For a moment Herne had thought the boy was going to lose his self-control and make a play against him right there in the saloon. It didn’t matter much to Jed if he had. An angry gunfighter was a bad gunfighter, and it never hurt to edge the odds your way.
There’d been a lot of times that Jed had faced men ready to draw against him, and he was still alive. Most all of them were dead.
But that didn’t make him any less careful. He’d seen too many friends get to buy the farm from being careless.
And he knew well enough what a waste of time it was to try the soft answer. Nine times out of ten you still had to fight, and all you did was give the other man confidence. It just came down to being firstest with the mostest.
‘You son of a...’
‘Talk’s cheap son. Let’s go out in the street where the action is. See what price you want to pay.’
They faced each other, Herne wondering whether the boy would try it there and then. Knowing that he’d take him out. Seeing the glimmer of uncertainty as he realized that Herne looked very big and very mean. And that Herne didn’t seem worried by the challenge. Or frightened by it.
‘All right, old man. You go first.’
‘Let you shoot me in the back? I’m full of that kind of trick, son. Come on over and we walk out slow and easy. Together.’
The sun was almost directly overhead as they stepped out of the cool of the saloon onto the boardwalk along the street. The kid edgy and tense. Herne calm and relaxed.
On the outside he was calm and relaxed.
Inside he was tightened up to a hair-trigger readiness. Looking around for the sign of movement or the glitter of light off a gun that would mean he was being set up by the kid for friends in the street.
Suddenly the town was full of people.
Every window had its crowd of faces; every door was partly open with a person in the shadows. Just for a terrifying moment Jed thought they were all out to get him and he almost began the draw, knowing it was over but determining to go down blasting.
Then he realized that they were just spectators. Out to watch the killing as if they were going to a picnic or a barn raising.
So they’d known.
Known the young boy was in there, and knowing what was going to happen.
Wild Rose City, so pretty and clean on the outside, was beginning to smell like a week dead horse when you got closer.
‘I’ll walk that way, son,’ said Herne, starting to pace off to the left, down the hill.
‘You’ll get the sun in my eyes, damn you!’ snarled the kid.
‘Sun’s clean overhead,’ replied Jed, calmly. ‘But if’n you want the lower end, you take it. No concern to me.’
‘Hell! You’re tryin’ to fuckin’ trick me, you stinkin’ old bastard.’
‘You think what you want, boy. I’m givin’ you the choice.’ He kept his voice loud so that everyone watching would hear. Would know that he wasn’t trying to railroad the young man into the fight. When you got to be a top shootist, then you had to take a lot of care. Otherwise you won the fight and still ended up dead. Choking out your life on the end of a vigilante rope.
‘You go down the hill, old-timer,’ shouted the boy, starting to walk, stiff-legged away from Jed.
Who turned and walked a dozen paces down. That was what he’d wanted all along. It was easier to aim up a hill rather than down. If you missed your chest shot you had a good chance of at least taking the man in the legs. Miss when you were shooting down a hill, and the odds were that you’d miss high and the bullet would go whining harmlessly by.
There was the rattling of a wagon in the small alley that ran along the back of Main Street, and Herne saw a cloud of dust drifting across the rear of the buildings. Wondering who was in such a hurry to come and see the fight. Having a sneaking suspicion of the answer to his own question. Seeing the answer when the Misses Sowren appeared around the corner of the bank, joining the manager, their oldest son, Joab, by the front door. Watching eagerly.
Two and two started to add up to four.
~*~
The kid was around eighteen. Maybe nineteen. He had grown a drooping moustache to try and make himself look older, and his hair hung across his narrow shoulders. He was wearing a light colored jacket and a blue shirt, open almost to his stomach.
His face was thin and foxy, eyes slitted in a pale face. Herne didn’t recognize him as a top gun, though shootists were always springing up and getting themselves a reputation for a few months in any town along the border or in the north where the mines were. Then the day came along when they met someone that inch faster or luckier, and their reputation didn’t shield them from lead.
‘Right Mr. Herne. You ready now, you spit-suckin’ old bastard?’
‘Ready as I’ll ever be, boy,’ replied Herne, flexing his shoulders, feeling the coat across his back. Moving the fingers of his right hand to ease away any stiffness.
‘Don’t fuckin’ call me “boy”, you son of a damned bitch, Herne. Don’t you want to know my name?’
‘Never concerned myself with the name of a man I’m goin’ to kill, son. Let’s get to it.’
The crowd was edging out into the open. The saloon was suddenly filled with folks, including Marcus Daley, a white towel across his arm. Herne wondered which of the Sowren’s brood ran the morticians’ parlor.
The dry goods store was at his back, the clerk, Hempstead, peering out from the front window, behind a display of cracker biscuits. The ladies gathered by the bank.
The sheriff hadn’t put in an appearance yet. That surprised Herne.
The two men faced each other. One young, coiled like a spring. The other grizzled and relaxed. Hands hanging loose at his side.
The shot made everyone jump. Booming out from the side of Main Street.
Herne began to turn, seeing the burst of powder smoke, even before he’d registered the crack of the shot. Then easing off again as he saw it was Sheriff Daley, putting in a belated word for law and order in the town.
‘You men better back off there,’ he shouted, holding his smoking pistol in his hand. It wasn’t much of a threat from better than fifty yards off but Herne watched him cautiously, trying to figure out the rules that this game was being played under. Careful not to make any sort of move that could be interpreted as menacing the lawman.
‘Leave us be, Sheriff,’ called the boy, his voice cracking with the tension, wobbling from foot to foot as if he was about to dive for cover.
‘I said back off. Can’t kill around here.’
‘Fair fight, Sheriff Daley,’ shouted someone from the crowd by the livery stables.
A voice that Herne would have sworn came from Gawain Sowren, Eliza’s youngest son.
‘Don’t allow no fightin’ in this town. Not fair fights and not unfair ones.’
‘Stand back, Sheriff!’ shouted the kid. ‘Me and this old man got us some shootin’ to do.’
‘Now you both...’
‘Matt. Leave them be.’
The sheriff turned round as though someone had just nudged him with a branding iron, staring across at where his aunt stood with her sister.
‘But we said...’
‘Let it be, Matthew,’ replied Eliza Sowren. ‘They wish to have a fair fight, then let them. I can see no harm in it Unless Mr. Herne wishes to back down from it.’
Jed didn’t. But it was interesting that she should suggest it. Almost as if she was able to control the kid and the way he acted. Like she controlled her own kin.
Almost.
‘Well, I don’t rightly…’
‘I do, Matthew. Do as I tell you and let them get on with it. I’m sure that Mr. Herne will uphold the right for Wild Rose City against young... this boy.’
For a moment it was as though she knew the kid’s name and then remembered she didn’t. But that didn’t worry Herne right at that moment. His eyes were locked with those of the young boy in the light jacket. Wondering if he would be one of those that stood still or one that powered himself off to the side as he opened fire.
‘Very well,’ shouted the sheriff, trying to salvage a remnant of his lost pride from the situation, ‘You fight fair-now. And I figure maybe it’s better if’n I give you the signal to...’
‘Sheriff,’ shouted the boy, coming close to winning a touch of respect from Herne. ‘You and men like you don’t understand what’s going down here between me and this old man. Just leave it alone or...’
The threat dangled in the dirt of the street, lying there among the short black shadows of the two men. The old and the young.
Jed watched Daley out of the corner of his eye, seeing him looking in his turn to his aunts, standing close together. One lean and tall, the other round and short.
‘All right. But it’d better be fair. Man tries to draw unfair and I’ll gun him down in the dirt, so help me, God.’
‘Matthew,’ warned Eliza Sowren, thin-lipped at the blasphemy.
The buzz of conversation in the crowd died slowly down, leaving the two of them facing each other, around twenty paces apart. Waiting.
‘Make your play, old man.’
Herne shook his head. ‘Never drawn first on a man or a boy in my life, son. You can get started and I’ll kind of catch you up.’
It wasn’t true. There had been times when Jed had shot first. Times even when he’d shot men in the back. If it was your life there on the line, and the cards were stacked against you, then there was no point in giving it up.
But faced with a kid, and a kid whose holster was slung way too low, Herne figured he could afford to be that bit generous. It wasn’t as though as he was facing Billy Bonney. He had once. Years back. Hell, the Kid was dead and buried these four years. He’d been about the fastest, had Billy. Runty son of a bitch. Laughed when he ate. Laughed when he made love. Laughed when he stole. Laughed when he killed men. Jed had always wondered whether Billy had laughed when Pat gunned him down at Pete Maxwell’s.
Top shootists hardly ever faced each other like this in a high noon pistol duel. They always knew how fast they were. And how tiny was the margin between the best and the second. So small that nobody could ever swear that it even existed.
So there wasn’t any point. Maybe you’d get the first bullet off and kill the other. But it was a better than even wager he’d have had enough time to squeeze his own trigger and you could be dead or critically wounded at the same time.
It wasn’t worth it.
~*~
‘Come on, Herne!’
It was a beautiful day. The fresh spring air of the Dakotas and the foaming waters of the river as a backdrop to the town. The hills all around it. The only cloud against the blue sky to the west where the Mount Morgoth refinery belched out filthy smoke.
‘Draw, damn you!’
‘Told you before, sonny. You wanted me out here so you get on with it. Or take out your gun and throw it down. Walk away and you stay alive, son.’
‘Draw!!’
‘No.’
‘Bastard!!!’
The kid screamed at the top of his voice, hand slapping down, body ducking and beginning to twist, knees bending. Herne reacting like a prairie rattler. Hand blurring for the butt of the .45. So much faster than the boy.
Three fingers around the polished wood, drawing the gun easily from the greased leather. Thumb pulling back on the hammer, triple clicking into place. Index finger snug and tight around the thin trigger of the pistol.
All happening by habit. His brain not even aware that it was going on. An instinctive movement, all worked in with the drawing and leveling of the gun. The movement of the body, the left arm balancing the right.
The kid wasn’t that bad. Herne had killed plenty slower. Not bad for a small town hidden away in the middle of the Black Hills. But he wouldn’t have lasted an hour in Tucson or Tombstone against real gunmen.
In the background, just before he squeezed the trigger, Herne was aware of a sound he’d heard a lot of times before. The gasp of a crowd seeing a man draw a gun faster than any of them could have believed possible. Herne wasn’t just good. Not just fast.
He was about the best.
Slightly higher than him, standing up the slope of the street, the kid took the first bullet in the pit of the stomach. With his pistol still not clear of the holster. The .45 slug kicking him a couple of steps back, the gun dropping from his fingers. Both hands reaching for the wound as if he couldn’t believe what was happening. Eyes staring wide, jaw gaping in shock.
It would probably have been enough. Any bullet that got itself buried deep in your stomach in 1885 would generally kill you.
Quick or slow. Often slow. And painful.
Jed wasn’t in the waiting mood.
‘One to kill them. Two to set your mind easy.’ That was what someone had once said to him. Couldn’t recall the name. Might have been that ex-officer. Caleb something. Thorn. Or maybe it was the man that folks just called Crow. No other name. Probably Crow. Meanest and coldest son of a bitch Jedediah Herne had ever met. Cavalry man.
The second bullet took the young boy’s feet the last steps along the road to the shrine of death.
The kid was fighting to straighten up from the bullet in the stomach when the second slug hit him. Ripping his throat apart, snapping splinters of bone from the top of his spine, and bursting on through the back of his neck in a gout of bright arterial blood.
He dropped to his knees, coughing, hands resting in the dirt. Gripping the small stones of the street so hard that Herne could actually hear the boy’s nails snapping and tearing backwards as the pain beat him down.
Blood pattered in the sand, loud in the quietness, clearly audible even above the noise of the Clearwater River and a sigh from the crowd. The ragged breathing of the dying boy, bubbling through the frothing blood from his lungs, was the only other sound. Herne watched him, the smoking pistol still in his fist, a cartridge ready under the cocked hammer.
‘Herne ...’panted the kid, raising his head with an agonizing effort.
‘What is it, son?’ asked the older man, stepping a few paces nearer.
‘Herne ... They said... to me...’ A coughing fit interrupted him and he slid forwards on his face, the blood flowing more slowly from the wounds at front and back of his neck. Barely trickling from the other wound in his stomach.
Jed took another couple of steps, trying to hear what the kid was saying. Watching him carefully in case he was going to try a last trick. The fallen pistol was only inches from the boy’s clawing fingers.
‘Who told you, son?’ he asked.
‘They…’
‘They?’
The face turned up to him, slobbered with blood, bubbles smeared across his mouth. Spotting the blue shirt and dappling the white jacket. The boy’s eyes were veiling over as he became preoccupied with the mystery of his own dying.
‘The...’
The bullet smashed into the back of his skull, bouncing his face in the dirt. Herne spun around at the shot, gun seeking out who’d fired it. Seeing the pistol in the chubby hand of Sheriff Matthew Daley. Who waved it apologetically at him before holstering it.
‘Sorry, Mr. Herne. Thought I saw him going for his gun.’
Jed looked down, seeing that the boy’s hand was close to the butt of the pistol, the fingers now relaxing in death. Looking up again into the frank, open face of the ageing lawman.
‘That’s the case then I got to thank you. And I got to go lookin’ for someone else owes you a debt of thanks.’
‘Who?’
‘Persons the kid was goin’ to name before you blasted the words off his lips.’
‘What are you sayin’ Herne?’ asked Daley, fingers hooked belligerently in his wide belt.
‘I’m sayin’ nothing, Sheriff. And neither is he.’