‘Yester! How much longer you goin’ to keep me locked up in this shithouse of a jail?’
The sheriff slammed the inner door back against the wall hard enough to chip away several slivers of wood, ‘You’re stayin’ there exactly as long as I say, that’s how long!’
‘You half-assed lawman, you get things movin’ so I can get out of here, or I won’t answer for what happens when I do.’
‘If you do!’
Herne was on his feet, hands gripping the bars, anger lining his stubbled face. ‘I’ll get out, Yester, sooner or later.’
‘Later,’ mocked the sheriff, ‘later, Mr. Herne the Hunter, or whatever you like to call yourself.’ He laughed and jabbed a finger in the direction of the cell. ‘With a name like that, old man, you should be in a Wild West show.’
Herne exploded into a stream of curses in the midst of which, Yester slammed the door shut and turned the key. As Herne’s voice simmered down to a flat echo, he turned and surveyed the inside of his cell. There was a hard wooden bunk chained to the rear wall, a thin straw mattress on top of it which provided a rest home for elderly fleas; the blankets Herne had to pull over him at night to keep out the cold stank of stale sweat and vomit left there by the succession of drunks who’d been the only people Sheriff Tozcek had ever bothered to arrest. Alongside the bunk was a tin bucket which Herne was obliged to make use of to relieve himself during the night. In the middle of the floor now was the tray on which his breakfast of bread and beans had been brought by the man from the dining rooms – that and a mug of weak coffee, already cold by the time it had arrived.
Herne stared at the tray and kicked at it in his anger, sending it skittering across the floor and into the wall, mug and plate and fork spinning off in different directions.
Damn that kid out there! Who the Hell did he think he was? Coming on all high and mighty on account of the badge on his shirt and the cuffs on Herne’s wrists. Holding him while he and the town council argued about whether there was a strong enough case against him to send for the circuit judge. In the end, Herne guessed they’d fine him on some trumped up charge and tell him to get out of Cimaron Falls. Well, that would be the second time and he had no wish to come back. He hadn’t the last time, only that fool letter for a lovely woman who was now under the earth in the cemetery on the edge of town. For a woman who’d set her sights high and looked to leave her husband behind, she’d sure been humbled fast. Herne had a picture in his mind of what her cutthroat must have been like – it wasn’t pretty. Not the way she’d been when he’d seen her alive.
Not for the first time, Herne started thinking about the who and the why. If it had been the same bunch who jumped him in the alley, what kind of sense did that make? But whoever had attacked Nadine had taken the letter, that seemed certain. If it had been the four men who’d been trying to get at Edwards earlier, why would they beat up on Herne once they’d got hold of the letter? To keep him from taking it into his head to follow them? Follow them where? Herne shook his head and as he did so a shooting pain lanced through it and he was reminded yet again that his bruises were still very much there. After he’d established that the man tending to him wasn’t the same one that made a mess of amputating the former sheriff’s leg, he’d allowed him to doctor up the cuts a little, hut now all they could do was heal on their own. He had a purple mark the size of a large fist high inside his right thigh, another, redder, at the small of his hack. His right arm seemed to have been worked over pretty thoroughly and his face must look like it had been trampled on by a passing herd of stampeding cattle.
With his finger ends he traced ridge and scar across both cheeks, his nose and forehead; he could feel that his lower lip was still swollen up and cut deep at the corner.
His hands became fists as he gripped the cell bars once again: he’d find out who was down the alley and he’d make them pay dear for what they’d done. Just as soon as he got out of there.
Herne rattled the bars, his cuffs banging against them as he shouted for the sheriff but if Dan Yester heard him behind that locked door he didn’t give any sign. Herne cursed and kicked and sat back down on the bench and waited for his next meal.
The bald headed man slid the tray beneath the bars and Herne used his foot to push the empty tray back out. The smell of stew rose up to Herne’s nostrils and made him aware that he was hungry as Hell.
The man grinned gap-toothed and said, ‘Good stew. Made it myself. Tasted it, too.’ His tongue ran around the edges of his ratty mouth. ‘Good stew.’
He wasn’t a man of great conversational powers.
Herne lifted up the tray and backed away to the bunk; he set the tray on his knees and forked a mouthful into his mouth. It wasn’t bad at all.
‘Good stew, ain’t it?’ said the short man.
Herne nodded, chewing.
‘Made it myself.’
‘You said.’
‘Made it an’ tasted it.’
Herne ate some more, nodded. The man was still behind the bars, looking at him. Herne wondered if he was going to stand there and watch him until the plate was emptied.
‘Got no work to do?’ Herne asked after a few more moments.
The bald head came up and down energetically. ‘Too much. Too much work. Cookin’ and washin’ dishes and helpin’ out front. This is the first rest I’ve had since sunup. Likely the last.’
Herne set a forkful of potato back down on the plate. ‘I thought there was help enough.’
‘Was,’ the man agreed. ‘Was but not anymore.’
‘How come?’
‘Girl, she’s gone.’
Herne leaned forward, his interest quickening. ‘Which girl?’
‘One as helped out after poor Nadine left to work at the hotel.’
‘The breed?’
‘Sure, that’s the one. Rose, that’s what folk called her.’
Herne set the tray down on the blankets.
‘You ain’t leavin’ that good stew are you?’ asked the bald man, both surprised and insulted.
‘For now,’ Herne said, ‘just for now. While you tell me about the girl.’
‘Rose?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What d’you want to know about her?’
‘When did she quit? Where’d she go?’
The man scratched at the corner of his head, right by one of the few remaining tufts of graying hair. Then he explored the inside of one ear and all the while it was possible to see him going through the difficult business of thinking.
‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘Don’t know where she went. Left town, though, that’s certain. As for when, I guess it’d be couple of days back. She ...’
‘She give notice? Say why she was quittin’?’
The bald head shook from side to side. ‘No word, I’m pretty sure of that. Didn’t turn up that morning that was all. I got sent down to the place she lived. Shack down the end of town. See if maybe she was sick or something. Not sick. Just gone. All her things – not that I guess there’d have been many – all gone. Didn’t seem like she was reckonin’ on comin’ back.’
Herne nodded and resumed his eating. The bald man hovered around a while longer and then headed for the door. As he was waiting for the sheriff to let him through, Herne ran the thing through in his mind; when Yester turned the key and swung the door back, Herne asked him if he had time to hear something that would help him sort out the murder. Yester choked back his immediate impulse to tell Herne to go to Hell – something in Herne’s voice told him that he was serious this time and that he’d best listen. The sheriff let the little man from the dining rooms back into the street, rolled a thin cigarette, lit it and walked lazily down to Herne’s cell. This time he didn’t bother to lock the door behind him.
Herne finished off his meal, wiping a chunk of bread round and round the plate to soak up the juice.
‘For a man with something important on his mind,’ said Yester, ‘you sure are taking your time.’
‘It’ll keep,’ said Herne. ‘This stew’ll get cold faster.’
Yester scowled at him. ‘I got things to do. You got something to say, snap it out, else you’ll be talkin’ to the walls again.’
Herne spoke with his mouth partly full of bread he was still chewing. ‘You did check on folk leaving town after the killing? I mean, leaving sudden and without good reason?’
Yester shrugged, raising an eyebrow. ‘How’d you mean? I don’t know nothing about anyone leaving town. No one said anything to me about it.’
Herne leaned back. ‘That’s right. You had me in jail, why should you bother looking any further – hot-shot lawman like yourself?’
‘Don’t rile me, Herne!’
Herne snorted. ‘Rile you, son? I wouldn’t piss on you if you was on fire!’
‘And I told you before about callin’ me son!’
Yester’s hand had moved towards the gun at his hip, the fingers were resting on the wood of the butt.
Herne looked at the Colt obviously. ‘Goin’ to shoot me down in the cell, are you? For talkin’ back?’
‘Get on with whatever you’re sayin’,’ glowered Yester. ‘So far you ain’t makin’ a lot of sense.’
‘That’s ’cause you ain’t listenin’ right. What I’m saying is this: if someone left town for no good reason right after this Nadine was murdered, that looks a darn sight more suspicious than the fact that I had a clean bayonet in my bags that might have cut her throat.’
‘That ain’t the only thing,’ snapped Yester.
‘Just about! But you listen on. There was a half-breed girl worked at the dining rooms, name of Rose. She didn’t take to this Nadine, I know that from the way she talked about her. What I didn’t know till just now was that no one’s seen hide nor hair of her since the killin’. She left town without a word and she don’t look like she’s comin’ back.’
‘That don’t prove a damn thing!’
‘It looks suspicious though, don’t it? ’specially someone who’s likely to have some kind of Indian knife around. She heard me say I had a letter for Nadine from her husband. If she had some reason to get curious about that, if there was already some way of her guessin’ it might be about some buried silver ...’
‘That’s a whole lot of ifs,’ said Yester.
‘Sure it is,’ agreed Herne, standing up nice and easy, lifting the tray off his lap as he did so. ‘But it’d take some lookin’ into, don’t you reckon?’
Yester drew on his cigarette and thought about it a while. Herne waited patient, watching the man turning the ideas over in his mind. Gradually he shifted himself closer to the front of the cell.
‘I’ll ask around,’ said Yester finally. ‘See if there’s anything in what you say. But it seems a long shot to me.’
‘And how ’bout me?’ asked Herne. ‘When can I get out of here?’
Yester looked at him and shook his head. ‘We still ain’t decided.’
Herne shrugged. ‘Well, don’t be too long about it. I’m gettin’ fed up with this stinkin’ hole back here.’
‘You lived in worse places, I reckon.’
‘Huh!’ Herne glanced down at the tray. ‘You want to take this back through?’
Yester shook his head again. ‘Leave it on the floor.’
‘Okay.’
As the sheriff began to turn away, Herne started to bend towards the ground. Part way down he whipped his right arm up fast and threw the tray against the cell door. Yester jerked back in his tracks, automatically pulling away. As he moved, so did Herne, but faster; Herne’s left arm snaked out and curved about the sheriff’s neck, dragging it back against the bars. Yester’s temple smacked against iron with a thud and he attempted to wriggle his right hand down towards his gun but there was no room. His own body, forced against the cell wall, was blocking the way. And after a couple of seconds it was too late – Herne had seized the Colt for himself.
‘Back off!’
Herne swung the lawman by his collar, so that he stumbled awkwardly into the wall. Yester flattened one hand against it, correcting his balance. He readied himself to spring forward but the barrel of his own gun was aimed directly at his head and he could see that the hammer was already back under Herne’s thumb. A trail of blood, thin yet warm, ran down the side of his face and curled under his chin. He was breathing unevenly, anger and frustration hard in his throat.
‘You know if you make a wrong move I’ll kill you, don’t you?’ muttered Herne.
Dan Yester didn’t answer but the look in his eyes said that he knew. For the first time in his short career as a peace officer he didn’t have the upper hand and he was quickly getting to know what that felt like.
‘Okay. Unlock the door.’
‘You can’t expect me to do that.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ It was Herne’s turn to laugh.
Yester weighed up his chances, either of grabbing the gun through the bars or getting through the side door and into his office, where there was a sawn-off on the wall. He figured the second gave him slightly better odds but not good enough to persuade him to gamble. Not when the stakes were his own life.
‘There ain’t no time to waste,’ said Herne and his voice told the sheriff he wasn’t fooling.
Still Yester wasn’t about to let his first prisoner walk out of the jail scott free. ‘If I let you pull this on me, I’ll be out of this job by one hour from now.’
Herne shrugged, unsmiling. ‘That’s your problem. But you can play it anyway you want. Either how you are now, in which case I’ll knock you out with the butt of your own gun, lock you in your own cell and leave you there till the old boy comes with my supper and finds you. Or if you want to play it clever, you can claim you just let me go. Decided there wasn’t nothin’ to hold me on any longer, not once you’d found out about that Rose disappearin’ the way she did.’
‘Who’s goin’ to believe that?’
‘They might if you tell it good enough. You can even see me to the street, act friendly if you want. Anyway, it’s a chance. It’s better than havin’ to let ’em know I took your gun off you while I was still your prisoner.’
Yester thought it over fast; it didn’t take him long to decide that what Herne suggested made the best sense. ‘What if I go back on my word once you’re out?’ he asked.
Herne shook his head. ‘I don’t read you like that. If you change your story and come after me, you’re declarin’ yourself a liar. And if you try to take me back in before I leave town—’
‘Yeah,’ said Yester, ‘what’ll happen then?’
‘No doubt about it,’ said Herne, ‘I’d drop you before you got in your first shot.’
There was enough in Herne’s face, his changed stature now that he was in control, the way he held the gun to make Dan Yester believe that was most likely the case. He fingered the key ring from his belt and unlocked the cell door. He was careful to back away before Herne slid out, he walked slow along the short corridor and into his office. His eyes glanced quickly at the shotgun racked on the wall, but no more. He stood in the center of the room and waited for Herne to tell him what came next.
‘Get someone off the street to run down the livery stable, fetch me my horse. Then you can get my gun belt and Colt from wherever they’re stashed.’
Yester didn’t argue; for the first time since he’d shot that runaway mare, he was feeling as inexperienced as he was.
‘You’re going after her, ain’t you? The woman you say killed Nadine.’
Herne stared back at him. ‘Why should I do that?’
The sheriff bit back on his tongue and kept the reasons to himself. Five minutes later they stepped into the street and Herne held out his hand so that the few bystanders could witness what seemed to be going on.
‘Thanks, Sheriff,’ said Herne. And more quietly. ‘Stick at it, you just might grow into that badge one day.’
Yester flushed slightly and watched as the older man swung up into the saddle, his bruised body making him grimace as he did so. The sheriff remained where he was until Herne had passed from sight, nothing but a high trail of dust showing his path. From the corner of his eye, as he swung back towards his office, he saw Cohen hurrying across the street towards him, anxiety clear on his face. Yester nodded to no one in particular and went back inside, rehearsing his story in his head.
Herne let the bay gelding break into a trot once the edge of Cimaron Falls was reached and gradually accelerated into a canter. like he’d said to the sheriff, what business was it of his that one woman had maybe killed another? What concern of his was it that whatever Edwards had stashed away was going to fall into the wrong hands – either the half-breed, Rose, or those four no-accounts who’d been after it from the start?
None.
Save that he’d slept while a stranger died and then buried him.
Save that a beautiful woman had had her throat slashed until she bled to death.
Save for the aches that ran through him with each jolt of the horse beneath him; aches which reminded him of the way he’d been suckered into a beating he wanted to repay.
Fallen Lake, the dying man had mumbled, Fallen Lake.
Herne slowed the gelding to an easy trot and hauled on the rein, turning north towards the hills.