EDGE: Savage Dawn (Edge series Book 26)

by George G. Gilman

  ‘Madre de Dios!’ the tiny Sorrano gasped as he and Banales rushed forward to crouch beside the unconscious priest.

  ‘Either of you two fellers have an objection about coming down to the post?’ Edge asked, back-tracking to stand beside Parker.

  ‘What would it avail us to refuse?’ Banales countered venomously.

  ‘Sympathy,’ Edge replied, his tone strangely gentle. ‘Afterwards.’

  ‘Father Vega?’ the tiny Sorrano posed croakily,

  ‘He doesn’t know it, but I’ve convinced him he’s coming. You want to pick him up?’

  The two elderly men eyed each other, nodded their surrender and lifted the priest by his shoulders and ankles.

  ‘Thought it was only the navy that went in for press-ganging, Captain,’ Parker said as they followed the prisoners back along the alley. ‘And I think they have an age limit on the men they get that way.’

  ‘It’s quality that counts, feller,’ Edge replied as they emerged on to the street.

  ‘Señor!’ a familiar voice squealed, deep shock audible in the single word.

  Jesus Vega was in the doorway of his house, staring in horror at his unconscious father slung between the sweating men.

  ‘You’re running out of admirers fast,’ Parker muttered.

  ‘He’ll be okay, kid,’ the half-breed assured, capturing the wide-eyed gaze of the youngster. ‘Want you to go tell Señorita Montez that.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘Shut up and listen!’ Edge snarled and his tone and bleak expression froze the boy. He moderated his voice. ‘It’s for the best, Jesus. Go get the Señorita and bring her to the post. Just her, you understand?’

  The boy nodded and the motion of his head had a mechanical quality.

  ‘Anyone else comes, I’ll kill your pa. You tell her that.’

  Tears welled up into the big eyes. ‘That is for the best, Señor Edge?’ he squeezed out softly.

  ‘After you’ve delivered the message, that won’t be for me to decide, kid. Go!’

  Jesus hesitated for a moment—perhaps because shock continued to hold him fastened to the spot. Then he lunged out of immobility, into a flat-out sprint that raised dust to veil his slight form.

  ‘Let’s move it,’ Edge ordered.

  ‘Is there no length to which you would not go?’ Cirilo Banales hurled over his shoulder.

  ‘This feller gets things done a foot at a time,’ Edge answered wryly with a glance at the grinning Parker. ‘I’m ready to go further than that.’

  As the group moved through the gateway into the post, a shout of surprise from one of the sentries roused the off-duty men from sleep. They came running from their quarters, rifles and carbines at the ready. And pulled up short at the scene which greeted them. The prisoners gazed out of the cell window, not uttering a sound.

  ‘Been on a recruitin’ drive, Edge?’ Hawkins called sardonically.

  ‘You got it, feller,’ the half-breed responded.

  The grin froze on the Southerner’s face. Elsewhere, shock ebbed and was replaced by eager curiosity.

  Edge had the priest seated on the ground, his back against the wall, beneath the window of the post’s command office. Then ordered Banales and Sorrano to stand either side of the unconscious man.

  Running feet sounded out on the trail as he and Parker made their way back to the post gateway. Isabella, Jesus Vega and a half dozen men skidded to a halt between the blown-open gates. The youngster was merely worried. The woman and men expressed a sweating mixture of fear, anger, hatred and desperation. The men were gripping picks, shovels and sledgehammers: in a manner which negated their use as tools and made them into weapons.

  ‘I told the Señorita only she...’ Jesus began.

  ‘Get lost, kid,’ Edge snapped. ‘You I trust.’

  The dark eyes of the adult Mexicans shifted from the helpless prisoners on the other side of the compound to share their attention between the dudish and peon-style attired Americans flanking the inside of the gateway.

  ‘We demand the release of our people!’ Isabella snarled, anger enhancing her beauty. Her arms were spread wide, to still the buzz of angry talk among the men behind her.

  Edge snapped into a turn from the waist, whipping his rifle down from his shoulder and pumping the action. He squeezed the trigger. Banales and Sorrano leapt aside as the glass in the office window shattered and sprayed across the room. Without their support, the priest toppled out of his seated posture.

  ‘You do what, lady?’ the half-breed rasped between clenched teeth, turning to face the villagers again.

  Parker had covered them with his Winchester the moment Edge began the move. For part of a second, their fear for the lives of the prisoners remained inscribed into their work-weary faces. But then this was replaced by a depthless hatred. Silence lasted for stretched seconds during which everyone was as unmoving as the features forming the valley beyond the post.

  ‘What is it you demand of us?’ Isabella said at length, her voice no louder than a reverent whisper.

  ‘Help.’

  Isabella stared hard at Edge, then threw back her head to put her face to the sky. Her laughter sounded as if it was travelling down a long hollow log. The villagers behind her were suddenly anxious for her—perhaps fearful her mind had cracked. Then the sound was curtailed and when Isabella looked at the half-breed again her eyes gleamed with deep contempt.

  ‘Saint Edge of San Parral is reduced to asking simple Mexican peons for assistance?’ she taunted. ‘I thought I would never live to see the day.’

  Now it was the Federales who were nervous, aware of what had been between the half-breed and the woman and concerned about his response to her vindictive scorn.

  ‘I ain’t asking, lady,’ he replied evenly. ‘I’m telling you what I want.’

  ‘And if we do not comply you will kill our priest, our mayor and Señor Sorrano?’ Isabella said rhetorically, her voice a hushed whisper again.

  ‘Plus you,’ Edge told her, and the texture of his lined face and set of his features appeared suddenly obscenely ugly—in an expression that was the cumulative effect of every brutal experience he had suffered during his harsh life.

  Everyone who looked into his face at that moment knew he meant what he said.

  ‘We will do whatever you ask,’ one of the men behind her promised, and released his shovel. The others dropped their tools.

  ‘To think that I was betrothed to a man who is capable of such evil!’ Isabella hissed. And there was a brand of vicious ugliness masking her loveliness for an instant. She spat, and the globule of saliva splashed on to one of Edge’s boots.

  ‘Know how you feel, lady,’ Edge rasped, his thin lips curling back to show his teeth and his eyes narrowing to the merest slits. ‘Right now, neither of us is in a very engaging mood.’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘SOMEBODY is coming!’

  The warning was shouted by Sergeant Riaz who was on sentry duty at the eastern end of the walkway along the north wall.

  It was close to midnight, at the end of a day when no bell had sounded after the single chime to mark the hour of one o’clock. And there had been no loud noise of any kind since Edge had blasted a warning shot to shatter the window of the post’s command office.

  Father Vega, Sorrano, Banales and Isabella Montez had been confined in the office, guarded by a grinning Tim Parker—who had made it plain he had less scruples about killing the defenseless prisoners than the half-breed.

  The rest of the villagers had the freedom of the post, but were constantly aware that the Americans and the Federales were watching them—as closely as they searched for the first sign of the bandits’ return.

  For a few minutes after they had filed dejectedly into the post, Edge had explained what he required of them. Then, using shells emptied of power, he made them practice loading the Winchester rifles, Fruwirth carbines and Colt and Remington revolvers.

  Julio Melendez was the only citizen of San Parral who cla
imed he would have co-operated without duress. He asked: ‘In the heat of battle, Señor Edge, what is to prevent these people killing those they regard as the greater enemy?’

  ‘Been thinkin’ about that myself!’ Amos Hawkins had drawled. ‘Won’t be blank shells they’ll be loadin’ then, Captain!’

  The half-breed had raked his narrowed eyes over the sea of faces in front of him. And saw the idea had sparked interest and even hope in some minds. Instantly formed plans of rescuing the hostages, capturing the defenders and doing a deal with the bandits of Ortiz Gonzalez.

  ‘In the heat of battle we’ll just have to make sure we’re winning,’ he answered. ‘People like winners better than losers.’

  Weapons and ammunition had then been placed at strategic points around the walls, on the walkways and roof of the building. And men, women and children waited and watched throughout the heat of the afternoon and coolness of evening. A lot of water was drunk, cigarettes and cheroots smoked and tobacco chewed. Nobody ate anything.

  Edge stood sentry duty for a two hour stint and for the remainder of the time sat under the north wall walkway, aware of the tension mounting within the post. He felt nothing, having already expended the self-anger while he sat beneath the ancient oak tree earlier in the day. He had allowed himself to be placed in a position of responsibility, had planned a course of action and was ready to accept the consequences.

  Just as he had done in the war of many years ago. And there were other parallels: his lack of faith in—perhaps even ignorance of—the cause he was fighting for. Plus a low regard for those he commanded. But there was an advantage in this to a man like Edge: a loner who, when his plan exploded into violence, could justifiably ignore his responsibilities to others and fight solely for his own survival.

  Except that there had been no Isabella Montez in the war.

  The shout from Riaz interrupted his train of thought and a swell of anxious talk filled the post as Edge scrambled up the heap of rubble to reach the walkway. The scrape of carbine bolts and repeater lever actions silenced the villagers.

  ‘Just one man!’ Riaz reported. ‘On foot. From the east.’

  Edge had claimed Alfaro’s field glasses and he trained them out across the eastern side of the moon bright valley. The lenses brought the stumbling figure of the fat Al Gibbon into stark close up. The bounty-hunter had lost his hat as well as his horse and the moon showed an expression of depthless terror on the fleshy face as Gibbon’s head moved constantly from side to side, searching for signs of pursuit.

  The half-breed elevated the glasses and swept them to left and right. Gibbon, advancing at a staggering run, was the only thing that moved on the valley floor. An army of bandits could have been concealed in the foothills of the high ground behind him.

  ‘Return of an old friend,’ Edge said to Jack Burton, who had moved along the walkway from his sentry position at the northwest corner of the post. ‘Yours.’

  ‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth, Captain,’ the pale-faced Burton growled, able to recognize the overweight form of Gibbon without need of the field glasses. ‘He might have jelly for a backbone, but he can still fire a gun.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Edge muttered. ‘But who at?’

  Now he scanned the valley in the other three directions, checking that Gibbon was not a diversion. It was still and peaceful to the north, west and south. Amos Hawkins, who was on the roof of the packing station, waved that all was well out across the terrain he was watching.

  ‘Another old trick, Captain?’ Parker yelled from the office.

  ‘It’s Al headin’ back!’ Burton supplied.

  “Well, what do you know about that?’ the Boston dude exclaimed.

  ‘Nothing yet,’ Edge muttered as he moved along the walkway and climbed down the rubble of blasted adobe. ‘But I figure to find out.’

  He waited at the gateway.

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ Al Gibbon shrieked as he neared the east wall of the post. ‘It’s me. I’m a friend!’

  ‘It’s okay, Al,’ Burton called down to him. ‘We recognized the stink of your sweat two miles off.’

  ‘Gee, am I glad to see you, Jack,’ the fat man gasped, then giggled.

  There was still a smile on his face when he appeared at the gateway. The expression froze when he saw Edge.

  ‘Into every life a little rain must fall, feller,’ the half-breed growled as the expression of relief melted to be replaced by familiar fear. The congealed blood had been picked off the razor cuts and the cross-shaped scar showed white through the bristles on the fat man’s fleshy cheek.

  Gibbon tore his gaze away from the lean face of Edge and raked his eyes this way and that over the crowd peopling the compound beyond.

  ‘I parted company with the Federales,’ he blurted out, addressing everyone within earshot. ‘Then my damn horse went lame on me! Had to shoot him!’

  ‘What happened to your rifle?’ Edge interrupted.

  ‘I’m tellin’ you! When he went lame he fell! I was ridin’ him hard! He came down heavy! Bent the barrel of that Winchester like it was made of lead! Burst open my canteen! I didn’t know how far to anywhere ’ceptin’ this place! So I figured I’d come back!’ He eyed the leaning gates and crumbled adobe. ‘Bandits hit you, uh?’

  He looked exhausted and dehydrated, filthy from a long and sweaty trek across dusty terrain.

  ‘They blew it,’ Edge answered. ‘But we figure they’ll be back to try again.’

  Gibbon nodded. ‘Yeah ... well ... I made my try and it wasn’t no good. Guess I have to throw in with you guys after all.’

  ‘We lost Red, Al!’ Burton called down from the wall as Edge stepped aside in a gesture for Gibbon to enter the fort.

  ‘Lose one, gain one,’ the fat man muttered with a nervous giggle as he stepped forward. ‘Shame about Red, but...’

  Edge turned as Gibbon passed him. His body moved slowly. His arms a lot faster—swinging the Winchester up and across. The barrel crashed into the back of the bounty-hunter’s exposed head and sent him sprawling forward. Stunned, but still aware. He grunted at the impact, then howled as he hit the ground. He rolled, then became still as the muzzle of the damaging rifle was pressed hard into the mound of his fleshy belly,

  ‘But yellow’s a man of a different color,’ Edge rasped, swinging a foot to straddle the terrified fat man.

  ‘Edge!’ Parker roared. ‘When it comes to an extra gun hand, I’m color blind!’

  Moments of shocked silence ticked by, stacking up to support the mounting tension.

  ‘Maybe you inherited the luck that left the two men you rode with, feller,’ the half-breed said evenly to the grimacing Gibbon. ‘But it’s about to run out through holes in your belly and ass. If you can’t convince me Gonzalez didn’t send you back here.’

  ‘You’ve got no reason to think...’ Parker started.

  ‘Anything!’ Edge cut in. ‘Up to this feller to fill me in.’

  Gibbon’s mouth flapped open and closed several times the wrong way and trickled down his bristled jaw. ‘What … what can I say?’ he croaked.

  ‘A simple yes or no, feller.’

  ‘And you’ll know if to believe me or not?’ His face was drenched with sweat. The stains on his shirt expanded. The crotch of his pants was wetter.

  ‘Try me. And remember a bullet through the guts is a bad way to die. On account that it takes a long time.’

  Gibbon swallowed hard. Some spittle escaped his mouth and he uttered only sounds of mental agony. Then: ‘Honest to God, Edge, I’d have told you about it!’ he blurted, and the rising tide of angry murmuring against the half-breed’s brutal questioning was abruptly silenced, ‘I swear by all that’s holy...’

  ‘You’ll be pretty holey yourself if you don’t get to the point,’ Edge interrupted evenly.

  ‘They’re comin’ at dawn! Show themselves the way they did last time! Soon as the talk starts, I’m supposed to blow up the armory!’

  Edge eased the rifle muzzle away from t
he excess flesh of his belly and backed off the man. Gibbon folded up into a sitting posture, massaging the area where the Winchester had been aimed.

  ‘Honest, I’d have told you!’ the fat man yelled, snapping his head around to direct his plea at everyone who stared at him.

  ‘And Gonzalez wouldn’t kill you when he got here, Al?’ Parker growled.

  ‘He’d sure as hell have killed me out in the hills, Tim,’ Gibbon countered. ‘I was trapped between two stools like they say.’

  ‘Good enough place for another piece of shit like you!’ Burton called. He swung his Winchester. ‘You want me to make him into a real piece of human waste, Captain?’

  Gibbon hung his head and began to tremble, he had seen by raking his terrified eyes over every face that nobody believed he would have admitted the plot had he not been pressured.

  ‘I could do it real good,’ the woman of Julio Melendez offered, stepping away from her husband’s side. ‘Apache way.’

  The stare she directed towards the figure of despair hunched on the ground in front of Edge spoke tacitly of what the fat man had made her suffer in a room at the rear of the cantina.

  ‘Nice to be wanted, ain’t it, feller?’ the half-breed said wryly.

  ‘I been honest with you, I swear,’ Gibbon croaked. Then covered his mouth with both hands to try to hold back a sob.

  ‘It’s the best policy,’ Edge told him. ‘And like Parker said, men able to use a gun are at a premium.’

  ‘We ain’t gonna cancel him for the lapse, Captain?’ Burton asked, disappointed.

  ‘Guess not, Jack,’ Parker supplied. ‘Reckon he can rest assured on that.’

  ‘To our mutual benefit,’ Edge added.

  Chapter Eleven

  THEY came with the sunrise, riding down the valley from the north in line abreast, the same way as yesterday morning. In the same strength and at the same easy pace. Little dust. Ortiz Gonzalez and his two lieutenants at the centre.