The Negro braced himself on slightly bent legs.
Edge started down the stairway. On the periphery of his vision he glimpsed a scene that triggered the loudest and clearest echo of war. But there was no time for a double take to confirm that the components were real and not figments of a snow-mirage. For, directly ahead of him, a man was aiming a Winchester - at Linn.
The half-breed snatched his free hand off the stairway rail, fisted it around the barrel of the rifle and fired from the hip.
The Negro accepted the flying weight of the steward.
Two rides exploded together - their simultaneous cracks masked by a second firing of the howitzer.
The black man grunted, staggered backwards and fell hard to his rump. Blood stained both the front and rear of his right upper arm. But he continued to hold the screaming steward.
The cylinder and several arms of the boat’s paddle-wheel were splintered by the solid shot from the artillery piece.
The bearded miner had been crouching on the top step of the lower stairway. Edge’s bullet penetrated the centre of his forehead and exploded into air again amid a rain of gore at the nape of his neck. And the second Southern sympathizer who elected to stay aboard the Delta Dawn fell limply to the stairs and slithered down to the forward Main Deck.
Charity Meagher’s scream of horror sounded above a third volley of rifle shots from the shore.
Edge reached the Hurricane Deck in a crouch. The young roustabout with the old eyes threw himself out at full length and bellied across the deck.
They said they’d give us a chance to get off!’ the steward shrieked. ‘Bastards, bastards, bastards!’
He was still writhing across the massive form of Linn. As he repeated the oath for the third time, he raised his right arm high and plunged it downwards. At the instant of the change of direction, Edge and Linn both saw the knife clutched in the youngster’s fist.
The Negro snarled and flung up his good arm. Edge cursed softly and exploded a shot towards the third member of the Rebels’ fifth column. A hole showed high in his back, left of centre. Dark staining blossomed.
Wind gusted the freezing air.
Flakes of snow fell.
The steward became still, but not before a dying movement of his knife hand had sunk the blade through Linn’s coat sleeve and cut a furrow in the fabric and the flesh below, from wrist to elbow.
‘I never thought that little punk was a traitor, suh!’ Linn croaked through gritted teeth as Edge hauled the corpse off the Negro and helped the twice-injured man to his feet.
The snow fell harder, slanted close to the horizontal by the strengthening wind.
‘If you’ll overlook the expression,’ the half-breed growled as he picked up the shotgun, ‘only figured two niggers in the woodpile myself. I counted wrong, but I reckon we’re even.’
Linn’s right arm hung limply at his side. But he was able to take the shotgun with his left hand.
‘Whatever you say, suh.’
A third solid shot from the howitzer smashed through the wheel-house.
Rifle shots, muted by the rising howl of the new norther, thudded bullets into wood and against metal from one end of the Delta Dawn to the other.
‘I say we get the hell off this ship!’ the half-breed snapped, and led the way in a low crouch across the Hurricane Deck and down the stairway.
On the forward Main Deck he turned right and lunged into the cover of the starboard boiler-room bulkhead. The body of the bearded miner was already covered with a coating of fresh snow.
The other miner was sheltering from the Rebel fire. The two roustabouts, Henry Rhett, Horace Ferris and Charity Meagher were also huddled in solid cover - the men clutching Winchesters and the woman pressing both hands to her left breast, where the reason for the slaughter was sewn.
‘You see them, Captain?’ Rhett yelled, his voice high-pitched with excitement. ‘Just like Bob wrote me it was in the war.’
Edge had seen them. At least a score of men making what speed they could through the deep snow and tangled brush of the timber. Men in the gray and yellow uniforms of the old Confederacy. One with the insignia of a Colonel who brandished his saber as he advanced. Another clutching a bugle. A third holding aloft the Rebel flag with its emblem of a thirteen-starred cross. Dismounted cavalry advancing on foot under the covering fire of an expertly manned twelve-pounder howitzer hidden far back in the trees. No more than three hundred yards back from the target judging by the guncrew’s effectiveness in locating and hitting the helplessly stranded Delta Dawn,
The half-breed had seen many similar sights during the War Between the States. But with one vital difference - this new breed of Rebels were not armed with single-shot carbines. They had Winchester repeaters. Many more of them than the handful of defenders aboard the stern-wheeler.
‘Vhat is wrong with Jack Linn?’ the European with the battered face gasped.
‘His arms!’ Ferris yelled above the howl of the wind.
Edge glanced at the Negro, who had dropped the shotgun and was leaning hard against the bulkhead, both his coat sleeves stiff with frozen blood. ‘Got a hole in one,’ the half-breed muttered. The other’s badly sliced.’
The howitzer fired again and the port stack toppled against its twin. The howling wind snatched at the acrid smoke and swirled it down through the stinging snow.
‘Let’s go!’ Edge yelled as belching smoke and slanting snow reduced visibility to just a few feet.
‘Where?’ Charity demanded.
‘Off of here. Fast.’
He dragged one of her hands away from her breast and lunged forward. The woman shrieked and was forced to go after him. All but one of the men sprinted in their wake. Out of the cover of the boiler room, across the deck and to the port bow.
‘Jump!’ he yelled over his shoulder.
Like an automaton, she leapt over the gunwale, her left hand still gripped tightly in his big fist. The blizzard tugged at them and blinded them to everything more than a yard away. Their feet hit hard on the frozen sandspit. Charity almost stumbled but kept her footing as she was forced to continue the sprint.
Rifle fire punctured the howl of the wind. Their boots cracked ice, and water rose to their ankles. Edge tripped and the woman fell alongside him - both on the strip of thick ice that extended out from the bank.
Behind them, Ferris, Rhett, the miner and two roustabouts made the safety of the ice.
‘We’re going towards them, Captain!’ Rhett shrieked.
‘Nothing’s ever won running away, feller,’ Edge snarled as they all got to their feet and started to run again-on a diagonal line from the reared up bow of the Delta Dawn. To take them out of the line of fire between the timber and the stern-wheeler.
In the deep snow covering the solid ground between the trees, Edge halted and the others imitated him: leaning against trunks and crouching to catch their breath.
‘I’m impressed by your gallantry, Edge,’ Charity gasped, snatching her hand away to massage it. ‘But I’ll be safe here. You’ll be able to kill easier without me as a burden.’
The half-breed refastened his grip on her. His blue eyes, narrowed to the thinnest of slits, looked even more like chips of ice against the snowflakes clinging to his bristles. ‘Ain’t gallantry, lady,’ he snarled. ‘You got the letter.’
‘Vhere is Jack Linn?’
‘Sure ain’t with us,’ Rhett responded after a fast glance around. His laugh had a hint of hysteria in it. ‘He’s one guy we’d be sure to see in all this snow.’
The group had to shout at each other to be heard above the howl of the wind: far louder in the timber as the norther ripped between the trunks. The only sounds which were louder came from the muzzle of the howitzer and the barrels of the Rebel’s rifles.
‘Dead, I’ll warrant!’ Ferris snarled.
‘No guarantees were issued,’ Edge growled, jerking Charity away from the tree against which she was leaning.
He gave no order and this was
another echo of war. Then there had been troopers - six in particular - who accepted and respected their captain’s detachment from themselves in special circumstances. They followed in the knowledge that they could trust him and the awareness that he would communicate with them if it proved necessary.
Today, amid the snow and wind of a Dakotas blizzard, a woman had no alternative but to follow him. And five men trusted him because there was nothing else they could do.
Edge moved without the sense of exhilaration that had gripped him during the heat of battles fought many years ago. His pace was as fast as possible through the snow and with the reluctant woman struggling in his grip. But his mind-was working at a measured progress, receiving the information given by the regular roar of the howitzer and programming the direction he should take.
He struck due south for a long time, then swung east. The reports from the artillery piece were louder. Rifle-fire could hardly be heard at all.
He halted and all those behind him were grateful for the rest.
‘See nothing happens to her, feller,’ Edge said, close to the ear of Ferris, and released the woman.
Then he drew the razor, dropped the Winchester into the snow and pointed at Rhett, the roustabout with the battered face and the young one with the old eyes. He beckoned that they should follow him, and then put the stiff finger to his lips.
The four men advanced in line abreast, Rhett with the blade of his Apache Knuckleduster extended and the other two with Colts drawn.
The howitzer was positioned ten yards from where Edge had called the halt. It was an old Napoleon, a twelve-pounder mounted on a modified twenty-four-pounder carriage. The wheels of the carriage were deeply imbedded in frozen snow. There was a three-man crew - one passing the shot, another loading and a third firing. A corporal and two enlisted men.
The Rebel who was loading saw the intruders loom up through the blizzard. His youthful face was abruptly contorted by terror and his mouth gaped wide to vent a shriek of warning.
Two revolvers cracked and the face was suddenly sheened with bright crimson flooding from wounds in the cheek.
Edge lunged at the corporal and Rhett went towards the third man. Both the Rebels were caught as they spun around. Rhett’s blade sank deep into the chest of the enlisted man. He withdrew it as he followed the corpse down, folded it into his fist and began to punish the dead face with the brass knuckles.
The half-breed killed the non-com with a sideways slash of the razor, the blade gashing open the taut throat, the windpipe and the jugular vein. As the man crumpled, Edge still wore a grin of satisfaction. It stayed in place as he looked down at Rhett: kneeling on the chest of the corpse and sending up a spray of blood from the mutilated face with each thudding punch.
‘He ain’t feeling no pain, Rhett!’ Edge snapped.
It brought an end to the beating. ‘You would, if I could bring myself to do it, Captain!’ Rhett snarled, staggering to his feet. ‘You killed Bob and all his buddies. I heard the story.’ He pointed his blood-caked hand down at the pulped face of the dead man. ‘But I owe you too much. So I just imagined he was you!’
‘Killed his buddies is all, feller,’ Edge yelled above the storm as the two roustabouts stared at him. ‘Would have killed him, but they did it first. Don’t believe all you hear.’
‘Hold your fire!’ a voice yelled from beyond the curtain of slanting snow. ‘Colonel says to cease fire. We’re gonna board.’
A uniformed figure ran into view and came to an abrupt halt. ‘Damnation!’ he exclaimed.
Rhett’s tiny gun exploded and the man staggered backwards, hit a tree and collapsed, a blossom of blood showing the position of his heart.
‘Maybe,’ Edge growled. ‘But figure to keep it one nation.’
‘I believe you, Captain,’ Rhett said, out of context now.
There was a deafening roar: far louder than the several reports exploded by the howitzer. A ball of fire glowed through the trees and the falling snow for an instant. Then the stench of burning touched the nostrils of the men and was immediately swamped by the wetness of the blizzard.
‘The boat?’ the European roustabout asked. ‘You think they have blown up the Delta Dawn?’
‘Them or a feller a hell of a lot worse armed,’ Edge growled.
He spun around and lunged back to where Ferris, Charity and the miner waited. Only the woman did not express relief at seeing him.
‘What was that?’ the miner asked.
‘A report,’ the half-breed tossed at him, then snatched up his Winchester and grabbed the woman’s hand again. ‘But I ain’t reading nothing into it until I check for myself.’
He started another struggling run through the timber and was again trailed by the men. This time it was easier, for he was able to follow the beaten tracks made by the advancing Rebels. All rifle-fire had ceased now and there was no glow from the river as they drew closer. Pieces of charred lumber and twisted metal began to mark the snow. Then torn-off portions of human flesh and entire bodies. Where the trees ended and the thick ice of the river began there was more debris of the same kind. Wedged into the leafless branches of some high brush was a head. The crinkled hair had been seared from the skull and the eyes had melted in their sockets. But the basic structure of the face remained the same as it had been in life. The skin had been black before the flames touched it.
‘He blew her boilers, that is vhat happened,’ the battered-face roustabout pronounced sadly as, like the others, he turned away from the severed head to peer out through the slanting snow to try to see what remained of the Delta Dawn. ‘Jack, he must have shut down all the escape valves. No one else vould hear the noise she vas making in this storm.’
‘It is the bravest of the brave who die for their country,’ Ferris said pompously.
Edge eased his grip on Charity’s hand. ‘You gonna be that brave?’ he asked evenly.
Every head was wrenched around to stare at him. The woman jerked free of the half-breed.
‘What?’ she shrieked.
He showed her a cold, evil grin. ‘You been trying too hard not to come with me.’
‘Edge!’ Ferris snarled.
The half-breed started to swing his Winchester towards the terrified woman: not fast.
Charity responded with speed and strength. Her foot lashed out to kick the rifle from his loose grasp. Then she whirled and lunged away from the solid ground of the bank. Her violent action trapped the other men into immobility for a vital moment. And in that time she was on the ice and swallowed up by the blizzard.
‘Women never were no good!’ Henry Rhett howled, and ran forward. He pushed his feet apart and slithered across the ice. And disappeared into the falling snow faster than the woman had done.
‘Charity!’ Ferris shrieked, still staring at Edge.
‘You notice how she almost threw up every time a Rebel got his?’
The woman screamed.
‘I got the she-cat, Captain!’
The half-breed ignored the questions fired at him by Ferris and led the way out over the frozen river, picking a careful course across the ice and around the scattered debris of the explosion.
Rhett had knocked down Charity a few yards short of where the thick ice ended and the water was still trying to freeze around the sandspit. She was flat on her back. Rhett was erect, a foot on her belly and the muzzle of his Winchester against her throat. There was a triumphant grin on his weakly handsome face. Charity’s lovely features were made ugly by a scowl of hatred.
‘How did you know?’ she gasped as the men gathered around her.
‘You ran, lady,’ Edge told her. ‘Didn’t know anything until then. Just suspected.’
‘Why, Charity?’ Ferris choked.
‘To kill Coolidge, that’s why!’ she snarled, not struggling under the booted foot and the rifle muzzle. Insane triumph merged with the hatred in her eyes as she swept her gaze around each towering man in turn. ‘The letter’s a fake, you fools! With it I was able to wip
e out every Government agent in New Orleans. And I almost got close enough to your stinking President to blow him off the face of the earth!’
‘But the attempts on my life?’ Ferris rasped desperately, and waved his arms about him. ‘All this?’
‘The brave, magnificent innocents!’ she rasped, the look of triumph draining from her face. ‘They were misled in the same way you were. But they served their purpose. Their actions ensured Coolidge would meet us. And I asked nothing of them I would not do myself. I was prepared to die in completing my mission.’
‘How about before completion, lady?’ Rhett growled.
‘You were working for the Rebels all those months you were engaged to John?’ Ferris demanded.
Tears squeezed from her eyes and froze in the snow on her cheeks. But she was not weeping for John Ferris. Perhaps for the Rebels who had died - or maybe in response to the reality of defeat.
Ferris leaned forward, as if he was about to crouch down beside her. Instead, his arm shot out and the heel of his hand chopped down against the hammer of Rhett’s Winchester.
The gun discharged its bullet and blasted a powder-burned hole in the centre of the woman’s throat. The expression of sadness remained on her face in death and her green eyes stayed open, glazed by frozen tears.
‘She failed with the President,’ Ferris told the startled Rhett. ‘But she was responsible for the death of my son.’
‘No sweat, Mr. Ferris,’ Rhett assured with a thin smile. ‘One less female to compete with me. Mind if I take the letter for a souvenir?’
He released the Winchester and dropped into a crouch. The combination weapon came out from under his coat and he extended the blade to cut at the coat, dress and underwear of Charity Meagher.
‘You will both receive the balance of the fee I offered,’ Ferris said dully.
‘Damn right,’ Edge muttered. ‘I ain’t the kind that makes grand gestures.’
Ferris nodded. ‘I am quite aware of that, sir. Which is why I have a greater admiration for the Negro. Even for these misguided men who died for a cause they believed in. True patriots.’
Edge: Echoes of War (Edge series Book 23) Page 14
