The Black Widow (2 page)
Authors: John J. McLaglen
Tags: #historical, #wild west, #gunfighters, #western fiction, #american frontier, #the old west, #john harvey, #piccadilly publishing, #laurence james, #jed herne
Ruth smiled.
‘
My dearest boys. Outside the
chill of winter is settling its claws into our lovely estate.
Across that blue lake, the fall will soon be frozen into a pinnacle
of ice. Then the lake will freeze. The valley will be cut off for a
couple of months. All this will happen within the next two or three
weeks. Anyone outside the house after that date will not be able to
get back. Nor will anyone within be able to get out. It has always
been so and it will always be so.’
It was true. Mark and Luke had lived
in the house for most of their lives, only able to taste the heady
air of freedom for an occasional week at a time.
‘
That alone would make a
request for permission to leave for San Francisco utterly absurd,
would it not?’
They both nodded. There was a knock at
the door and their eyes flicked towards the hall with a flash of
interest. An interest that dulled the moment they saw it was only
their English butler, Jackson.
‘
Yes?’
‘
Mrs. Bellamy wishes to know
when you require dinner serving, madam?’
‘
Is it the salmon as I
ordered?’
‘
It is, madam.’
‘
Then w
e will eat at eight.’ She watched
Luke, finding a perverse pleasure in the look of dismay that
crossed his face. ‘Don’t worry, my dearest boy. I shall ensure that
you have your medicine before we eat.’ The butler turned to leave
the room, as silently as he had entered. ‘Oh, Jackson?’
‘
Madam?’
‘
I was just talking to my
sons about the approaching winter. We have in all the provisions
that we need, do we not?’
‘
Indeed we do, madam. Will
there be anything else?’
‘
No. You may go.’
After the door whispered shut, she
turned again to her sons, neither of whom had moved since she
entered the room.
‘
Mark, my sweet boy. And darling
Luke. I would rather lose my life than have you hazard yourselves
outside.’
‘
Mama. We can look after
ourselves. We’ve been out before and we got back safe.’
She smiled gently. ‘Yes, Mark. The last
time you went out was March of this year of grace eighteen hundred
and eighty-two. And you joined Senator Nolan’s son and some of his
so-called friends on that wretched train.’
‘
B
ut, Mama we...’
‘
Luke! Hold your tongue.
Children should be seen and not heard. If you interrupt me again I
think we may have dinner late. And I recall that you are never in
the best of appetite if your medicine is much delayed.’
Luke’s face went white behind its usual
pallor, giving him the bizarre appearance of a corpse dressed for a
wedding. But he kept silent.
‘
Very well. That adventure of
yours up near Tucson, and don’t look so surprised that I mention
it, Mark! That adventure has proved expensive. I hear from a friend
on the coast that the husband of the slut who chose to end her
slatternly existence after you had favored her is making a nuisance
of himself.’
Mark and Luke exchanged glances. Since
March and their safe return, neither of them had left the house,
perched on the narrow snaking trail not far from the township of
Lone Pine. So the bitch’s husband was riding the vengeance trail,
was he? That might prove interesting if he decided to tangle with
the Stanwyck family.
‘
There were others,
Mama.’
‘
And they are all dead,
Mark.’
In the silence, the clock chimed the
quarter hour, its silver note echoing on and on.
‘
D
ead?’
‘
Yes, Luke. Your hearing was
always at its most keen at this time of the evening. I wonder why?
Yes, I hear that this gunman has slaughtered them all. All but you
two, of course. And now the dear Senator has, I understand,
arranged that this person will soon be able to join his harlot
wife, and is having vigilantes track him down. So that we will
remain here until the winter has eased. By then it will once again
be quite safe, and you will both be of the majority, and I will
permit you to take short vacations beyond the valley.’
Luke began to twitch, his face moving
uncontrollably. Great gobbets of tears coursed down his cheeks,
spotting over his virginal shirt and jacket. His shoulders heaved
and he reached out blindly towards his mother. She took a step
forwards and took him to her, clasping him in her arms, nestling
his head on her bosom.
‘
There, there. My wee baby
Luke. Don’t you worry. Mama will give you your nice medicine, and
then we’ll eat, and maybe I’ll let you sleep in Mama’s bed tonight
so you can cuddle up and be warm.’
‘
Mama.’
‘
Now, Mark. I allowed you to
share my bed only a few days ago. Today is, let me see, Tuesday,
October tenth. My goodness! Exactly fourteen days to your
birthdays. I have arranged such a lovely surprise for you both. And
nothing will spoil that. Don’t either of you worry any more about
what’s outside Mount Abora here.’
Mark turned away from his crying twin
and gazed out of the window across the valley, sealed in by high
walk of rock, and covered in a scattering of tall pines, with the
tips of the massive sequoias just visible through the settling
gloom of the evening to the west.
‘
It’s snowing, Mama. If it
settles tomorrow, perhaps we could go out with a few of the men and
try out the new toboggan you bought us in the city.’
Ruth Stanwyck smiled. ‘Of course,
Mark. Have you thought of a nice name for the sled?’
The boy simpered. ‘I had thought,
Mama, if you don’t mind the name, that I could call it after a
flower.’
‘
How sweet, darling boy. What
about a name like “Rosebud”? That’s a lovely name.’
‘
No, Mama. That’s too prickly.
And Rosebud would be a silly name for a sled. I shall call it
“Speedwell”. I saw the name in one of Father’s old books in the
library.’
‘
That’s lovely! A most
appropriate name. But do take care and make sure the men have their
guns.’
Mark reached to the side and pulled on
the long hanging cord of maroon silk, with its tassel of gold
thread. Smooth and silent, the drapes swung across, cutting off the
evening and the snow.
‘
Don’t worry, Mama. I hardly
think this dreadful avenging angel will be spreading his wings up
here at this time of year. They would become covered in icicles and
he would fall from the sky.’
‘
L
ike Lucifer fell as he was cast down from
heaven,’ said Ruth, helping Luke from the room, letting him lean
heavily on her shoulder, his white clothes a stunning contrast with
her shiny black dress. She paused at the door to wait for Mark to
catch up with them. ‘But I’m sure that you’re right, dear boy.
Hardly weather for camping out, is it? Nice for the sled tomorrow
if the sun shines through. Speedwell. Yes, but I still think
Rosebud would be a nicer name. Don’t you?’
The oak door closed behind them and
cut off Mark’s reply. Outside, the snow continued to fall across
the valley.
As it fell on the crenellated
towers of Mount Abora, so it fell all along the spine of the
Sierras. Dappling
the trees and the peaks, falling silently in the streams and rivers
of Yosemite. Coating the mighty trees of the mountains.
Freezing.
‘
Jed. I’m freezing!’
‘
You and me both, Becky. I guess
it’s so long since I been up in the tops when the frosts came that
I clean forgot just how damned keen it bites. Here. I’ll put a few
more pieces of wood on the fire. Daren’t let it blaze up too much.’
He squinted through the drifting whiteness across the valley, to
where they could just see tiny pinpoints of light. ‘I guess we’re
less’n a mile from Mount Abora.’
‘
And the end of the killing,’
said Becky flatly, trying to cut up slices of jerky with Herne’s
belt-knife. The honed Civil War bayonet remained safely in his
boot. That wasn’t for meat, only for fighting.
‘
Y
es.’
Herne
let his mind wander back in the
silence, his eyes fixed on the tumbling flames of the small fire,
the driven flakes falling on the embers with the faintest
hiss.
Seven men had taken part in the brutal
rape of his wife back in March. The rape that had culminated in the
murder of his neighbor, Rachel. The mother of fifteen-year-old
Rebecca,
Five of the seven men had died on the
vengeance trail, and there had been other deaths. Becky’s father
had been gunned down in a saloon, and Jed Herne was now her only
guardian. A load that weighed on him with increasing gravity. Much
as he liked the girl, and that was as far as his mind would allow
the thought to spread, she was still a dreadful liability in the
game he played.
A game that wouldn’t end with the deaths
of the last two men. Because Herne was the hunter and the hunted.
The first man to die had been the spoilt son of the influential
Senator Nolan, from the west coast. Enraged at the murder of his
only child, the old man had sought out the best gunman around and
set him off to claim a massive bounty for Jed Herne. Dead or
alive.
Before he had married, Herne had been one
of the top guns in the South-West. And that meant the top gun
anywhere. He’d met the best. Some he’d killed. Some he’d ended up
liking and respecting. And the one he liked best was the tall, lean
albino, Isaiah Coburn. The one they called behind his back,
‘Whitey’.
Jed and Whitey had ridden together in the
Civil War under Quantrill, and then fought alongside Garrett and
Bonney in the Lincoln County Range War. Jed always reckoned that
Whitey was the only man who might - just might - have the edge on
him.
The man that Senator Nolan had hired
was Whitey Coburn.
Jed knew well enough that a contract was a
contract, and that their long friendship would mean nothing when it
came to the confrontation. Already there’d been a couple of
attempts. But Coburn was handicapped with the other members of his
unofficial posse that Nolan had saddled him with. Nolan mistrusted
Coburn, feeling that he might betray him for the sake of an old
friendship.
But there’d be other
attempts.
And maybe on the girl as well.
Something had to be done about Becky. That would come after the
last two killings. If they were the last...
Herne
looked up from the fire, aware that
the snow had eased. It was getting late and far across the giant
scar of the valley the pinpoints of light at Mount Abora were going
out.
‘
Time for sleep,’ he
said.
Morning had broken, just like any
other morning, and Becky had rolled out from under the blankets,
still fully clothed, sleep clogging her eyes.
They had left Carson City a week back,
heading south and climbing higher each day. The cold biting in at
them like a pack of wolves, nipping fingers and ears. Like Jed she
had taken to wearing a hat tied down over her head with a long
woolen scarf, wrapping it round her mouth and tucking it down the
front of her thick jacket. But the freezing wind still poked and
pried, finding the cracks and chafing her skin.
They’d
seen the first snow as they passed
close to Yosemite Valley, the vaulted mountains towering over ten
thousand feet high. Gradually getting closer to the end of the
quest for the last two men on Herne’s list. Brothers who lived in a
castle with their widowed mother. Names were Stanwyck. Twins,
called Mark and Luke. That was all she knew.
The fire was out and she scrabbled
among the ashes for some dry wood to get it going again, leaving it
to go behind a tree to answer a call of nature. As she did so her
boots squeaked in the thin layer of snow.
Herne
rolled from his blanket, prodded by
the sound into instant alertness, the heavy Colt up and cocked and
in his hand. He grinned at her when he saw who it was and what she
was doing.
‘
Told you, Becky. Wake me before
you start the fire. Never know if there mightn’t be a bobcat up
here just waiting for some young girl takin’ a leak behind the
nearest tree.’
The girl blushed, and tugged down her
skirt, walking back to join him. ‘Jedediah Herne! I do wish that
you’d recall that I’m not a little girl anymore and that ladies
like a mite of privacy.’
‘
Sorry,’ said Herne,
insincerely. ‘Better get the fire going, Becky. A mug of coffee
might thaw me out.’
While she
labo
red with
the wood, cursing to herself as the match burned her finger, Herne
began his morning ritual. Taking the Colt from his holster, the
bayonet from its special sheath in his boot and getting the Sharps
rifle from its saddle holster.
His stallion and the girl’s mare
nibbled at the patchy grass that still poked through the coverlet
of snow. He had tethered them close enough to the trickling stream
for them to water themselves. Across the valley, he stood for a
moment and looked at his target. Mount Abora. A fortress with its
own private army. That was what the storekeeper in Lone Pine had
said. Jed wondered whether it might not be safer to leave the
horses in the town, and climb back here. Maybe even leave the girl
behind?
