“He wouldn’t die!” Douglas pleaded again.
Hedges got to his feet and trudged across to recover his rifle. “Corporal punishment never killed anyone,” he answered, and glanced up toward the top of the cliff.
Rhett’s face was very white against the background of the trees. “I was covering you, Captain!” the New Engender called down, his voice high-pitched and quivering.
“Obliged,” Hedges said wryly, and spat into the mud, then wiped the blade of the razor on his pants leg. “But you can come down now.”
“Jump?”
“A fairy ought to know how to fly” Forrest snarled. “Yeah, jump you yellow bastard.”
Rhett groaned, took a deep breath, and launched himself into midair. He sent up a great gout of mud and water as he landed. He stayed on his feet and grinned in triumph at the achievement. “How about that?” he announced gleefully.
“You always were good for a jump, Bob,” Roger Bell drawled.
The trail of the two hold-up men led Edge in a wide half circle around the western rim of the verdant valley, at the center of which was the town of Jerusalem. At first, it was easy for the slitted eyes of the tall half-breed to see the sign left by riders and horses. But then day drew to a close, and the period of twilight was short.
The half-moon was bright, and there were no cloud patches to veil it. But it hung low in the sky, spreading deep shadows through the timber and—higher up in the Big Horn Mountains—dropping solid pools of darkness among the rugged rock formations. Night and firm ground, which was less inclined to show sign of his quarries’ passing, slowed the progress of the solitary rider.
But after a while a pattern emerged. The wide swing around Jerusalem ended short of the trail from the south. The holdup men had turned west, climbing every yard of the way, and at the crest line of the first step of the range veering northward. Edge followed the easiest course, and at infrequent intervals saw horse droppings, cigarette butts, and hoofprints in pockets of soft earth.
When he reached the barrier of a rearing slab of solid rock, he elected to follow a narrow gully that canted steeply up toward the star-dotted western sky. At the top, it leveled off and then opened out onto a high plateau. A trail bisected the rocky flatland, and at the very center was a small group of frame buildings. They looked distant and desolate in the pale moonglow. The shout reached
Edge like the last of many echoes down a long valley. A stagecoach emerged from among the buildings, pulled by a six-horse team, whipped into a gallop and heading north. The clatter of hoofbeats reached him late and distorted.
He watched for a few moments, lean face impassive as he considered the alternatives. Then he thudded in his heels and jerked on the reins, urging the gelding into a gallop toward the buildings. As he drew closer, he saw that they formed a stage-line way station. The largest building was the office and waiting room. One of its windows was lit. The others were stables, a feed bam, and a shack for the company man to live in.
Edge rode in among the buildings at a casual walk, carefully but not furtively. Two horses were hitched to the rail outside the main building. He had last seen the animals raising dust on the trail out of Jerusalem. Also familiar was the sign hung on the front of the single story building: WYOMING-MONTANA-COLORADO LINE. Like the rest of the station, the sign was in a better state of repair than the old shack south of Jerusalem.
The half-breed angled his horse across to the hitching rail and maintained an attitude of calm self-assurance as he slid from the saddle and tethered the gelding. He had his back to the doorway as he stooped to check the tension of the cinch. But he heard the creak of the opening door, and the wedge of light it spilled fell across him.
“Stage has left, mister,” a man announced, his voice scratchy with age. “Not another until next week.”
Edge sensed there was more than just one man behind him. He straightened slowly, then whirled, drawing on the pivot. The company man was older than his voice. He was short and thin and looked ready to fall over if anybody breathed too heavily on him. More than eighty hard years had carved a network of lines deep into the slack flesh clinging to the angular bones of his face. His yellow-tinged eyes seemed to be dead already. His hair had given up and fallen out long ago. His slack mouth twitched violendy when he saw the Colt in the brown hand of the half-breed.
“Jesus, mister, ain’t nothing here worth the stealing!” he pleaded.
“What I want’s already been stole,” Edge said, directing his voice and his hooded-eyed stare over the top of the old-timer’s head at the two tall men standing behind him.
The neckerchief masks they had worn during the holdup had been no disguise at all. They were obviously the same pair of good-looking youngsters in their early twenties. Their clothes were the same, except that they had removed their hats. This emphasized the distinctive auburn and blond of their hair. Only the eyes were different, because of a change of expression. In Jerusalem the two pairs of brown eyes had shown nervousness. Now, as they looked from the gun in Edge’s hand up to his unrelenting stare, naked fear distended the irises.
“I told you it was him,” the blond whispered hoarsely to his partner.
The redhead recovered first and made a fast draw. A gasp from the old-timer and a slight bowing of his emaciated body told where the revolver had been jabbed. “Drop the iron, or old man Fargo gets lead in his spine,” the • man ordered calmly.
Edge did not even blink, and his gun hand remained rock steady, the revolver’s muzzle aimed over the naked skull of the old-timer, between the heads of the two youngsters. The blond looked at the redhead as if he couldn’t believe what he had heard.
“Clint!” he gasped.
“Please, mister!” the old-timer begged.
“He ain’t nothing to me,” Edge said. “You kill him, I got more of you to aim at, feller.”
“Please?” Fargo tried again, his voice rising in pitch. “This ain’t my fight.”
“Let me explain,” the blond implored.
“He don’t look like a good listener, Aaron,” Clint said, his tone still rough. His eyes suggested that the statement could be a question.
“Money talks,” Edge replied evenly. “I’ve got twenty thousand good reasons to listen if you say the right words, feller.”
“Twenty thousand!” Aaron exclaimed, and beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. “Christ, Clint.”
The announcement hit Clint hard, too. But he handled it better. A lump rose to his throat. It bobbed and he swallowed it. “There wasn’t that much in the bag,” he argued.
Edge nodded. “That figures. The difference is between me and the guy who took my bet. It could be the difference between life and death for him.”
“You threatening us, mister?” Clint snapped.
Fargo controlled the trembling of his slack mouth. “He ain’t the kind of man to make the idle kind,” he said knowledgeably. “I seen lots like him.”
“Get your buddy to toss out the money bag,” Edge ordered, tightening his voice and ignoring the old-timer. “Fat chance,” Clint snarled. “You don’t scare me.” The Colt bucked in Edge’s hand. The three horses snorted at the sound and jerked back. But the rail held them prisoner. Clint remained on his feet for long seconds, blood from a hole in the center of his forehead streaming out to splash on the bald dome of the old-timer. Fargo shuddered at the touch of the warm stickiness, then slumped into a faint. Clint went down at the same time,
his surprised eyes snapping closed, and the gun slipping from his lifeless fingers.
“You killed my brother!” Aaron screamed, finding his voice at the end of a brief period of dumb shock. “You killed Clint!”
I “He died rich,” Edge muttered. “I figure I inherit.” “You bastard!” Aaron shouted. “Just like that, you killed him. We didn’t want no trouble. It was just that we wanted to help—”
Edge’s glittering slits of eyes drove back the mounting hysteria, and Aaron halted in mid-sentence. “You want to pass
me out the money now, feller?” he asked softly, ducking under the rail but keeping the revolver aimed directly at the white-faced youngster.
“All right! I’ll get it.”
Aaron stepped back into the doorway and reached to the side. When his body swayed upright again, his holster was empty. The revolver he had used to press against the temple of the sheriff’s wife was now aimed at Edge. He fired from the hip, and he wasn’t that good with a gun. Edge dropped into a crouch and heard one of the horses snort with pain. The animal thudded to the ground as the other two tried again to wrench free from the rail.
“You get it!” Edge hissed, and the Colt exploded a second time.
The bullet drilled into Aaron’s heart, and he fell like a tree, stiff and straight. The blood bubbled up from the ragged hole and expanded an ugly, dark stain over his shirt front. Edge slid the gun back into its holster and stepped over the two dead brothers and the senseless Fargo. He cast a quick glance around the room. It was large, sparsely and crudely furnished, with a bureau and a table surrounded by a half dozen chairs. The men had been seated at the table, drinking coffee, when Edge’s approach disturbed them. The coffee pot was half full and still warm to the touch. Edge emptied one cup on the floor and refilled it. The coffee was lukewarm and weak. But he finished it, listening to the groans from the old-timer as he regained consciousness. The hats of the dead men hung from hooks in a wall. The shotgun rested on the floor below. Edge broke open the gun and saw it had been reloaded. He ejected both charges and dropped them in the coffee pot. After another glance around the room to check that the money bag was not there, he stepped outside.
Fargo was sitting up, rubbing the blood from his head with his shirt cuff. He looked up fearfully at the tall halfbreed. “They’re both dead?” he asked.
“Some folks say things happen in threes,” Edge replied easily.
“You wouldn’t shoot down a poor old man?” His tone was incredulous, but his eyes gave the lie to the sentiment.
Edge curled back his lips into a cold grin. “Poor? With a name like Fargo?”
“Not that Fargo,” the old-timer corrected, getting shakily to his feet and leaning wearily against the doorframe. “That’s young Gideon, my lousy nephew. He’s with the lousy government, so he’s got pull. Fixed every line I’ve tried to operate. Him and Butterfield. Even registered the name Wells Fargo so me and my partner couldn’t use it. Jim Wells has pulled out. But I don’t give up that easy. I’ll show young Gideon, government pull or no.”
“We all got problems,” Edge said. “What did those guys do with the bag they brought here?”
Fargo shrugged his thin shoulders, his eyes fearful again, now that the more pressing problem of staying alive was once more of greater importance than business concerns. “I didn’t see no bag, mister.”
Edge leaned against the hitching rail and stroked the nose of the gelding, his hands gentle as they soothed away the skittishness caused by the gunshots and the mixed smells of blood and burnt powder. “What did you see?” he asked.
“I had just the' one passenger to board here,” Fargo replied quickly, anxious to be of help, fearful of the consequences if his assistance fell short of what was expected. “Little blonde girl. Mighty pretty. Rode into the station maybe an hour before the stage was due. Kinda nervous, she was. Like she was waiting for something—not just the stage, I mean. But then she sees these two fellers riding in from the hills and she’s okay. They talked a lot outside here. I didn’t hear nothing. And I didn’t see if a bag was give to her. Stage come. One of these fellers tied her horse to the back, and she got aboard. I had some coffee on the stove. We was drinking it when you showed up. The two fellers was happy. Like the girl when they come. Seeing them like that, hard to think how happy they was.”
“Those folks that say things happen in threes,” Edge said as he ducked under the rail and unhitched the reins.
“Yeah?”
“They also say money can’t buy happiness,” Edge replied, swinging up into the saddle.
The old-timer swallowed hard. “They right both times?” he asked.
“Nobody’s right all the time. That girl?”
“Yeah?”
“Where’d she buy a ticket to?”
The thin shoulders shrugged. “Dunno, mister. On my line, passengers pay the driver. One thing, though.”
“Yeah?”
“I seen her before. She got off the stage yesterday. Had her horse tagged on behind. Untied him and rode off east, toward Jerusalem.”
“She sit down while she was waiting?”
The old man blinked. “Funny kinda question, mister. Matter of fact, she didn’t. Did a lot of pacing. Why?” “Long story with a painful end,” Edge told him. “Obliged for your help, Mr. Fargo.” He touched his hat as he backed the gelding away from the rail with its one live and one dead horse still tied there.
“What shall I do about these fellers?” the old-timer called, suddenly nervous again.
“Bury ’em,” Edge replied.
“What if somebody comes around asking questions?” Edge nudged the gelding forward. “Say you had to bury ’em to keep ’em from smelling up the place.”
Fargo sighed, aware he could expect nothing more from the tall, cold-eyed killer riding away from the station. But suddenly a thought occurred to him. “Dead men ought to have words spoke over them!” he called. “You know what to say, mister?”
“Just the one word,” Edge called back without turning around.
“What’s that?”
“Goodbye,” Edge shouted, and urged the gelding into a gallop.
CHAPTER SIX
First the troopers heaved the bodies of the actors into the swollen river. They didn’t wait to see the corpses caught by the swift current and swirled out of sight. Instead, they applied themselves to the task of man-handling the rear of the stage clear of the mud and blocking it with rocks. The wheel rim was buckled beyond repair, and several spokes were broken. But there was a spare lashed to the underside of the stage. Dawn was fully broken by the time the damaged wheel had been removed and a new one fitted. The stage was rocked clear of the worst of the flooded morass and hauled along the trail on to higher and firmer ground.
The sky was a slick, gray color and shed a grim light that emphasized the unhealthy pallor and dullness in the eyes of the men. Hedges recognized the signs of exhaustion and felt the bone-deep fatigue attacking his own body. It would have been easy to order the troopers to break out the tents stowed in the stage and make a hasty camp. But the place was wrong. Open and too close to where a Rebel patrol might stumble on the washed-up bodies of the murdered actors.
“Check the trunks for clothing,” the captain ordered.
It was greeted with scowls, but no man voiced his discontent. The long haul with the wagons, the tensions of the ambush at Hartford Gap, the near showdown between Hedges and Forrest, and the nervous excitement of the murders combined to drain the men of even the will to gripe. It was a dangerous state for them to be in, for if they lacked what it took to argue with their own hated officer, what would be their reaction if the enemy suddenly appeared?
Turn and run? As Hedges watched Scott and Bell haul out a bulky, wooden trunk while the other four leaned indifferently against the stage, he knew this was a distinct possibility. Not from cowardice, except in the case of Rhett. But from depression, triggered by exhaustion. The men had fought no part of the war with the spur of justice, patriotism, or the ultimate gjory of triumph to support their morale, They had donned uniforms only because this enabled them to indulge their enjoyment of killing without fear of the law’s retribution. But could not even homicidal maniacs suffer from a surfeit of slaughter? Did they reach a point when the mere act of shooting or stabbing a man was not enough?
As Hedges selected a highly decorated western outfit for himself and stripped off the blood and mud-stained uniform, he acknowledged that this could be so. He was his own example, although he balked at thinking of himself as a
pathological killer. But the fact remained that the long years of war had given him a taste of seeing men slump before him, spurting blood and gore from gaping wounds. He had discovered that he was able to kill with a sensation that often went beyond enjoyment and into the realms of exhilaration.
But he was able to justify such a feeling. He was fighting for a purpose. Nothing so abstract as justice or glory. His aim was to return home and work the farm with Jamie, and every Rebel who fell at his hand was a step closer to peace and happiness on the prairies of Iowa.
How many more steps, though? The soldiers in Hartford Gap and the defenseless actors added up to a great many corpses. But how much closer was the farm with its green pasture and golden wheat fields baking under the midwest sun? Not three stinking seconds or three lousy feet. And he’d known it while the Rebs were being tom to pieces by the explosion, and the actors were spilling blood under the slashing, stabbing blades. There had been not the slightest tremor of excitement in the acts of killing. Cold, calculated self-preservation had been the sole motivation. And when there was no other factor but this, the easiest course was to get the hell out to where every rock or tree trunk, building, or hill crest did not represent cover to an enemy—to where a man could rest wherever he wanted when he was tired.
Hedges looked around at the troopers, incongruously attired in white Stetsons, embroidered shirts, fancy pants, and high boots—the Easterners’ idea of what a cowpoke wore for work. If he, with something clear-cut and solid to fight for, felt like turning his back on the war, how much more bitter must be the thoughts of these men?
“Even seeing you dressed up like a dude ain’t no fun, Captain,” Forrest said dully, once more reading in the hooded eyes something of what was running through the mind behind them.
Like the others, he wore a hand-tooled leather gunbelt with a tied-down holster. The ivory grip of a shiny revolver poked up from the ornately stitched leather. Although tired, he was still fast. In the time it took the watching troopers to blink their red-rimmed eyes, the sergeant crouched, drew, and squeezed the trigger. It was all part of a single coordinated, fluid movement. The gun muzzle was in line with Hedges’ heart when the report cracked apart the dawn silence. The captain made no move to draw his own gun.
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