Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Other Edge Titles
George G. Gilmlan's 'STEELE'
SAVAGE DAWN
By George G. Gilman
First Published by Kindle 2014
Copyright © 2014 by George G. Gilman
First Kindle Edition February 2014
Names, Characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
Cover Design and illustrations by West World Designs © 2014. http://westworlddesigns.webs.com
This is a High Plains Western for Lobo Publications.
Cover Illustration by Cody Wells.
Visit the author at: www.gggandpcs.proboards.com
For S. G. who watched for the word on me for me
Chapter One
THE man sat in the shade of the only live oak within an area of a hundred square miles and contemplated the prospect of marriage to Isabella Montez. Then he smiled as he experienced a sense of well-being. But he knew it was his present state of contentment in mild drunkenness rather than uncharacteristic thoughts of an idealistic future which caused him to feel at peace with the world in general and the Mexican village of San Parral in particular. This self-knowledge was not, however, the reason why his smile was touched with an unmistakable trace of bitterness. It was just that this man was the one named Edge who had walked so long on the harsh side of life, he would never be completely free of the influences of his experience. To an extent where even a smile of physical pleasure was distorted to something approaching a grimace of mental agony.
The smile of the man sitting on a wooden bench under the shade of the tree decorated a face that looked at home amid the surroundings of a Mexican village—and yet did not. A face that could be regarded as handsome or ugly. A true personification of the many contradictions which formed the character of the man who had become known as Edge.
It was a long, sparsely fleshed face: the skin drawn taut across the high forehead and between the prominent cheekbones and firm jaw. The complexion was stained dark brown by heritage and exposure to the extremes of weather; scored with deep lines cut by the ageing process of more than thirty-five years and the suffering he had endured during so much of that time. The eyes were a bright, piercing blue: cold looking and never wide beneath the hooded lids. The hawk like set of the nose was perhaps emphasized by the constantly alert, almost predatory impassiveness of the eyes. It was an impression which certainly gained something from the wide, thin-lipped mouth that even in repose hinted at the latent cruelty of the man.
The face was framed by jet-black hair which grew to shoulder length. Freshly shaven, as he was at this hour close to noon, Edge wore a thin moustache which curved down towards his jaw at either side of his mouth. The bristles were black, just beginning to be dappled by gray.
Thus were his features in keeping with everything around the ancient oak tree because many of them were inherited from a Mexican father: while the others had been formed because his veins also carried the bloodline of a Scandinavian mother.
‘Señor Edge … six men come towards San Parral from the north.’
The small, round-faced boy of some ten years was breathless from a fast run in the midday heat. He used the sleeve of his shirt to wipe sweat beads from his forehead as the bell in the church tower began to toll the twelve monotone notes of noon.
‘Only six?’ Edge asked, managing to inject a little more warmth into his smile as he stood up and looked down into the trusting face of the boy. ‘You want to tie one hand behind my back, Jesus?’
The strength of character obvious in the face of Edge was backed by physical power—just as unmistakable as he straightened to his full height of six feet three inches. For he weighed in the region of two hundred pounds, not a single ounce of this contributed by excess fat. So, although his shoulders were broad and his chest was wide, with no suggestion of a narrow waist, there was a kind of lanky leanness to him. And the underplayed curves and angles of his firm flesh and large bones adequately filled out the worn black Levi’s and sweat-stained gray shirt in which he was dressed.
He also wore scuffed and down-at-heel riding boots—spurless under the cuffs of his pants—a wide-brimmed and low-crowned Stetson which was dusty black and a loosely knotted gray kerchief.
An old gun belt slotted with shells was slung around his waist. The holster, tied to his right thigh with a thong, held a .45 Frontier Colt without fancy adornments. Around his throat, hidden by the kerchief, was a length of leather cord strung with beads of subdued colors which was as practical in its purpose as the gun belt. For it supported at the nape of his neck a pouch in which was nestled a wooden-handled straight razor. His shirt contoured the bulge of the razor sheath beneath the ends of his hair.
‘It is a joke you make, Señor Edge?’ the young Jesus Vega replied solemnly and glanced quickly over his shoulder? He was the only son of Manuel Vega, San Parral’s priest, and had inherited his father’s melancholy. His English was good.
‘In bad taste, maybe,’ the rangy half-breed allowed with a genuine grimace. ‘Like that stuff Melendez calls rye whiskey.’
The church bell sounded its final note as Edge jerked a thumb towards the cantina. There were long moments of near silence in the plaza which marked the eastern end of San Parral’s only street, with just the hypnotic buzzing of scavenging flies to disturb the peace.
Then: ‘You are not too drunk to shoot straight, Señor Edge?’ Jesus demanded, anxious and scornful.
‘You know these six fellers?’ the half-breed asked flatly, swatting at a fly that tried to take a rest on his forehead.
A solemn-faced shake of the head. ‘They are too far to the north. I saw them only as six riders, Señor Edge. Little dust. So riding slowly. I could not tell who they are. But did you not say it is better to be cautious than to be surprised?’
Edge sighed. ‘If anyone in this town said I said it, I said it,’ he allowed and moved out of the shade into the full, blistering glare of the sun.
San Parral was deserted except for the half-breed, the boy and the priest and cantina owner. And the flies, which refused to be discouraged by swatting hands. Walking easily along the centre of the curving street, Edge thought again about Isabella. About whether he could spend the rest of his life here with her as his wife, burdened by the hero-worship of every citizen.
Isabella had reported the bare facts of the grueling and dangerous journey she had shared with Edge from the Colorado Plateau to this Sonora village in the rugged Sierra Madre which was her birth place. A journey on which she had seen her mother, her father and her brother die horribly. One on which she, too, would have died, had it not been for the half-breed and a strange Oriental poet and philosopher who also failed to reach San Parral.
In the three months during which he had made a home of sorts out of a room in the cantina of Julio Melendez, the people of the village had told and re-told the story to each other. And at every telling th
e exploits of Señor Edge in aiding Señorita Montez were embroidered by vivid imaginations.
Although he was conscious that his stock seemed to rise daily in the eyes of the Mexican villagers, he was not at first aware of the reason. And, for a while, he enjoyed the awe with which he was regarded. Until he discovered that virtually anything he chanced to say was likely to be accepted by all and sundry as a kind of gospel tenet—to be remembered and quoted back at him in the way the young boy had just done.
The hot and dusty atmosphere of San Parral had started to cloy then—to an extent that the citric smell which constantly pervaded the village from the surrounding lemon groves had seemed to take on a stink of rottenness in his nostrils. It was then he had begun to drink more of the cantina’s cheap rye than was good for him. Seeking, as he had once before during his harsh life, to drown the memory of a woman in hard, liquor. But, since Isabella was still vibrantly alive and he saw her every day, it was a pretence doomed to failure.
‘Bandits would not approach so openly, Señor Edge,’ Jesus said gravely. ‘Thus, the Federales will have no interest in the six men who ride towards the village.’
‘Buenas tardes, Señor Edge,’ Father Vega called cheerfully from the shade of the church’s arched porchway. Then the more usual solemnity returned to his deep voice and thin face, ‘My son is not annoying you, I hope?’
The half-breed touched the brim of his hat. ‘Figures there’s a problem, is all, padre. If there is, I figure I can handle it better than the one I was working on.’
The church was on the south-west side of the thirty feet wide street, where it curved from east towards the north. It was adobe, like every other building in San Parral. Flanking it, and on the other side of the street, were rows of small, crudely constructed houses. All single storey and none with more than three rooms. Sun-bleached white with doors and shutters wide open to catch any slight breeze which might waft along the valley to stir the dust and create a fleeting impression of coolness. Flies buzzed in and out of the houses.
The priest nodded towards the retreating backs of Edge and Jesus, then pushed his head out into the sunlight to look beyond the man and the boy and back the way they had come.
Beyond them, the houses ended and the street became an open trail—running arrow straight northwards up the valley until it disappeared into the heat shimmer. Two hundred feet past the final house on the east side of the street was the spick and span, adobe and timber built Federale post with the Mexican national flag hanging limply from the white painted pole above the entrance.
Father Vega could not suppress a sneer of scorn as he looked briefly at the post and the immaculately uniformed man on sentry duty under the unmoving flag. But then something akin to a smile of pleasure spread across his sweat-sheened face as he scanned the street in the opposite direction. There, at the end, in the centre of the plaza, was the live oak which had always promised the people of San Parral there was water beneath their village. Behind the oak was the lemon packing station which until recently had marked the eastern extremity of the village.
Now though, in the back of the station was a new building. A building which stood atop a deep well and housed the steam-driven engine which would soon begin to pump up the precious water from a massive underground lake. Water which would be channeled into the irrigation ditches which at this very moment were being dug by almost every able-bodied man and woman from San Parral.
But the priest had to listen very hard to hear any sound of this toiling in the traditional time of siesta. For the ditches were well advanced to the east and south—out across now barren ground beyond the lemon groves: being hacked into rock-hard soil that one day soon would be transformed into crop-bearing fields.
Although he could not see them, and heard them only infrequently, Father Vega knew the villagers were working with a will. Spurred on by the knowledge of what Señorita Montez and Señor Edge had endured and achieved to make the dream of such an irrigation project a reality. Gaining strength, when they were in danger of flagging, by recalling how many had sacrificed their lives to ensure that the gold which was to pay for the well and the equipment reached the village from the far north of the United States.
Isabella would be out there under the blazing sun, working harder than any other woman and even some of the men. Intent upon completing the scheme to the exclusion of all other considerations: determined that it should be a memorial to her dead parents and brother.
Would she then be more than merely grateful and distantly polite towards the tall, powerfully built man called Edge? The trace of the smile deserted the gaunt face of the priest now and he chided himself silently as he withdrew his head and was completely in the hot shade again. It was foolishly vain to be proud of an exercise in perception of which a retarded child was capable,
Everyone knew that Señor Edge would have left the village long ago were it not for Isabella Montez. Did he not sit for hours—drinking more each day—in the doorway of the cantina on the north side of the plaza, hat tilted forward and eyes gazing at the Montez blacksmith’s shop directly opposite? Then, when he had drunk enough of the cheap rot-gut sold by the lazy, good-for-nothing Julio Melendez, did he not sober himself by sitting in the shade of the oak or prowling the surrounding country: always looking like a man on the point of doing something important—but never making up his mind to do it?
Melendez knew the reason for this behavior. Francisco Sorrano, who ran the livery, and Cirilo Banales who owned the store—both on the west side of the plaza across from the packing station—knew the reason. So did every other adult in San Parral—and those children who had overheard their elders discuss the matter.
The man called Edge loved a woman who offered not the slightest encouragement. And this man, whose single-mindedness had been talked into a legend, was undecided what to do about the situation.
‘Ah, a wedding to celebrate the flowering of fields where once there was only infertility…’ the priest said softly in Spanish Then he sighed as he turned to go into his church. ‘It would have been perfect,’
Jesus had difficulty in keeping up with the long-strided walk of Edge? And he sighed—an imitation of his father in miniature—when they came to a halt at the point where the street ended and the open trail began. Then he wiped some more sweat from his brow and spat. There was no dust in his mouth—just venom in the gesture. And on this occasion the young boy was imitating almost everyone in San Parral. For with a few exceptions of vested interest, the villagers were wont to spit each time they happened to look at the neat Federale post out on the trail.
‘You see, Señor Edge. Six riders, as I told you.’ He formed both hands into lensless field glasses and raised them to his eyes. ‘Americano. Hey, with a woman!’
‘You called it right, kid,’ Edge growled, squinting his eyes still further from their normal narrowness to get a clear focus on the group advancing along the trail.
The boy saw the man’s abrupt interest and nodded sagely. Jesus, of all the children in San Parral, admired Edge most. He had given himself a kind of roving commission as another pair of eyes and ears for the half-breed—convinced that something would happen so that his hero could prove he was mucho hombre. Not that Jesus doubted the truth of the story Señorita Montez had told. On the contrary, he believed it implicitly—and longed for the day when he would see Edge exhibit his prowess in dealing with evil troublemakers.
‘She is their prisoner and you will make them release her, Señor Edge?’
‘Looks like three of the fellers are wearing white hats and three black ones, kid. And the lady doesn’t have a hat on at all.’
‘Señor!’
Edge responded to the boy’s confused expression with a short-lived smile. ‘So there’s no way of knowing yet which are the good guys and which the bad,’ he answered evenly.
The men were riding three abreast in two rows. The woman was on a lead line fixed to the saddle horn of the centre rider in the second row. She was obviously close t
o exhaustion and wavered from side to side as she staggered in the wake of the horses, both her hands fisted on the rope which was tied around her waist.
Even when the riders halted their mounts outside the Federale post—the woman sinking gratefully to the ground—the men’s hat brims hid their faces in shadow. But it was obvious the boy had guessed right—judging them to be Americans from their horses, equipment and style of dress. They had travelled a long way, fast for some of the time. Sweat had dried on the men and animals and the gray dust of the Sierra Madre was pasted to flesh and ingrained into clothing. The horses were big and strong, carrying Western saddles fitted with rifle boots, lariats, canteens and bags. Bulky bedrolls were lashed on behind.
Despite the dust and the sweat and the bristles of more than two days, one of the men managed to convey a dudish quality by the cut of his clothing. He emerged as the leader of the group, speaking softly to the others before he swung down from the saddle and strode towards the Federale sentry. There was a kind of military elegance in his bearing and gait.
The other five looked like saddle-tramps—better equipped than most. Experienced in the ways of their kind because, even over a distance of two hundred feet, all recognized that Edge merited more than a passing glance. The half-breed’s face was shaded, too. So they could study only his build and the strength it suggested. And his easy stance. Then feel strangely uncomfortable as they sensed that they were being studied much more closely by the eyes of the stranger peering out from under his hat brim. Two of the mounted men moved their hands slowly towards the jutting butts of their holstered revolvers.
Then the Federale sentry captured all attention: making a lot of noise as he thudded his feet against the ground and swung his Fruwirth carbine from the shoulder to the aim. He barked an order in Spanish. The sounds of the carbine’s bolt action pushing a shell into the breech seemed disproportionately loud.
The gun was aimed from the hip of the Federale at the belly of the dudish civilian. The civilian stopped and grinned. The Federale remained grave-faced. Every mounted man now fisted the butt of his gun, but none drew.
EDGE: Savage Dawn (Edge series Book 26) Page 1
