The Black Widow (13 page)

The first three rooms along that side
of the corridor were all empty. Jed had heard nothing from the
other end of the house. It was a strain on the nerves, walking into
these chill, dusty, over-furnished mausoleums, never knowing if
there might be a man with a gun in any of them.

Sweating a little, despite the cold, Herne
stepped along the corridor to the fourth door.

‘
I’ll pay you. Whatever Nolan is
paying, I’ll double it Treble it. Give you the money ten-fold, if
you’ll just ride on out of here and leave my boys alive. They
aren’t bad. I’ll see they never roam out of here again.’

‘
Mrs. Stanwyck. There isn’t
enough money in the whole damned world to make me betray anyone.
’Specially not a contract or a friend. And your boys are bad. Fact
is, by all accounts, they’re damned rotten. Through and
through.’

‘
I
saiah. I would do anything. Do you
understand me? Anything at all, to save my sons.’

Her eyes, hooded as a falcon’s, locked
with his while she stood carefully up, hands going to the straps of
her shift, sliding them off her milk-white shoulders. Allowing it
to fall to the carpet in a whisper of satin and silk.

Despite himself, Coburn gulped as she
stood there, quite naked, hands demurely by her sides. He looked at
her through the dimness, seeing her paleness like a fish in a
cavern below the sea. Unable to look away from the dark patch of
hair, and the nipples, jet black in the half-light, tipping the
magnificent breasts.

‘
I
offer you everything, Mister Coburn.
There is no more I can do.’

It had been a long time.

‘
Mrs. Stanwyck...
I...’

‘
Ruth, please.’

‘
Ruth. I can’t walk away
from this one. I’ve said what I meant, and...’

‘
You meant what you said. I
admire you for that, Isaiah. There are too few men to my knowledge
with that sort of honor. If you and I had met while ... but let
that pass. If you will lie with me a short while, then perhaps...
We might see. You are not under any obligation to me, Isaiah.
Please. Come lie with me... and be my love.’

Ignoring the threat of the gun she
stepped in closer to him, hands reaching for him, seeing even in
the gloom of the bedroom that she was having an obvious effect on
Coburn.

‘
Why don’t you strip down,
Isaiah, for me? I’m positive that you would begin to feel easier
and more comfortable. Come on.’

Jed swung open the last door in that
stretch of the corridor, jumping in, landing two-footed, gun
probing at the room.

It was empty.

Which meant that all the remaining
people in Mount Abora, mother, sons and the last of the gunmen,
must be along the other end. The end where Whitey Coburn had
gone.

Pausing only to glance out of the
mullioned window at the falling snow, Herne began to retrace his
footsteps, towards the center staircase.

‘
You take no chances, Isaiah.
Can this truly be enjoyable for you?’

Grunting between his teeth, Coburn
tightened the length of cord round Ruth Stanwyck’s right wrist.
Securing her quite helplessly to the top end of her bed.

‘
Ma’am. Despite what some folks
say about my face, I’m only human. I ain’t had a woman at all in a
long whiles. And I ain’t seen a woman to match you for a whole lot
longer still. So I’m takin’ you up on your kind offer, but that
don’t mean I aim to let you stab me, or blow my head off with a
little pillow gun. Or start screamin’ and carryin’ on. This way, I
figure it’ll be better.’

‘
And my boys?’

‘
I
make no promises, Ruth. None at
all.’

‘
Damn it, Mister. Aren’t you
even goin’ to take off your hat and boots?’

‘
No, Ruth. It’s a mite cold in
here, and I don’t figure to catch a chill. There’s only one bit of
me I aim to uncover, and that won’t be cold for long. It’ll get
sort of centrally heated.’

He gently laid the Colt, still cocked,
so that it rested on the mound of her breasts, the tip of the
foresight scraping the delicate skin. Making her squeal.

‘
Quietly now.
If’
n that
hurts, then I’ll just make it better, like this!’

He lowered his mouth to her breasts,
nuzzling at her nipples, while his hand reached between their
bodies and found her already warm and ready for him. He used his
other hand to open his trousers, wriggling awkwardly to release
himself from the confinement of the clothes.

‘
Yes.’

It was all she said as he forced his knee
in between her thighs, finding that there was little resistance to
him, Hearing the faint ripping noise as his boot heel tore the
coverlet. Thrusting himself hard at her, feeling her open and
engulf him. Her hips rising to meet him, while her mouth hung
slackly open.

‘
Oh, my sweet God!
Yes!’

He shut her mouth by the simple
expedient of kissing her, feeling her cobra tongue probing between
his lips, while her teeth pinned at his skin.

She tasted warm and sweet, with the
faintest hint of corruption, like a sun-blown peach.

As he pounded towards his climax,
Coburn was suddenly aware of what stood on the small table by the
head of the bed. A tiny spirit lamp, and a strip of silk. White
silk. A silver spoon, its bowl darkened underneath, as though it
had been warmed in a naked flame. A glass vial of white,
crystalline powder. And a needle, with a plunger attached to
it.

Then Coburn closed his eyes and shuddered
to a violent climax, feeling the woman moving frantically under
him, dragging out her own satisfaction, moaning into his face, her
hips arched up, heels locking behind his back, pulling him deeper
into her than he would have believed possible.

Only after several seconds had passed did
she begin to relax, gasping and moaning. When he looked down at
her, he saw that her cheeks were wet with tears, and he rubbed them
away with the tip of his long forefinger.

‘
That was so good, Isaiah. And
perhaps now you might leave my sons to me.’

The thrill had gone, leaving him
drained and feeling mildly irritated. Angry with himself for having
given way to a foolish weakness for the voracious woman. A weakness
that could have left him dead if anyone had come into the bedroom
while he was busy.

Someone had said to him years back; was it
the chubby marshal from up Oregon way, Duke Harknett? He’d said
that a man was at his softest when he was hard, and at his hardest
when he was soft.

Not trusting himself to speak, he was
so angry with himself, he shook his head. Swinging off the broad
expanse of the bed, buttoning himself up. Leaving the pistol, still
cocked, lying between her heaving breasts.

‘
You promised, Isaiah. You gave
me your word that if I let you do that to me, you damned animal,
you’d spare the boys!’

Her face was red and angry, showing
more her true age. Coburn looked at her, waiting for the storm to
pass, watching her strain at the ropes at her wrists.

‘
No use, Mrs. Stanwyck. And I
never gave you my word. Not then. Not now. Not ever. I took what
you gave me, and I’m real obliged to you for it. But it truly don’t
change nothing at all.’

‘
But...’

‘
Aren’t any buts. I
shouldn’t rightly have done that, and maybe I won’t sleep good at
nights thinkin’ on it. But I done a whole lot worse that never
stopped me sleepin’, so I guess this won’t. Now I got to go and
look to my partner.’

‘
Let me go!’

‘
Later.’ He walked towards her,
to pick up the gun, when he saw the small table again, and
remembered the question he had meant to ask her.

‘
This junk here. Whose is it,
Mrs. Stanwyck? Is it yours?’

The voice
was as soft as darkest velvet.
Cold as death. And it came from near the door. Behind
Coburn.

‘
It is mine, Sir.
Mine.’

Jed had actually been standing
with his left hand on the cool brass doorknob, having listened for
a moment. When he heard Luke Stanwyck’s voice raised in maddened
anger. And
heard the woman’s voice as well. And the third voice that
he knew, even through the muffling door, near as well as his
own.

So he knocked smartly on the panels
with the barrel of his Colt, and stood back, flattening himself
against the wall, under a picture of an elderly and choleric
looking gentleman in hunting pink. He glanced both ways up the
corridor, but nothing moved.

Four shots.

All sounding like they came from a Colt.
The noise of someone falling, then a hand fumbling at the knob of
the door. Slipping on it as though the handle was wet. Finally
wrenching it open and stumbling out into the guttering light of the
dusky corridor. Holding a gun. With blood running brightly down one
arm, trickling from the end of the pale fingers on to the heavy
pile of the carpet. The whole of one side of the suit stained with
blood, making it like a jester’s suit of motley. One half
scarlet.

The other half white.

Luke didn’t see Herne waiting there, close
against the oak paneling. The boy, gasping with pain, struggled to
shut the door behind him, fumbling with the knob, finally kicking
it to. Turning to run down the corridor, away from Jed, still not
seeing him.

Herne
let him take half a dozen staggering
steps along the corridor, blood from the exit wound patching the
back of his jacket, before he called him.

‘
Luke Stanwyck!’

The boy stopped as though someone had
pulled him up on a choke rein, spinning round, falling into the
gunfighter’s pose, looking back into the ochre gloom.

‘
Who the Hell are
you?’

‘
You’re Luke
Stanwyck?’

‘
Y
eah. And you must be … ’

‘
Jedediah Herne. You caused my
wife’s death back in March. I’ve come for the
reckoning.’

The gun in Luke’s hand shook. He
brought the other hand across to help, wiping the blood off on the
leg of his pants, leaving a scarlet palm-print.

‘
Why don’t you shoot me, then?
You cowardly bastard, why don’t you shoot me? Your friend in
there’s done for me.’

‘
No, boy. You done for
yourself.’

From behind the bedroom door there was
a piercing scream. A woman’s voice. And Jed saw the knob of the
door beginning to turn slowly.

‘
Hold it, Whitey!’ he shouted,
hearing his voice echo through the dusty corridor. ‘I got some
business to settle out here. Wait on in there!’

‘
Watch for the others!’ shouted
Coburn, opening the door the narrowest fraction, squinting through
the gap. ‘Must be somewheres round here. I’ll cover your
back.’

Luke fired a second shot, the bullet
hitting the wall close to the door. Missing both men.

Jed looked at him. Feeling a touch of pity
for the boy. Leaning against a bureau, trying to steady himself to
fire again. Painfully slowly he brought the gun up, so that it
pointed in the general direction of Herne. Who wasn’t about to get
himself killed just for a touch of pity.

He fired at Luke, the bullet hitting
him in the right arm, close to the shoulder. The gun clattered to
the floor, and the boy tried to bend down to pick it up. It was at
that moment that Jed fired a second time. The bullet ploughed clean
through the top of Luke’s skull, smashing his brain into exploding
shards of splintered bone and gobbets of soft flesh.

The boy toppled backwards as though
he’d been kicked, falling in a sitting position, his face set in a
frozen position of horror. Blood poured from nose and mouth,
vomiting over the once-immaculate suit, soaking into the carpet. By
some macabre freak of reflex, the jaw muscles worked continuously,
as though he was about to speak, and kept forgetting the words he
wished to utter.

Thumbing bade the hammer, Herne put
another bullet between the eyes of Luke Stanwyck, removing even the
most superficial shreds of life, leaving him a silent corpse in the
quiet corridor.

The reek of cordite overhung the tang of
the smoking lamps, and Herne coughed to clear his throat, emptying
out the used cartridges, and reloading the Colt.

Whitey came out and joined him,
shutting the door on the noise of a woman crying, hardly glancing
at the boy’s body.

‘
He was injecting himself
with morphine. Or heroin. One of those junk things. Came in while I
was ... while I was with Ruth Stanwyck, and he was all hopped up,
ready for another of his jabs. Shot at me, and I fired a couple of
times. Guess I hit him once. Yeah, that bullet there’d be mine. Two
in the head are yourn. So that’s one more down. One to
go.’

It suddenly occurred to Herne that the
shooting ought to have brought Mark and the other gunman out of
hiding. Since they hadn’t appeared, it probably meant that they
were preparing an ambush somewhere.

‘
Where are they? The other
two?’

‘
Better go look for
them.’

The noise from behind the door had stopped
and-Herne looked enquiringly at his partner, ‘Why doesn’t she come
out see what’s happening?’

‘
She’s kind of tied up at
the moment. Should I let her loose to tend to her boy?’

‘
Why not? Guess she won’t
harm us none.’

Herne
waited in the passage while Whitey
went in, drawing a knife. He was in the room for a couple of
minutes. When he came out again he looked shaken.

‘
I cut her free, and told
her that Luke was dead. She stood there, bear-naked, and smiled at
me. Turned my blood cold. Said she’d get dressed to care for him.
Didn’t seem to get through to her what’s happened.’

‘
Forget her. Let’s go get
us the last of the breed. Can’t have gone far.’

The first three doors they tried were
open, and the rooms empty. The next was a bathroom. The next was
another echoingly deserted bedroom, with only a moth-eaten tapestry
hanging across one window. The snow had stopped once more, and the
late afternoon sun broke through the stained glass of the window,
casting a web of gules and argent across the empty room.

There were two more rooms along that side
of the house, and both were empty. Herne looked at Whitey, his face
showing his bewilderment. ‘How in hell do you get to the top part
of this place? There wasn’t no staircase the other end, and there’s
nothing here either.’

The corridor ended in a blank wall,
decorated with a fine tapestry, in far better condition than the
one in the bedroom. Woven in faded colors, it portrayed the
beheading of Saint Eulogius of Cordova. As they stood there, Jed
noticed that the bottom corner of it fluttered, as though there was
some kind of draught. Yet the corridor was virtually
airless.

‘
Here!’ he exclaimed, stepping
forward and pulling the heavy curtain aside. There was a narrow
staircase winding upwards, the stone steps worn down in their
centers.

‘
Careful,’ warned Whitey,
following Herne behind the tapestry, Colt cocked in his right
hand.

The stairs wound upwards, with only slits
of windows to lighten them, with the surrounding valley falling
away beneath them. The walls were a good three feet thick, closing
off the rest of the house from the tower. There was another door at
the top, with a massive ring for a handle. Herne paused with his
left hand on the ring.

‘
Whitey?’

‘
Wh
at?’

‘
If they’re up here, then
I guess they can’t have heard all that going on down
there.’

‘
All that shootin’ and
screamin’, and you reckon they wouldn’t hear it?’

‘
This place is built like a
jail. Walls that thick. Solid doors. Those heavy curtains. You
could murder someone ten feet away and not have anyone
know.’

Coburn
nodded. ‘Could be, Jed. You going
first up there?’

The handle turned slowly, and Jed set
his shoulder carefully to the door, controlling it from opening too
far too fast. Putting his face to the crack, and checking it was
clear. He saw another corridor. But much shorter, ending this time
in a blank wall with no decoration. And only one door opening off
it. To the right. Opposite another of those narrow
windows.

It was very cold, with a faint smell of
perfume. There was a worn Persian carpet down the center of the
passage, and Herne stepped cautiously on to it, followed closely by
Whitey. The door to the room off the corridor was standing ajar,
and they could hear voices. A high-pitched voice, giggling, and
another. Deeper.

Jed glanced quickly round to see if Whitey
thought the same as he did. The tall albino nodded, setting his
lips in a thin line, shrugging his shoulders to ease the weight of
his coat.

‘
Straight in?’

‘
Straight in.’

Herne
lifted his foot, kicking out hard at
the door, sending it swinging back on its hinges, jumping in, gun
ready, moving right, with Whitey already at his elbow on the
left.

It was the end of that long trail of
revenge. In front of him he saw the last of the men who had raped
and tortured his wife. Killed Becky’s mother.

‘
Mark
Stanwyck?’

There were two men in bed. One with a
dark moustache, and shoulder-length dark hair. The other paler
skinned, with soft features. Younger.

Neither of them moved
as Coburn and Jed
stepped round, one on each side of the bottom of the bed, standing
there looking at them.

‘
Fuckin’ unnatural
bastards!’ spat Whitey, looking across in disgust at his
partner.

‘
We’re not harming anyone,’ said
the younger boy, putting an arm across the shoulders of the other
man. ‘Did my mother send you up to scare me? She’s always doing
that. Well, you ought to know that my brother and I rule Mount
Abora. And if you want to keep your jobs here, then you’d better
learn your manners.’ He stared fascinated at Coburn’s tumbling mane
of white hair. ‘What lovely locks! I wish I could get mine like
that. It’s so fine and soft-looking. Anyway, now you’ve had your
joke you’d better go and tell my mama it didn’t work. Go on, before
I tell my brother.’

‘
Your brother is dead, Mark. I
shot him down like the dog he was.’

‘
No! I don’t believe it. Nobody
would have...’ There was a sudden silence, as realization came to
him. ‘You’re Herne. It was your wife...’

‘
Yes, boy. It was my wife. Now
get up. I don’t take to killin’ a naked boy in his bed.’

Mark Stanwyck looked desperately from
face to face, seeking help. His lover, the last of the castle’s
gunmen, remained quite still, as though he hoped that they might
somehow overlook him, and that he might live,

He might have done.

If it hadn’t been for Mark. The boy had a
derringer under his pillow, and he suddenly pulled it out, firing a
shot at Coburn, the bullet plucking waspishly at the cuff of his
sleeve. Immediately he pulled the other man in the bed to him,
spoiling Herne’s aim.

Then, with equal speed, Mark pushed the
man from him, right at Herne, while he fired a second shot at the
figure of Coburn, who was also maneuvering for a clear sight of
him.

In the small room there was chaos. Whitey
shouted out as the small caliber bullet hit him in the leg,
toppling him over against a carved chair. The naked gunman lurched
at Herne, arms reaching out for him to save himself from falling.
Taking advantage of the confusion, Mark made his leap for the
door.

Herne
never knew whether the man who clung
to him was trying to fight him or simply escape from him with the
un-coordination of blind panic. It didn’t make a whole lot of
difference.

He squeezed the trigger of the Colt,
ramming the barrel hard into the gunman’s stomach, the noise of the
shot muffled by flesh. With a scream of pain the man fell away from
him, hands clutching for the wound. A tiny hole, smoke-blackened at
its edges, leaking a thread of dark blood over the sweat-tangled
pubic hairs and the limp genitals.

‘
Jesus! That hurts like
nothing I ever known. Jesus but that hurts.’

The man sat down on the edge of the
bed, reaching round behind him, his hand coming away covered with
blood from the massive exit wound, the size of a man’s fist, where
the forty-five bullet had blown him apart.

Herne
ignored him, walking fast round the
room to where Coburn was standing up, feeling at his leg with a
grimace of pain. He could hear the noise of Mark Stanwyck’s bare
feet pattering down the stone stairs, but he ignored it. There
wasn’t anywhere the boy could run.

‘
Bad?’

‘
Nope. Nipped the outside
here. Give me the cord off that coat on the bed.’

The coat was an ornate robe in bright
silk, with dragons twining about each other against a background of
red and green temples. Herne ripped the belt from it and passed it
to his partner, watching while he bound it round his injured leg, a
few inches above the knee.