There were five shots left in the Le Mat and Herne also had the sheriff’s Colt .45 in his holster. Eleven bullets in all. Plus a dozen that he’d taken from Matthew Daley’s belt before tipping his body into the turbulent waters of the river.
Two Sowren boys left.
Then Eliza and Lily.
Herne figured he had the odds fractionally on his side now. There was the important factor that he knew they were alive and they believed he was dead. But that tipping of the balance wouldn’t last forever.
~*~
Miss Eliza began to suspect it.
When the nephews didn’t return in half an hour from their task of executing the shootist, then she suspected it.
She stood by the window of the great mansion, looking down over the sleeping town, her fingers knotting and tangling with each other. Her mouth a grim line of steel beneath her questing nose. Sighing to herself as she began to realize that the tall man with the graying hair had undone everything that mattered in her life. In her sister’s life. Her father’s, everything.
Eliza turned away to the room, luxurious, the original oil-paintings from Europe on the walls, illuminated by the gentle glow of the lamps. The expensive glass and china on the polished table and the gleaming silver plate and cutlery. ‘Lily,’ she called. ‘Come here, will you. There are some things that we must do.’
~*~
Jed guessed that the noise of the shooting would have been totally muffled by the pounding waters, and he stalked away towards the main trail in from the mine, confident that nobody in the town of Wild Rose knew that he was free and on the scent of bloody vengeance.
The Sowrens must have finished their task of removing Zimmerman’s body. It wouldn’t take long to clear other men from the furnace room at Mount Morgoth. Certainly if you were the sons of Eliza Sowren it would be absurdly simple. Then to open the great doors and slide in the corpse, wincing away from the white heat inside. There might be the momentary stench of roasting flesh in the air above the smelting plant, but the stink of the chemicals would soon overpower it.
The moon still rode high in the Dakota sky, the few scattered clouds disappearing, leaving a cool night with a rising wind that continued to tug at the topmost branches of the trees. Jed stepped cautiously along until he reached a thick grove of bushes, close in to the rutted trail. He crouched down, out of sight, and waited. Knowing that it wasn’t going to take long.
In the house, Lily was getting hastily dressed, while her sister waited impatiently below. Out back, by the wall of the silent graveyard, servants were busy loading cans of liquid into the light rig. A horse, already harnessed, stamped its hooves nervously, scenting a strange tautness in the air.
It was difficult for Herne to catch the noise of movement above the sound of the river and the sighing of the wind, but he finally heard hooves, clattering quickly towards him.
In the darkness among the trees it would be easy to miss a shot at the men. Fatally easy. Moonlight did strange things to angles and distances when you were shooting, and Jed couldn’t afford any mistakes.
It wasn’t a time for being sentimental about animals.
As the two riders came round the nearest bend, moving at a fast trot, he readied himself. A gun in each hand. Herne wasn’t completely ambidextrous, but he was as good with his left hand as most men were with their right.
Joab and Gawain were in high spirits. Now that the dangerously nervous manager was dead and fried to a crisp, and that murdering shootist was bobbing wetly down the Clearwater, the road ahead lay straight and clear for them. Nothing was going to stop them now.
‘Hold it, you sons of bitches!!’ yelled Jedediah Herne, stepping out of the bushes directly in front of them, like an Apache shaman leaping from a cloud of smoke to terrify even the stoutest of hearts.
‘Jesus Christ!!’ screamed Joab Sowren, fumbling for his rifle.
His brother, Gawain didn’t shout anything at all. He was too busy fighting his horse that had reared up in terror at the frightening appearance of the man, right under its hooves.
Calm as if he was at early morning practice, Herne pumped three bullets into each animal, using the Colt in his left hand. Feeling the pistol buck and kick against his wrist. Seeing in the silver light the black splodges of blood that burst but on the chests on both horses, the impact of the bullets knocking them over in the slippery mud.
Joab was so concerned with trying for his Winchester that he was slow in reacting. As his horse rolled under him, he never managed to get his boots clear of the stirrups and was trapped by the leg. A snapping sound and a lance of fiery pain telling him that the bones were crushed by the weight of the animal. From where he lay, he couldn’t reach his gun, and the tossing of the dying creature’s head prevented him even seeing the man that had attacked them.
Gawain was luckier and quicker.
Jumping sideways as the horse fell, landing in a crouch, his hand going for the pistol at his belt. There had been a time when Gawain Sowren had been fast with a hand-gun. As a younger man he’d practiced a whole lot, in the rolling country out beyond the cemetery. But that had been long years back. Though he was only about the same age as Jed, maybe a year or so older, his years had been soft and easy.
Herne’s years had been long and hard. Keeping the edge that Sowren had long lost.
Jed dropped the empty Colt in the dirt by his feet, thumbing back the Le Mat, snapping off a quick shot at the kneeling man. Seeing the effect it had.
Gawain screamed once, high and thin, like a stallion being gelded, and his arms flew up and wide as if he’d seen a long-lost friend and was readying himself to greet him. But the expression on his face was one of agony, not greeting. The bullet had hit him in the chest, just above the breastbone, sending him slumping back, rolling in the mud. Trying to scream again but blood from his torn lungs flooded into his throat and mouth, choking him.
He clapped his hands to the wound, pressing as hard as he could, attempting to force the pain away. As he tried to sit up, Herne shot him through the centre of the head, the forty-two ripping away most of his nose, opening the middle of his face like a butcher’s cleaver. Angling up sideways and back, forcing one eye from its socket where it dangled on Sowren’s cheek, still attached by the gristle of the muscle and the optic nerve.
The distorted bullet mangled a chunk from the middle-aged man’s brain before finally stopping its progress. Gawain Sowren died blinded and alone, face down in dirt, his fingers clawing for a handful of earth. That was all the birthright that death left him.
There were three bullets left in the Le Mat, and one son to kill.
Joab Sowren was struggling for his life, his brain threatening to slip away from his control into a helpless hysteria. One moment all had been well and they’d been riding along happily, pushing on to report their success to their mother and to Aunt Lily. Then an appalling horror had erupted among them.
His brother was dead. He knew that. The two bullets, the scream and that awful choking, bubbling sound. And now it was his turn. He could feel his broken leg crushed by the horse. Even see the shattered fragments of white bone sticking through the torn cloth of his trousers. His horse was finally still, blood tumbling from its wounds and pattering on the dirt. Flooding down the slope of the trail, stark in the moonlight, looking like spilled ink.
‘Herne?’ he yelled, voice cracking. ‘That you, Herne? Is it?
There was no answer. Jed was waiting quietly, unable to see beyond the corpse of the horse, whether the man had a gun in his hand or not. In the middle of the action, amid the noise of the bullets and the drifting clouds of powder smoke, he thought he’d heard the clean crack of a bone breaking, but he wasn’t sure. Not sure enough to want to risk his life on it.
‘Herne? Do this mean what I think it means?
From out of the darkness there floated a voice as cold as a midnight tomb.
‘It do.’
‘My leg’s broke, Herne,’ called Joab.
“What the Hell d’you want me to do? Come and nurse you?’
‘ You killed Gawain.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And Matthew and Marcus? Must have if’n you’re here and alive.’
‘You figure good. Just like a damned banker, Sowren. Even a crooked banker.’
At that moment, Eliza and Lily were sitting in their withdrawing room, a half mile away up the hill, waiting patiently. Not wanting to be too precipitate. Eliza had ruled that they would wait until half-past four. If nobody had returned by then they would assume that all was lost and they would act accordingly.
They both knew what they must do.
That had been agreed among the family many years back. Even though none of them had ever imagined that it would come to it. None of them had ever imagined that there was a man around like Herne the Hunter
~*~
‘Let me alone, Herne.’
‘You’re wastin’ breath, Sowren. Man as close to death as you are should be makin’ peace with his gods, not whining on about livin’.’
‘I’ll pay you, Herne. Thousand dollars.’
‘Forget it, Sowren.’
‘Ten thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money.’
‘Sure is. And I got me plenty of life to think on the way I earned it. Thanks a lot, Mr. Sowren, but I guess not.’
‘Anything...’
‘You don’t need to offer that much, Sowren. All I want is one bullet through your head. That’ll do me. Kind of pay off some scores for all the men you and your murderin’ family butchered in all those robberies.’
‘Wasn’t my idea.’ Joab was still fighting to free himself, but the dead weight of the horse was too much. At first shock had eased off the pain from the broken leg, but now it was inching back in. Tearing at him like the jaws of a wild animal.
‘I know that, Sowren. It was your mother and her crazy sister. They’re goin’ to get theirs too, not that I go much for killin’ women. But I’m real prepared to make an exception for those two.’
By now he was beginning to suspect that Sowren wasn’t armed. Or was so badly hurt he couldn’t get at his pistol. But a suspicion wasn’t enough to go walking up on, and he started to move around, skirting the grove of bushes that had first hidden him. Moving silent as a Chiricahua warrior, setting down each foot as carefully as if he was treading on eggshells.
At last he could see partly behind the corpse of the horse, settled in the mud. The banker was there, struggling to lift his head and see where Herne was.
‘Where are you? Damn it! Don’t just go off and leave me here. I’ll die.’
There was no answer.
Jed stepped in closer to him. Closing the gap. Watching the man’s hands, seeing they couldn’t reach the holstered gun trapped under him.
‘Come on!! Help!!! Help!!!’
Sowren’s control was going as he realized that he’d been left with his broken leg. It could be a day or more until anyone came along and found him. By then he’d be dead from pain and shock.
‘Don’t leave me,’ he whimpered. ‘Help me. Please, Mama. Help Joab. Help me, Mama. Please help me.’ His voice had dropped so low that Herne could hardly catch it, and the middle-aged banker was beginning to cry.
‘Not fair, Mama. Please.’
In his morbid terror, he hardly even noticed the cold of the muzzle of the Le Mat against his muddied hair.
‘So long,’ said Herne, in a pleasant conversational voice, squeezing the trigger once.
At the crown of the head the hair hadn’t got wet from the muddy earth, and the explosion of the pistol at point blank range set fire to it. Filling Herne’s nostrils with the smell of scorched hair. But it sizzled for only a moment.
Jed had aimed for a little behind the right ear, so that the bullet would bury itself in the middle of the brain. It was surprising how you could shoot a man through the head and not kill him. Herne recalled a dance-hall girl in Natchez, or could it have been Dallas? A girl who’d fired two shots from an over-and-under Derringer through her head and failed to kill herself. Both bullets had passed through without doing any fatal damage.
But the shots had scarred her face, taking away part of her jaw and most of her teeth. As soon as she was free from hospital she’d gone on down to the river and drowned herself.
‘Natchez,’ he said to himself, remembering.
Standing up from the twitching corpse of Joab Sowren, wiping shards of bone from his sleeve, specks of blood and pink brain from the back of his hand.
~*~
Three nephews and two sons dead. Herne looked up at the moon sinking slowly down towards the distant hills. The night was nearly over. He stood close to the trail and reloaded the Colt, sticking it in his belt. Glancing down at the two corpses.
‘Well,’ he said to himself, ‘I guess it’s about time to go join the ladies.’