‘Comanche, on my Ma’s side,’ Joe Straw supplied weakly and turned just his head to look with pain filled eyes at the startled prospectors. ‘And take it easy. Edge here ain’t mad at you. He ain’t got a wife no more on account of Indian trouble. Were they Sioux, man?’
He had lifted his head off the ground and was gazing at Edge when he posed the question.
Straw’s guess was right. His abrupt change of mood was caused by Stewart’s story triggering vivid memories of his wife’s death. And because the Scotsman’s tale paralleled that long ago time of fear, anger and grief in so many details, Edge was affected by it to a far greater degree than on any other occasion he could recall.
It had been the Sioux who hit the neat little farmstead in the Dakotas. And his wife’s name was Elizabeth.
On his own time scale, he seemed to be locked inside a private world of harsh memories for many minutes while his mind was attacked by disjointed, out-of-sequence images of how his best of all possible worlds had been shattered by the Sioux uprising. But when he had won the struggle to drive the painful past back where it belonged and was again aware of the trio of men staring at him, none of their expressions suggested more than a couple of seconds had gone by.
‘Lost more than a wife in my time,’ he told the bearded prospectors evenly. ‘A lot of it to white men. Don’t blame every stranger I come across for what others did.’
‘You’re entitled to your opinion, laddie,’ Stewart allowed grimly, and now looked at Straw who was stretched out flat on his back again, lacking the strength even to keep his head up from the ground. ‘But I have never trusted an Indian from that day to this. And you told Robert and me yourself that this one has killed two men.’
‘Aye, you did, Yank,’ McBride confirmed.
‘And he’ll hang for it, like I said.’
Stewart nodded. ‘That prospect is pleasing to me, laddie. My question about the size of the bounty was to seek assurance that you have sufficient cause to complete the journey to the gallows.’
‘For if you did not, Angus would be pleased to rid the world of the savage,’ McBride augmented.
Straw forced his head up off the ground again, to direct a pleading look at Edge after glaring at the two quiet spoken Scotsman.
‘You said you’d protect me, Edge! They still got irons in their holsters! And they hate me just ’cause there’s some Indian in me! I think we should get the hell away from . . .’
He was trying to rise, but the fresh pain erupted by the blow to his injured arm intensified with every move. And he flopped back down again with a groan that spilled saliva from between his quivering lips.
‘Aim to see he hangs, feller,’ Edge told Stewart as he set down his empty coffee cup and lifted the pot of on-the-boil water off the fire. ‘Even if I have to kill anyone who has different ideas.’
He rose and went to Straw’s side. The punished man looked at the pot he was carrying and scowled. ‘My gut’s still churnin’. I try to get anythin’ inside me, it’ll come right up again.’
‘Hot water is all.’
Edge lowered the pot to the ground and returned to bring the dead Hackman’s bedroll. The two prospectors watched him stoically as he unfurled the blankets and rerolled one to make a pillow which he eased under Straw’s head. Then their interest heightened and the injured half breed felt fear more strongly than pain as Edge reached into the long hair at the nape of his neck and drew the straight razor from the concealed pouch.
‘You ain’t gonna cut me, man?’
‘Like you told these fellers, take it easy, Joe.’
‘I’d rather take my chances of gangrene settin’ in!’ His voice was shrill, but then he sucked in a great gulp of air and exhaled it as a sigh. This when Edge used the razor to cut two strips from the blanket, one of them narrow, which he left whole, the other broader and this he cut into squares.
‘Going to try to clean out whatever dirt got into the wound, Joe. Then bind it up to keep it clean.’
‘Gee, man. That’s gonna hurt like hell, ain’t it?’
‘No worse than your knife in Hackman’s belly.’
The bearded Scots had finished their coffee and now Stewart refilled both cups.
‘Something I’ve never understood, Robert.’
‘What is that, Angus?’
‘Why it is that adult male Indians are called braves.’
‘It is strange indeed, Angus. Perhaps that is why their skin is red. The better to hide the yellow that is inside them.’
Straw brought his head up off the blanket pillow to glower at the men and snarl: ‘Shut your stinkin’ mouths! I’d like to see you sonsofbitches go through what I been through and wind up friggin’ laughin’! And I’d like it even better if I was the one that put bullets into you and then beat up on where -’
Once more his high pitched scream cut through the mountain air, seeming to the men close to him that it had the power and volume to reach across the night into infinity. The keening cry forced from his stretched throat by Edge’s action of pressing the boiled water soaked wad of blanket against the pus closed entry hole of the rifle bullet.
Joe Straw, intent upon bawling out Stewart and McBride, was totally unprepared for the excruciating agony exploded by the scalding water against his poisoned flesh. And his physical and vocal reactions to it were short lived. This new punishment was too much for his system to accept. The scream was curtailed, the rigidity drained from his body and he was again plunged into unconsciousness, his head slamming hard back down on to the pillow.
Both the Scotsmen winced, as if they had vicariously experienced a degree of pain themselves.
Edge removed the compress and began to bathe away the thick, evil smelling pus that had been burst from the mouth of the wound.
‘You think he will be grateful that you put him out before doing that, laddie?’
‘I don’t care what he thinks, feller. Happens to be easier for me to do this while he ain’t yelling and thrashing about.’
They sipped their coffee and remained silent while Edge completed his primitive treatment of the oblivious man. Cleaning both the entry and exit wound and then binding the arm.
The fire crackled and the pot bubbled, keeping the coldness of the night at bay and permeating the atmosphere of the camp with the appetizing aromas of woodsmoke and cooking food.
Then, as Edge washed his hands in the cooled water and dried them on the remains of the cut blanket, McBride said: ‘He would have been less trouble to you had you not done that, Yank.’
‘And since he is condemned to die in any event, laddie?’ Stewart added with arched eyebrows.
‘Supper smells like it’s ready to eat,’ Edge said, moving back to their side of the fire but this time sat on the saddles, delving into the centre of his bedroll to bring out his plate and spoon.
There was a ladle in the pot and he transferred a heap of stew on to his plate and began to eat.
McBride shrugged his shoulders and his partner grunted, each in his own way expressing resignation to the close mouthed nature of their visitor. Then helped themselves from the pot and for several minutes all three ate the food with scant show of relish. The beards of the prospectors became more matted with greasy gravy and morsels of meat and vegetables which dropped unheeded from the fast moving spoons.
They finished first and lit ready-filled pipes. Waited until Edge was through eating and had lit a freshly rolled cigarette.
‘The savage, laddie? Did he get much of a haul off the stage he robbed?’
Edge slid down off the saddles and leaned his shoulders against them. The money doesn’t matter. He killed the driver. Dead man’s son was the sheriff who came after him.’
‘And the Indian killed him, too?’
‘That’s what happened, McBride. After the sheriff put that bullet hole in Straw’s arm.’
‘And you just happened to be passing?’ Stewart asked.
Edge pursed his lips. ‘You fellers want to come out and say it
? Or is beating about the bush some old Scots custom you aim to spread around this country?’
‘We are simply passing the time of day,’ Stewart muttered peevishly.
‘If you find our company distasteful, it is not our wish that you should stay here,’ his partner added.
‘Out in the hills we see few strangers, laddie. And have exhausted conversation between ourselves.’
‘Never hit any paydirt worth talking about, uh?’
‘You have a suspicious mind, Yank!’ McBride snarled, scowling through the smoke curling up from the bowl of his pipe. ‘That is the second time you have spoken of our obvious impoverishment.’
‘Suspicious mind is right, Robert!’ Stewart agreed sourly. ‘The man has completely misunderstood me again.’
‘Americans!’ McBride growled, and spat into the fire. ‘They all want to be rich and are prepared to go to any lengths to get their desire. And think everyone else has the same ambition. And the same lack of scruples. ’
‘It is simply that I am a student of my fellow man, laddie,’ Stewart said with less rancor, directing a look of reprimand at his partner. ‘And I have no quarrel with the particular aspect of the American dream Robert takes issue with.’
He looked again at McBride, who snorted and got wearily to his feet to gather up the dirty dishes.
‘And he has no right to speak as he does. After all, did we both not abandon safe and humdrum lives as clerks in Edinburgh? And sell all we possessed, against the advice of our friends, to travel to your country in the hope of finding our pot of gold? And have I not lost my dear wife in the pursuit of - ’
‘It is an honest line of work we are in, Angus,’ McBride grumbled, as he used the dry, gritty dirt on the fringe of the camp to get the congealed food off the plates.
‘Aye, Robert. But who are we - relative strangers in this new land - to take exception to the trade of this laddie? Edinburgh has its criminal element sure enough. And a well trained body of the constabulary to deal with it. Out here in this vast land, an incalculable number of constables would be required to ensure that those guilty of crime get their just desserts.’
Now he surveyed Edge quizzically. Edge tossed the butt of his cigarette into the dying fire and shifted into an apparently more comfortable position against the heap of gear. He tipped his hat forward slightly, but not so much that the brim obscured his view of Angus Stewart some four feet from him and Robert McBride who was now urinating between two rocks on the fringe of the firelight.
‘International understanding ain’t a subject that interests me, feller,’ he murmured sleepily as he began to scratch the left side of his neck.
‘I have wandered away from my point, laddie. To return. I am intrigued by the value placed upon human life in this part of the world. The amount of money that Indian obtained for killing the driver of the stage coach. And you intrigue, laddie. Without wishing to insult you, you do not strike me as the kind of man to - ’
‘Now, Angus!’ McBride roared.
He had rebuttoned the front of his pants and turned sideways on to the fire, so that his right hip on which the holstered Colt hung was out of sight of Edge’s seemingly unwatchful eyes. But his bent elbow showed at his back when his right hand moved from the front of his pants to fist around the butt of his revolver.
An instant before drawing the Colt and whirling to face his target he had voiced the warning to his partner, and was given a clear shot by Stewart hurling himself sideways off the pack to sprawl on the ground.
They had a smooth working partnership which would have succeeded if Edge had been as genuinely at ease as he appeared. They had showed just the right degree of distrust for the night visitors to their camp. Their inquisitiveness was justified by the captor-captive relationship of the intruders. And they had carefully tested Edge’s reactions to both friendly and reproachful overtures. Settled for the age old combination of nice feller allied with bastard.
But they had unwittingly foreseen the flaw in their murderous plan when they agreed Edge had a suspicious mind. For he had been ready to counter whatever aggressive move they made since he first joined them at their camp fire. Behind his outward appearance of contented weariness, he became increasingly tensed to react with every broadly Scottish accented word that Angus Stewart spoke while his partner attended to the dishes: his distrust of the two prospectors heightened because McBride made no attempt to get behind him.
So, as McBride began the turn and yelled the warning, his hooded, almost closed eyes saw that Stewart was no immediate threat. And he dropped his left hand away from the position where it was just a fraction of a second away from drawing the razor. Pressed the palm to the ground to add power to his counter move. At the same time as his right came up from the ground, fingers hooked to bring the Colt from his holster. The thumb cocked the hammer and the forefinger curled to the trigger.
The flickering firelight illuminated the fear in Robert McBride’s eyes: in that instant when the Scot with the gun in his hand realized he and Stewart had made a fatal misjudgment. That he was not fast enough, because the expected element of surprise had never existed.
The Frontier Colt in Edge’s hand exploded a shot before McBride’s raking revolver was within a foot of coming on target. The bullet hit him on a rising trajectory that started almost at ground level. Blasted into his chest left of centre and was deflected into a more acute elevation when it glanced off a bone of the ribcage. Bored a hole through the upper area of his heart and cracked a shoulder blade as it came to rest.
The impact of the bullet added momentum to his turn and he almost completed a flat footed pirouette before death drained his body of rigidity and he collapsed into a heap, covering the drying stain where he had urinated and now spurted arterial blood on to the thirsty ground.
Edge had powered up into a half crouch the instant the killing shot left his Colt. Before McBride was a falling corpse he lunged forward, crashing down heavily on the prone form of Angus Stewart who was fumbling desperately to get his own revolver clear of the holster as he tried to roll over on to his back.
But two hundred pounds of falling weight thudded him face down again and rushed air from his lungs with an explosive sound. So that the man had no breath in his body to utter a vocal response to the pain of being crushed. Nor to the more intense agony when Edge pressed the muzzle of the Frontier Colt against the elbow of Stewart’s right arm and triggered a second shot. The man’s hand gave up the struggle to draw his gun.
Then Edge thumbed back the hammer and shifted his weight; rose on to his knees and then on to his haunches. Aimed the gun at the side of Stewart’s head from a range of three inches as the winded and wounded man stayed flat on the ground, struggling for breath and grimacing at his pain.
‘Cost of living depends upon a man’s tastes, feller,’ Edge rasped through gritted teeth. ‘Dying for your partner was the price of one shell. For you, I’ll double it.’
Stewart had one side of his face pressed hard to the ground, so that Edge could see only his left eye. It expressed the sadness of disappointment, at odds with the grimace of pain that contorted the rest of his bearded face.
‘Why be so generous, laddie?’ he asked with difficulty.
‘Got a question I’d like answered.’
‘Robert and I have never given up looking for the lucky strike, laddie. But it was not to be. There were five men before you. Lacking your guile. But we had the same misfortune as in our pursuit of gold from the ground. We never obtained more than enough to feed ourselves and the animal.’
He was still suffering chronic breathing difficulty, needing to fight to get out each word.
‘Ain’t your hard luck that interests me, feller. Need to know if you really did have a wife called Elizabeth who was killed by the Sioux up in the Dakotas.’
Despite his suffering, Angus Stewart was briefly intrigued by the query. ‘Quite a coincidence, if what the Indian said was true. Aye, laddie. It happened as I said it did. And if that gen
tle woman had not perished after the savages attacked her . . . Robert and I would not have done the evil that we did. Elizabeth was his sister, you understand.’
‘Obliged,’ Edge said absently.
‘You, too? If your woman had not . . . ?’
‘Never will know.’
‘You’ll finish me now, I’m thinking?’
‘No doubt about that.’
Stewart closed the eye Edge could see and murmured, ‘I have no complaint, laddie.’
Edge squeezed the trigger and his impassive expression did not alter as the neat hole appeared in Stewart’s temple and the man’s nervous system caused an involuntary spasm to jerk him briefly from head to toe. A few droplets of blood sprayed away from the wound and fell into his matted beard.
‘Got to agree with you, feller,’ he growled as he came erect and slid the Colt back into his holster. ‘Ain’t no more natural cause to die from than trying to kill me.’
He crossed to where McBride was crumpled, took hold of the collar of his coat and dragged him from among the rocks. Took hold of the corpse of Stewart in his free hand and dragged both away from the camp fire. Out on the ledge along which the stage trail ran. Arranged them side by side on the rim of the precipice. Then, with a booted foot, tipped them over the cliff.
The limp and unfeeling bodies seemed held together for a few feet, then separated and the heavier McBride tumbled ahead of his partner, to smash to the rocky bank of the stream perhaps a full second before Stewart’s flesh was burst and his bones shattered some six feet closer to the trickling water. In the glittering moonlight the unmoving forms were dark silhouettes against the grey rocks.
‘Man, did I have you figured wrong,’ Joe Straw gasped as Edge returned to the area of light and warmth radiated by the fire.
‘Welcome back to the land of the living, feller,’ Edge answered evenly.
‘I been here since you blasted the first of them sonsofbitches, man. It ain’t no death wish you got. You just gotta kill people, ain’t you?’
Edge made no reply to the half breed Comanche who continued to lay on his back, still only able to turn his head on the blanket pillow. Did not even look at the wan faced, injured man as he hauled the mule packs away from the camp. To tip them one at a time over the cliff top.
EDGE: The Prisoners Page 4
