Herne the Hunter 22 by John J. McLaglen

Author:John J. McLaglen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: bounty hunter, colt 45, herne the hunter, laurence james, piccadilly cowboys, gunslingers of the wild west, jedediah herne, the old west in fiction
Publisher: Piccadilly

Seven

A small crowd stood around the liberty pole at the centre of Portsmouth Square, listening to a white-suited politician stomping his feet on the improvised rostrum, thumping his fist into his palm and demanding that the entire Chinese population of California be deported and that San Francisco’s Chinatown be burned to the ground forthwith.

Apart from one youth with a wall-eye who fingered a length of timber nervously and yelled approval for the speaker’s more violent ideas, nobody seemed about to march off in search of burning brands.

Near the edge of the crowd a Chinaman wearing a skintight black cap and loose-fitting black clothes walked slowly round selling food from a tray. He was apparently oblivious to the politician’s rhetoric, and the crowd seemed oblivious to him—except when it came to buying spring rolls.

Herne stood some ten yards off from the small crowd, the ground beneath his feet more mud than grass. Half of the trees that had been planted inside the park railings had failed to grow and hardly outshone the wooden stakes which had been driven into the ground to support them; others had clearly been pulled up, perhaps by a mob fired more successfully than the present docile scattering.

So far Herne had seen nothing of the gangs of young hoodlums who were rumored to live in the city, mostly around the docks, coming out into the streets at night and terrorizing anyone foolish enough to walk alone or insufficiently armed. The stories he had heard told of groups of as many as fifty, armed with clubs and knives, razors and occasionally guns; tales of rape and robbery, throats cut and bodies drifting in the bay.

Again his mind went to Connors, trying to fit him into a pattern that seemed to be becoming increasingly difficult to contain.

He took a few paces across the square. Immediately ahead of him was the McLaughlin Mail and Stage Office, connecting with Oakland, San Juan, Santa Cruz and Stockton, onto Sacramento. The road in front of it had been paved with irregular cobbles and a coach stood waiting for departure, one of the team thrusting its head over the park railings and eating the leaves from the beginnings of a tree.

To his left was a sloping street of buildings that were mostly brick, all at least two stories high. John Piper, Dealer in Fruits; Lanszwtert’s Pharmacy and Chemical Laboratory; Lucas Fine: Gun Smith; the Plaza Bakery; the narrow building with a white awning to the right of the bakery had the name Ray Bellour painted in red script above the varnished door.

Herne crossed the street and looked through the window. A painting of a woman holding a small bouquet of flowers was set on an easel at the centre; she was wearing a pale blue dress and there was something Spanish or Mexican about her, apart from the fact that her hair, pulled back and turned into a tight coil, was fair. Several smaller paintings, one of a soldier in uniform, the others of women and children, were arranged at either side.

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