curlers in the ends of her light brown hair; worry and anger in her green eyes. Her mouth was slightly open. She held a pistol in front of her, holding it tightly with both hands around the butt, the thumb of one of them keeping the hammer cocked.
‘You! What are you doing here? And at this time? And looking like—?’
She stepped back a pace and stared at him, her expression changing to one of surprise, then horror.
Herne blinked, tried to concentrate. The gun ... the gun in her hands, leveled upwards at the middle of his chest, it was a Remington, a Frontier model .44. Herne imagined that it must have been her husband’s. Once. Before Nate shot him. He didn’t know why he bothered thinking about it, about the gun. It didn’t matter.
He was swaying from one side to the other as he stood there, unaware that he was doing so.
The green eyes narrowed. ‘Why have you come here? To me? What on earth do you expect? What do you want me to do?’
She let the hammer carefully back down, touched his arm with one hand, gingerly, half afraid that it would hurt him, half scared of something she couldn’t name.
‘The doctor’s across the street. You should have gone there, not here. You should have—’
Herne’s eyes closed a final half inch, his head shot back and he fell forwards, bouncing from the door frame into the woman. She tried to catch him, the gun still in her hands, but he fell through her arms and spread himself across the threshold.
With a sigh, she put down the pistol and bent over, pushing her hands under his arms and pulling him slowly inside the house. When she had done that she went back upstairs and got dressed. She sat on the side of the bed, looking at the sepia photograph of her husband that she kept in a frame on her dressing table.
After a while she got up, straightened her dress and went downstairs and over to the far side of the street. Ten minutes later she returned with the doctor. Together they managed to lift Herne up the stairs and get him onto a bed.
Herne slept fitfully for the remainder of the night and the following day. During that evening he woke for no more than five minutes, trying to remember where he was and how he had got there. When he fell asleep again he slept soundly through that second night.
The morning when he woke again was gray and overcast. A month later in the year and folk would have started preparing for the first falls of snow. He woke suddenly, his right hand immediately moving upwards, reaching towards the bedpost for a gun that didn’t hang there. The attempt to spread the fingers of the hand made him jump with sudden pain.
At that moment the door opened and Rachel Fairfax came into the room.
‘Good morning,’ she said, relief beginning to show itself on her face. She was carrying a bowl of warm water, a towel and a cloth.
‘How—?’
She set down the bowl on the table at the side of the room. ‘You remember coming here don’t you? Half naked in the middle of the night!’
Herne remembered: it only needed her to say that to bring it back, the events one after another, like reading a dime novel about Buffalo Bill or Wild Bill Hickok.
He tried to move but the effort made him wince and he lay back again, becoming aware of aches and bruises all over his body. He lifted his right arm slowly and examined the curled fingers. He tried to move them but it was difficult and painful.
She sat on the edge of the bed beside him. ‘I know what you’re thinking. At least, I think I know, but it will take time.’
He looked into her face and after a moment she turned her head away. ‘I brought some water for you to wash,’ she said, standing up. ‘If you use your left hand you can make a start on that yourself. I’ll fetch you some breakfast. It’s a long while since you’ve eaten.’
She lifted the small table over to the bedside and left him alone. Herne swished the cloth around in the water and half-squeezed it out, then began to wash his face and body. He was amazed at the number of marks that told of the beating he had sustained.
‘There’s something I wanted to ask you—’ Rachel began, later in the day.
‘Sure.’
‘Why did you come here?’
‘To you, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
Herne looked at the wall and then back at her face, the lines that were starting to spread from the corners of her eyes, her soft, wide mouth. ‘I couldn’t think of where else to go.’
She smiled and the dimple appeared on her right cheek. ‘That won’t do. Doctor Douglas is right across the street. You must have known I’d have to fetch him in anyway.’
‘I wasn’t thinking straight.’
‘Straight enough to get here.’
Herne glanced away again, looking down at the floor with its woven rug on polished boards. ‘All right. I wanted to see you again.’ He said it as much as a challenge as anything else.
She smiled again and pulled a strand of hair. ‘Looking like that?’
‘Perhaps looking like that was the only way I’d ever have dared come.’
Her expression changed, facial muscles tightened.
‘I know what happened to your husband,’ Herne said. ‘I know who killed him.’
She went white. He thought she was going to get up and leave, but she didn’t. Instead she said quietly: ‘And I know what happened to Joanne Taylor’s brother-in-law.’
‘That was an accident!’
She stared at him.
‘He pulled a gun on me and came at me from behind. He was about to shoot me in the back.’
‘I know.’
‘What the Hell else could I do?’
She reached forward and patted down the sheet, then stood up. ‘You’ll tire yourself. The doctor says the only way you’ll mend is by getting plenty of rest.’
He held up his right hand: ‘And what did he say about this?’
‘It’ll mend.’
‘How long?’
‘A couple of weeks.’
‘That’s impossible. It’s too long. It—’
‘That was what he said. He’s the doctor, not me. Argue with him when he comes. You only want it better so you can do more killing.’
Herne looked at her: ‘I want to kill the man who killed your husband.’
‘And is that the reason? Because he did that?’
‘There’s a whole lot of reasons. One more important than the others.’
She set her hand on the door handle. ‘What’s that?’
‘He deserves to be killed. It’s the only thing he’s worth. And it’s got to be slowly.’
She turned away disturbed by the hate in Herne’s face. When she was outside he called her back.
‘How many people know I’m here?’
‘Don’t worry. Just the doctor and myself – and that friend of yours who got shot.’
‘Charlie?’
‘That’s the one.’ She motioned for him to lie back down. ‘You rest now. The quicker you get better the sooner you can get out of here.’ Her face hardened. ‘And do what you have to do.’
Charlie came over to see Herne a few days later. When he put his head slowly round the door and peered into the room, all Herne could do was laugh.
‘What’s the damned matter with you?’
‘You seen yourself lately?’
Charlie flushed but came on into the room nevertheless, shutting the door to behind him. He’d got hold of some different clothes since Herne had seen him last. A shirt in an orange check and a yellow patterned waistcoat over it. Obviously he’d gone so long without shaving he’d decided to grow a beard and moustache and they were at present a sort of brown fuzz around his mouth. None of those were as noticeable as what sat on his head.
‘Where the Hell d’you get that?’
Charlie flushed some more and reached up to touch the brim of the black bowler hat on his head. ‘This, you mean?’
‘Uh-huh,’ Herne grinned. That.’
‘Met this drummer. He told me they was the best thing a man could wear. New line he was carry in’, he said. ’Sides, I wanted somethin’ different from that blasted hat Drummond made us wear.’
‘This drummer,’ asked Herne, ‘he a feller round thirty? Wears neat suits and talks a powerful lot.’
‘That’s him,’ agreed Charlie, surprised. ‘You know him?’
‘Met him. Didn’t buy nothin’ from him, though. Least of all a bowler hat!’
Charlie took it off and looked at it with admiration. ‘I reckon it’s a fine hat.’
‘I’ll agree it’s better than them hats of Drummond’s.’ He looked at Charlie thoughtfully. ‘You sure you’re through with him?’
‘You’re blasted right!’
‘How much through?’
‘Enough to sit in with you for a few hands.’ Charlie’s eyes narrowed. ‘You are goin’ to get back at them bastards, ain’t you?’
Herne nodded. ‘You bet! Soon as this hand of mine’ll do what I want it to, we’ll get ’em. But good!’