Jollye was standing in the main street waiting for him, wringing his hands nervously.
“All went well?”
“Sure.”
“Then you’ll be away in the morning?”
“MisterJollye. I have never found it sound practice to discuss my business while standing in the middle of the road.”
“But you are going?”
“Of course I’m damned well going. Now don’t ride my tail and get the money ready to pay into the bank straightaway. I’ll be gone from here well before first light and I want the two thousand dollars to my account before then.”
“It’ll be there, Mr. Herne.”
“It better be.”
By the time that the sun shrank from sight over the hills away to the west, there was a flurry of snow, dusting across the frame houses. Jed put his new horse - a stallion called Jubal - away in the livery stables and walked back past the Mitchell eating-house, towards his own rooms. He had the ammunition he needed for the Colt and for the Sharps, as well as two canteens of water and enough food to keep him going for several days.
Now all he needed was plenty of sleep.
Tucson was quiet, and Herne wondered if he had totally misjudged the priest. Maybe he had been ill. Maybe there wouldn’t be any kind of attack. Not on the trail. Not anywhere.
“Jedediah Herne!”
The voice came from the shadows away to his left. His hand fell automatically to the butt of his Colt, flipping off the restraining thong.
“Herne!”
“Who’s that?”
With the buildings all around, it was hard to judge whose voice it might be, or precisely where it was coming from.
“Me.”
“Who?”
“Scott Mitchell. Over here by the side door.”
Something was going on. Herne could feel it in his bones. Even allowing for the distortion, there was something wrong with the old man’s voice. Some kind of strain.
“What do you want?”
Herne kept his hand on the gun, ready to power himself into immediate action as soon as he could establish what the threat was.
“I want you to ... to come on over here.” A pause. Then something that sounded like a gasp. Then: “Come on. I got something to tell you.”
“I hear you.”
There were deep pools of shadow all along the high street, darkened by the heavy clouds, and Herne very slowly and casually eased himself into one of them.
“It’s about the train gang.”
“I know everything about them.”
“Cal Ryder is out to get you.”
“That so?” Herne hadn’t even known the gang leader’s second name, so the old man couldn’t possibly have known it.
So?
Scotty Mitchell was being forced to betray him. To try and lure him closer so that someone could gun him down.
It wouldn’t be hard to break and run. But there were two objections to that plan.
One was that it would mean Scotty would definitely get shot.
More importantly it could mean that all four members of the gang were in Tucson and Herne might just run right into one of them.
The only way to try and get out of the trap was to go and stick his neck in it.
“I’m comin’, Scotty.”
“Jed. Look ...”
The words were cut off like a razor had been drawn across the old man’s throat. Which was possible. Jed had noticed that the Mexican, Diego, had been wearing something in a leather pouch at the back of his neck. It could be a trick that he had picked up from Josiah Hedges, the legendary ‘Edge’, who had always worn a cut-throat razor in that way.
Still playing innocent, Herne took a few faltering steps towards the side alley, calling out as he did.
“Scotty? You all right in there, Scotty? Damn it, where are your
Herne’s mind was racing like a train barreling across the prairies, trying to think how in Hell he could get the bandits out of the alley. He had to get them to start their play first, so that he could know just where they were.
But how?
“Scotty?”
Silence.
The street was deserted, and he wondered just how many people in Tucson had been bought or frightened. The Sheriff hadn’t impressed him much. Used to be a fat lawman in Tucson, called Nolan, way back. Old Nolan wouldn’t have known what a bribe was and the only thing that frightened him was his beautiful young wife, Heidi.
But he was long dead. Ten years or more.
Nothing lasted, thought Jed bitterly.
“Scotty? You had one of your turns again?”
Maybe the noise of someone nervously shifting a boot in the gritty dirt of the alley.
“Wait on there, old-timer,” he called, the Colt now ready and cocked in his right hand. “I’ll go and get some folks to help. Maybe the doc to take a look at you.”
He half-turned away, balancing like a great cat, ready to make his move at the first sign.
“Waste him!” yelped a voice from the blackness, and Herne dived to his left, snapping off a couple of shots into the alley.
A volley of shooting came whining back at him, the bullets digging sand up all around him. But the light was poor and he was a moving target.
“Jesus!” Herne screamed, rolling over and over, holding his stomach as though he’d been gut-hit, making sure that he ended up in the cover of a horse-trough, in case they had a long gun with them and just pumped a few slugs into him to make sure he wasn’t faking.
“Wait!” called someone. The Mex he thought.
“I got him,” shouted another voice. Danny? Not Cal. Didn’t sound like Luke Barrell, and old Luke would have been too cunning to fall for such a simple trick.
It was often the simple ones that worked best. He guessed that the killers must have been waiting up in the alley for some time, their nerves getting stretched like a rustler’s neck, waiting for him.
Now he was there, and one of them was confident that he’d shot Herne the Hunter.
Lots of men had thought that over the last twenty or more years. One or two of them had even managed it.
Not this time.
“I’ll finish him, Diego!”
It was Danny.
That must mean that there were only the two of them. Cal and Luke choosing to wait up in the safety of the hills to see whether they needed to run or wait. Which meant that Herne had to kill both of them to stop word getting back.
He kept moaning, the pistol ready in his fist, eyes squinting into the dim light across the street to try and make out the figure of the bandit.
There!
Coming in a slanting run, like a huge crab, sidling out of the alley, snapping off a couple of shots as he did, one bullet ripping splinters of wood from the trough within a foot of Herne’s head.
If it was Danny, then he wasn’t bad. Not that it made any difference to Herne. He’d known shootists who’d\ claimed they liked to come against top men as they felt better about it.
Herne didn’t give a damn. A kid of ten with a scatter-gun would make you just as dead as Wes Hardin with a lightning cross-draw. If they weren’t for you, then they had to be against you.
If they were against you, then they were better off dead. That was the simple way of looking at things. The only way if you wanted to stay breathing.
“Danny! It might be a trick!”
“Damn right, Mex,” said Herne softly, steadying the pistol by holding his right wrist with his left hand, sighting at the advancing man. Squeezing the thin trigger once. Feeling the jar run up his wrist, his nostrils filling with the familiar tang of the black powder smoke.
The body of the bandit jerked to a stop as if it had just run into a brick wall, the hands flying out like they were about to embrace an invisible friend. Gun dropping to the earth with a thud.
“Danny!” screamed Diego from the alley.
The killer sank to his knees, a moan of pain and shock clearly audible to Herne, who was some twenty paces away from him. Clutching his chest where the heavy caliber bullet had hit him. Swaying with the wound.
Carefully, aiming at where the sagging head joined the body, Herne fired once more.
Like a kick in the face it toppled Danny backwards into the dust of the Tucson street. His legs scrabbled for a few seconds, then he lay still.
Lights were coming on all around and a few doors were opening. But still nobody appeared.
As he lay by the trough, Herne quickly replaced the four bullets that he had fired. Trying to put himself into the mind of the Mexican. Trapped in the alley. Having seen his comrade gunned down. Wondering in his turn what Jed was going to do.
“Hey, Senor!”
“What is it, Mex?”
“This old man will be plenty dead in sometime soon if you no throw down the gun and let me go.”
“He’s nothin’ to me, Mex. I kill you whether you kill him or not. I don’t care.”
Diego considered this, wondering whether it was true or not.
“I cut him pretty bad, first.”
“I’ll take your knee-caps off Mex, and make you crawl from here to Hell and back.”
“Señor!” There was a pleading note in the man’s voice, instantly putting Herne on the alert.
“What?”
“I tell you where the others are if you will let me go.”
“If you mean the deserted silver mine up the north trail into the Pinaleños, then save your breath for prayin’.”
A laugh. “Hey, you know pretty damned lot, Senor. I guess you think you a winner?”
“No winners, Mex. Just a lot of losers.”
Gradually, crawling slowly, Herne began to edge his way towards the alley. When there was the smashing of glass from the darkness.
“He’s in the window, Mister,” called out a voice from a half-op en doorway.
Herne had guessed that, trying to recall what he could of the inside of the eating-house. Wondering if the Mexican would go on out the back, or try and fool him by coming straight out the front.
From what he knew of Mexican bandits, they were often low on courage, and very high on cunning.
“The front,” he said to himself, standing up, gun ready.
He was right.
The main door exploded as if someone had set off a charge of dynamite inside it, and Diego came charging out, a pistol in each hand spitting fire into the night.
The attack was so violent that Herne was taken partly by surprise, and dived backwards for cover, landing on his shoulder on the edge of the walkway with a jolt that knocked the gun spinning from his hand.
There was enough light from the open doors and windows for Diego to see what had happened and he laughed in delight, standing still in the centre of the street, both guns steady on the helpless man.
T think maybe you the loser, Senor.”
Herne’s eyes were caught by a movement in the darkness of the alley. It was Scotty Mitchell, moving slowly and painfully, tucking a gleaming Colt into the greased holster on his hip. Steadying himself against the corner of the building, wiping a thread of blood from his forehead where they must have pistol-whipped him.
“Come on old-timer,” breathed Jed, trying not to give Mitchell’s position away to the Mexican.
“Now the game she is over, señor. Adios.”
Before he could pull the triggers, there was a shout from behind him. From Scotty.
“Call it, Mex!”
“Dios!” spat Diego, spinning round to face the new threat. Both guns barking in his fists.
There was enough light for Herne to clearly see the puffs of dust spurt from the old man’s chest and leg where at least two of the bullets had hit home. Knocking him back against the wall, that held him upright, facing the bandit, his own gun still undrawn.
“You bastard,” said Scotty, his voice slow and heavy with the pain.
Herne started to move for his own gun, then stopped, fascinated by the grim tableau being played out across the street from him.
Diego was standing still, unable to believe that the old man was still upright with the bullets in him. Not firing again. Just waiting.
“Greasy son of a bitch!” said Scotty, his voice louder. Hand feeling for the gun on his hip. Body slanting in a bizarre parody of a gunfighter’s fast draw. Like watching it done in a dream. Slowed down like someone fighting underwater.
The hand coming up from the holster, with the gun in it. Scotty tried to cock it with one hand but the effect was too great for him and he brought the left hand across to help himself.
Although Herne was conscious of people all around watching, from doors and windows, there was no sound. Just the lone wind bringing the taste of snow in it. And the click of the pistol as the hammer was drawn back.
“No,” called the Mexican, snapping off another flurry of shots. At least two of them hit home, making Mitchell stagger. It wasn’t possible that he could still stand there.
But he did.
Bringing up the Colt as if it was a religious relic of infinite value, cradling it in both hands, holding it out in front of his chest, aiming it with great care at the Mexican.
Diego couldn’t believe it, and he looked round at Herne, as if he sought reassurance that this nightmare wasn’t happening to him. But Jed shrugged, knowing that this hand needed to be played out right to the end, his only other movement being the quick step needed to pick up his own gun.
In case.
The old man’s pistol boomed, the flash of the flame nearly obscured by the burst of smoke from the muzzle.
Jed was a few paces behind the Mexican, and it seemed to him as if the man’s head had burst. The bullet hit him in the temple, angling off and distorting as it ploughed through the skull and ripped the brain apart. Knocking the sombrero off Diego’s head.
The bandit danced back a few steps under the impact, as if he was fighting for his balance, but it was only a reflex action from the dying brain. The strings were cut and Diego’s body slumped untidily in the middle of the Tucson street, and lay motionless.
Herne jumped over him, knowing that there was no need to bother further about him, sprinting to where Scotty Mitchell leaned against the wall of the eating-house. The gun had fallen from his fingers, and he was slowly sliding down the side of the building.
“Gramps!” screamed a girl’s voice in the crowd. Jed turned to see Ellie-May running towards him, skirts flying. He caught her in his arms and stopped her going to the old man.
“No.”
“But he ...”
“No, Ellie-May. Scotty’s done what he had to do. Wait here.”
The side of the wall was splintered where the Mexican’s bullets had passed clean through the frail body of the old gunfighter, and blood smeared all the way down to where Mitchell half sat, half lay, looking up at Herne.
“Sorry ’bout the trap, Jed, but …”
“It doesn’t signify, Scotty.”
There was a kind of a smile from the dying man. He didn’t seem to be in any pain, but Jed had seen the bullets hit him and knew that life was a matter of seconds for him.
“I get him?”
“Course.”
“Dead?”
“As a fish in ice.”
“That’s mighty good.”
“You saved my life, old timer,” said Herne, putting away his own gun.
“Said I’d come a’runnin’, didn’t I?”
“You sure did.”
It was a scene that Herne had lived through more times than he could remember. Having a friend die right in front of you and nothing to be done. Though he’d only known Scotty Mitchell a couple days, he’d been a shootist, like Herne, And he’d done what he could in a tight corner. That made him a friend.
“Guess this is the end of the trail, Jed.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you. You should have stayed safe in the alley.”
The head shook. “Nope. Man couldn’t ask a better way to ... to go. Savin’ a life. Wastin’ a no-good. Smell of the powder smoke. I ain’t sad ’bout it.”
Herne stood silent and watched the life ebbing. Hearing the girl crying behind him, and the muttering from the crowd in the street.
Scott Mitchell peered up at Herne through eyes that were misting over. “You ... know something? I saw George Custer when he ...”
The voice faded away like the dew on morning grass and the old man was dead. Herne walked back to his room through the cold of the evening.