“Damned good job the weather’s as bleak as this, mister. Else this wouldn’t have been taken.”
Herne looked up at the garrulous conductor, his face set like stone. The trip out to St. Louis had taken two days. Leaving New York had taken a further two days. Jed had been touched by the collection that had been taken up among the guests of the Grand Central Hotel to provide an expensive funeral for Rebecca Yates. Better than four hundred dollars had been raised and Jed had been able to use it.
Despite his promise to the dead girl, he hadn’t realized just what he was taking on in trying to get her back to Tucson, to rest with her mother and with Louise.
The mortician had been fascinated with the task.
“Of course, my poor dear Sir, we do sometimes receive some most unusual requests. A gentleman who wished to be laid to rest in a double coffin with a dressmaker’s dummy at his side. A sporting lady who required that she should be laid to rest seated in her favorite buggy. That was very costly. And I have had several departed who have wished for their remains to be buried at sea or in some even stranger places.”
He had rubbed his kid gloved hands together at the happy and costly memories, while Jed had stood still, looking through the large window, reading the ornate Gothic golden lettering backwards. Hoping the man would be quick and tell him what he wanted to know.
“One man, and I must preserve his name to avoid any impropriety with the family, had a long-standing relationship with a street-girl in Harlem. He wished his coffin to be built into the frame of a bed, so that she could carry on her trade on top of him, as it were.” He smiled. A tactful smile that landed on his mouth like a layer of fine, gray dust. “Of course, we were unable to provide that particular service for him.”
“I don’t see why not,” snapped Jed. “But I just want to know how much. For the coffin and for ... for preparing Becky for it. And the rail fare to Tucson. I can take it from there.”
A lot of scribbling with a long green pencil. The point broke and the mortician cursed softly, discreetly, reaching for a small knife and making it needle-sharp once more.
He was so thin and willowy that he looked as if a fresh breeze would carry him away.
“The cleansing and internal …”
His nerves strained by the sudden death of the girl, and with lack of sleep for two nights, Jed’s hair-trigger temper was more than usually edgy. He half-drew the heavy pistol and showed it to the mortician.
“I don’t want your damned details about what you’re goin’ to do to Becky. Just the money, you blood-suckin’ son-of-a-bitch bastard!”
“You talk to me like that and I’ll call the law, mister,” protested the young man.
“You call your sheriff, and you end up deader’n a beaver hat. Get on with it.”
With a chill, the mortician realized that this grizzled westerner actually meant it. That he would slaughter him if he didn’t do as he was told.
The idea was rather exciting and he had to press his knees together to try and cover his arousal by this man’s casual brutality.
“I’ll do the best I can, Mr. Herne,” he stammered, dropping his pencil deliberately so that he would have the opportunity to kneel down close by the older man’s scuffed boots and worn pants.
“No details. Just the cost.”
“Fine. Even in the sort of weather you’ll be having all the way West, we must still provide a sealed coffin. The railroads insist on it because of the way that the bodies tend to ...”
Herne interrupted him. “I know why they insist on sealed coffins,” he barked.
“Of course. Of course. That means good quality, and good quality is not cheap.”
Herne took out his watch, holding it flat in the palm of his left hand.
“You are in a hurry, Mr. Herne?”
“No. You are. You’re in a hurry to finish tellin’ me what I want to know in just sixty seconds, then I start to push your face around a mite.”
“Oh,” quavered the mortician, torn between fear and excitement.
“Fifty-six seconds,” said Herne.
“Hundred dollars for pre-coffin work. Say, three hundred for the casket and sealing. I’ll have to check shipping but I figure it’ll be around another hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars. Through St. Louis then on the ... let me see …”
“Union Pacific to Topeka, is the way I see it.”
“Surely. Then the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad south to El Paso.”
“And the Southern Pacific to Tucson,” finished Herne, flicking the watch away into a pocket of his jacket.
The final bill was five hundred and eighty-nine dollars and forty cents.
“I said this wouldn’t have gone in summer, even with that sealing, Mister.”
The conductor on the Union Pacific pressed on, disregarding the silent stranger with the long hair, graying at the temples. Ignoring the tight set of the broad shoulders and the blank stare from the cold eyes, that looked as if they were one too many mornings and a thousand miles away.
“You hard of hearin’, mister?”
The eyes finally acknowledged him.
Eyes colder than the Sierra snows, that froze the man to the floor of the carriage. Froze his tongue to the top of his mouth, and turned his brain into ice.
“You got a job to do?” asked Herne, his voice flat and incurious.
“I... I guess so, Mister,” stammered the conductor.
“Then get the Hell away from me and do it.”
“Sure. Sure will. Right away.”
He stumbled quickly down the car, relieved to be clear and away with his life, breathing deeply to try and quell the sickness that rose in his guts at the memory of those eyes.
Jed Herne sat back in the dusty seat and looked out across the bleak landscape rolling by outside.
It had been hard. Dealing with the mortician, and the well-meaning folks at the hotel, but now it was over. He and Becky were both going on home, traveling West, following the pale winter sun.
The coffin was heavy. Polished mahogany. A neat plate in silver set into it. The name: Rebecca Yates. The date of her birth: 1868. And that of her death: just sixteen short years later.
He’d given her best dress to them for her to wear on her last journey. He kept the pendant himself to put on at the last moment, before the coffin lid was screwed down tight and sealed. Although it wasn’t worth that much, it was a pretty piece, and some light-fingered thief in the mortician’s might have taken a fancy to it. It wouldn’t have been the value. It would have been the broken promise.
Herne had been shocked when he saw the girl that last time, in the soft lights of the chapel of rest, laid out in her pretty clothes. There had been too much rouge on the cheeks, and he’d angrily demanded that it was wiped off.
“Damn it! She’s a girl of sixteen, not a Memphis whore!”
They’d hurriedly done as he asked, finally leaving him alone with her, for the last words. They hadn’t come easily, and they’d been private, secret words. That nobody would ever know. Not there. Not anywhere.
Not ever.
When he stood back, there were tears on his cheeks. Not for himself. Herne the Hunter had always made out and always would. Until the day that someone faster came along.
The tears were for the lost years for Becky.
He leaned over and kissed the girl gently on her firm, cold cheek, and then watched while the last rites of the sealing were carried out.
The baggage car had been nearly empty. Not a lot of stuff being shipped west in the middle of winter. Nor were there many passengers aboard.
After the change at St. Louis, things weren’t any different. Nor, after a few hours on the Kansas Pacific, was there any change on the run south from Topeka.
Herne drank a lot and slept more. Folks on the train left him alone, figuring that the tall man with the mean face and the Colt strapped to his hip wasn’t the sort to enter willingly into conversation.
Across the Arkansas River in a freak blizzard that held them up near Dodge City for two and a half days until they could get the special train through with the big snow-plough on the front. Past Trinidad and into the Territory of New Mexico. Another storm sent the train up the branch line into Santa Fe. Herne scarcely noticed the delays, soaking up the booze and laying out on the bench seats. Snow on the line between Albuquerque and El Paso meant another day wasted. Money was running short, and there was still the actual burial to arrange. As soon as Becky was safe in the ground, Jed was going to have go looking for another bounty. At El Paso they transferred to the Southern Pacific Railroad, and a few more folks boarded the train. Mostly making the long journey from New Orleans clean through to San Francisco.
That didn’t worry Jed Herne. He found himself a seat and stretched out along it, waiting for the day’s ride through Apache country to Tucson.
The end of the line for him.
The unusually bitter weather didn’t concern him either. He simply tucked up the collar of his jacket and gripped the whisky bottle more tightly.
The train had only just lurched out of El Paso, with a clattering of wheels and its whistle screaming, when Herne realized that someone was watching him. He propped open one eye and stared across the car.
“Pardon me, sir,” said the stranger, “but I feel that I know you.”
Jed shook his head. “Guess not.”
The man opposite was around six feet tall, carrying better than two fifty pounds around with him, a lot of it bulging out over a massive leather belt. On each side of the belt hung a Colt .45. A matched pair with ivory handles, Herne noticed.
Despite the guns, the stranger wore a tight suit of obviously Eastern cut, topped by a light brown derby hat two sizes too small. The face was round and honest. As far as you could tell. One of the most open-faced, likeable men that Jed Herne had ever met made a specialty of slitting the throats of young girls and drinking their blood!
You could never go far by appearances.
He was certainly persistent.
“I’m sure I do know you. Have you ever been up in Montana?”
“Yes.”
“Then it was there.”
“Guess not.”
“Ogden, in Utah?”
“Been there.”
“Then it ...”
“No.”
The big man took off his hat and scratched his head, the movement opening his vest and revealing a small pistol in a holster under the left arm.
“I still think I know you, Mister...? I guess I didn’t catch your name.”
“That’s because I didn’t throw it your way.”
“I hear you’re the man traveling with the little girl’s casket.”
“You heard right.”
“Kin?”
“Kind of. Takin’ her back home to Tucson to be laid down with her folks.”
The man nodded. Rubbing his hands together and blowing on them. “Damned cold! I’ll be glad when we get to the coast and I can get off and eat some good food and lay me between some warm blankets.”
“You on business?” Despite himself, Herne found himself drawn to the fat man’s obvious good nature.
“Surely am. You hear of the Pinkerton Agency?”
“Eye that never sleeps? Sure.”
“I’m with them. Agent Lovell. Harry L. Lovell. I’m pleased to meet you, Mister...? Still don’t seem to have your name.”
“I’m Herne. Jedediah T. Herne.” He reached out to shake the agent’s hand, but Lovell sat still, lips set in a hard line.
“Jed Herne?”
“Yeah.”
“You wouldn’t be the man they call “Herne the Hunter’, would you now?”
“I’ve been called that.”
Lovell leaned back, fingers unconsciously dropping to toy with the butt of the right-hand Colt. Biting his lip nervously, not sure where to look.
“I heard a lot about you, Mr. Herne.”
“That figures, Mr. Lovell. I heard plenty about me as well. Most of it lies.”
“You were the best. Then you got killed, I heard. Then, year or so back, the word came that you were back on the bounty trail.”
“I wouldn’t argue with that.”
“Mind if I ask you what happened?”
“I mind.”
“Oh, I just wondered why you quit, and why you came back.”
“Keep wonderin’, Mr. Lovell. Just you keep on with that wonderin’. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I could do with some sleep.”
“You ... Pardon me for asking you this, but I wondered if you and me might even be on the same mission. That really would be something to tell the wife and kids when I get home to Tuscaloosa.”
“When I work, Mr. Lovell, I keep that to myself. I seen men that talk a lot. Men with the brains of a fence post. Mostly dead men by now.”
“Sure. Sure, Mr. Herne, I take your meaning there, indeed I do. Word to the wise, Mr. Herne.”
The Pinkerton man was rubbing his nose and winking at Jed as if he was plagued with some kind of nervous tic. Leaning back in his seat, and easing his guts over his belt with a sigh of satisfaction.
Herne closed his eyes and tried to sleep, ignoring the other man’s attempts to restart the conversation.
Lovell finally lapsed back into a muttered monologue.
“Herne the Hunter. God damn it, but that is really something to tell the boys. Herne. Knew Billy the Kid, they say. Best damned gun around. Damn it to Hell! Herne on this train with me.”
The monologue faded away and Herne finally managed to sleep.
When the train started to climb higher into the hills, halfway across the last leg of the long journey, Herne felt a hand tap his shoulder, and he woke to find the Pinkerton agent pointing out of the misted window.
“What the ...?”
“More snow. Don’t see that kind of weather much in these parts, ain’t that so, Mr. Herne?”
“Jesus. You woke me up to tell me that it’s snowing! I don’t give a sweet damn about it. Just as long as I can get to Tucson. Then I start over.”
“You never thought of joining up, Mr. Herne?”
“Pinkerton’s?”
“Surely. Regular money. Travel. Touch of excitement now and again.”
“I get all of that when I want it. It’s not hard getting bounty work.”
Lovell nodded furiously, his treble chins bobbing with his enthusiasm. “Bet you killed you a lot of men for money, Mr. Herne?”
“Some. Most I killed ’cause it was the best way of stoppin’ them killin’ me.”
Looking round the quiet car, Lovell leaned forwards, dropping his voice to a whisper.
“Glad to have someone like you with me, in case things get tough.”
Herne was puzzled. There had been no armed guards on the train, and the baggage car had been more or less empty. So what was the fat man guarding?
“I guess I can trust you, Mr. Herne, you and me being in the same line of business.”
Lovell was obviously bursting a gut to tell him his secret, and Herne couldn’t raise the energy to stop him. Not even to tell him that it was a whole lot safer to trust nobody.
The line of the law was very thin, and out on the frontier it sometimes got so thin that it became invisible. Some of the biggest robberies in the last twenty years had been carried out by sheriffs, or deputies, or even by bounty hunters seeing a chance of better rewards by crossing over that thin red line.
“Yes, sir. The old eye that never sleeps is on the watch over something pretty damned precious. Not like gold or jewels. No bigger than this ...” He held his hands a few inches apart. “But heavy. Real heavy.”
Herne nodded. “Printing plates.”
If Jed had pulled a copperhead snake down his nose Lovell couldn’t have looked more shocked.
“Jesus! How did you know that it’s printing plates I’m guarding?” A sudden look of suspicion. “You sure you aren’t in some manner involved in this, Mr. Herne?”
“Mr. Lovell,” replied Herne, wearily. “If I was on your side I wouldn’t be callin’ it out to the whole world and its neighbor. If I wasn’t on your side, then I’d have killed you by now.”
“Then how did you ...?”
“Not gold. Heavy. The size. Has to be something worth a dollar or two. Must be printing plates.”
“Keep your voice lower, please, Mr. Herne.” Despite the cold, Lovell was sweating. He looked round the car again, checking out that nobody was near enough to hear them.
Jed had already checked that out, as a matter of habit. There was a group of four men down the far end that interested him. The rest of the carriage was a scattering of ordinary-looking folks. Families. Children. Pair of women traveling together; probably a mother and daughter from their looks. A priest who had sat all the journey with his nose buried in a large Bible.
Nothing to worry about.
But those four men ...
One looked Mexican, with a small moustache. Two others could have been cowhands, but you didn’t often see range boys carrying their guns as low on the hip as they did. The fourth man was dressed in a black cutaway coat with pearl buttons.
They didn’t talk much, but when they did it was with heads together. The Mexican kept wiping the steam off the window with his sleeve and staring out. Herne watched them, wondering what they were plotting.
Wondering about those printing plates.
“We have an agent in Tucson, Mr. Herne, and I have to check the plates with him when we get there. A Government official will look them over before I take them on the rest of the way to San Francisco. If they fell into the wrong hands, well, I just shudder to think …”
And he did shudder, his broad shoulders quivering violently.
The priest across the aisle looked up curiously at the juddering of the huge frame, then went back to his quiet meditations.
The train rolled on westwards under gray skies, across a barren and empty land, riven with great hills.
It became colder and colder.
It was growing darker as well as colder, with night following the slow-moving train from the rear, closing in on it like a cloaked band of Apaches, bringing the conductor along the three carriages to light the small lamps. They gave off a smoky smell of oil which mingled with the damp, chilled air.
The bottle was empty and all Herne wanted to do was sleep again. In the morning they would pull into the station at Tucson, and there would be a lot for him to do. He nodded a goodnight to the fat agent opposite him, also giving a half smile to the priest who was looking at him over the top of the Bible.
Most of the passengers were sleeping or readying themselves for sleep, except for the group of four men at the far end of the car. They were playing a quiet game of poker, the money chinking on the seats as they placed their bets.
“Goodnight to you, Mr. Herne,” said Lovell, stifling a belch with the back of his hand.
Jed closed his eyes.
“First person to move gets a bullet through the head.” The voice was quiet. Controlled. Only just loud enough to carry the length of the car. It woke Jed up and his hand was on its way after the Colt before he even opened his eyes, checking out what was going on.
Three of the four men were standing near the end of the carriage, where they’d been playing cards. The fourth man had disappeared. All three men held pistols, covering everyone.
There wasn’t a lot of fuss. One of the women gave out a half-scream, but the rest sat quiet and easy, cowed by the threat of the guns.
Jed glanced behind him, wondering if he could make it to the door out to the baggage car. Deciding that they could gun him down before he was able to move three steps. Also deciding that it really wasn’t his fight. From what Lovell had been saying, Herne guessed that the bandits must be there for a purpose. And that the purpose might be connected with those valuable printing-plates.
“Someone’s talked,” whispered the Pinkerton agent, his face taut with horror. Fingers working like he had something sticky on them, and couldn’t work out a way to get them clean. Rubbing, edging nearer the butts of the matched pair of pistols.
Herne wondered if he really would have the nerve to make a play under the threat of the three guns. Eyes flicking around to see if there was any other way out. The priest saw him and shrugged helplessly, the Bible closed on his lap.
“I can’t. Just can’t,” said Lovell. “You with me?”
Herne didn’t reply.
Didn’t have to.
“Men up and let the guns go. Real slow and easy.”
It was the tall man in black speaking, smiling over the barrel of the Colt in his right hand.
Behind him the Mexican was still peering worriedly out of the window.
“Cal? We gonna make it up the trail into Pinaleño Mountains in this weather?”
“Shut up, Diego. We get to the trestle and then we can make it easy up to the north.”
Herne listened, vaguely interested to hear them discussing a region he knew well. They were making for the Pinal range. There was only one trail off a trestle bridge, and it led to a disused mining camp. He kept that to himself, figuring they wouldn’t take kindly to anyone knowing exactly where they were headed.
Seeing his one chance slipping away as the men were disarmed, Lovell made his move. Diving sideways with a surprising speed for a fat man, he drew both pistols, and rolled left behind the seats, close by the priest.
Jed was puzzled when none of the bandits made a try for the agent, simply standing there as if they were waiting for something further to happen.
The priest leaned forwards, touching the kneeling Lovell on the back with the Bible, in a strange gesture, almost of blessing.
There was a muffled explosion, and the end of the gold-blocked book seemed to explode in a haze of black powder smoke. The fat man toppled forwards, and lay still, blood trickling from a hole just below his left shoulder. The cloth of his coat smoldered from the contact burn.
Herne didn’t move, knowing that his own life hung by a thread. The priest looked at him and shrugged his shoulders again.
“I guess that’s what they call a book of revelations, Reverend,” said Herne.