‘Course it was damned Indians!’
‘I’m just sayin’, Sheriff, that it could be renegades or a bunch of breeds. Even a gang of Mex bandits from south ‘cross the River.’
The law in Stow Wells, Arizona Territory, was a young-looking forty-year-old; Sheriff Clifford V. Williamson. Son of a local rancher, he’d been the law for close on twenty years. The settlement was generally quiet and the slaughter of the coach’s passengers, driver and shotgun had left him shocked and angry.
‘Indians,’ repeated Williamson, stubbornly. ‘Scalpin’ and butcherin’ like that. Chiricahua. Under Mendez. Small sub-tribe.’
‘Not normally the Apache way … taking a stage like that.’
‘Happened before. Month back. Same way. Goin’ to be hard to get driver and guard next time on.’
Herne sniffed, leaning back in the chair in the Sheriff’s office, looking around. Thinking that lawmen’s rooms were the same all over. Board with some flyblown notices pinned crookedly to them. Back door through to the cells. Rack of Winchesters and Meteors, chained together. Desk and a couple of seats. Iron round-bellied stove with some of last winter’s ash still cluttering up its base.
And the same kind of lawman.
There were easy towns and hard towns and Herne had known plenty of both. Stow Wells was an easy one. You could tell that by watching Sheriff Clifford V. Williamson.
The most trouble he’d normally get to see would be a couple of cowboys getting themselves drunk and raising some kind of hell with the girls from the Inside Straight across the street.
Williamson had the stamp of a man who’d lived too easy for too long. Now there were hard times poking their noses over the hills around him and he wasn’t rightly ready for them.
During the silence Herne stood up and walked to a small table near the barred and shuttered window that opened on the street. Pouring himself a cup of coffee that a rosy-cheeked woman had carried over for them both from the eating-house across the way. It was good coffee, hot and black and strong enough to float a marble clock.
‘I heard plenty of you, Herne,’ said Williamson, breaking the silence.
‘I heard nothing ’bout you,’ replied Jed, wiping his lips on his sleeve.
‘Heard years back you’d gotten married. And then that you was dead.’
‘Part true.’
‘Yeah. You surely are kind of a legend.’
‘I know it. And it don’t do a damned thing for the way I live, Sheriff.’
‘Take care of one of our colts here in town.’
‘Blackstone.’
‘Hell!’ The sheriff couldn’t hide his surprise, his boot-heels slipping off the edge of the desk so he nearly fell.
‘Seamus Blackstone. Red-headed kid.’
‘Now how the . . .? You just rode in here. I know for a fact you can’t have been through Stow Wells in the eighteen years and . . .’ he paused, calculating on his fingers. ‘In the eighteen years and seven months that I’ve been the law here. So how come you’ve heard about Seamus?’
‘I hear things.’
‘Oh, sure.’ Williamson continued to look puzzled, but wasn’t prepared to push it. You’ve not been this way before?’
‘No. Not through this place in the daylight. Camped close by once.’
‘You get to see most places, I guess.’
‘Yeah. And they all look just around the same, Sheriff.’
Herne’s reputation as a gunman and shootist had ridden well before him. For years now he’d hardly ever met a lawman who hadn’t been nervous, seeing his presence in a town as a signal that some general massacre was about to begin.
Sometimes they were correct.
'You was born up in the Sierras, weren’t you?’
Herne was surprised at that one. Not many lawmen knew that much about him.
'Yes. Who told you that?’
‘I think it was one of the old-timers from the Home. Yeah, it was. Don’t recall which one. All them skinny old bastards looks ’bout the same.’
‘Who runs that Home?’
Miss Lily Abernathy. Widow of the old Colonel. Mighty handsome woman. Her daughter, Andreanna, is … what do they call …? Yeah. The Matron. Matron of the Home. And she’s an even more handsome piece of womanhood.’
‘How old are they?’
Williamson crinkled his eyes. ‘Miss Lily was a whole mile younger than Colonel Abernathy. Used to be somethin’ on the stage back East. She’d be around forty. Ladiest lady I ever seen.’
‘The daughter?’
‘Andreanna’s twenty-three next month.’
The speed and accuracy of the reply indicated that Sheriff Clifford V. Williamson might have more than just a passing interest in Miss Andreanna Abernathy.
‘How many men there?’
‘Twenty, give or take who died this morning. All between sixty and eighty-five. Hardly any of them more than ten cents in the dollar.’
Herne nodded. Though the three he’d met earlier hadn’t seemed too far gone.
Williamson reached in a drawer of his desk, fishing out a half-empty bottle of bourbon. Offering it to Herne who silently shook his head. The lawman drew the cork with his teeth and put away a couple of sizable belts of the liquor.
‘Better. My Pa always did says he’d never end up in the Home. He died three years back. Your Pa still livin’, Herne?’
The instinctive answer was ‘No’, but the shootist hesitated. It wouldn’t have been strictly true.
‘I don’t know, Williamson.’
‘You don’t know. Now that’s interesting.’
Herne waited for him to go on, but he stayed quiet.
‘Yeah,’ continued Jed. ‘I was born up in the Sierras. February twenty ninth, ’forty-four. Pa was A.J. Herne, a cartographer with the Fremont expedition.’
‘What in hell’s a cart … whatever you said?’
‘Mapmaker. Pa was good. Ma was with him, as they was supposed to be in and out of the high country before the weather broke. Didn’t turn out that way.’
‘Snow came.’
Herne nodded. ‘Yeah. My Ma’s name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth Julia Herne. I saw pictures of her. Hair looked blacker than a raven’s wings at midnight. That’s what my Aunt Rosemary said.’
Williamson took another pull at the bottle. And Herne took some more coffee. Wincing at the pain as the scalding liquid touched on his raw-nerved tooth. Remembering that his next call had to be on the smith. Bisset. Jim Bisset.
‘The snows came up on Carson Pass.’
‘I been up that way once. Damn it! It was colder’n a well-digger’s ass.’
‘So Ma had me in a camp. No doctor, nor nurse. No other women. I lived and she didn’t. Pa took it real hard. Blamed himself for it. When the snows went he took me out East. Had an unmarried sister, Rosemary, in Boston. Big house up on Beacon Hill.’
‘She raised you?’ asked the sheriff.
‘Tried to. She was powerful fond of French brandy. She was mild and gentle and I walked all over her once I was grown. Left her before I was thirteen.’
‘And your father?’
It occurred to Herne that it was a little curious this lawman showing so much interest in his parents, but he was content to talk. Postponing the moment when he had to go and face the blacksmith.
‘He left,’ he answered, shortly.
‘Up and walked?’
‘Yes. Vanished into Indian country in the summer of ’forty-four.’ He saw the next question already appearing in the lawman’s mind and answered it. ‘Sure I searched. But he’d gone and that was that. Guess he changed his name. Couldn’t live with what happened. Figured maybe that I was kind of to blame as well, just for bein’ born. I never saw him again. Never heard a word at all.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Rumors. I followed out West when I was in my teens. That was when I was riding with Bill Cody out of Fort Bridger with the Pony Express. And I heard a word here and there. Man on his own. Talked a lot to himself. But nothing you could hang a hat on. And that, Sheriff, was that.’
Clifford sniffed, jamming the cork back in the bottle and sliding the remains of his liquor into the desk drawer again. ‘That’s real interesting Herne. And now … What are your plans? Moving on?’
‘I just got here. I aim to move on when I’m ready to move on. Not a whole lot sooner.’
‘Your teeth painin’ you?’ the lawman asked, leaning forward in his chair and staring intently at Herne, as though he’d been studying his face.
‘Yeah. I hear the smith’ll help.’
‘Big Jim? Sure will. Gentle as a mother sucklin’ her baby. One jerk and all your troubles are over.’
Herne stood up and began to move towards the door when the Sheriff also stood and called across the room.
‘Wait on now.’
Herne felt a prickle of tension in the voice and turned slowly. What is it, Sheriff?’
‘Two things. How old would your Pa be? Supposin’ he was still living.’
‘’round …seventy-two. Seventy-three. That kind of age. Why the damned interest?’ The nagging pain from his jaw had shortened Herne’s temper to the point where he wasn’t likely to suffer fools at all, never mind gladly.
‘Nothing. Hold on that rein, Mr. Herne. Hold on, there.’ The look of anger had frightened Williamson. Red fire had seemed to flare behind the eyes of the shootist and the lawman had felt the chill wind of death brush around the office.
‘What else?’
‘What?’
‘You said there was two things.’
‘Sure. If’n you could use a few dollars, it looks like we got us a vacancy as shotgun or driver on the coach, next time it makes a run.’
‘When’s that?’
‘Should be in three days.’
‘I can’t drive a Concord. Well, I guess I could if’n I had to. Don’t have the hands for it. Not the feel.’
‘I know someone who’d drive. But not anyone who might ride guard.’
‘No. Thanks, Sheriff, but it’s not my style.’
‘Pay you twenty dollars. Twenty-five.’
‘No. Be seeing you.’
He walked out of the cool of the office into the bright sun of late afternoon. There were people on the street watching him and he was sure he caught the movement of someone behind the dusty windows of the saloon. It looked like a man. With red hair.
*
‘Igth at on.’
‘Sure. I see it, Mr. Herne.’
Herne felt the blacksmith touch the tooth that was paining him, sending a white flash of undiluted agony lancing through his jaw. ‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Guess there’s some infection under it. Soon as I draw it that’ll start drainin’ away. Two or three days and you’ll feel great.’
‘I’ll believe that when I feel it,’ replied the shootist.
‘Go sit down there.’ said the smith, pointing to an old wooden chair in the corner of the forge, away from the glowing fire. ‘Hang on that leather strap runnin’ under it. Kind of brace yourself.’
The room was unbearably hot and Herne felt sweat coursing down his cheeks, soaking into the collar of his shirt. Running down into the small of his back. At least he figured that it was the heat that was making him perspire so much.
The leather strap was right there and he reached down and gripped it. Fighting the temptation to hang on real tight, forcing himself to relax. Taking several slow, deep breaths. Closing his eyes and easing the tension from arms and legs.
When he opened his eyes again Jim Bisset was right in front of him, blotting out the rectangle of light from the open door. The smith was a big man with broad shoulders and a neatly trimmed beard. His arms and shirt were dotted with scorch marks from the fires and muscles danced beneath the skin.
‘You ready now, Mr. Herne?’
‘Sure. Ready as a stallion facin’ the gelding. Get to it, Bisset.’
‘There’s a cup of water there by your feet. Use it real quick and rinse out when the tooth’s gone.’
‘Get to it,’ repeated the shootist. Opening his mouth, feeling the strong fingers reach in. The taste of smoke on his tongue. A jab of searing pain as the smith’s thumb and finger closed shut.
Then there was an interruption. A voice from near the door. Young.
‘Stand off the stranger, Jim. Leave him be.’
Over the smith’s shoulder Herne glimpsed someone holding a gun. And the sun from outside glinted off the boy’s bright red hair.
‘Shit.’ said Jed.