"Sheriff Layton's got a strong jail, pa," Allen pointed out.
"Layton's a lazy fool," the boy's father came back. "I wouldn't trust him to keep a gopher in an iron cage. Go and saddle this critter a horse."
"What you goin' to do, Tom?" Margaret asked fearfully.
"Turn him loose is what," came the reply, and the man's steady eyes caught and held the gaze of his wife.
"When Layton gets here you'll tell him Hedges woke up and beat it 'cause he forced you to tell him about Grace goin' to town."
Margaret drew in her breath sharply. "He could die out there."
"So much the better. If he don't he'll either get clear away or get caught. Whatever happens, he won't have no call to think badly of us." He turned his determined eyes towards his son. "Go do like I say, boy. Don't want Layton to catch us in the act."
As Allen left the room, Tom stripped the covers from the naked Edge and ordered his wife to bring the man's clothes, stiff with dried mud. Edge was no longer in the grip of the fever, but his body was exhausted by the fight for life and he remained limp in unconsciousness as he was dressed. When Allen called that a horse was ready, Tom hefted the unresisting form over his shoulder and carried him outside, instructing his wife to bring the Winchester. He heaved Edge across the saddle and forced a foot into one stirrup and went to the other side of the animal to push a wrist through the other one.
"He could easily fall off," Margaret pointed out as she slid the Winchester into the boot.
"That ain't our concern," Tom answered as he checked the security of the slumped form. He nodded his satisfaction and took the reins to lead the horse over to the gate. He opened it, released the reins and slapped the animal on the rump. It hesitated a moment, then broke away at a canter, swinging off the trail towards the north.
"If they catch him, he won't recall anything," Margaret said suddenly.
Doubt etched her husband's features for a few moments, then was gone as he turned to walk back towards the house. "He was delirious," he explained. "Ain't likely a man sick as he is would recall all his actions. Now get supper, Maggie. And tell me what it is you got to tell Layton when he gets here."
The woman and her son went into the house behind Tom and as she prepared the meal she rehearsed her story for the sheriff. Out on the range the horse continued to canter northwards, leaving easy-to-follow tracks in the rain-softened ground. Five miles to the east along the trail the posse led by Sheriff Layton and Deputy West caught up with Grace Hope's buggy and slowed the pace to escort it.
CHAPTER NINE
THERE was a lull in the fighting as summer gave way to fall and fall retreated under the advance of winter. General McClellan raised his army and trained and drilled it into a body of professional soldiers in well organized camps around Washington while the Confederates regrouped after their Bull Run victory and dug in to defend their line.
For Hedges—and many like him who had found war to their taste—it was a period of bone-deep boredom. But at least he could gain relief on the submissive body of the ever-inventive Jeannie Fisher and it was her willingness to act as a receptacle for his frustrations—all of them channeled into a single driving lust for her—that held his killer instinct in check.
Then, early in '62, action flared in western Tennessee. Navy gunboats blasted their way south down the Mississippi River as Brigadier-General Grant led fifteen thousand troops and another fleet of ironclads in the same direction, on an almost parallel course along the Tennessee. On the Mississippi, Fort Pillow fell to the Union advance and Grant took Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. The push south was on and Brigadier-General Buell swung south west from Nashville with twenty-five thousand men.
Hedges' troop of cavalry were among the reinforcements assigned to join Buell's force, and they rode with a will, anxious to avenge the rout of Bull Run. Hedges allowed little time for rest and the hard training program he had put into effect drew dividends in the stamina of the men under his command. They complained, but they kept moving, sweeping across western Virginia, through Kentucky and into Tennessee. The speed of their advance took them south of Buell's columns and, not realizing this, Hedges pressed on, expecting each minute to spot the spectular sight of a massive army on the march. But it was not Buell's brigades he saw, hut Grant's. It was the evening of April 6 and as he rode up to the east bank of the Tennessee River it was to look across to the far side and see the blue-coated Union soldiers falling back under heavy attack from the Confederates.
"God, don't we ever do nothin' but lose?" Seward demanded. "I'm in the wrong army."
"Where are we, sir?" Douglas asked, as the whole troop came to a halt to gaze in shocked amazement across the swirling water of the river.
Hedges dug for his map. "Pittsburg Landing," he muttered.
"Never heard of it," Forrest growled.
"That wasn't where, they was supposed to be," Douglas said. "Was it?"
Hedges shook his head and consulted his map again. "No, Corporal. General Grant was supposed to be camped close to a meeting house called Shiloh Church."
"Guess he was caught praying by the rebs," Forrest said cynically, unbuttoning his holster. "Reckon he needs a hand, Captain?"
"Reckon he'd be obliged," Hedges answered and heeled his horse forward, into the rapidly flowing water of the muddy river.
"Yippppeee!" Seward yelled, plunging in after the captain as the rest of the troop moved forward.
Horses whinnied and spray flew from their struggling hooves as the riders dug in their heels and thwacked at hindquarters, driving them to the far bank, where cannon roared and small arms cracked. Their approach was seen by the. Confederates and some of the rebel artillery was ordered to raise its sights. Great spouts of water began to rise up around the advancing troopers, terrifying the horses into greater efforts.
"Hell!" a man shouted and Hedges glanced to his right and saw a trooper staring down in surprise at the bloody patch where his left arm had been. Another trooper angled over to help his comrade and was smashed from his horse as he took a shell, full in the chest.
"You with Buell?" a lieutenant in one of Grant's divisions demanded as Hedges came clear of the water.
"We missed him," Hedges snapped back. "What the hell happened here?"
"Rebs caught us off-guard," the lieutenant shouted, pressing himself into the ground as another barrage of heavy shells arced overhead and splashed into the river, now clear of troopers. A Union barrage replied, whining across the open countryside towards the rebel line, distinguishable in the gathering darkness by the flashes of exploding powder.
"Many losses, lieutenant?" Scott asked.
"They cut us. to ribbons," came the shouted reply. "Came at us like hungry wolves. I hadn't been here, I wouldn't have believed such slaughter was possible."
From out of the darkness, cutting across the gunfire and pitiful calls of the wounded, a bugle sounded. Every man pinned down under the rebel bombardment turned to look across the river, straining his eyes through the gloom to see what was backing up the brave sound.
"It's Buell!" somebody shouted, the delight brittle in his voice. "It's goddamn beautiful Buell."
"Now we'll show the reb bastards," the lieutenant hissed.
The Union artillery battery waited for the head of Buell's column to splash into the river and then opened up with a murderous covering barrage. Runners spread out from Grant's command post, screaming to be heard above the din. Hedges could see the Union line advancing on both sides of the command post and did not wait to hear what the runners had to say.
"You're gonna get the chance to show them, lieutenant," he said and drew his saber, swinging it around his head and pointing ahead. "Forward!" he yelled and as his horse thundered ahead, infantrymen scrambled from his path, cursing and then bolting after him, finding an outlet for their anger in pumping a hail of bullets towards the rebel line.
All along the Union advance other cavalry units broke from cover in a series of headlong charges, safe from the e
nemy barrage which was still directed at the thousands of men pouring across the river. But for several minutes the rebel line held firm and the advance ran into an almost solid wall of flying bullets and ballshot as the opposing infantry found their range.
Hedges found himself gripped by the same feeling of exhilaration he had experienced at the Bull Run, heightened perhaps by the darkness of night. Horses and men tumbled about him, the sounds of their deaths swamped by the rattle of rifle fire and the deeper, more sporadic crash of artillery. Then the opposing armies clashed in close combat. Hedges saw a rebel soldier loom up out of the ground before him, raising a rifle towards him. A foreleg of the cavalry mount struck the man in the chest; spinning him to the ground. His rifle went off and sent a bullet crashing into the brain of a comrade as a hind leg thudded into the skull of the fallen man.
The rebel artillery abruptly ceased the barrage as an order to retreat was communicated down the line and moments later the Union battery was silent, its officers fearful of shelling their own cavalry and infantry.
Hedges' troop and the other cavalry units had broken through the rebel front line in many places but did not halt their charge as the enemy turned on their heels to flee. A rebel soldier fired his rifle at Forrest and succeeded only in putting a hole through the Union man's hat. Forrest was close enough and riding fast enough to slip a foot from his stirrup and lashed out with a boot at the man's throat. His neck snapped with a dry sound.
Douglas spotted an injured rebel sitting down and crying his pain. He rode in close, reached down and caught hold of the man's hair to drag him screaming across the ground. Bell swung in towards the speeding Douglas and fired his Colt twice, once into each of the rebel's wide eyes.
Seward, his giggling somehow more obscene than the crack of gunfire, had great sport zigzagging among the fleeing soldiers and swinging his rifle down, in skull splitting blows to the backs of their heads.
"Like eggs!" he shrieked in delight. "Just like rotten' eggs."
Scott, riding slower than the rest, confined his killing to those rebels already wounded, using his horse to trample unmercifully on the already broken bodies of sprawled soldiers. Hedges at first shot at anything that moved in front of his galloping horse, and then when he had emptied his rifle and revolver, slashed about him with the saber, feeling an electric thrill course his entire body with each spurt of blood that erupted from around the curved blade.
Sweat was pouring from every part of his body and his mind felt so filled with pleasure he thought it would burst. The sounds of the battle raging about him were diminished by his own personal war and he heard only the swish of metal through the air, the thud of its edge sinking through flesh to find bone, the screams of his victims. He saw only their bulging muscles as they strove to flee from him, the looks of terror as they glanced up at him, the gaping wounds and spurts of blood.
It was Forrest, galloping alongside him and then swerving in to grasp the reins and slow the horse, that wrenched him out of his private world of gore so that he heard a score of bugles sounding their strident notes.
"Recall, Captain!" Forrest roared at him. "They're sounding recall."
The two horses stopped and Hedges looked hard into the face of Forrest, his expression still set in an expression of narrow-eyed, lip-curled hatred. Forrest backed off, licking his dry lips and swallowing hard.
"You were right, Captain," he muttered.
"I'm always right," Hedges said hoarsely. "In what regard!"
"When you said you weren't in the same league."
Forest looked back over his shoulder and Hedges followed the direction of his gaze. Stretched out in a straight line along the course Hedges had ridden was a row of perhaps twenty bodies, each with a horrible, gaping wound even now still pumping blood, into the earth. Hedges grinned and spat as he wheeled his horse.
"Dead right, Forrest," he muttered, and started back to where the Union forces were regrouping.
Forrest grinned his own brand of evil now. "Learned a new lesson, too."
"What was that?"
"Easier to kill them from behind."
Hedges nodded. "Now you're right," he agreed.
That was not the end of the carnage at Shiloh. Throughout the night, as Buell's army continued to pour in with their columns of supplies, the senior officers conferred and planned their strategy. And at first light the joint forces of Grant and Buell moved forward, mounted cavalry, the infantry and the supply wagons and artillery trampling into the ground the remains of the Confederate dead.
"Reckon we'll win this one?" Seward asked.
"I reckon," Forrest answered. "Yeah, Billy. I reckon we'll beat the shit out of them this time."
"Heard they lost one of their generals last night," Douglas put in. "Feller named Johnston."
"Generals is human," Bell pointed out. "Bullets make 'em bleed same as anyone else."
"Sure like to get me a general," Seward muttered. "Sure like to do a general like what we done to Captain Jor…"
Forrest was riding beside Seward, immediately behind Hedges and he took his foot from a stirrup and lashed out with it. The toe of his boot dug painfully into Seward's calf. The boy yelled in pain and swung in the saddle, glaring angrily at the other man. But Forrest's evil expression silenced his retort.
"You kill Jordan?" Hedges asked without turning around.
"Billy's got a big mouth, captain," Forrest answered.
"Then you better make sure he keeps it buttoned," Hedges advised evenly.
"Jordan weren't no loss," Bell commented.
"You know that, and I know it," Hedges came back, still not turning to look at the men riding behind him through the early light of the new day. "Might be some people won't look at it that way."
"Billy won't go shooting off his mouth no more … will you Billy?"
Seward seemed to shrink in size under the withering gaze of Forrest. He opened his mouth to speak, but could raise no sound. He shook his head emphatically.
"And Captain..."
"Yeah, Forrest?"
"Ain't no man goin' to tell it how it really was."
"You threatening me, Forrest?" Hedges reined his horse just enough so that the big, cruel-faced man could draw alongside him.
Forrest's menacing expression could have been carved from solid rock and it did not alter one iota under Hedges' steady scrutiny. "I ain't talking to exercise my tongue," he replied coldly.
Hedges' hand flashed to the back of his neck and whisked out the opened razor, his hand chopping out to rest the blade on Forrest's tunic collar, a fraction of an inch from the flesh of his throat.
"Jesus!" Seward hissed.
Forrest swallowed hard and the swelling of his throat caused the razor to nick his skin. "You still got a tongue, Forrest," Hedges said softly. "You threaten me again and I'll cut it out and stick it up your ass."
"Yeah," Seward exclaimed and giggled. "He talks a lot of crap."
"Where'd you get the razor?" Forrest asked hoarsely.
"Guy I knew had a pa who was a barber," Hedges answered and lowered his arm, then replaced the razor in its neck pouch. "Guy's got no use for it anymore."
The first shot of the second day in the battle of Shiloh cracked through the morning and Forrest dropped back from the head of the column, lashing out another kick at Seward's leg.
"Smart talk me again, punk, and I'll stick your head up your ass."
"Can you men spare some time to fight the Confederacy?" Hedges asked sardonically as more gunfire rang out."
Yeah!" Forrest rapped out angrily. "Let's go finish this war so we can take these damn uniforms off. Then I can settle me a few private scores."
"Hope you can scare the enemy more than you're scaring me," Hedges snapped over his shoulder as he drew his saber and held it high in the air, then pointed it to the front. "Forward!"
Once more Hedges led his troop into the forefront of the battle, streaking into the hail of enemy bullets, taking a terrible toll of human life with gun
and saber. Again, after he had given the command to action, Hedges was overcome by an awesome desire to kill, a lust that cut him off from every aspect of the battle except that in which he was personally engaged.
Around him, as the battle of Shiloh blazed its way into history as the bloodiest conflict yet waged on American soil, and the Confederates turned and fled, Captain Josiah C. Hedges committed legal mass murder with a cold-bloodedness that knew no bounds.
"Leave some for us," Seward yelled as Hedges pumped two shots into the head of a rebel just as the giggling boy was preparing to kill him.
"He wants to win the damn war all on his own," Bell complained as a rebel's head was split asunder by the captain's flashing saber.
"Yeah," Forrest muttered to himself. "That guy's a loner."
Hedges heard none of this as he swept forward, slaughtering every rebel soldier within range of his blazing guns or reach of his slashing saber. He rode on and on, waging his own personal war, a man alone.
*****
THE gunfire of Shiloh faded and then was abruptly magnified and channeled into a single shot that rang out with the utmost clarity then echoed away into the distance. Edge snapped open his eyes and had a blurred view of broken ground rushing along a few feet beneath his face. His body ached as it continued to be buffeted by the headlong gallop of the horse and through his background of pain he could feel a sharper agony at his neck. He was sure he had been hit by a Confederate bullet and was slumped across the back of his still galloping cavalry mount.
Then he recalled a girl. Jeannie? No, not Jeannie. A girl tending a grave. Christ, Jamie's grave. Jamie had still been alive when the carnage of Shiloh took place.
Edge heard another shot; and galloping hooves. He turned his head to look behind the horse over which he was slumped, ignoring the stab of agony from his neck. He had an upside-down view of a group of horsemen streaming after him. He saw the flash of discharged bullets and then heard the cracks of the reports. Only then did he see the riders wore civilian clothes and came to his full senses.
Killer's Breed (Edge series Book 4) Page 13
