They reached Fort Yuma round about seven o’clock in the evening and booked themselves into a small hotel close by the livery stable. Herne felt tired and had a meal in a clean little restaurant round the corner, while Yates went out to find where the nearest and noisiest saloon was.
He came lurching back to their room after midnight, disturbing Jed by crashing over a chair and dropping his gun-belt on the floor.
‘Get to bed, Bill. And get sobered up. We got another job to do tomorrow. You find anything about the Reverend Chester Goldsmith?’
Yates giggled, trying to pull off his pants, toppling over on his back with the effort. ‘Hey, that was damned fine liquor they peddle here. And a lovely young lady that I reckon I might see a mite more of. Just as soon as I’ve sat in on the poker game they run in there. She wears a dress of red feathers, and I just can’t wait to get a’ plucking at them?
‘The Reverend!’ said Herne, growing more and more impatient with his partner. In the past he’d seen gunmen, better men than Yates, who couldn’t stand the tensions of living so close to death. Some had found solace in drink, and others with women. Immediately after the Civil War, with its hangover of morphine addicts, some had taken to the new drug being used to combat the morphine addiction.
A new drug called heroin. But all of them had looked outside themselves for strength. And none of them had found it.
‘Yeah. The good old Rev. Goldsmith. God bless him and all who sail with him. I been thinkin’ ’bout all this killing. I reckon we got …what was I saying?’
‘You were telling me about where Goldsmith lived and then you started babbling about killing.’
‘Right, brother Herne. That’s a good old Hunter, Jed my buddy. Good old Herne the Hunter. Wild Bill Yates will look after you. William Butler Yates at your service. Maybe that’s where we can get the Reverend. Day after tomorrow, at his service.’
Herne swung his feet out of bed, feeling the cold linoleum under them, and stalked through the dimly lit room to where Yates lay on his back, making houses with his fingers and grinning at the ceiling.
‘Yates.’ There was a strength and anger in Herne’s voice that brought his partner upright on the bed. ‘Either you cut down on your drinking or we will no longer ride together. I cannot carry a drunk along with me.’
‘Well damn you and your high and mighty manners, Jed Herne! If’n it hadn’t been for me back in Tucson, that rich puppy would have cold-cocked you with his Deringer.’
‘True. And if it hadn’t been for me, you’d have been lying belly-up in the sun somewhere in the middle of the desert with your hair decorating a lodge in an Apache camp. And your damn stupidity is going to get us both killed unless you check it.’
‘Right. That does it. Since we’re both here in Yuma then we’ll kill this minister. After that we might just ride our own trails.’
‘Bill, that would suit me fine. Now where does this Goldsmith live?’
‘Outside of town, with his brother and wife and children. He’s got nine, aged from about fourteen down to one. Wife’s dead and he’s got himself the plainest looking woman I ever seen as a housekeeper. I seen her, and also his brother down the store, collecting supplies with the buckboard. Maybe we hit them Sunday, right in front of everyone.’
‘No. Revenge is mine. That’s what the Good Book says. It doesn’t say nothing about going and glorying in the killing. Tomorrow. At his house.’
Yates flopped back on the pillow, turning his face to the wall, sulking like a spoiled child that’s had his favorite toy taken away from him. ‘Wanted to do it in the church.’
Herne padded back to his own bed, feeling the weight of his Colt under his pillow. ‘Tomorrow, Bill. We do it my way or not at all. All right? Or do you want to argue it?’
‘O.K. Jed. Your way. This time.’
‘Right. Now get some sleep. Goodnight.’
There was no reply. Just a burst of loud snoring from the other bed.
Saturday morning in Yuma was a busy time for the ladies and a quiet time for the men. There was all the week’s provisions to get in, and cooking to do and the washing had to be out of the way before the Sabbath dawned. Friday and Saturday night were the two big drinking times of the week for the men, and all of the saloons did a roaring trade. As did the town sheriff, running in drunks and collecting guns from those who seemed as though they might want to be using them.
The morning saw both men quieter. Yates nursed a hangover and Herne had done some thinking and decided that it would be better so long as Bill could keep his drinking under reasonable control for them to carry on and operate as a team. Not essential, but the word would soon be getting round that there were men out riding the vengeance trail, and those who had been responsible for the raping and killing back in Tucson might start banding together.
They booked out of the hotel, walking to collect Billy and Cleo, paying the cripple boy for one night’s board and feed and grooming. Then they cantered through the town, along the high street, past the front of the stores and saloons, to the road west.
Towards the house of the Reverend Chester Goldsmith.
Number Three.
Yates talked about what he’d been able to find out about the Reverend, apart from his large family. It seemed that Goldsmith had come from the east, Boston it was said, he had been the eldest son of a family of merchants. In his first three years in Fort Yuma he’d been a model priest. Caring for his flock, looking after the sick and the needy, as well as being a devoted husband and father.
Then things had begun to change. His wife had become ill with what the barkeep had told Yates was certainly consumption. Nearly every service she would play the harmonium for him, a supply of handkerchiefs at her side; ready for the coughing fits and the spouting blood.
A year back, in the late Fall, she had been taken from them and the Reverend Goldsmith had been quite shattered by it. But at the same time he had been left a very considerable sum of money on the death of his father.
At this point the bartender had leaned forward and dropped his voice to a whisper. Things weren’t the same out at the rambling house. He’d taken a housekeeper, which was to be expected, with all those wee ones. And a lady so lacking in any kind of beauty that not a tongue could wag among the ladies of the sewing circle. Indeed, the woman seemed to make every attempt she could to make herself ugly, wearing awful shapeless clothes and bonnets that near hid her face.
But, and here the voice of Yates’s informant dropped so low that he had to crane across the bar to hear him, there were still some mighty strange rumors. Strangers getting off the train and riding out to the Goldsmith place. Lights on in the house all night.
‘Did he mention any names? Any folks calling there that he might have known?’ asked Herne, pulling the bandana up over his mouth to cut out the worst of the red dust.
Yates grinned. Thought that might interest you. I can be useful, you see. Yep, he named a name or two. Like the son of a senator off the west coast. And someone knew the undertaker from a town not all that far to the east of here. Couple of twins that he said were kind of sinister. Red-haired fellow. So red it fair made your eyes pop. And some others.’
And there had been rumors about the housekeeper. Whatever she might look like, there was talk that the inside didn’t match up to the outside. A lady visiting had walked in on her without warning one day and the house had smelled of cigarette smoke! And the washing on the line had once showed some underpinnings that didn’t quite go along with the faded and dirty dresses and down-at-heel shoes.
‘Sounds like the Reverend is playing fast and loose with Yuma,’ commented Herne.
‘One more thing about this woman. Seems someone once trod on the hem of her gown in the store, and ripped it. She turned round and spat out a flaming mouthful of language that was stronger than anything anyone had ever heard. So strong that two other ladies fainted clean away. After that, she only comes in with the Reverend’s brother. Came here couple of months ago. Don’t nobody know nothing about him, except that his name’s Al, and Mrs. Fazackerley, that’s the housekeeper, treats him like a slave. And nobody’s ever heard him answer her back. Mighty strange.’
They reached a clump of cottonwoods on the right of the trail, with a narrow track winding off through it. According to Yates’s instructions, that was the way to the house of Chester Goldsmith.
‘Isn’t he taking a risk living this far out of town? All on his own. What about the Apaches?’
Herne reined in Billy, standing up in the stirrups, looking around them as far as he could through the scattered trees.
‘Twenty miles south across the desert there and you’re over the border in Mexico. Sonora. Most of the hostiles are to the east of here. There might be a few raiders coming up over the border, but the federales are tight on their patrolling. Tight as any Mex can be. No, I figure he should be safe enough out here.’
‘Safe except from folk like us,’ sniggered Yates, taking a pull at a flask he’d mysteriously acquired since leaving Gila Bend. ’
The house loomed up through the cottonwoods, set firm and solid in the centre of an acre or two of cultivated ground. There were cows and some hogs, with a pony galloping skittishly in the pasture. Just under the shadow of the glade, the two men dismounted and tethered their horses, standing together, looking across for any sign of life.
A bunch of children suddenly erupted from the back door, scampering over the dry grass to where a silver thread of water meandered through the fields. Yates counted out loud.
‘Seven. Eight. Damn it! One not there.’
‘Just coming out now,’ said Herne. ‘That makes the full nine. Let’s go in. Like we did at the Doc’s. Straight up to the front door and knock. I doubt the word’s got around those sons-of-bitches yet that we’re after them.’
They felt the sandy soil gritty beneath their boot-heels as they walked together towards the minister’s house, pushing aside a squeaking gate. Through a field, past a barn, with a sign on the next gate that said: ‘Positively No Admittance Without An Appointment. Dog Trained To Attack Trespassers.’
‘Right friendly bastard for a Reverend, ain’t he?’ said Yates, clearing his throat and spitting a dark stream off tobacco juice at the notice.
They could hear children whooping and yelling somewhere around the other side of the spread. Herne swung the iron gate open, nearly catching his hand on a strand of heavy-duty barbed wire wound round the top. Yates shut it behind them, swinging round at the noise of a snarling dog grouching across the yard, tail flattened, teeth bared, was a sharp-muzzled dog. Bigger than any Yates had seen before.
As it saw them looking at it, the tip of its tail started to swing, and it edged closer, keeping up the snarling deep in its throat.
‘What sort of a beast’s that?’ asked Yates, reaching for his gun.
‘Don’t shoot! Bring them all out on us. Try and do it quiet and easy. It’s a German sheep dog. I seen one before. Vicious. Walk slow and careful for that door.’
But the dog wasn’t going to make it easy for them. As they began to walk across the yard towards the back door of the house, it made its move. Jaws gaping, it darted like a streak of brindled lightning, paws scuffing up the dust, jumping for Herne’s throat. Yates took a step back, hand dropping again to his Colt, but he was way too slow.
Instead of trying to dodge or run from the brute, Herne simply waited for it, ignoring its open mouth, and grabbed at its leading front feet. Quicker than Yates could follow, he jerked the dog’s legs apart, hard. There was a snapping noise, like a large log being split with an axe, and the dog gave an almost human cry of pain and shock.
Blood jetted from its jaws as Herne flung it casually from him, letting the corpse drop twitching to the splattered earth. The legs moved spasmodically, as though it was trying to run, and then it was still.
‘God! My God, Jed. That was …I just didn’t see how you did that.’ .
Herne wiped his hands down his trousers, sniffing at the wind that was getting up from over the border. ‘I like dogs. Most dogs. But there’s some, like that, as shouldn’t never have been whelped. Bad ones. Rogues. Just like men. If a beast like that comes at you, either snap it hard on the muzzle, or you can burst its rib-cage by jerking its paws apart hard. Come on.’
Apart from the snarling and that one desperate yelp of despair, the dog had made no noise in its attack. The house still stood silent, its windows blank and heavily curtained. The paint was in excellent order, the roof impeccable.
‘Do the kids go to school in Yuma?’ asked Herne, an odd thought nagging away at him.
‘No. Bartender said they never saw hide nor hair them from one year’s end to the next. Not since their Ma died. And they don’t have no visitors at all. Keep themselves right to themselves.’
‘Well now. I just wonder why that is. You’d think that maybe the Reverend Goldsmith might have something to hide.’
Herne reached up to touch the knocker, and then let his hand drop. The door stood ajar, and he pushed it silently open and both men walked in. The inside of the house was also in perfect shape. The fresh smell of polish, the floor gleaming and clean. From somewhere inside they could catch the scent of frying chicken. They looked at each other wonderingly. This wasn’t the sort of place to find a rapist and murderer. It was the ideal family home that the journals would have been happy to feature for the enlightenment of their Christian readers.
Both men had their guns drawn, looking round, but the house seemed empty. Herne pointed upstairs with his Colt and Yates crept towards the stairs. Suddenly he froze. A man had appeared at the top landing, with his back towards them.
‘His brother! Al!’ mouthed Yates, looking round to Jed for a lead.
‘Come on down real easy,’ said Herne, but the man took no notice at all, merely continuing down the stairs towards them, with his back turned, polishing at the sides of the stair-carpet with a yellow cloth. ·
‘Come on here!’ shouted Yates, but still Al ignored them.
Herne was going to wait, keeping one eye open for anyone else in the house, but Yates grew impatient with the man, and leaped up the stairs towards him.
When he felt a hand on his collar, the brother of Reverend Goldsmith jumped in the air, with a startled cry, struggling to escape from the grasp. With brutal efficiency, Yates clubbed him over the side of the head with the butt of his Colt, peeling off a strip of scalp and hair, and sending the man tumbling down the staircase in a flurry of limbs, ending up striking his back against the heavy table near Herne’s feet. He gave a groan and lay still.
‘If that noise doesn’t bring out the Reverend, then we must reckon he ain’t here. That right, Jed?’ said Yates, coming quickly down to join his partner in the hallway.
Herne nodded. The noise had been considerable, but the house now stood silent once more. Outside he heard a cow snorting and the high, carefree voices of the young children at their play.
‘Can I find out from him where his brother’s gone? Can I, Jed?’ The eagerness was dripping like poisoned honey from Yates’s tongue. Herne found it hard to hide his disgust.
‘All right. Make it fast and don’t hurt him more than you need. That’d make us worse than the ones we’re after. I’m going in the kitchen to keep watch.’
He walked slowly along the corridor, pushing open the door of the kitchen, his nostrils filling with the odor of the cooking lunch. Vegetables bubbled on top of the stove, and the fowl was spitting merrily in the oven. Somehow, it didn’t seem right to come and kill a man in such a place. Surrounded by his family. Lunch almost ready. He’d felt that they should have taken off their muddy boots before coming inside the perfect house.
There was little sound from Yates’s activities. Once he heard a voice raised in anger, and several times he could just hear the sickening thud of boot on flesh. He got up and pushed the door shut and, taking a clean cloth to protect his hand, poured himself a fresh cup of coffee from the blue pot bubbling on the hob.
After about ten minutes Yates came in, panting, wiping the sweat from his face. He was flushed, and didn’t seem to know quite what to do with his fingers, tangling them one with the other and cracking his knuckles.
‘He’s the most stubborn bastard I ever did see. I kept telling him that I’ll stop when he tells me where his brother is, and he just grunts at me like he’s trying to make out that I’m a damned fool.’
‘He hasn’t told you? Maybe I ought to come and see if I can…’
Yates waved a hand at him, going over and filling a jug of water from a pail by the back door. ‘No. No bother at all, Jed. He just passed out on me, so I’m going to wash him up a little and then ask him some more. I guess that he’ll be about ready to sing like an angel.’
It was only when he had gone out again, closing the door behind him, that Jed noticed that Yates had left a trail of boot-marks all over the white, stone floor. Faint, red marks
He finished the cup and was standing by the stove, pouring another, when the back door swung open. His reflexes acting for him, Herne dropped the mug and the pot, feeling some of the scalding coffee splash across his trousers, but his mind was more concerned with drawing fast. The hands slipped easily down, butt nestling against the open palm.
Thumb cocking the Colt even as the fingers tightened and lifted. By the time the pot crashed on the stones, the gun was out, cocked and aimed, his finger tensed ready to apply that fraction more pressure that would release the hammer.
‘My God! Jedediah Herne! I thought you were dead, you old bastard!
‘Eliza!’ The finger relaxed and the thumb took the pressure off the hammer, letting it gently down to rest against the cartridge. With an action that he’d performed hundreds and hundreds of times before, Herne slid the heavy gun back into its greased leather holster.
The woman smiled, putting down a basket of groceries. Through the open door he could see a mule, and realized that the noise of the things cooking had drowned out the sound of her arrival.
‘I hope you’re going to help me clear up all that coffee off my clean floor, Jedediah.’
‘By all . . . Eliza Barrell. Where was it? Back in Denver? You were with the Dutchman in them days. And now look at you out here, all respectable, and the housekeeper to a real minister.’
Just for the moment, he almost forgot that it was that minister that they’d travelled here to kill. But Eliza Barrell, of all women! She’d been one of the brightest of the fallen women on the frontier back in the middle seventies, and he’d once spent a whole month’s wages just for a night with her.
But, he reflected, it had been worth it. She’d taken a shine to the young man with the awesome reputation, and there’d been several other nights, when he didn’t have to pay at all for her favors.
But in those days she’d dressed differently. Then it had been a bright red corset. Silk with dangling black ribbons. Her breasts nestling in. the top like two smooth eggs. Silk stockings with red silk garters, and a lacy pair of unmentionables.
Now it was a different lady. A torn and patched dress of printed cotton, tied loosely round a spreading waist. Men’s shoes, scuffed and down-at-heel. And a poke bonnet that looked as though it had been used for baling out the sump of an old pump. It was difficult to see her face, and it had been mainly the voice that had given her away. Plus the fact that Eliza had been one of the few women who had ever called him Jedediah.
‘How about you, Jedediah? I heard that Herne the Hunter had got himself saddled by a young girl. Tucson, was it?’ Herne nodded. ‘And that you settled down. There’s lots of young kids, looking for a name, who were sorry about that. And here you are, wearing a gun. Bit more grey in the hair. A half inch round the middle. Apart from that, still a damned fine-looking figure of a man. If’n you weren’t tied up, I’d be mighty tempted to settle your boots under my bed again.’
While she talked Eliza was bustling about, cleaning up the floor. Herne sat down again, straining his ears to the rest of the house, trying to catch any sound from Yates. But it was as still as a tomb.
‘I’m blessed. This is just … Anyway, Jedediah; come on tell me about life as a settled old farmer. How’s the wife and what about any little Hernes?’
‘My wife’s dead, Eliza. She was attacked by some men and she killed herself about a month back. She was carrying our first'
The scrubbing stopped, then restarted again, reaching out beyond the spilled coffee to the rest of the floor. While Herne watched her, she reached the first of the bloody boot-marks, rubbing at it, then suddenly stopping and sitting back on her heels, looking up at him. Her face was drained and pale, ageing ten years as he met her gaze.
‘Chester?’ Her voice wasn’t above a whisper.
‘Yes. He was one of them. We know it was him, Eliza. We’ve got proof. Absolute and …’
‘Don’t.’ She got up, wearily leaning her hand on the table.
‘I should have guessed. Herne the Hunter wasn’t ever much for social calls. That’s blood on the floor there. Isn’t it? Yeah, I cleaned enough blood off enough floors in my time to know what it looks like.’
Before she could go on, Herne interrupted her. ‘Why? Why here? Why the Mrs. Fazackerley disguise?’
‘I’m getting on, Jedediah. Oh, I know that I could still turn a trick or two with the best, but I want something mite more respectable for my old age. And I met Chester. His wife had died, and he’d come into some money, all about the same time. I know what he is now, Jedediah. But that’s what the money’s done. Everyone in Fort Yuma’ll tell you that he used to be a good man. Fine kids. They love me. But after his angel of a wife — and I’m not being nasty — she really was a wonderful woman … After she died, things started to go sour. When he met me I was in Denver, doing a show there. He paid me well, and after a couple of nights he persuaded me to come and live here. Said after a year or so we’d move somewhere else and we’d wed.’
‘So what went wrong?’
‘He did, Jedediah. I seen a lot of wicked men in my time, and you could just take a look at them and see that they were evil. Right through and through. But Chester’s different. It’s like he’s got a devil inside him, digging its claws into him, making him do bad things. Every now and then he breaks out. We have gambling parties with some of the worst. All smelling of money and corruption. Used to make me shiver to look on some of them. One was a mortician. Another the son of a Congressman or something. Out west. A pair of twins that were so creepy it was like they just come from out of a graveyard.’
‘Nolan’s dead. The Senator’s son. And the mortician. The others will be. They were all in on it.’
‘I’m so sorry, Jedediah. I know that you men all believe that you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, and all that kind of thing. But . . . I’ve got a nice life at last, and Chester isn’t all bad. I reckon I can change him, once he’s away from the bad company. I’m asking you, Jedediah, to ride on by this one time. Killing Chester isn’t going to bring back … what was your wife’s name?’
‘Louise.’
‘It won’t bring Louise back. And there’s all those little children. If you ride on, I’ll swear to you that I’ll keep Chester from any more harm. And then I can marry him and we’ll be happy ever after.’
Herne shook his head. ‘I’m still a kind of believer in the Bible, Eliza. That eye for an eye sort of stuff seems to make sense to me. I let him live, maybe some other woman’ll suffer like Louise did. It’s got to be. I’m truly sorry.’
‘But if you kill him, then I won’t be able to touch any of his money, ’cos we aren’t wed. That means the County’ll take all the children, and I’ll be back where I was. Only a couple of years older. Please, Jedediah. I’m down on my bended knees, asking you.’
She came and knelt in front of him, resting her hands on his thighs. Eliza was still a lovely woman, though Herne could see the cracks appearing. Cracks that she would find harder and harder to paper over with every month that passed.
‘No.’
The word was flat and final, and she recognized it as such.
Yet she still made one last attempt, rising as he stood up, and standing near him, putting her arms round him and tugging down his head. Kissing him hard on the lips, her tongue sweet and sinuous, probing between his lips. ‘
‘I’d do anything for you, Jedediah. Anything if you’ll spare my man. Please.’
Gently, but firmly, Herne took her by the shoulders and stood away from her. Eliza didn’t cry, but just stood there, hands dropping to her sides, eyes dead, looking only at the half-clean floor.
‘That blood. Jedediah, I didn’t realize when we … whose blood is it? Not Chester, he’s not here. One of the children?
Her voice rose almost to a scream. Herne shook his head.
‘No. Not any of the kids. I thought you knew me better than that, Eliza.’
It was her turn to shake her head. ‘Jedediah, I’ve known you for a long time, and I know how you earned the name of Hunter. By killing. And I know that nothing would stand between you and what you thought was right. If Jesus Christ himself came and said to spare that man, you’d just ride through him as though he wasn’t there.’
‘Maybe he isn’t, Eliza.’
‘Then whose blood? Al’s?’
A new voice from the door made her turn round with a gasp. ‘Yes, ma’am. Al’s blood.’
‘Who the … ?’
‘His name’s Bill Yates, Eliza. And his wife was actually butchered by the men we’re after. Bill, this is Eliza Barrell. The lady you know as Mrs. Fazackerley.’
Eliza nodded at him, looking at the blood on his fists, smearing the dusty leather round the toes of his boots. Clotting on his spurs.
Yates ignored her, wrinkling up his nose; looking only at Herne. ‘He was tougher than I thought, Jed. It seems like he ain’t gonna tell us where the Reverend is. Not no more he ain’t.’
‘He’s in church of course. He always goes there on a Saturday morning. What have you done to poor Al?’
‘I guess you might say that he should have talked a little sooner, ma’am. Seems like he’s died.’
Eliza closed her eyes. ‘You bastards! You damned bastards. Of course he didn’t tell you. Al was deaf and dumb.’