Outside their shelter, Herne could hear Becky vomiting in the snow.
Retching and crying at the same time, coughing as she brought up the thick soup that she’d cooked for them all with the makings Coburn had brought from the store. Inside the shelter, Jed and Whitey crouched each side of the young gunman they’d taken prisoner. He was tightly bound, with ropes round his ankles and wrists tied behind his back. He was bare to the waist, and despite the cold his body was covered with a slick coat of sweat.
Sweat and blood.
Their main enemy in getting the man, whose name was Mel Tarrant, back to their camp was the weather. They waited for more men to ride out from Mount Abora, huddled down behind the rocks, the tip of Herne’s bayonet pricking Tarrant’s throat. They’d heard hooves, but only one man had appeared round the bend, peered cautiously through the driving sheets of snow, and galloped back to safety. Jed didn’t blame him.
At least half of the force slain, by nobody knew how many gunmen. Killers who might still be hiding in the rocks waiting to carry out further slaughter. It made a lot of sense not to wait around within rifle range.
Once darkness fell, it was comparatively easy for the two gunmen to hustle their prisoner back through the white carpet of snow, now well over ankle deep, and in places over the knees. Past the brightly-lit front gate, and in among the trees, stepping cautiously. Pushing Tarrant in front of them, and treading in his footprints, so that if there were any traps in the way it would be the boy who would lose his leg.
Becky was almost beside herself with worry, and grabbed Herne tightly round the neck, squeezing him to her. The fire had been well tended and there was a fresh pot of coffee steaming away brightly. It was good to be back out of the snow and in the warm.
‘They’ll know now that we’ve arrived. They’ll guess that you aren’t alone, Jed. Not with that many downed. So they’re going to stay holed up inside, jumping at every shadow.’
Herne nodded, cupping the hot mug in his hands, letting his mind and body relax after the tension and violence of the afternoon. Glanced across the fire to where the boy sat, blood dried brown over much of his face. Becky had made a move to help him, and wipe it clean, but Coburn had stopped her. Quite rightly, thought Herne. It didn’t do when you were about to ask someone some questions he might not want to answer to show him too much kindness.
As soon as he’d finished his coffee, Whitey began on Tarrant.
‘Right, Mel. You did say your name was Mel, didn’t you? Don’t want to get things wrong. Not right at the start like this.’
‘What do you want to know, Mister Coburn, sir? Just ask me and I’ll tell you.’
Lips pulled back from his teeth in what he thought passed for a reassuring smile, Coburn leaned forwards. There was a hiss in the air, and faster than the eye could follow, the albino had drawn a knife and cut the boy’s coat open, slashing the shirt and red vest underneath, nicking the flesh. Tarrant whimpered with the sudden violence, and tried to roll away. But Coburn reached out and locked his fingers in the damp tangled hair, tugging him right forwards, so that their faces were only inches apart. His voice dropped to the faintest whisper, so that only the boy and Herne could hear.
‘You sit right still, boy. I’m just going to cut away all these clothes you got on.’
‘Whitey!’ interrupted Herne. ‘Remember the girl’s here.’
‘Yeah. Like my partner here says. There’s a young lady with us. But it’s mighty hot with this fire, so I’ll just slice away the clothes from above the belt, and keep the decencies. Right.’ The voice dropped even lower. ‘And if it wasn’t for the girl, you stinkin’ little bastard, I’d cut off your cock and burn it in front of you!’
Shamed and bare, the boy had been right on the edge of tears, but Herne had felt no pity for him. A hired gun was paid on results. If the going got tough, then he shouldn’t snivel about it. Neither he nor Whitey had ever wept over screwing up on a contract.
And this boy wasn’t even on the side of the angels. The Stanwyck family was evil, and it was boys like this one who stood between Jed Herne and his justified revenge. So what was a little more suffering among so much?
‘I’ll tell you! Please. Why don’t you just ask me some questions, and I’ll tell you?’
And he’d talked. Betrayed every one of his friends and the people who paid his hire. Herne shook his head in silent contempt at the lack of guts. Within a couple of hours they knew most everything they wanted to know.
Just how many men there were left? Seven. How many other servants? Just the butler, Jackson, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Bellamy. Where were the guns kept? Where did the guards sleep? Where were the rooms of the Stanwycks? When did they eat?
But there was one question that Mel shook his head on and refused to answer. Coburn didn’t press it, preferring to slide around it, and try other questions. Finally, though, there wasn’t anything else left.
‘Apart from that main gate, there has to be another way into the place. Where is it, and are you going to take us there? That’s the last one, Mel. You done real good so far, and we’ve not had to hurt you scarcely at all, so come on with this one.’
The boy shook his head. The time had given him some time to regain his composure. ‘I can’t I told you everything else. But if I tell you about the other way in, and they find out... Then they’ll give me either to that creepy one Luke, with his white clothes and his fuckin’ needles, or to his brother.’
Despite the sweat that ran down his naked chest, the boy shuddered.
‘What’s wrong with Mark Stanwyck?’ asked Herne.
Glancing across at Becky who was trying to sew up a tear in a skirt, the boy whispered: ‘He’s a pervert... you know? He likes doin’ it up your... Only he hurts you while he does it. And in your mouth. When he...’
‘All right. We get the picture.’
Yes, we see,’ said Coburn, shaking his head in distaste. ‘But you got to realize, Mel, that if you don’t tell us, then they won’t be able to harm you. ’Cos we’ll kill you. Course, we’ll hurt you horrible first.’
‘If you tell us, then maybe we’ll let you go after all this is over. And if you tell us right, then we’ll get in there and kill them and you needn’t worry no more. Now how about it Mel?’
The boy’s eyes flicked from man to man, the firelight bouncing off their faces, hardening them. And he shook his head.
‘I can’t. Truly. Please let me go.’
‘Jed?’
All three men turned to look at the girl, speaking for almost the first time since they’d arrived with their prisoner.
‘What is it, honey?’
‘Can’t you let him go, Jed? He’s answered all your questions. Hasn’t he?’
Whitey turned to her, the red of the fire reflected deep in the hollow caves of his eyes, making it seem as if flames glowed within his skull. ‘Becky. Young Mel here’s told us a lot that helps. But none of that’s worth a flying … flying damn, less he tells us how to actually get in the house. And for that we figure we need him to take us in. So you just hush up and leave us be. It won’t be long, and if you don’t like it, then go take a breath or two of that fresh air.’
Her lips went thin with anger and hurt, and Herne saw, half in the shadows, how much like his dead wife the girl was.
‘Becky. Remember what the boy told us. These two are the last. And in some ways they’re the worst. I recall what Louise told me about these twins before she … before she died. The one who wears white, he couldn’t do it, and he threatened to cut her eyes out if she told. And this other. Mark. He was one of them to do it the... to do awful, blasphemous things, to her. She was your friend and my wife, Becky. We got to do what’s needful to avenge her.’ After that, she said nothing.
It hadn’t taken long. But it had been messy, and noisy, despite the knotted rope gag jammed in the boy’s open mouth.
Because the needle-point of Jed’s bayonet was a little sharper than his own knife, Coburn borrowed it to help ‘persuade’ Tarrant that it would be better if he helped them.
There wasn’t all that much blood.
But so much pain that Herne had to lie across the boy’s body to hold him still under the probing of the steel. It was at that point that Becky rushed outside to be sick.
‘That’ s enough, Whitey. Look at his eyes. He’ll talk now. Won’t you, Mel?’
The young gunman nodded, his face a white mask of agony, blood trickling from his gagged mouth where he’d bitten through his tongue. His eyes were rimmed with blood from the delicate touch of the knife, and breath bubbled through the slit nostrils.
Before handing back the bayonet, Coburn cut away the gag, and wiped the blade on the boy’s own trousers. Helped him to sit up, putting his arm gently round his shoulders.
‘You did well, boy. None of them in that house could have done better. Ain’t no shame in knowing when to give in, isn’t that right, Jed?’
Herne nodded his agreement, feeling the thin bitterness of bile rising in his throat at the violence and coldness of this sort of torture. Whitey had always been better at it than him. Even though he didn’t take any pleasure from it, like Bill Yates, Becky’s father, had.
He was just glad it was over, and wondered whether he ought to go out to the girl, then deciding she’d probably be better for a while on her own. Looking out into the night, he could see that the snow had eased, with just an occasional flake catching the light of the fire as it drifted past the mouth of the shelter.
‘You should have killed me,’ said the boy, his voice flat and dead.
‘Come on, Mel.’
There’s a door. At the bottom of the far tower wing. Nearest to the path you brought me down. Nobody knows about that. The path.’
‘This door?’ prompted Herne, leaning forwards intently.
‘It’s just for us. The guards. It’s got its own sentry on twenty-four hours a day. Man with a scatter-gun behind it. Barred window that slides open for him to see through to who’s outside.’
‘And? This is interesting, boy, but it’s not getting us inside there.’
‘Mrs. Stanwyck is very tight on discipline. Always makes rules that we have to knock and wait and the guard inside has to identify the men outside and slide back the grill so he can see them. Only then will he let them in. Oh, and he’s supposed to carry a lantern at dark so there’s no mistake.’
‘Sounds tight to me,’ muttered Coburn to Jed.
‘It would be, only most of us have been there for several months, and it comes to be a whole load of wasted time to keep going through that.’
‘So?’
‘So we have a special knock.’
‘And the man inside just reaches up and opens the bolts and doesn’t even stop looking at his set of French postcards. Is that the way of things?’
Tarrant nodded. ‘Yes. Maybe after what happened this afternoon, things might get tighter.’
‘And again, they might not. What’s the knock?’
The boy looked down at his feet, ignoring the question. Spitting out a trail of blood and saliva in the fire where it hung sizzling on the end of a branch.
‘I’ll make it easy, boy,’ said Coburn. ‘I’ll make like you didn’t quite hear me, and I’ll keep real nice and I’ll ask you again. If’n you mishear me that time, then I’ll have to trouble Jed for his sticker again. Now. What is ... ?’
‘Three close together. Then a pause. Then two more. That’s all.’
Coburn grinned, elated by the news. ‘Good! Good boy, Mel. So we’ll move tomorrow, Jed. Right?’
‘Wait on. There’s two ways of thinkin’ on this, Whitey. One says they’ll be more careful now and then relax over the next few days. Other way, they won’t expect us to come back straight away. Which do you favor?’
Coburn scratched his nose. Put his head on one side, screwing up his eyes. ‘There’s things for and there’s things against. What do you reckon, Jed? You were always a mite better than me at the thinkin’ game.’
Becky came back in the shelter, her face almost as pale as the albino’s. Averting her eyes from the blood-speckled face and body of the boy. She ignored Jed and sat down as far away from him as the cramped shelter would permit, picking up her sewing again.
It was hard to figure out what might be best. The weather surely wasn’t going to get any better over the next few days. That meant more snow all round. But it shouldn’t make the path up through the woods any harder for them. The men inside wouldn’t know about that hidden trail, and they’d see the deepening snow as a way of keeping them safe. So, they’d start to relax.
It was that thought that decided Herne. He cracked a small twig across his knee and threw it on the fire. ‘We’ll wait. Wait for a week. By then they’ll reckon that we’ve gone and that’ll be the time. They can’t get out, but in a week we’ll be able to get in.’
Coburn nodded. The girl stopped her work and looked up at him. ‘That mean we all stay here for a week? In this place? All of us?’
She stressed the word ‘all’, staring deliberately at the bound figure of the young gunman. Coburn caught the inference and glanced sideways at Herne, shaking his head negatively. Jed felt the same. To try and keep Tarrant a prisoner for seven days was too great a risk. Left to his own decision, he’d just as soon have taken the boy outside and shot him behind a tree.
‘All of us, Jed? Or are you going to kill him after stabbing him like that?’
‘There wasn’t any other way to do it, Becky. He knew something we wanted to know.’
‘Now you know it. What about him?’
Coburn opened his mouth as though he was going to speak, then changed his mind and shut it again. Tarrant looked up, his emotions locked away in shock, hardly seeming to realize that they were discussing his life.
‘All right.’ Herne made the decision, even though it was one he didn’t really like. ‘We’ll keep him. But he stays tied and if he tries anything, I’ll kill him.’
‘It’s only for a week,’ Becky said, flashing him a smile of thanks.
But it wasn’t.
It was three days.
Three days of continuous snow, the wind gusting up towards gale force, driving drifts of deep white against the base of the trees, piling snow along branches until they snapped under the weight.
Mel Tarrant sat quiet and patient, only speaking when he was spoken to, huddled up inside a blanket that Becky had sewn into a poncho. He was fed by the girl, and the men took it in turns to go with him and watch him with a drawn pistol when he wanted to answer a call of nature.
Whitey and Jed spent a large amount of time either locked in deep reminiscences or planning the attack on Mount Abora. Trying to cover every detail of what might happen and what they’d do if it did. But there came a point when further planning became absurd, and they stopped working out all the angles on the third day, when they just didn’t have any angles left to work on.
Inevitably, they had all come to accept the presence of the captured boy, and he played his part perfectly, appearing cowed and humble. Grateful for the gift of his life. Ironically, it was the suspicious Whitey Coburn who gave him the half-chance he’d been waiting for.
Late on the afternoon of the third day, with the blizzard easing down to a more modest fall, the albino was smoking and Tarrant asked him for a draw. Coburn leaned right across him to put the roll-up in the boy’s mouth, and found the muzzle of his own pistol digging into his ribs. The gunman had slipped it from the holster, gripping it in his bound hands, using the folds of the blanket as a cover.
‘Make a move and I blast you through the belly, you white-face bastard. Move back, slow and easy, and keep your hands open and your mouth shut.’
Herne and Becky were both out collecting wood during the lull in the gales, and would be back at any moment.
‘Just sit there good and quiet, and wait. Then I’ll be moving on.’
‘We would have let you go, you stupid son of a bitch! Now we’ll have to kill you.’
Tarrant smiled, the barrel of the gun tilting to point directly at Coburn’s face from six feet away. ‘Any killing round here, Whitey, and it’ll be me that does it.’
‘Kill me and who unties you? I’m your card, boy, so let’s not be even more fuckin’ foolish. It’s something of a standoff, boy, so let’s play it that way.’
Tarrant snarled at Coburn. ‘Don’t call me “boy”, old man!’
Minutes trickled past while Coburn sat still, his emotionless face reflecting nothing of the seething anger. Anger that was directed more at himself than at Tarrant. In the boy’s place he might have tried the same sort of thing. But there was no admiration in him. No sense of reluctantly congratulating his younger adversary. If he had been given the way of shooting Tarrant in the back, Coburn would gladly have taken it. But he was well caught, and could do nothing but sit there and wait to see how Herne played the hand he was going to find waiting for him when he and the girl returned to the shelter.
Barely a quarter of an hour later they both heard the crunching of feet in the snow, and the boy made a warning gesture with the gun. ‘One noise, that’s all, and I’ll fuckin’ blast you.’
‘I should watch your tongue when Herne gets back here, otherwise he’ll break that gun over your head for using foul language in front of Rebecca.’
‘Here comes the fire service!’ called out Herne, stooping to enter under the low roof. ‘We went a ways along the trail by the lake and it’s still clear and the... Ah!’
The unnatural silence at last penetrated to him and he dropped the pile of branches on the floor, standing quite still. Becky bumped into him from behind, laughing and pushing a strand of hair back from her face.
‘Why are we all ... Oh, no!’
Nobody moved, like a tableau vivant at the vaudeville halls, frozen. Tarrant sneered at the way the gun in his bound hands had tipped the balance in his favor. Herne glanced at Coburn, who shrugged his shoulders apologetically.
‘Grabbed it when I was givin’ him a smoke. Never thought he’d do something that stupid when he was that close to makin’ it away.’
‘Mel! Why?’
The boy grinned at the girl, his eyes never leaving Whitey. ‘Guess I was tired of waitin’, Becky.’
‘What happens next, son?’ asked Herne, looking at Tarrant, his hand hanging loose and easy by his side.
‘She cuts me loose and then I get on a horse and ride away.’
‘No.’ The word was quietly spoken, yet it dominated the silence in the little shelter. ‘No, son. If’n we let you do that, then maybe you’ll ride away to Mount Abora, and that’ll shoot all our chances of gettin’ in, and you’re able to lead them right to us. I don’t favor that idea, son. Not at all.’
‘Don’t call me “son” you stinkin’ old bastard! I’ll fuckin’ kill you all!’
Herne shook his head gently. ‘You got the ace there. You just play it the way you want, and we’ll think about it.’
‘What? What do you mean?’ There was a dear note of uncertainty in Tarrant’s voice.
You got a gun, there. Now what do you aim to do with it,’ said Herne patiently.
‘Oh. Yeah. You give that knife of yourn to the girl and she’ll cut the ropes round my hands and feet.’
‘Suppose I say not?’
‘I kill him. Sure, I know that’ll give you time to draw and kill me, but that ain’t the way you’d act. You fuckin’ old-timers with your ideas of being loyal to a friend. You’d not risk his life.’
‘If’n it was me, son,’ interrupted Coburn, ‘I want you to know I’d gun you down like a dog, even if you had a gun to my mother’s breast.’
The boy’s nostrils flared with anger and they all saw, in the ruddy firelight, his knuckles whiten on the butt of the Colt Herne’s own hand trembled and he tensed ready for the quick draw to save his own life, but the girl saved the moment for them all.
‘Give me the knife, Jed,’ she said, stepping forward to come between Herne and the boy.
‘Take it,’ he said, not wanting to risk reaching down with his gun-hand.
‘Don’t get in the way of the gun,’ said Tarrant, as she sliced through the ropes round his ankles. Becky went to cut the ropes on his wrists, but he stopped her. ‘No. Take their guns and throw them out in the snow. Then we’ll go out there and you can cut them.’
‘You don’t get my gun, boy.’ Herne shook his head. ‘Right now we can talk a deal, but if’n our guns both go out there, then there’s no deal to talk. You let her cut the ropes and we’ll give you a head start.’
Finally Tarrant nodded, arranging his hands so that she could free him with the bayonet without coming between him and Coburn. The moment the ropes dropped away Tarrant made his play, grabbing Becky round the neck with his left arm and digging the barrel of the cocked Colt into the back of her skull.
‘Right Now that does it, boy,’ said Herne. You try and take her with you and you’re deader than a beaver hat.’
‘You try and stop me, old man, and she’s dead. Now she and me’s goin’ out there to the horses and we’re goin’ for a ride. I’m takin’ your horses too, and I’ll be watchin’ this shelter. Any sign of either of you tryin’ anything, and I squeeze the trigger, and this pretty little lady gets her head spread all over the fuckin’ Sierras. Come on!’
Coburn sat silent, with Jed at his side, while the boy inched his way from the shelter, keeping the gun rammed into Becky’s neck, always keeping her body between himself and them.
They could hear their feet scuffling through the packed snow, heading towards where the horses snickered uncertainly. By bending down, Herne could see them as they moved away, Tarrant carefully holding Becky tight so that he himself presented no target.
‘Clever young bastard, ain’t he?’ said Coburn.
‘Maybe,’ said Herne, keeping his eyes on the couple outside. ‘Maybe.’
‘You goin’ to let him get away with it?’ asked Coburn, stretching out his right hand for the Winchester, quietly thumbing back the hammer.
‘Let’s sit this one out, Whitey.’
‘You reckon the girl’s in it? Maybe playin’ along with him, on account of she feels sorry for the son of a stinkin’ bitch? Maybe?’
‘Maybe.’
They were at the horses, Tarrant standing close to Becky while she adjusted the straps on the saddle-bags and the girths. He took little notice of her, still raking the opening of the shelter.
‘Should have unsaddled them when you came in,’ said Coburn quietly.
‘I was figurin’ on tryin’ to get up through the woods with her. See if we could get close to the house on horseback. Make the way out that much easier.’
‘I could hit him easy from here, Jed. Is it worth a try?’
‘You kill him, and he still squeezes the trigger on the way down and kills Becky. I guess that little girl’s about all I got left in the world, Whitey. If I’m going to try and pick up some of the broken pieces, I can use her help.’
‘Kickin’ yourself in there, old men?’ called Tarrant, from the other side of the clearing. ‘I’m takin’ the girl with me.’
‘No!’ That was Becky. Sounding more angry than frightened. ‘I’m not goin’ with you, Mel Tarrant!’
‘Then I might as well kill you now. Mount up or else I’ll put a... Oh.’
The last syllable was a quiet, polite exclamation, following on the muffled noise of a small caliber pistol shot. Jed and Whitey exploded from the shelter, both holding guns, to be met with a strange scene.
Tarrant was hanging on the bridle of Jed’s stallion, one boot already in the stirrup, his blanket poncho flapping in the wind. The gun was still gripped in his right hand, but it pointed down at the earth. His mouth hung open, and he was staring, not at Herne and Coburn, but at Rebecca.
She stood three paces away from him, her left hand to her mouth, the right holding the small derringer that Herne had insisted she carry in the saddle-bags of her mare. Largely, he thought, as a useful back-up weapon for him. But he’d taught her to use it.
Taught her well.
Smoke trickled from the one barrel, being whipped away by the cold breeze.
The horse skittered sideways, putting Tarrant directly behind her, in line of a clear shot from either of the men, making the boy hop awkwardly on one leg. Herne saw the muzzle of the Colt swinging up again, towards the girl.
‘Again, Becky. Again!’
This time the crack of the gun was louder, as the second bullet found its mark, sending Tarrant tumbling to the snow, his gun dropping from his nerveless fingers. He shook his head like he couldn’t believe what had happened to him, struggling to his knees, fumbling for the fallen weapon. After his gasp of shock as the first bullet hit him, Tarrant never said another word.
There was the heavy snap of the Winchester at Herne’s side as Whitey fired. The bullet hit Tarrant through the chest, pitching him on his face, right at Becky’s feet, his hand reaching vainly up to her, as though he sought her help. His fingers closed on the dark material of her skirt, and she stood quite still, looking down at the dying boy.
Even as his life-blood pumped sluggishly across the rutted ice, his fingers didn’t relax their grip, nor did she make any effort to move away.
Finally, it was Coburn who stepped forward and kicked the body on its side, tearing the hand from its death-grip. Whitey bent down and picked up his own gun, holstering it again.
Becky didn’t speak, simply placing the little hand-gun, its over-and-under barrels still warm, into Herne’s pocket as she walked unsteadily past him into the shelter.
As the two men dragged the stiffening corpse out of sight among the trees, burying it under several feet of snow to try and keep the animals from it, Coburn grunted to Jed: ‘Don’t worry about her. Like I said. She’s got grit, that one.’
‘Maybe,’ was all Herne replied.
During that night, Becky woke three times, finally crying herself to sleep.
Four days later they were ready to make their move.