Jed’s ears were filled with the harsh rasping of the girl’s breath, so that he never heard the faint scrape of a boot on a fallen link of heavy chain.
It was Becky who heard it.
Half-turned.
Screamed.
Herne was hampered by the girl hanging on his arm. Desperately, he threw her away from him, seeing her sprawl out in a tangle of white legs, the scream dying away in a choking cough. One of the attackers kicked out at her as he closed in, and Jed heard the sickening thud of the foot making contact.
But there was no time to worry about Becky. He backed away from the assailants, fumbling under his coat for the Colt Peacemaker, unable to free the thong across the top of the hammer that held it secure.
A knife hissed through the air, plucking at the hem of his coat. Herne swung a left-hand punch to hold the man off.
There were three of them. Two tall and skinny, and the third hunched over and weaving in and out like a snake. All three wore a ragged collection of gray and black clothes, making it hard to pick them out against the bleak, rain-swept background.
All of them had knives, the points flickering in and out at him. He stood back against a wall, balanced on the balls of his feet, trying to counter their moves.
“Come on, cowboy,” grinned one of his attackers, panting with the effort of keeping Herne pinned back.
“Yeah. Give up, country boy. Just stand still and let us take what we went. Maybe you won’t get hurt too much.”
“And the little lady’ll be safe as houses.”
“Sure — Bawdy houses!” yelped the other.
The third of them, bent to barely half the height of the others, barked his laughter, his voice gobbling in his throat like it was bubbling up through a cauldron of boiling phlegm.
Herne was like a dancer, trying to threaten the three dock-rats, even though he wasn’t able to get at any of his weapons. The bayonet was snug in its holster in his right boot. To bend down for it would have been to invite a knife in the belly.
So it had to be the gun.
“You spoil our fun, rube, and we gonna cut you up real bad,” panted the leader of the attackers.
“Yeah. Cut us some of that tender meat I see lyin’ still and waitin’ for it, skirt up round her ass like she’s waitin’ just for us.”
“Peckerwood bastard!” snapped the first of them, beginning to lose patience.
Herne feinted an attack, forcing them all back a couple of steps, using the fraction of bought time to tear his coat open, the buttons popping across the wharf, flicking the retaining leather cord from the gun, feeling the cold of the walnut grips against his hand.
“Christ Almighty!” screeched one of the men as he saw the Colt spring into the cowboy’s hand as if propelled there by a secret spring.
Jedediah Herne was faster than anything that they’d ever seen. Faster than anyone they were ever going to see.
The forty-five was in his hand, thumb pulling back the hammer with the triple click, revolving the chamber, so that the cartridge nestled ready.
As the fog closed in, the harbor was filling with the deep, mournful tones of sirens, all the ships giving warning of their positions. The noise drowned the first shot, the boom flat and muffled by the surrounding warehouses.
The bullet hit the leader of the three killers plumb in the centre of the chest, the impact of the heavy slug throwing him back on his heels. The knife tinkling on the wooden planks. Jed knew well the old gunfighter’s saying: “Never use one bullet when two’ll do.”
He squeezed the thin trigger, filed down for speed of firing, seeing the flash of the muzzle bright in the failing light. Already rocked off balance, the impact of the second shot, high in the throat, toppled the attacker several steps backwards, his boots catching on the edge of the dock. He fell head over heels and landed with a faint splash in the freezing water.
Already dying, the would-be murderer wasn’t able to kick his way to the surface. Before he could drown, the two bullets killed him, and he died feeling a bitter anger that he had failed against a western hick in a big hat.
By the time that his body hit the water, Jed had fired three more shots. Two of them smacking into the other tall man, doubling him up, sending him staggering from side to side, hands jammed against his stomach, trying to hold back the pain, moaning aloud. The third of the trio saw a half-chance and darted in, using his dying partner for cover. Jed snapped off a quick shot at him.
But he was unlucky. The bullet ripped into the top of the other man’s head, exploding his skull into shards of splintered bone, pulverizing his brain into a ragged mess of pink and gray.
The mute hurdled the corpse, diving in at Herne, knife outstretched in his hand, a strangled yell bursting from his open mouth.
Two attackers down and dead with five bullets would have been good shooting at any time. But in the treacherous light, and the swirling mist, it was excellent. Yet with a third man leaping in at him, and one bullet left, Herne wished it could have been just that fraction better.
The acrid smell of the black powder smoke tugged at his nostrils as he dodged the attack, hearing the point of the knife grate on the wall immediately behind him. Reaching out with his left hand and tugging the smaller man by the collar, smothering his assault, making it hard for him to use the blade at such close quarters.
Pressing the muzzle of the pistol hard against the killer’s stomach, feeling the roughness of the man’s coat against the back of his knuckles.
Squeezing the trigger a sixth time.
The skinny body of the mute jerked as if it had been kicked by a swayback mule, and Herne waited for it to drop, pushing at it with .the empty pistol. The man stepped back a couple of paces, the eyes blanking out with the beginning of the mystery of dying. The knife was still clutched firmly in his hand.
The mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but no sound came out. Herne risked a glance past the man to where Becky lay motionless, her hair spread out like a veil, the bonnet caught under her chin. It was too dark for Jed to see clearly, but there was a dark stain or a shadow about her open mouth.
It might have been a trick of the evening light.
It might have been blood.
Despite the severe gut-wound, the third man was coming back, knife ready, the other hand clutching the scorched mark on his coat where black blood was already trickling its way through the layers of winter clothing.
“Jesus,” said Herne quietly. “I don’t know what your name is, but you surely got a whole lot of nerve.”
He slipped the warm gun back into the holster, and dropped his hand to pull out the bayonet from inside the right boot.
It was a long weapon, slender and mean. Herne had carried that knife, or one like it, ever since his time in the War. As a boy of just nineteen he and his old friend Whitey Coburn had ridden with the notorious Quantrill. As part of his unit of Raiders they had been there on that bitter day in 1863 when the town of Lawrence had been burned to the ground and more than fifty men butchered. In that one year alone Quantrill and his men killed over a thousand people.
Neither Jed nor Whitey ever forgot those days.
Just as he looked after his guns, so Jedediah Herne never neglected his knife, keeping it honed sharp enough to split a hair.
A thread of scarlet worming from his open mouth, the mute lurched forwards, trying a clumsy stab at Herne, aiming at the groin. But Jed was faster and better balanced, with a longer knife. And he was without the handicap of a bullet in the stomach draining the life away.
He cut at the man’s wrist, feeling the edge of his blade grate through flesh and tendon, opening up the fingers as if they’d been burned. His assailant’s own knife slipped to the dock.
He tried to pick it up.
There wasn’t any other kind of choice open to him.
And he didn’t make it by a long way. As he stooped forwards, left hand still gripping the stomach wound, Herne stepped lightly in out of the fog at him, like the avenging angel of death, and cut his throat, the steel slicing a gaping mouth in the side of his neck, the blood from the severed artery under the ear spurting high in the air. Pattering on the damp wood all around them.
Gargling deep in his chest, the mute slipped to his knees like a penitent at confessional, one hand at his belly, the other touching the fountain of blood from his neck. He brought the dappled fingers to his eyes as if he couldn’t believe what he was feeling.
Like a swimmer entering deep water, he slid forwards on his face, the blood slowing, dying away to a thin trickle, and finally stopping.
With the third death, Herne stood still, taking several deep breaths into his chest, relaxing himself after the supreme tension of the life and death struggle. Bending and wiping the bayonet clean on the stained coat of the man with the shattered head, and slipping it back again inside his boot.
Looking round in case the wharves hid any other rats, flicking out the spent cartridges, and reloading with the speed that came from years of long practice. Listening, senses straining for anything out of the ordinary.
But there was just the sullen noise of the fog-horns, echoing around the harbor of New York, reverberating about him, until it seemed as if the whole world was filled with wreathing mist and the boom of the ships.
It was full dark, the light having failed utterly during the brief scuffle. A scuffle that left two men dead on the dock and the third weaving and bobbing gently beneath the water, his hair like fronds of weed about the bloodless face and the staring eyes.
Only when he was sure that there was no further threat to him did Jed Herne turn to the motionless body of the young girl. She lay a few paces from the splintered edge of the wharf.
“Becky.”
He knelt down, feeling the damp through his trousers, lifting her head, and cradling her in his arms.
“Rebecca. It’s me. It’s Jed.”
Her head would have flopped back if he hadn’t been holding it, and her eyes were shut. He could feel that she was still breathing, a faint pulse fluttering in her neck confirming that she was alive.
But there was blood around her nostrils, and trickling from the corner of her mouth. He wiped it away with his fingers, wondering if a stray bullet had hit her, or if one of the thugs had injured her.
“Becky! Can you hear me? Come on, Becky!” He felt the chill of utter desperation and loneliness, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Becky, my love. Please, Becky. Please, my dear.”
The eyes fluttered and blinked up at him, barely visible in the gloom, and the corner of the lips curled up in an attempt at a smile.
“Jed ... I must have ... my chest hurts so and ... and I want... cold ... very cold ...”
“I’ll carry you. We’ll get a cab and then we’ll soon be good and warm. Come on. Up we go.”
Again he was shocked at her lightness, more like a child of seven than a grown girl of sixteen. Her head nestled against his shoulder and he stood up, smiling down at her.
Her eyes were closed again.
So he walked off the dock, towards the hotel, leaving the deaths behind him and carrying life with him.
Sweeping across the Hudson from the Jersey shore, came the first flakes of snow.