The plain was white. A hard frost had set a crisp seal on the snow that had fallen during the night. Each forward movement the horse made cut down through the brittle crust into the softness beneath. Herne pulled hard at his coat and cursed the cold. He had jammed a Stetson down on his head and bought a pair of gloves for the hands that held the reins but was still colder than he’d been for some ten years. The time he’d been trapped in a blizzard in Wyoming Territory. Then it had been more than thirty below.
Jed pulled the horse to a halt at the crest of the hill that wound down towards the Newman homestead.
He looked round behind him at the expanse of whiteness, unrelieved except for the straight line of hoof marks that marked his progress through the snow. Above him the sky was still darkly gray.
Below him …smoke curled up out of the chimney and was soon lost to sight. Chopped wood. A cart with a broken wheel. Away to the right of the main building a single, bare tree. All were lined with snow. Heine’s attention went back to the tree. There was a flutter of movement, a flapping of wings: a large bird perched on an out flung branch, tumbling small showers of white powder downwards. Dark. Ugly. A vulture.
Not even this temperature could negate its greed; not even the extreme cold could blunt its sense of the proximity of death.
Herne wanted to draw his gun and shoot it. Instead he moved his mount on the descent to the ranch.
He had got within fifty yards of it when a shot rang out. It was oddly muffled by the eerie, snow-filled atmosphere. Jed reined in sharply and waited. The bullet had passed well wide of him. He sensed that it had been meant as a warning. A warning that he should keep well away.
The sound of his spurs announced his decision to continue towards the building from which the shot had been fired. Another ten yards and there was a second shot. This one was closer. It dug a tunnel into the snow close to his right, causing the horse to rear up.
Herne brought him back into line and moved down once again.
This time the door of the ranch house was flung hastily open and the figure of Tom Newman jumped out. He had a rifle to his hip and even from that distance, Jed could see the anger that burned on his face.
‘I warned you, Jed! I warned you what would happen!’
‘And I told you that I was comin’ in, no matter what you said or did.’
Newman started to lift the rifle to his shoulder.
Herne shouted down to him. ‘Don’t be more foolish than you need be, Tom. There ain’t no point in you shootin’ me, anyway. For one, you’ll likely miss and then I’ll have to take you myself. For two, if you did stop me, then Mellors would only send someone else. You can’t win, son. Don’t cause people to die when it ain’t necessary.’
The young man waved the rifle in an outburst of temper. ‘It’s too damn late for you to talk about people not dyin’. Ma lay awake yesterday when we thought she was asleep. She heard us talking about what you’d said. When she spoke to Pa about it, what little bit of life she had left seemed to drain from her. She never said anything again. Just lay there with her mouth frozen open. All we could hear as we sat around the bed was a dry rattle at the back of her throat. ‘Bout midnight she sat up in that bed as though a bolt of lightnin’ had struck through her body. Arms flung out and eyes staring up above her like she’d seen something terrified her. By the time she’d fallen back on to her bed, Ma was dead.’
Herne reached up and pulled off his Stetson and held it in front of him as a mark of respect
Tom,’ he called down, ‘I’m sorry. Plumb sorry. I…there ain’t nothing more I can say.’
Tom began again to lift his rifle to his shoulder. ‘You’re right, Jed. There ain’t nothin’ more you can say. You’ve said enough already. What you said yesterday brought about Ma’s death.’
‘That ain’t so, Tom. You know that. Only don’t lift that gun of yours any higher. ‘Cause I don’t want there to be another dead body round here an’ if you make a play against me I got no alternative. Not as far as I can see.’
The movement of the rifle stopped momentarily. Herne relaxed. Then another figure stepped out into the coldness of the morning. Tom’s father held his shotgun in front of him, twin barrels aiming in Herne’s direction, stock pulled back against his hip. He walked past his son and moved up the slope towards the spot where Jed Herne was waiting.
‘You killed her! You killed her!’ the old man shouted feverishly. ‘My Emily. You killed her!’
His foot drove down into an especially deep patch of snow and he was stopped short. Herne looked at the old man’s face; it was lined with strain and creased by year after year of hard work. Work which had proved ultimately fruitless. His eyes were flooding with tears: tears of hatred for the man sitting astride his horse on the slope above him; tears for the woman he had loved for more than thirty years. The woman who now lay on the bed that had been their marriage bed. Now the worn white sheet was pulled high over her face. And a covering of snow was over the land he had tried to tame for his own.
Old Man Newman pulled his leg high out of the deep fall and started back towards Herne. Tom Newman watched helplessly. Knowing that he should interfere; knowing also that he would get no thanks from his father if he did so.
‘Mister, I’m gonna kill you if it’s the last dang thing I do! My…my Emily…she was everything to me. All I ever wanted. All I…watching her like that…fading away…her poor body racked with pain …hate, that’s what it is…gonna make you regret that you ever come here — gonna kill...kill…k...k...’
Saliva flew from his mouth. The man was merely babbling now, making sounds rather than words. His feet slipped and stumbled as he tried to hurry towards the man he wanted so desperately to kill. As he got nearer, Jed could see clearly where the flecks of spittle had frozen on to the ragged edges of his beard.
He looked at the man’s gnarled right hand; the one close by the double trigger of the shotgun; the one which would send a devastating cascade of buckshot in Herne’s direction.
‘Gonna…gon…gon…k…k…Emily…kill!’
Herne looked past the man at his son, who was still waiting below with his rifle close to his shoulder.
Tom!’ Herne shouted. ‘Stop him, can’t you? He’s gone loco!’
Tom Newman’s answer flashed back, ‘Don’t you say that about my Pa!’
‘Kill...kill...kkkk...!’
Herne watched as the old man lost his footing and fell forward, pushing out the gun in an effort to right himself. Half way to the ground, his fingers pressed down on the trigger.
Herne flipped himself backwards from his horse, rolling through the snow in a ball from which he emerged with his legs splayed out into a gunfighter’s crouch, his Colt .45 drawn and ready.
One barrel of the old man’s gun had been fired; the other was still waiting. Not for long. He looked truly crazed now. His mouth was open and hissing sounds emerged, together with a stream of spittle which dribbled down over his chin. He wasn’t more than fifteen feet away from Herne and he suddenly decided that he was going to charge across that space and fire the remaining barrel full into Herne’s body.
There was no way in which Jed could accept the risk–he might get close enough for it to be impossible to miss, or he might get thrown off balance the same way as a few moments earlier. In either case, there was no doubt what he had to do.
Herne fired twice. The first bullet smashed into the old man’s knee cap, breaking it instantaneously into a myriad shards of brittle bone. The second almost split the wiry arm at the elbow, again rending bone and tearing through sinew.
The old man was spun round by the impact of the bullets. He balanced precariously on his left leg, staring at the shattered limbs of the right hand side of his body. A ragged scarecrow guarding a field of snow. Only not stuffed with straw. The blood that ran down into the whiteness by its feet testified to that.
Then he fell with a crunching sound as the frozen surface opened up and accepted his broken body.
Only then did Herne notice where the first charge from the shotgun had gone. It had blasted into the side and stomach of his horse. The animal lay now with its torn belly facing in Herne’s direction. Coils of intestine tumbled over one another and slithered like snakes down on to the ground. Blood washed over them and soaked into the white surface, through which it spread like fire through paper.
Herne watched spellbound as the blood from the animal reached out tendrils towards that from the old man’s shattered arm and leg, some five feet away.
Amazingly, the animal’s head moved up off the ground and it gave an almost human whine of pain. Herne stood over it with his gun aiming downwards.
‘Jed! Jed Herne!’
He had temporarily forgotten Tom Newman.
‘Herne! How many more of my family you gonna kill?’
Herne ignored him and fired once through the animal’s brain. Only then did he turn and face down to the ranch. Tom had shifted his ground, finding cover behind the cart to the left of the main building.
‘I didn’t kill your Ma and your Pa’s not dead. Why the hell don’t you come up here and get him into the house instead of trying to get yourself shot into the bargain?’
The answer was a bullet which ploughed into a thick drift of snow a foot or so to his right.
‘The next one’s going to be straighter, Jed.’
Herne had no intention of waiting to find out. He holstered his gun after snapping off a shot to keep the youngster ducked down. Then he ran hard and low, heading for the opposite end of the ranch buildings. A shot came after him, close enough for him to sense it passing by his head. He ducked lower still, tripped over something hidden under the surface of the snow and dived headlong. This time he couldn’t manage an even roll, but he didn’t shake himself up too badly. He pushed down on his hands and darted the final feet to the cover of the low barn.
Time to get his breath back and reload.
‘Tom,’ he shouted, partly stalling for the chance to prepare himself again, partly because he still hoped it would be possible not to have to shoot the youngster too. ‘Tom! You hear me?’
‘Sure I hear you.’
‘Don’t it do anything to you that your old man’s lyin’ bleeding up there in all that snow?’
‘Sure it does. It makes me want to put a bullet from this rifle of mine right between those eyes of yours.’
‘You reckon that’s more important than stopping your old man bleedin’ to death? Or freezin’?’
Silence. Herne guessed that the kid was thinking this last remark over. He hoped he would see sense. Something told him that he would not. Up on the tree, that was almost immediately above him now, the vulture had been joined by three others. Herne glanced at them with a growing feeling of disgust deep in his stomach.
He was surprised when Tom Newman stepped out from behind the cart. ‘Jed! You put up your gun and I’ll go up and get my Pa. We can sort the rest of this out later.’
Surprised and pleased.
He stood out from the side of the barn and let Tom see the Colt fall smoothly down into its holster. Tom laid his rifle on top of the cart and walked, then ran, up the slope to where his father lay.
Herne walked after him, hoping all the while that he had been right and that the old man was not dead.
Tom Newman knelt down beside the still, bent figure, putting his face close to the old man’s head, anxiously searching for some sign of life. Herne saw the expression of relief flood over the boy’s face, then change dramatically as he examined the damage to his father’s arm and leg.
He pushed his arms underneath the old man as gently as he could, aiming to lift him up.
Herne moved forward and went down on one knee. ‘Let me help you, Tom.’
The blue eyes fixed on Herne, icicle-cold.
‘If you move a finger to touch him, I’ll blast your damned brains out, you bastard. You were the one who did this to him, so what the hell do you want helping out now?’
Herne answered quietly, ‘I don’t see how I had any choice, Tom.’
‘Shit! You didn’t have to do what you did. He’s just a harmless old man.’
Herne stood up. ‘He was a harmless old man with a double-barreled shotgun in his hand and a mind to use it. That’s how harmless he was.’
Tom Newman raised his father’s body up slowly and looked again at Herne. ‘You still didn’t have to do this to him. You didn’t have to shoot him where you did.’
‘I aimed to stop him running and stop him firing.’
‘I reckon as how you did a sight more than that!’
Tom Newman turned away and walked down to the homestead, his father cradled in his arms. Herne waited a while then followed after him, watching the drip, drip of blood that fell from the old man’s body.
Two hours later, the sky outside had darkened. Within the small ranch house, things were darker too.
Herne had paced around the room, watching while Tom Newman washed and dressed his father’s wounds as best as he could in the poor light. He had made one further offer of help, but this had been refused with such ferocity that Herne had not thought to make another.
The old man had come round in the middle of his son’s attentions.
The mixture of pain and understanding of what had happened to him had unloosed a sobbing, choking stream of cusses and moans. Finally, he had lapsed into semi-consciousness.
Tom Newman spoke. He did not look at Herne, but there was no one else in the room that he could have been speaking to. ‘If he lives through this, then he’s going to wish he hadn’t. What use is an old man with only one good leg and one arm? What damn use is he? Specially without a place to live.’
Then Tom turned and set to work on his other task. He fetched a shovel and walked around to the back of the buildings.
He dug downwards, pushing with all of his strength. The ground was frozen solid beneath the soft snow covering. It was going to be a hard, difficult task. Tom kept digging till the exertion of his efforts brought sweat to his forehead and tears to his eyes. He stopped and leaned forward over the handle of the shovel, breathing unevenly. He was exhausted.
He looked up and saw Jed Herne standing opposite him holding a spade he had fetched from the barn. Tom wanted to shout, to tell him to go away, to leave him alone with the job of burying his mother. He didn’t even have the strength left to do that.
So Herne began to dig, slowly lifting and turning back the clods of dark earth. Tom Newman joined him after a while. The two men worked on in a strange atmosphere of extreme cold and extreme heat. There were times when their sweat turned to frozen beads on their faces.
Eventually the grave was ready, a six-foot deep hole of cold, forbidding earth.
Tom went into the house and lifted back the sheet that masked his mother’s body. He picked her up as easily as if she had been a child’s plaything and carried her outside. He laid her down in the snow. Jed walked back into the house and returned a moment later with a blanket. He offered it to the kneeling youngster.
‘It’s better,’ he said softly.
Tom Newman stood up, accepted the blanket, then bent forwards and wrapped his mother’s body inside it. He lifted the bundle up and took it over to the grave. He lowered it slowly into the hole in the ground then picked himself up off his knees and stood for several silent minutes looking down on the huddled shape.
New flakes, of snow began to fall on the dark material of the blanket.
Tom picked up one of the shovels and started to throw the earth back down into the hole. Herne decided that it was better if he didn’t help him. Not now.
As he stood watching, something caused him to turn his head. At the comer of the ranch buildings was the figure of the father, leaning unsteadily against the wooden wall, observing the burial of his wife by his son.
And all around them and over them the snow tumbled down in ever-thickening sheets.
And it was Christmas Day.
Jed Herne stood in the doorway, watching as Tom Newman put another couple of logs on the fire. Now was the time.
‘What’s it goin’ to be, Tom?’ he said quietly, an edge to his voice.
The young man turned slowly, conscious of the fact that the big man he had sought to take for a friend had made his decision. Behind him, hungry flames licked around the new wood, seeking to consume.
‘There’s only one way it can be, Jed. I ain’t goin’ to move from here. Not now. Not ever. Unless you make me.’
‘That’s what I bin paid to do, son.’
‘I know it.’
Neither man spoke for several moments. They could hear the uneasy breathing of the old man in the next room.
‘Where’s it to be,’ asked Herne, ‘in here?’
Tom shook his head. Herne turned and stepped outside into the open. The snow was still falling but that hadn’t deterred the vultures, who were swarming around the open belly of the horse that lay on the hill. They pushed at one another with their wings, jostling for space, hopping the length of the carcass in an ungainly way, beaks wrenching at the exposed entrails and still-warm flesh. Eager to take what they could before it froze into a solid mass.
Herne ignored them; walked away to his right; waited to see what the youngster would do. The least he could do was allow Tom to call things his way.
Unless… ‘Tom. Why don’t you let me help you shift out of here, I...’
‘No! My ma died here and I reckon my pa’s goin’ to. This place is all we got. All they ever had. All I ever had. I reckon it’s a good enough place for me to go in, if that’s what’s meant to happen.’
Herne nodded stiffly. ‘You said your piece, Tom. Now make your play.’
The young man held his rifle across his body, level with his waist. Herne guessed he would either try to bring it up to his shoulder or chance a snap shot from the hip. Jed pulled off his right glove and flexed his fingers slowly, worried about the intense cold that was already spreading through them. Hoping it would not be too long before the affair was over.
A large snowflake broke damply above his left cheek. He instinctively raised his gloved hand to brush it away, at which moment Tom Newman chose to go into action.
He swung the rifle towards Herne and squeezed off a shot. And missed. The youngster fired again, stabbing clumsily at the trigger in his haste. And missed again. Herne stood his ground.
Tom lifted the rifle up towards his shoulder.
As he did so Herne shouted out his name. Tom hesitated, just fractionally, then continued to level the sights in front of one of his clear blue eyes.
Herne drew smoothly, effortlessly. He was not going to make a mistake. He took aim at a point above Tom’s rifle and fixed.
The youngster’s body jerked backwards, both feet momentarily raised from the ground. The rifle was thrown upwards, spinning uselessly away. At the center of his clean, unlined forehead a crimson star had burst forth, the only bright thing in the entire landscape. The body lay completely still. Tom Newman was dead. The snow was still cascading down, quickly covering the corpse in a fine white powder.
Herne holstered his Colt, pulled his glove from out of his belt and slipped it back on his hand. Then he walked into the house and went over to where the old man lay on his bed.
He was awake with his head turned towards the door. His watery eyes showed no surprise at seeing Herne. It was almost as though he was expecting him.
The voice was so weak that Herne had to bend low over the bed to hear what the old man was saying. ‘You killed him, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Herne said, then stood up straight.
The old man seemed to nod to himself, then his eyes closed.
Herne bent forward again. ‘When I ride back into town I’ll get someone to come out and see to you. Look after you; move you into Charity. You just hang on here while I’m gone.’
The man’s hand pushed up out of the covers, the swollen knuckles bulging prominently. The fingers pointed past Herne towards the pistol that rested on the shelf above the fire.
Herne followed the gesture, got up and fetched the gun over to the bed. He checked that it was loaded and laid it alongside the old man’s head.
‘That’ll keep you safe enough till someone gets out here. The doc will have you patched up and right in no time.’
He moved away and slipped quietly out of the door. Outside the snow seemed to be easing, but the sky was still dark and the clouds were low over the horizon.
Herne looked across at Tom’s body, lying upturned on the ground. Two vultures were sitting astride either shoulder, pecking down at his eyes. Herne rushed at them, waving his Stetson. They fluttered with a noisy beating of strong wings upwards to their perch on the tree.
Tom Newman’s face stared vacantly up at him from eyeless sockets, blood coursing down his cheeks.
Herne quickly saddled one of the ranch horses and rode away up the slope, past the ravaged guts of the animal he had come in on, to the top of the hill overlooking the Newman homestead.
He looked back down. The vultures were gathering once more around Tom Newman’s corpse. A single shot rang out from inside the ranch house.
The birds rose upwards, flapping heavily into the leaden gray sky. Harbingers of death celebrating a feast day. Herne turned his horse’s head and rode slowly away across the crisp white expanse of land that seemed to stretch forever.