Edge: Echoes of War (Edge series Book 23)

by George G. Gilman

  ‘You gave me hell, white trash,’ Linn said dispassionately, just loud enough for his voice to carry above the noise of the Delta Dawns progress to where Edge stood against the rail. ‘Worked me harder than any other man on this firetrap. Give me all the shit jobs and got me in bad with McBride every chance you got. Just because I’m black. Worse of all, never called me anything but nigger. You remember all that, white trash?’

  Wren had his lips compressed now, and was breathing fast through his flaring and contracting nostrils.

  Edge sensed the eyes of the woman on him and knew they were imploring him to do something. Even though his back was towards her when he sliced off Wren’s ear, he had felt the hatred and revulsion she was staring at him. But he had thought it was a passing phase: that she detested the streak of cruelty in him but would overlook it when the circumstances of the moment were passed. Her motives for overlooking it did not concern him. He ignored her now, as he rolled a cigarette, the shotgun pressed to the side of his body by one arm.

  Linn moved his position, down towards Wren’s feet. The mate was as still as a waking corpse, trapped in a coma of terror.

  ‘Ain’t gonna soil my hands or my blades on your flesh, white trash,’ the Negro said, almost crooning. ‘But I sure am gonna kill you, mister friggin’ mate.’

  Snowflakes floated down, then stopped. The boat juddered against a snag that was not floating free, but came clear with a hard turn to starboard. Linn crouched at Wren’s feet, grasped a boot in each hand and stood up. With the ease of great strength, he lifted the mate, and raised his arms above his head so that Wren was hanging upside down, just the backs of his hands brushing the deck.

  Linn carried his unstruggling burden along the deck, to a gap in the rail where a gangplank was positioned when the stern-wheeler was docked.

  Edge ambled after him as Charity Meagher backed away.

  ‘It’s all them times he called me nigger, missy,’ Linn explained to the woman. ‘That’s why I hate him so much.’

  He turned into the gap, to swing Wren out over the water slurping along the hull of the boat. He bent his legs at the knees and ankles. Wren’s hands broke through the surface and he was abruptly exploded out of his paralysis. His scream was piercingly shrill. He tried to kick his feet free of Linn’s hold. Linn crouched deeper and the scream was curtailed as the mouth from which it was vented closed against the rush of water.

  The feet kicked once more, then were still. Linn continued to crouch and hold his burden as the corpse canted, the river seeking to snatch another unwanted piece of humanity. Stretched seconds passed, then the Negro straightened, hauling Wren out of the water. Drips fell from the head of the corpse, but not for long. Ice formed in the hair and on the face, giving Wren’s upside-down features an even more grotesque appearance.

  Linn grinned at Edge, the expression one of genuine humor. ‘He don’t ever do it again, man.’

  ‘Give you a hard time?’

  ‘Call a spade a spade!’ His entire body quaked with laughter, and he released his grip on Wren’s ankles.

  The corpse splashed into the water and was immediately dragged down below the surface.

  ‘That was ghastly!’ Charity groaned as both Edge and the Negro leaned over the side to watch as the body bobbed to the surface astern of the boat, dark against the white water of the wake. ‘I think I’m going to be sick to my stomach.’

  ‘You changed your mind?’ the half-breed asked, striking a match and touching it to the fresh-rolled cigarette. When he turned towards her, there was still a look of revulsion contorting her face. ‘Something you said awhile back,’ he added as he took hold of her faintly trembling arm.

  ‘You ain’t joinin’ us poor folk in the hold, man?’ the Negro called after them, and laughed again. A lighter sound than before. ‘But I got no hard feelin’s about it.’

  ‘You wouldn’t get it if you did have,’ Edge answered him wryly, quickening his pace to hurry the woman back to her cabin.

  ‘Changed my mind about what?’ Charity asked at length, as they started up the stairway to the Hurricane deck.

  Edge showed her a grin that was part coldly humorous and part mean. ‘Liking chilled Wren.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Henry Rhett was back on guard outside the door to Ferris’s cabin. He stiffened and made to draw his hand out from inside his coat when Edge and Charity approached. Then recognized them and his grin held more than a trace of relief.

  ‘You had second thoughts, Captain?’ he asked. He put both hands to his mouth, cupped them and blew into them.

  ‘There’s been some trouble,’ Charity said, shivering: from the cold and the memory. ‘Edge has joined us.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Couple of fellers died,’ the half-breed told him. ‘No funeral expenses, but Ferris will be out another five thousand at the end of this trip. I’ll relieve you in an hour.’

  He stood aside to allow the woman to go in ahead of him. She had not yet recovered from seeing him torture a man and then stand idly by while Linn committed brutal murder. So, although she followed the tacit order and entered the cabin, her face wore a stiff mask of contempt.

  ‘I’m sure will be good to have you—’ Rhett began.

  ‘No way,’ Edge cut in, and followed the woman, slamming the door on the outside cold and enjoying a moment of relative comfort before his flesh adjusted to a temperature that was just a few degrees higher.

  ‘I wanted to tell you that it wasn’t entirely a reluctant decision I came to, Mr. Edge,’ Charity said from close to the bed.

  ‘This time you’ll get longer to talk,’ he replied, unfastening his coat. ‘Afterwards.’

  ‘I don’t feel able to…’ She could not find a suitable way to end the sentence and let it hang in the chill air.

  ‘Already told you rape ain’t my way. Intend to share your bed, though. Up to you whether I do anything else but sleep in it.’

  She was still fully dressed by the time he had stripped to his underwear. As he advanced on the bed, she moved hurriedly away. He had his clothes bundled in his arms, the razor pouch and shotgun balanced on top. He moved a chair closer to the bed, dropped his burden into it and cocked both hammers of the gun. Then, totally ignoring her, he got under the covers, pressed his head into the pillow and covered himself to his chin.

  ‘You’ll hear me out!’ she insisted, not moving closer. Her tone was of grim determination. ‘It was entirely my idea to get you interested in me. Mr. Ferris was strongly against it. But I could not have envisaged such a plan were the man not … not attractive to me. If I cheapened myself for something I believe in it was at least with a man I felt something for.

  ‘But I no longer feel anything for you, Mr. high and mighty Edge. When killing is inevitable in the pursuit of my cause, I accept it. But I do not relish it, and I can have no admiration for anybody who does so.’

  She paused, and leaned forward to stare hard across the cabin at the bed, with its covers contouring the form of the half-breed.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ she demanded.

  Edge did not have the intention of sleeping. He had slept most of the afternoon and had felt anything but tired as he held Charity’s arm when he escorted her to the cabin. Even though she had made her feelings blatantly plain on entering the cabin, he still felt a hard want for her: his mind recalling the first time for a long time.

  But he was prepared to accept the warmth of her bed instead of the heat of her aroused body if that was the way it had to be. And the warmth beneath the covers had a quality of luxury after the biting cold of the pre-blizzard on deck. Then, despite the angry voice of the woman intruding upon the regular sounds of the Delta Dawn’s progress he began to feel drowsy. He heard nothing she said and was aware, in the moments before sleep wrapped his mind in comforting darkness, of a disturbing thought.

  That perhaps he was getting old.

  ‘Damnation!’ Charity snarled, with the force of an obscene exclamation. Then cont
rolled herself and shivered. Muttering to herself about male arrogance and her own determination not to be robbed of what was hers, she swept across the cabin, kicked off her shoes and eased into the bed otherwise fully dressed.

  The sleeping half-breed was subconsciously aware of her proximity, but received no disturbing signals that she threatened danger. And he did not wake until the hour he had specified had elapsed. By that time, the warmth of the bed, augmented by the body heat of Edge, had worked to calm the woman to an extent where the need for sleep overtook her. Edge, aroused by a mental alarm, took no pains to be quiet as he dressed and armed himself, but Charity slept on peacefully.

  Outside, snow and sleet were falling fast and every exposed surface of the Delta Dawn was coated with at least two inches of pure whiteness, sparkling with ice crystals. The Nebraska bank of the river, opposite the port side of the boat, was just visible through the falling flakes. The wind was coming in short gusts, veering constantly so that sometimes it blew from due north, sometimes east of north.

  The open water between the stern-wheeler and the bank was narrowing. The big paddle wheel alternately churned and stalled. Men’s voices yelled, indistinct against the other sounds aboard.

  ‘It seemed like frigging two hours, Captain,’ Rhett growled, stamping his feet and blowing on his hands. His face was tinged with blue and the snow in front of Ferris’s cabin door was hard packed.

  ‘It wasn’t,’ the half-breed told him. ‘Scheduled stop?’

  ‘Yeah, to take on cordwood. And damn lucky there’s safe mooring here. I reckon the pilot’s been setting a course blind for the last mile. I’ll see you, Captain.’

  He turned to the door, then looked back to express a cold-pinched grin. ‘I’m not getting any bonus like you are with the dame, Captain. Ferris and me don’t sleep together.’

  Edge nodded. ‘Guess you’re on the camp bed?’

  ‘Shit!’ Rhett growled. ‘Bob used to write me you were real hard-nosed when a guy needed some fellow-feeling.’

  ‘But he usually got some feller in the end,’ Edge responded as the door closed on Rhett.

  For a while, there was a continuance of activity aboard the Delta Dawn as she was steered towards the bank, then alongside a timber wharf: where man leapt ashore fore and aft to secure the mooring lines. Then the engines were disengaged and idled and the boilers were fired just enough to maintain a head of steam.

  As if the weather felt it owed something to the snow-covered stern-wheeler, the wind did nothing more than gust and veer until she was safely moored. Then it became a vengeance-ridden norther, howling directly down the line of the river and lashing at every obstacle with pelting snow, sleet and hail.

  Roustabouts sent ashore to begin replenishing the boat’s fuel reserves from ready-cut cordwood stacked on the wharf were hurriedly ordered back aboard. Soon, the howl of the wind, the crash of waves against the hull and wharf and the creak of the stern-wheeler’s timber against pilings blanketed all other sounds. Surrounded by the blinding, lashing, swirling snowfall, Edge had a feeling of isolation. Beneath his feet the Delta Dawn rose and fell at the dictates of the storm-ravaged river: reminding him, if he needed an aid to memory, that he was aboard boat in close proximity to many fellow humans.

  His eyes, narrowed to slits in concentration and defense against the wind and snow, constantly searched for the first sign of movement not caused by the blizzard. But the expression on his lean, heavily bristled face betrayed no hint of expectation - certainly not of fear that somebody might emerge from the storm with the intent of killing him.

  Beneath the unrevealing surface of his near impassiveness, he was enjoying the sense of being apart from the rest of the world.

  Even when he was no more than a boy, very much part of a close-knit family working the Iowa farmstead, he had been happiest doing those chores which required no help from others. During the war, his status as a junior officer allowed him, little opportunity to carry out his duties alone and in his own way. And when his loner instincts did come into play, they aroused resentment among his men and drew the valid criticism that he was trying to win the war entirely on his own.

  Since the war, he had been the true and ultimate loner on only two occasions - when he tracked down and killed Jamie’s killers and then when he was only partially successful in finding those responsible for Beth’s death.

  Much as he had loved Beth, he had often during their tragically brief marriage, found himself compelled to go off alone into the rugged terrain of the Dakotas: for no other reason than to be his own man thinking his own thoughts, completely detached from the rest of humanity.

  Before and since Beth there had been other brief periods of self-inflicted solitude. Riding the high country, travelling the deserts and plains and even in countless hotel rooms, of cities or towns. But always when there was no responsibility to anyone except himself: his single aim was to survive.

  But a man could not survive by the gun alone. He had to eat, drink and have shelter from the elements. So he had to have money. In the case of the man called Edge, to earn money was essential for survival for despite everything else he had become he remained honest. He might kill a man who stole a dollar from him: but if there were ten thousand dollars on the corpse, Edge would take just one.

  This need to earn money enforced human companionship on him and when a man placed himself in the service of another for reward, he was no longer his own man: he might try to convince himself he was working alone towards his own ends, but could never wholly accept the basic untruth.

  Except for short intervals, such as now, standing alone in the freezing cold on the constantly moving deck of the stern-wheeler. Subconsciously, Edge knew he was guarding the life of Horace Ferris and that he had allies in Henry Rhett and Charity Meagher. Just as, beneath the sense of detachment from the world at large, he did not ignore the knowledge that there were many people close by. But the reality - against which he maintained vigilant guard - did not prevent him relishing his solitude in the blizzard.

  Nature became calm as the new day was born. At first, the norther slackened, then veered and gusted with bursts of renewed power. The snowfall thinned and broke up into squally showers. The Missouri continued to rush frenetically towards its distant meeting with the Mississippi, but its surface was less scarred by white water. The clouds slowed in their race southwards and were thinned as they were sucked higher. Dawn injected grayness across the dark sky. The landscapes of Nebraska and Iowa became visible, their every feature thickly layered with pure white. The Delta Dawn rode high and taut against the wharf and her mooring lines.

  Edge shook snow off his hat and brushed it from his shoulders. As the air became still it felt colder than at the height of the blizzard and he continued to pace a short course up and down the deck outside the cabin door. The shotgun remained trapped between his ribs and the inside of his right arm as he blew into his cupped hands.

  He saw men on the shore before the roustabouts responded to the bellowed order that aroused them from their bedrolls and sent them reluctantly towards the gangplanks.

  The refueling stop was at a point where the river cut through a stand of timber: the only feature of any significance for as far as the eye could see across the rolling prairie of Nebraska and Iowa. Once, the stand had been more extensive, but many of the trees had been felled to supply the Missouri steamboats with cordwood. The stumps of the sacrificed timber stood like giant, headless toadstools against the pure whiteness of the snow. The surviving trees, their boughs weighed down by snow, were huddled close together in two groups behind the wharf - split by a wagon track that ran due west from the river.

  It was on this track that the men could be seen: about a dozen of them, bulky in warm clothing, urging their mounts through ice-crusted snow that touched the bellies of the smaller horses. The riders were still more than a quarter of a mile away when Edge first saw them.

  As the roustabouts swarmed on to the wharf, carrying shovels with which they bega
n to clear a path to a stack of cordwood, the door of a small shack swung open and another man appeared.

  ‘Sure was a bad one!’ he yelled, rubbing sleep from his eyes and squinting against the brightness of first light on snow.

  ‘Held us up, damn it!’ McBride shouted from the wheelhouse. ‘And lost us two men.’

  Smoke was whisping from the chimney of the woodcutter’s hut. The man looked longingly back inside his home before he closed the door on the warmth and trudged through the snow. He was middle-aged, short and thin under his thick, ankle-length coat. A heavy beard sprouted from his chin. His small eyes were red rimmed, from lack of sleep or a hangover.

  ‘Lost ’em?’

  ‘Overboard before we tied up, I reckon,’ McBride answered sourly. ‘Wren and a roustabout. Sure didn’t jump ship in this God-forgotten white hell, Fryer.’

  ‘I like it!’ Fryer bellowed, and vented a trickle of shrill laughter. Then his tone became one of complaint as he looked from the boat to the men on the trail and back again. ‘’Ceptin’ when folks come around clutterin’ up the place.’

  It was apparent the woodcutter was a little unhinged: perhaps made that way by the loneliness of his occupation. Maybe, Edge thought briefly, he was himself a little deranged because he enjoyed his own company so much.

  There were eight roustabouts on the dock, their snow-shoveling chore over now. Fryer, full of his own importance, was superintending the taking of logs from the stock to the boat. The blizzard was now completely blown out and the loudest sound was of steam hissing from escape valves.

  The horsemen rode their mounts on to the dock and slid from their saddles, not talking. But one man emerged as the leader. He had ridden slightly ahead of the group and the others watched him closely, following his actions in reining his horse and dismounting.

  The door behind Edge opened and Rhett emerged from the cabin. He smelled, for a moment, of sleeping in his clothes. Then the biting air of the lightening dawn neutralized the rancid odor. He fisted grit from his eyes and massaged the bristles of his face with both hands.