“Call.”
“Raise ten.”
“Ten and up another ten.”
“I’m out.”
“Twenty to see what you got.”
“Full house. Aces and tens.”
“Beats three of a lousy kind.”
Edge was flanked by the Baron on his right and Fyson on his left. All three had halted just inside the threshold of the cave, taking time to allow their eyes to adjust to the dry darkness spread around the glowing fire. It took only a few moments, and then they were able to pick out shapes and movement.
Rollo Stone’s white nightshirt-clad form was on the right of the fire. He was stretched out on his side, with his ankles bound and his hands tied behind his back. His eyes were blindfolded and his teeth gleamed in a grimace of pain or fear or a mixture of the two. Behind him was a heap of saddles and bedrolls and beyond this the four horses were hobbled. Grummond and the two other Devil’s Disciples were sitting cross-legged on the other side of the fire. They had coffee mugs and piles of pebbles in front of them and the winner of the game raked pebbles from the center to add to his pile. Another player gathered up the cards and started a new deal.
After the wet, neutral smell of the blizzard, the scents within the cave were strong: horseflesh and horse droppings. Leather and wood smoke. Coffee and unwashed bodies. Human excrement.
As their eyes became accustomed to the brightness and shadow after so Ions of looking at just darkness, the trio of intruders inched into the area of fire glow that already encompassed the Devil’s Disciples.
“Threes wild,” the dealer announced, grinning as he finished the deal and looked up.
He saw the newcomers and his grin became a fixed grimace of terror.
“A little mad, is all,” Ede growled.
“You’re under arrest!” Fyson snarled.
The other two black-garbed men twisted from the waist and all three went for their guns.
“Goddamn it!” Fyson groaned, and squeezed the trigger of his Remington.
His bullet plunged into the heart of the man who had been facing the cave mouth. The man flipped out onto his back, gun spinning away as a spurt of crimson sprayed from the wound.
Edge fired the Winchester at the same time and hit his man in the temple. The bullet exited on the other side of his head, amid a welter of crimson and the lighter-colored gore of brain tissue. As the corpse toppled, knees spasming up to the chest, the Baron leapt forward. His trailing leg moved into a kick action and the boot lifted flaming kindling from the fire.
It was Grummond who felt the searing flames on his flesh as he struggled frantically to uncross his legs.
“Die, sir!” the Britisher bellowed, springing away from the fire to crash his feet to the ground in front of Grummond.
“One’s real wild,” Edge muttered, pumping the Winchester’s action, but curling his finger around the guard rather than the trigger.
Grummond’s hair and the back of his jacket were smoldering. But he saw the more lethal threat of the enraged man standing before him and swung his Colt to the aim.
The sword swung and in just part of a second, Grummond’s arm was slit open from shoulder to wrist. As his coat and shirt sleeves parted to show the terrible wound, the revolver fell from a hand greased by warm blood.
The injured man screamed.
“That’s enough, goddamn it!” Fyson roared above the sound of agony and the moaning wind.
But the Baron, his bewhiskered face seeming to be carved from red-stained granite, was enclosed in a private world of vengeance that admitted nothing except his own desires and the object of those desires.
Grummond had fallen onto his back. The sand of the cave floor smothered the fire in his jacket, but his hair ignited with a burst of flame. His shrill scream rose to a girlish pitch.
“I said enough!” Fyson snarled as the Baron swung a leg to straddle the agonized Grummond.
This time the Britisher heard the demand. But his expression of unswerving determination did not alter as he lowered the point of the sword blade toward the contorted face of his victim.
“You must kill me to save this thug,” he answered.
Grummond’s voice broke and he became silent as he stared at the descending blade. It was as if fear of the cold steel negated the agony of his mutilated arm and the searing pain of the flames licking at his scalp.
And the Devil’s Disciple vented just a subdued sigh as the sword was thrust into his eye: to drive four inches of blade under the front of the skull and find the brain. With the same grace he had shown in making the gentle thrust, the Baron withdrew the blade, twisting his wrist to lift Grummond’s blood-filled eye from the dead socket—and to send it into the fire. It sizzled softly as it surrendered its moisture to the heat.
“I am finished now, sir,” the Britisher said, turning slowly to face the enraged glower and aimed Remington of the towering Fyson. “For the moment, or forever?”
His raised eyebrows added the query as he slid the blood-run blade into the stick.
The smell of scorched flesh blotted out all other smells in the cave, until Edge flipped off the lid of the coffee pot and lifted it from the fire to douse the contents over Grummond’s burning hair.
Fyson remained rigid for a moment, then the tension drained from him, and he pushed the Remington back into the holster. His expression became a grimace of disgust as he looked down at the slaughtered corpse.
“He’s better off dead, maybe.”
“Sir, have you ever seen a man crushed by stampeding cattle?” the Baron countered stiffly.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Rollo Stone called, still terrified in the pitch darkness of his blindfold.
“The show, feller,” Edge answered as he crouched down beside the young musician and cut through the ropes and kerchief with the razor. “If everyone keeps acting in concert.”
“Hey, they’re Devil’s Disciples!” Stone gasped, blinking against the firelight as he explored the bruise on his skull from the gun butt blow which had knocked him out in the hotel room. “They snatched me?” He nodded in reply to his own question as his bright eyes supplied the evidence. Then his voice became a snarl. “And I composed a new work dedicated to Tallis and his men!”
Edge had moved to the heap of gear to check on the supplies brought to the cave by the Devil’s Disciples. For, after the tension had drained from him, his belly growled a protest that he had not eaten since noon.
During the explosion of violence, the wind had ceased to moan and whine through the cracks in the cave roof open to the weather: as if Nature had held its breath while it witnessed the carnage. But now the eerie noises began again—louder and more weird, sounding more than ever like the groans and wails of the disembodied spirits of the new and ancient dead.
“What on earth happened here?” Stone asked as he got shakily to his feet and stared in horror at the sprawl of corpses among the scattered playing cards and charred fire debris.
“High Fy just broke a record,” Edge answered evenly, coming erect and biting off a chunk of beef jerky.
“I don’t expect consolation from you, cousin,” the former sheriff of High Mountain snarled.
Edge nodded to the man who had gone down in front of the exploding Remington. “Ain’t the one bleeding heart enough for you, feller?” he muttered.
“It was unavoidable, sir,” the Baron added calmly. “And two things have been proved. My ability to do what must be done. And that sometimes the methods of the law to get what it wants differ from those of us two only in the matter of degree.”
He looked towards Edge for agreement and the half-breed nodded as he chewed on the dried meat.
“The brutal truth, feller,” he told the solemn-faced Fyson. “Guess that makes the law’s method the third degree.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EDGE looked down from the pass towards High Mountain and the chasm to the north of the single-street town. It was seven-thirty on a bright, clear morning and despite
the distance from the town and his altitude above it, he could see the component parts of the bustling scene in sharp detail.
The gusting cold of the norther and the icy assault of the sleet were distant memories of the black night: becoming harder to recall with each moment that elapsed toward eight o ‘clock. For the blizzard had blown itself out in the early hours of the morning and the new day had dawned with a cloudless sky. Then, as soon as the sun showed its leading arc above the eastern ridges, it offered a promise of fierce heat to come—and already at such an early hour it was beginning to deliver on that promise.
But it was the tension of waiting as much as the warmth of the sun that squeezed the sweat beads from the half-breed’s pores as he saw a Concord coach moving eastward along the street below.
The town was as crowded this morning as it had been when he first looked down at it from the pass. But there was a difference now, outside of the fact that the scene was lit by the sun rather than oil lamps. For almost everyone except those aboard the coach were heading for the same ultimate destination: hurrying toward a pine-flanked pathway that led from the rear of the church down into the chasm.
In the daylight Edge could see that this chasm had steep, exposed rock walls on two sides, with the north and south sides formed by gentle, grass-covered slopes. The inevitable painted canvas signs hung from the rocky sides, too distant for the lean half-breed to read the lettering on them. But it was not hard to guess that they gave further information about the music festival which was to take place in the natural amphitheater below the town. For a wooden stage had been built at the lowest point where the grassy slopes met, and neatly grouped on the platform were a piano and a dozen or so chairs with music stands in front of them. To one side was a large tent decked out with colored streamers.
Already the lower stretches of the slopes were dotted with music lovers who had risen early to claim the best position from which to watch the entertainment. And the audience was becoming thicker on the ground as the crowds were ushered into orderly rows by the familiar black-garbed Tallis men.
But not all the Devil’s Disciples were on usher duty across the slopes. For, as the street became less crowded, Edge saw a group of a half dozen or so standing in front of the law office, watching the progress of the stage as it lumbered up the first gradient of the basin side.
Edge remained where he was for several more minutes. From the moment he first saw the Concord, he had recognized the unmistakable figure of Fyson riding in the guard’s seat. Now, as the distance between the coach and the pass narrowed, he saw that the overweight, tobacco-chewing Augie was in control of the four-horse team. There was no way he could look inside the Concord, but as he withdrew into the pass, he saw that the Devil’s Disciples in the chasm had started up the slope toward the town.
Midway through the pass, the half-breed pumped the action of the Winchester and crouched behind a rock, his burnished features set in an expression of mild satisfaction. Because everything he had seen so far augured well for the battle plan which had been formed as he, Fyson, the Baron, and Stone had crouched around the fire in the eerie, body-strewn cave.
It was not a plan he would have devised had he been working alone, and the Baron had also voiced reservations. But the towering ex-sheriff had insisted upon reducing the risk of innocent blood being spilled.
Hoof beats sounded on the trail through the pass and the big coach creaked on its springs.
“Reckon about here, cousin,” Fyson drawled.
“Whooooaaa, you ornery bastards!” Augie yelled at the team as Edge compressed his lips and cracked his eyes against the gritty dust raised by the slow-turning wheels.
He moved around from the rear to the side of the rock as the halting Concord rolled by. Then, he sucked in a deep breath and lunged forward to sprint across fifteen feet of open space to reach the back of the coach.
“You see anythin’, High Fy?” a man called from inside, and swung open the door.
The other door opened at the same time.
The Concord was rocking as the passengers moved to climb out, so that the additional motion as Edge hoisted himself onto the roof from the boot was not noticed.
“Nothing I wasn’t expecting,” Fyson answered, turning fast on the seat and drawing his Remington. “Just the two,” he told Edge, clashing eyes with the half-breed for an instant. Then he directed a glowering stare and the gun barrel at the black-garbed man halfway out of the Concord’s right hand door.
“What in tarnation…!” Augie yelled, and a wad of tobacco shot from his wide lips.
“High Fy wants you alive, feller,” Edge said evenly to the man who had frozen with one foot on the step of the left side of the coach. “Don’t matter a damn to me, though.”
The half-breed had gone out at full stretch along the roof of the coach and drawn the razor from its pouch. As he spoke, he curved his hand around the front of the Devil’s Disciple and pressed the blade of the razor against the leather-textured skin of the man’s throat.
Both men had started to reach for their holstered Colts, but suddenly their arms seemed paralyzed … as one looked into a revolver muzzle at a range of six inches and the other felt finely honed steel touching his flesh.
“Friggin’ hell, you again!” the overweight driver gasped and looked hurriedly around. “Where’s that crazy kid?”
Edge curled back his lips to show a wry grin. “Told him we didn’t need him to help us head ’em off at the pass.”
Augie shrugged, resigned to the unexpected’s happening when the tall half-breed was nearby. “Guess it ain’t necessary for me to know what the hell’s goin’ on, huh?”
“He was set on driving,” Fyson put in. “His company’s coach and he’s responsible for it.”
“Just figured on a little excitement,” Augie growled, climbing down and looking for the tobacco that had sprung from his mouth.
“Obliged if you’d get these fellers’ guns,” Edge asked.
“Sure, sure,” Augie agreed. “Like at the hold-up.”
“Where’s Grummond and the others?” the man covered by Fyson croaked.
“Dead, cousin.”
“And it’s catching around here,” Edge added blandly as the man below him stiffened.
Augie stood at arm’s length to lift the Colt from the Devil’s Disciple’s holster, then hurried around to the other side of the coach to claim the second man’s weapon.
“Back inside,” Fyson ordered, and brandished the Remington.
“Same for you,” Edge instructed. “You could get a sore throat out here in the morning air.”
Fyson sprang to the ground as Edge withdrew the threat of the razor and swung over the side of the coach. He replaced the razor in the pouch while he was in midair, and landed sure-footed with the Winchester aimed. But both prisoners were sitting rigid on the front-facing seat, fear showing through the sweat beads coursing their weathered features. There was a suitcase on the floor at their feet.
“That the money?” Edge asked.
Both men nodded.
“No problems?” The half-breed looked across the interior of the Concord to where Fyson was stooped outside the other open door.
“No, cousin. Storm held long enough for us to get into High Mountain without being seen. Stone reckons he can get that Box guy to go along with what we want. And that guy with the fancy foreign handle to his name is still as mean-minded as ever.”
“Tallis’s pretty full of himself—sending a couple of his boys.”
The two Devil’s Disciples turned their heads this way and that, looking at Fyson and Edge in turn as each man contributed to the exchange. Augie had located the missing tobacco wad, dusted it off on his shirt front, and was chewing on it again.
“Real confident, cousin. And more than happy to have me and the driver along as independent witnesses. Plans on giving Stone a guard of honor down to the stage.”
“Hiram?”
“Him and the whore still tucked up tight in bed whe
n I last looked. Reckon he had a hectic night.”
“So he ain’t just a tenderfoot anymore?” the half-breed muttered sardonically as he climbed into the coach, slammed the door behind him and sat down on the seat opposite the two fearful gunmen. “Used up enough time, I figure?”
Fyson nodded and used the Remington to close the door before he climbed up on the high seat. “Turn her around and head back down, cousin,” he instructed Augie as the fat little driver reached his place and took up the reins. “And be ready to jump off when we reach the town limits.”
“Not me, mister!” Augie retorted. “I reckon you fellers are goin’ up against the Tallis bunch. Along with the Baron, that right?”
“You’re outta your mind!” the blue-eyed Devil’s Disciple growled as the team was urged into making a tight turn.
“You could be right, feller,” Edge muttered, tracking the Winchester from one man to the other and back again.
“Don’t provoke him, Roy,” the black-garbed man with a scar on his jaw croaked.
“Didn’t plan on this much excitement, I gotta admit that,” Augie yelled above the noise of the Concord and team. “But I’ll sure enjoy takin’ a crack at Tallis and his bunch.”
“We are not doing it for fun, cousin,” the ex-sheriff told him.
Augie grinned, squeezing tobacco juice through his dark-stained teeth. “Last time I had a couple of guns stuck in my belt, they weren’t there for fun. But I sure had me a whale of a time fightin’ for the republic against old Santa Anna.”
“Remember the Alamo?” Edge asked the two prisoners conversationally as the Concord tilted on to the downgrade.
“You were a lot younger in those days, cousin!” Fyson pointed out above the increased noise of speed.
“Meant I had a lot more to lose,” Augie answered philosophically. “What you want me to do, High Fy?”
As the ex-lawman explained the plan to Augie, Edge maintained his almost constant watch on the sweating Devil’s Disciples—sparing just the occasional fleeting glance for the town each time the Concord took a turn to bring High Mountain into view.
EDGE: Rhapsody in Red (Edge series Book 21) Page 12
