The Black Widow (14 page)

‘
Better.’ Coburn stamped a few
times, experimenting with the amount of movement he’d got. ‘Might
stiffen later, but right now I’m good for a whiles. Let’s get after
that boy.’

‘
Can you do something for
me, Mister?’ said the boy who had been on the bed. He now lay
against the bottom of the bed, leaving behind him a slobbered
trail, like that of a giant scarlet snail, where he’d slipped
down.

‘
Nothing to do for you.
You shouldn’t have left your farm, boy. I’m sorry.’

The naked figure watched them go, the
incomprehension of death beginning to cloud his eyes. There wasn’t
a thing that either of them could have done for him.

Even if they’d wanted to.

The sun lay lower over the Sierras as
they made their way carefully down the stone stairs from the tower,
leaving the last gunman dead behind them. As they’d left, Jed had
pulled the coverlet over the man’s face.

Whitey’s leg was paining him, but he
seemed to be walking on it without too much discomfort. The
tapestry at the foot of the stairs fluttered slightly in the cool
air, and they brushed past it to emerge on the dusty main
corridor.

Although they moved cautiously, with
Whitey several paces ahead, covered by Jed, nothing happened all
the way along. The body of Luke Stanwyck still lay where it had
fallen, the blood congealing on the heavy carpet, the limbs
stiffening in death. Someone - Ruth they assumed - had folded the
arms across the bloody breast of the corpse, and had laid a small
hymnal in the pale, waxen hands.

They reached the head of the
staircase, certain that nothing lived on all that top
floor.

It was as Herne started to walk down the
stairs that they heard talking in one of the main reception rooms
overlooking the front of the house. It was the voice of a woman,
but it wasn’t possible to hear what she was saying. When Jed turned
round in confusion, his partner simply shrugged his
shoulders.

They reached the bottom of the stairs,
Whitey keeping looking back up to the landing as though he expected
to see Mark Stanwyck. But the banisters were the dark bars on an
empty prison.

The voice came from the room to the
right of the front entrance to Mount Abora. Across from what they
already knew was the library. Closer now, they could hear the
words.

‘
Nothing can happen to
you. Just remain here with me, Mark, and all will be well. And I
shall tell you of the future that I have planned.’

The words were emotional, but the tone was
flat and dead. They heard an answering voice, but it spoke more
quietly. Although they were now close against the paneled door,
they couldn’t make out any of the words. But it was undeniably the
voice of Mark Stanwyck.

‘
In?’ whispered
Herne.

‘
L
ike before. I’m right behind you,
Jed.’

Herne
couldn’t understand it. The boy must
know that they would come after him. And yet he hadn’t bothered to
try and ambush them. Or hide. It sounded as though he was just in
there, waiting for them, like a good host waiting for his guests to
arrive.

The door handle turned easily under
his hand, and he gave it a push, sending it silently back on its
brass hinges, revealing the living-room. With two
occupants.

Ruth Stanwyck stood by the sofa, one white
hand resting on its velvet back. Smiling gently at the two men
standing in the doorway. With guns in their hands. She had dressed
herself after Whitey had released her, and now wore a tight dress
of black satin, with a wide belt, its only splash of color a great
red stone at its center. Her hair was neatly brushed back in place,
and she had put some powder on her cheeks.

Mark stood close by her, the empty
derringer on a table at his elbow. If it was empty. There’d
certainly been time enough for him to reload the little gun. He had
snatched a loose robe from somewhere and wore it wrapped around his
nakedness. His hands moved constantly against each other, as though
they had some perverse life of their own, the fingers nibbling at
the air, then lying still with startling suddenness.

Neither of them spoke.

‘
Mrs. Stanwyck. I’m sorry that
you should have the pain of this, but it’s only a mite of what I’ve
been suffering for near eight months.’

‘
Your suffering is easing,
Mister Herne. I fear that mine is scarcely begun.’

Her voice was husky. Chilling, yet
strangely sensual. Coburn found himself becoming curiously roused,
but made a positive effort to turn his mind away from the woman,
concentrating on the boy.

‘
Mama. You promised me that they
wouldn’t hurt me. I could have run.’

‘
Where to, boy? Your runnin’s
long done. Ain’t nowheres to go. Out in the snow? We’d track you
and take you in a half hour. On the trail? No horse goin’ to move
you far in this weather in the high country. Nowhere to run, boy.
This is the end of the road for you,’ said Herne coldly.

‘
And the end of the chasing for
you, Mister Herne? I offered your partner money. I take it
that...’

‘
No.
Ma’am, not money. Not
anything.’

‘
Mama?’

‘
You have taken one of my boys
from me. In only a week, he would have been twenty-one.’

There was a long silence, and both men
stood uneasily. The boy was clearly unarmed, and neither of them
wanted to gun him down like that.

‘
If he has a gun, I’d feel
happier if he...’

‘
So you could kill him and feel
a sense of justification, Mister Herne? I am disappointed in you.
If you have come to kill, then you must not be persuaded against
it.’

‘
Please, Mama. Don’t let
them!’

Mark Stanwyck moved closer behind his
mother, but she ignored him, her face set like stone towards the
two men.

The room was getting dark. A single lamp
in the far comer, near a small harmonium, the only source of light.
Herne glanced sideways at Coburn, unsure for once how to play the
hand.

Mark saw the two gunmen exchange a look
and made his move. Grabbing at his mother’s hand, hidden behind the
sofa, and wrestling from her another derringer. Plated and inlaid,
Herne noted in passing, finger tightening on the trigger of his own
gun.

But the boy was safely behind his
mother, holding her round the waist with one hand, pointing the gun
at the men with the other. This time he wasn’t going to be foolish
enough to risk snapping off a shot and missing. The gun was his
only card, linked with his cover of his mother’s body. Together
they seemed a fair enough bet.

But not against Herne the
Hunter.

‘
Stand away,
boy.’

‘
You stand away, Herne. Stand
right away. And you too, whiteface. Right out of the path. Drop
your guns before I gun you down! I mean it.’

‘
Mark! I’d rather not do
it this way, but I’ve come here to kill you for what you done to my
Louise. And using your mother for a shield isn’t goin’ to save you.
For the very last time move away!’

‘
D
on’t, Mark. He wouldn’t shoot.’

‘
I know, Mama. I
know.’

‘
Hell.’

The word was flat. Resigned. Aiming
carefully, Herne fired once, the bullet hitting Ruth Stanwyck in
the stomach, low down on the right side, under the ribs. Passing
clean through, uninterrupted by any bone. Its nose slightly
flattened by the impact, and its velocity considerably slowed. But
not slowed anywhere like enough to save Mark Stanwyck, standing
pressed close against his loving mother.

The bullet hit him clean through the
middle of the stomach, in almost exactly the same position as
Herne’s previous shot had hit the young gunman in the tower
bedroom.

Ruth screamed with the violence of the
pain that tore at her stomach, kicking her backwards on top of her
son, who also screamed out loud, the derringer spinning from his
fingers into the corner of the room. With a scrabbling effort, the
robe falling open, the boy pushed clear of his mother, crawling
across the room towards Herne, head down, gasping with the agony of
the gut wound.

Herne
watched him come, lurching slowly
forwards like something out of a nightmare. The last man he had
ridden thousands of miles to kill, dying at his feet. He ignored
Ruth Stanwyck, trying to get to her feet, pulling the white runner
from the table, scattering china ornaments on the floor. Ignored
Coburn at his elbow, breathing hard.

Shut out everything except this pathetic
object groveling at his feet.

‘
You bastard, Herne. You killed
my mother.’

‘
You bastard, Stanwyck. You
killed my wife.’

He pulled his lips back over his teeth in
a wolf-like snarl and pumped the last five bullets from the heavy
Colt into the boy’s body, cocking and squeezing, long after the
chambers were empty.

The air was thick with gunsmoke. When it
cleared Herne saw what he had done. The bullets had literally torn
the boy apart. His flesh had been mashed into the carpet, and blood
had sprayed everywhere. Splashed in Herne’s face. Sprinkled in the
ghostly whiteness of Coburn’s hair.

His revenge had ended as it had begun.
With death and blood.

The only sound came from Ruth
Stanwyck, sobbing as she tried again to get up, blood dribbling
through her dress from the stomach wound.

‘
I’ll
loose the servants,’ said Coburn,
quietly. Almost apologetically walking from the living-room. The
death-room.

Herne
stood locked in with his own
thoughts, hardly aware of the presence of the woman. She had
managed to crawl across the floor, kneeling and cradling the
mangled corpse of her son in her arms, wiping away the blood from
his face, only to find more blood beneath.

‘
Wh
y? Why?’

‘
Why not?’ said Herne, walking
away from her. He stood by the window, staring out at the setting
sun, dappling the mountain peaks with golden orange. Reddening the
fields of snow on the walls of the valley. Gleaming off the sheets
of ice on the lake and the tumbling chandelier of the Rich Stream
Falls over to the right.

‘
Time to go, Jed,’ said Coburn,
waiting in the doorway, watching as Herne joined him, ignoring the
crying woman.

‘
Right
,’ said Herne.

‘
Why... ? Why do you leave her
alive, Jed?’

‘
Because she hasn’t got
anything left to live for,’ he replied.

Just before he closed the door on the
mausoleum Ruth Stanwyck finally stopped her crying, and he saw her
eyes closed in her torment and madness, holding the body to her.
Heard her talking to the corpse.

‘
Better by far you should forget
and smile,
than that you should remember and be sad.’ He shuddered and
walked out of the house into the clean air of the
evening.