The Black Widow (6 page)

Wednesday, October 11th, started
sunny, with the kind of blue sky that seems like it’s going to be
there forever. All the way round the horizon there wasn’t a single
cloud to be seen, not even hanging on the jagged peaks of the tall
mountains to the north and west.

Tired out after the excitement of the
previous day, Becky slept in late. When she woke she found a
healthy fire warming the shelter and a narrow path of trodden snow
marking the way Jed and Whitey had gone to get water and more wood
from among the trees.

The two of them were sitting out on
large stones, heads close together, and the albino was drawing
something in the snow with the pointed end of a long stick. They
both looked round as soon as she made a move out of her cocoon of
blankets. She noticed that both of them made the instinctive drop
of the right hand towards the holstered pistols, checked
unconsciously as they saw what it was had disturbed
them.

‘
Good to see you, Becky,’
grinned Coburn, no longer the frightening figure she had once
thought him. He had washed his face and combed back his hair so
that it hung in silver waves over his shoulders.

‘
Coffee’s good and hot, Becky,’
said Herne, pouring out a steaming mug for her.

‘
You should have woken me,’ she
complained, feeling for some obscure reason insulted.

‘
Didn’t need to. We been talkin’
about supplies. Whitey here could go down the store safely in Lone
Pine, get us some basics and be back not long after midday. Might
be we can finish up here before nightfall, but we got to reckon the
dice aren’t goin’ to sit up and beg for us. So we might be here for
a few days. Another foot or so of snow on top of what fell
yesterday, and we could be in a heap of trouble.’

‘
I’ll
take my horse down. Say that me and
my friends are moving on. It’ll be a while yet before folks get
concerned and come lookin’ up here. Not before the spring thaw, I
guess. So I’ll be goin’ now, and pick up the horse.’

‘
Doesn’t he have a
name?’

‘
No. Never got round to it. Once
rode clear across the desert on a horse with no name. Foundered
under me a half mile from water. If’n I’d given him a name, then
I’d be sitting here remembering him and how sorry I feel about the
way he went. Too many people to recall without concerning myself
with animals. Now,’ he stood up, stamping his feet to get the
circulation going. ‘I’ll be getting going. You do that patrol, Jed,
and we’ll talk when I’m back.’

Without a wave or a backwards glance,
Coburn walked off through the frozen snow, his heels kicking up a
tiny spray of white at every step. Becky watched him go, looking
out of the corner of her eye at Herne. Seeing a certain look in his
face she had never seen before. Not since the death of Louise.
Something that was close to being affection. Something that she’d
never sensed when he looked at her. The thought made her feel
jealous and possessive, aware that the years that lay between the
two men represented a past that she could never share.

Leaving her with the horses and the
shelter, Herne went off on a similar patrol to the previous day,
but with a new lightness of heart. There was no longer the threat
from Whitey Coburn. His old friend turned enemy was again turned,
for a time, friend.

There had been moments during the last
night, when Herne had considered drawing his Colt and putting a
bullet, without any risk, through the back of Coburn’s narrow
skull. He knew that if they both survived the coming battle against
the Stanwyck private army, that he and Whitey would have to face
each other in a fight that must end in a killing. That was as
inevitable as the sun lurching up from the eastern sky over the
plains.

But the odds against him, locked up beyond
the blue lake in Mount Abora, were too great. Stacked higher than
he liked to think about. So Whitey would equalize them a little.
And afterwards... ?

That would be a shot to call when the
time came for the calling.

He noticed that there was the faintest
blush of ice round the fringes of the lake, like spittle hanging at
the corner of a madman’s mouth. Fronds of white, blending into the
snow that lay crisply on the shores of the deep water. Herne
skirted the open where his footmarks would be clearly visible to
anyone with a telescope, remaining under the cover of the trees,
treading softly and carefully.

If their provisional plan was to work,
then his care in surveying the land immediately nearest to the
walls of the house would be crucial. It would mean the difference
between success and lying bare-boned and bloody in the
snow.

He avoided the camp-site where Coburn and
his gang had been living, guessing that the scent of fresh blood
would have attracted any predators in the area to snuffle and root
among the corpses. There would be enough trouble with human
animals.

Gradually the trees thinned out, and the
top end of the path faded away into nothing so that he had to
thread his way among the low branches. He guessed that the guards
around the house had never found the narrow trail up from the lake,
failing to backtrack it because of the odd way it vanished at that
end. Whatever the reason, it worked in his favor, meaning that
there was a way up and also a way down, other than the corkscrewing
main trail to Mount Abora.

Within three hundred yards of the house,
Herne dropped to his knees and squatted down, peering ahead. He
could just catch glimpses of the gray walls. He stayed like that
for a full quarter hour, watching for signs of the patrolling
sentries, checking his pocket-watch to time the intervals between
their patrols.

It fell in with what both he and
Coburn had separately thought. Generally in pairs, the sentries
walked around the outside of the huge house about once every
three-quarters of an hour. There were never less than four men on
patrol at any one time and the delays made Jed suspect that they
did more than just cover the area immediately closest to the house.
They must be patrolling some way into the grounds on the far side
nearest the main trail.

It began to look as though there
wasn’t even the suspicion of the back way up towards Mount Abora,
over the hills and down past the lake. So, if they depended
entirely on the twisting, overhung road across the valley and up
over the ridge to Lone Pine and the outside world it meant that
Whitey’s purchases in the store there would be as vital as they’d
hoped.

Finally, before returning to their camp,
Jed decided to test out just how close he could get to the house,
and whether it was possible to move clear round it. Waiting until
the next pair of sentries had walked by, their feet crunching
through the snow that lay thicker on that side of the valley, Herne
began to step cautiously between the trees.

He was so used to the location of the tree
roots, sticking up in gnarled shapes among the whiteness, that he
very nearly stepped on the small pile of twigs between two
particularly large mounds. Stopping dead in his tracks, with one
foot actually raised in the air, Herne looked around
him.

The nearer set of roots was from that
jagged pine on the right. And the next heap of snow covered the
roots from that tree ahead. So what was concealed in the snow
between them?

The splintered tree had been hit by
lightning within the last year or so and a longish branch lay
against the trunk. Jed reached out and took it, shaking off its
thin covering of snow, holding it by one end. It was about eight
feet long, near as thick as a man’s wrist. Gently, he laid it down
among the twigs ahead of him. Carefully pressing the further end of
the branch into the snow.

Clang!!

The noise was stunningly loud in the peace
of the forest, sending a bird noisily squawking out into the blue,
echoing around for seconds. The branch was jerked from Herne’s
hands, and he took a step back, eyes raking the surrounding wood to
see if the noise had attracted any unwanted attention.

But nothing moved, apart from the bird now
circling lazily on a thermal way up high. Knowing what he was going
to see, Herne moved forwards and tugged at the nearer end of the
branch, freeing it from the explosion of snow and earth that had
covered the further end.

The steel claws of the trap had buried
themselves deeply in the wood, leaving great white gouges and
splinters. Jed tugged experimentally at the branch, but the trap
was staked down deep in the earth. Hammered home with a sledge so
that no amount of pulling would ever shift it.

The spring on the trap was the strongest
that Herne had ever seen. Thicker than wolf-traps. Thicker even
than the great clawing traps that the hunters of the north used to
kill the giant grizzlies. It wasn’t meant for any animal, Herne
guessed.

Just for any man foolish enough to
come scouting round the Stanwyck home.

‘
They really reckon their home
is a damned castle, don’t they?’ was Whitey’s comment, when he and
Herne met again at the camp.

Both were on time, much to the girl’s
relief.

‘
Why didn’t anyone hear the
spring go off, Jed?’ asked Becky, picking a stringy hunk of gristle
from between her teeth.

‘
The house is so big, and the
trees grow right up against it, so I guess it must have been
muffled. But I could just see the nearest wing of the place from
where I was, and I could have sworn I saw a face at the window on
the top floor. A very pale face. A woman, I think. Looked to be
dressed all in white. Stared at me for an age, then went away
again. Couldn’t have seen me in the blackness under the
trees.’

Coburn stood up. ‘All that talkin’, I
forgot what I got me back in the store. Just what we
need.’

‘
Eggs? Flour?’ asked the girl,
watching the lean scarecrow figure stalk to his horse and bring
back a burlap sack from the saddle-horn.

‘
Not precisely, Becky Yates.
Something better than that. We got us enough food and plenty of the
produce of God’s own brewery, right up here. No. This is something
to add a mite of spice to life.’

Handling it carefully, shielding it
from the fire with his back, he reached inside the sack and pulled
out a small metal-bound box, the cracks in the wood sealed with
tar. Using the point of his knife for a lever, the albino gently
inched up the lid. Pulling aside a thick sheet of shiny brown
paper, revealing what lay inside.

Becky and Herne leaned forward to look.
Jed sat back with a sigh of pleasure, but Becky was puzzled. The
box was packed full with a coarse-grained gray powder. She reached
out to touch it, rolling it in her fingers, finding it felt like
thick dust.

‘
Wh
at is it, Whitey?’

‘
Take just a little pinch, like
the amount of salt you’d sprinkle in oatmeal gruel and then throw
it on the fire.’

Already guessing what it must be, the girl
did as he told her, taking a nip of the powder between her finger
and thumb and flicking it at the fire. Not surprised by the puff of
gray smoke and the flat crack it made.

‘
It’s blasting powder, isn’t it?
I remember that Pa used to keep some in the outhouse for breaking
up big boulders.’

Coburn nodded. ‘That’s what it is. The
miners’ friend. And hopefully our friend too.’

Herne
looked at it, calculating.
‘Fuses?’

‘
Twenty foot of five minute.
Reckon that should be about enough.’

‘
I
guess so. What did you tell the folks
down in the store?’

‘
Told them we were thinkin’ of
doing us some prospecting. They warned me off about goin’ anywheres
near the Stanwyck spread. Seems a couple of kids went huntin’ up
that way a year ago and never came back. They’re mighty free with
their hardware up there.’