A flicker of light, bright-feathered. Humming through the stillness of the Wyoming morning, burying itself in the side of the woman’s neck. Fired with such force that the point came lunging through, spouting blood, completely piercing her throat.
Aurora Clifton staggered sideways under the impact of the arrow, mouth sagging open with shock. The blanket dropped from her shoulders and she stood still for a moment, utterly naked, and very beautiful.
‘Noooo …’ cried Herne, eyes fixed to her, not able to believe what they were watching.
She took three hesitant, tottering steps towards him, towards the house, her bare feet shuffling through the dust. Her hands reached out, as though she was begging him to do something to save her.
Then, as though all of the strings had been severed at once, Aurora fell facedown, like a toppled tree.
Herne spun away from the window, going to the room where they’d been sleeping, picking up his handgun and the spare cylinder. He thumbed back the hammer, returning to the kitchen. On an afterthought he took a slender-bladed skinning knife from a rack on the wall and stuck it into his belt.
Outside, the morning was calm and still. The rain had finally passed away and Herne could see great shards of blue between the tops of the surrounding trees. The forest was silent, nothing moving. But the Cheyenne were out there. Probably three or four, if his tracking skills were as good as he hoped.
The naked body of the woman was halfway between the edge of the woods and the house. Jed flattened himself against the wall of the kitchen, squinting sideways and peering through the dusty glass of the window. He was fairly certain that the Indians would have some firearms. There was the rifle that he knew they’d taken, and the odds were that they would have stolen other guns. But having them and using them were two very different things.
‘The fuckin’ horses,’ he hissed to himself. The animals were out back, in the stable, not in sight from the front.
But Jed’s biggest problem was that he was now alone. It simply wasn’t possible to cover every side. Shutters were up and bolted on every side but at the front. And there was the one door standing open. There was a great temptation to run and pull it shut, but his fighting instinct told him that this wouldn’t necessarily be the best course of action.
Wait and think.
Wait.
~*~
The mochila containing the precious letters lay, almost forgotten, on the table of the living room. Jed had automatically brought it along with him. It had been made by a leather craftsman from St. Joseph, Missouri, named Israel Landis, and it weighed like a handful of feathers. The mail was already a couple of days late, and the way things were coming down, it might finish up a whole lot later.
The morning came and went, and still Herne waited. Patient as a shadow, only moving once, to get himself a mouthful of water and a couple of biscuits. The rest of the time he waited, listening to the silence of the trees.
Normally the forest would be alive with sounds, whirring with birds. But there was nothing. If ever there was a sign that the Cheyenne were still out there, it was that stillness.
It bothered him that the Indians were making no effort to come in after him. They must know that the woman had been accompanied by a man, and that he was still in the house. There was only the one door, and all of the windows had their shutters bolted across.
Noon passed and the afternoon wore on.
Jed didn’t know all that much about the Indians of the plains. Just what he’d picked up from talk around the tables at stations. But he knew that the Cheyenne rated honor very highly. It was considered as brave for a warrior to touch his enemy and count coup on him as it was for him to actually kill the man.
But they could hardly get at him to touch him inside the house.
The waiting went on.
~*~
When things began to happen, it was with the dramatic suddenness of summer thunder.
A young buck, looking no older than Jed himself, appeared on the fringe of the forest. He was wearing a fringed shirt of buckskin and short breeches. Herne immediately readied the pistol. The Cheyenne was armed only with a tomahawk, tucked into his belt. And a long stick, like a spear, but lacking a point.
He called something out, facing the house. Herne stayed hidden. There was a second voice from the woods, and the boy started to walk forwards, cautious. Head angled to one side as if he were receiving instructions from some unseen guide.
As he passed the corpse of Aurora Clifton he touched it lightly with the end of the stick.
‘Come on, you bastard,’ whispered Herne. Away behind the house he heard one of the horses suddenly whinny, but he was too involved with the approaching youth to do anything about it.
The Cheyenne brave was closing in steadily. Less than twenty paces. Fifteen. A dozen. Stopping, and looking into the black pit of the open doorway. Herne waited, behind the table. A voice came again from the darkness of the trees.
‘Come on, you …’ began Herne.
He was young, lacking in experience. It is always better in that sort of situation to try and take the initiative. The boy was close enough for him to have moved behind the door and gunned him down at absolutely no risk to himself.
But it’s always very easy for the observer to come along, being wise after the event.
The last ten steps came at a desperate, leaping sprint. So that the warrior was actually inside the building before Jed was ready for him. The doorway filled with the Indian’s bulk, taking Herne by surprise. Never for a moment realizing how important honor was. Never imagining for a second that anyone would be foolish to charge in on an armed man secure in a building.
Jed’s finger squeezed the trigger, jerking the Colt Navy, the bullet splintering the wood from the edge of the door. Missing the Cheyenne by a hand’s breath. And there wasn’t time for a second shot.
The stick brushed against the arm of the white man, carrying no force. But the Indian had also drawn his gleaming tomahawk. Bringing it across and down in a hissing scythe. Herne desperately parried it with the pistol, feeling the blade of the war-ax jar against the barrel. The impact fierce enough to knock the gun from his hand.
‘Shit!’
The young brave was fast.
Jed was faster.
Jumping to one side, dodging the next swing of the tomahawk, the feathers that decorated the metal head brushing his arm. The move gave him the moment he needed to draw the thin-bladed knife. Gripping it point up, like all great fighters.
‘Come on you, damned bastard,’ he whispered, gesturing with his left hand to the Cheyenne. Who grinned his reply, teeth bared.
The table was between them, and the two young men, both much of an age, circled it cautiously. Eyes locked. Herne desperately conscious that there were probably two more of the tribe somewhere outside. Probably the brave with him had been sent ahead to test him and to win some honor. But if too long drifted by, then others would come. And the fight would end swiftly and bloodily.
The Cheyenne muttered something at him, but Jed didn’t understand the words. The kitchen wasn’t that large, with the table at its center, and a sink for washing. And the small cooking-stove with the pot of coffee still bubbling merrily on it.
The pistol lay near the open door, and both the young men wanted it. Both of them pausing each time they were near it, wondering whether they had the time to stoop and pick it up. Both figuring they didn’t.
Time was against Herne, and his only chance was to gamble. With odds not in his favor, and with his life on the green table. He waited until he was furthest from the door, by the stove, his opponent close to the gun.
He feinted, as though he was going to move one way, pivoting the other way. His boots seeming to slip on the planking floor so that he nearly fell, reaching out to steady himself on the stove.
Off balance for a fraction of a second.
The Cheyenne saw the chance he’d wanted and made his move for the Colt Navy, stopping and grabbing it with his left hand. Coming up from the crouch, cocking the pistol, smiling his triumph.
Herne saw the smile.
Saw the cocked handgun, coming up towards him.
Saw the smile tighten and the eyes open in a moment of panic.
Then he threw the coffee pot. The scalding brown liquid rainbowing out as it splashed across the kitchen, hitting the Indian in the face and chest.
The young brave was blinded, dropping both ax and gun as his hands went up in a desperate effort to save himself from the boiling, blistering coffee. But he was way too slow and screamed as he fell away from the table, towards the door.
As soon as the pot had left his hand, Jed was moving. Straight over the table, drawing the knife from his belt again, where he’d put it as he went for the coffee mug. The Cheyenne was partly doubled over in pain, hands clawing at his blistered skin, steam rising from his head and his shoulders.
Herne pushed the warrior against the wall, making him straighten up. Stepping in so close he could smell the sweat and the fear. Thrusting the point of the knife upwards, sliding it between third and fourth ribs on the left side of the chest, twisting the taped hilt and feeling the edge of the blade grate against bone. Blood came seeping out through the shirt, following the knife as Jed withdrew it.
The boy moaned, eyes in their pink-blistered sockets filled with shock and with the awareness of his own impending death. Jed moved back from him, bending and picking up the gun again, switching the bloodied knife to his left hand.
There was no need for a second thrust of the knife. No point in wasting a bullet. Stabbed through the heart, his life was measured in seconds. Blood was flowing fast between his hands, and he sank to his knees. More blood came frothing from his mouth and nose as he coughed. Like a swimmer entering deep water, the Cheyenne lad slid forwards on his face, halfway out of the open door, and didn’t move again.
Herne battled to control his breathing, blinking fast. Steadying himself. There’d been fights before, but never anything like that. And there were at least two more of the Indians outside in the forest.
~*~
A half hour passed in stillness.
Once he heard a shrill animal cry from the blackness out yonder. A cry of an animal that he didn’t recognize. And that he guessed was dressed in buckskin shirt and breeches.
He stayed where he was, figuring it was better to let them come at him rather than go out and try and slip by hem in the trees.
It was full dusk when they came.
Both together, from the blind side of the house, appearing within a dozen feet of the front door like demons of the night. One was short, close to forty years of age, holding a battered Springfield carbine at the hip. The other was around thirty, face painted for war, streaked with white and yellow and red.
Jed had settled himself in the doorway of the living room, facing the door of the kitchen. Pistol ready, Even at sixteen he was developing the inner calm that was to make him, in later life, perhaps the greatest of all shootists. If he had been a lesser person he might have given way to hope. Hope that the Cheyenne had taken enough and had left him to live.
‘Hope’s one step off cuttin’ your throat,’ he once said.
The older of the Indians came in first, snapping a shot at the crouched figure of the white boy. The bullet ricocheted off the table top, tearing a great strip of white wood, hitting the wall just beneath a framed print of a whaling-ship.
Herne pulled the trigger of the Colt. Seeing the warrior stop as suddenly as if he’d run into an invisible fence. Another bullet from the pistol sent the Indian staggering backwards, tripping over his own feet, carbine clattering to the floor. Both shots had hit home in the man’s chest, two fingers’ breadth apart, one above the breastbone and one below it.
Both killing shots.
The second of the Cheyenne was armed with a long spear, knife and ax tucked into his beaded belt. He leaped the rolling figure of his dying comrade, bursting into the cabin with a blood-chilling screech of hatred.
Jed shot him between the eyes.
Neat, simple and extremely terminal.
A chunk of skull the size of a man’s fist was blown out of the back of the Cheyenne warrior’s head, followed by a great gouting spray of brains and blood, hanging pink and gray in the air. The man’s feet shot out from under him and he skidded over, falling sideways, ending up or top of the older man, his legs kicking spasmodically at the corpse of the boy.
The breath whooshed out of Jed’s lungs with relief, as he stood slowly up. Laying the knife on the table with his left hand. His right still gripping the smoking pistol. Waiting, listening. Just before the two braves appeared he had thought he’d caught a sound up on the roof, but now there was nothing. It must have been the shuffling of feet in the dirt around the side of the cabin.
So, it was over.
He moved to the back of the house, past the three dead Indians, looking out across the darkening land. The corpse of Aurora Clifton lay where it had fallen, pale and ghostly in the gathering gloom. The least that he could do was bury it. Perhaps now, before he cooked himself something to eat.
The whole long day had crept on without his being able to eat anything. Now, now that it was all done, Herne realized that he felt ravenously hungry. There was some salt pork that he could fry up, with some biscuits. And a new pot of coffee.
To anyone with a different temperament, food would have been the last thing on their minds after the slaughter of the last few minutes. Maybe to stoop and vomit, and then try and sleep. But to Jed Herne, some fatty pork, fried up, seemed the best idea in the world.
First he quickly went around the outside of the station, gun in hand, reloaded. Checking the animals were all right. Then coming back inside and closing the door. Sliding the bolt across to make sure that he was safe, locking the shutters in place. Night had come quickly that fall evening, leaving the cabin at the center of its own pool of warmth and light. The lamps cast smoky shadows across the kitchen and living room. Herne didn’t bother to go in the bedroom, the wraiths of memory still lingering there.
~*~
It took a half hour for the food to become ready. Three huge slices of meat, with some beans and gravy. A stack of biscuits to go with it. And two brimming mugs of fresh coffee. Black and strong enough to float a Colt Dragoon.
Jed had decided that he would bury the woman in the morning. He now saw a strong probability that the next station along the line would be untouched. The Cheyenne had done much of what they wanted. Avenged the blood debt begun by the murderous anger of Ethan Corleon. Wiped it away with the deaths of several whites. And added to their own pony herds with a couple of dozen of the finest mustangs in the whole country.
It was a huge relief to the teenager to find that he had been right in his tracking. Only three of the tribe had gone on, not four as he had at first wondered.
He wiped the last of the gravy off his plate with the last of his biscuits. Leaning back in the chair and belching his satisfaction. The mail-pouch rested on the table in front of him, still safely locked, its contents secure. Seeing it brought back to Jed that he had left his jacket in the bedroom, hanging on a chair in the corner of the room. Next to the fireplace.
The cabin was unusual in that there were two central chimneys, back to back. One for the living room and one for the bedroom. Jed pushed the chair, its legs grating on the floor. Walking to the room where he had slept with Aurora Clifton.
Hands still greasy from the food, Herne reached out for the latch of the door. Opening it and …