‘Sir!’ he called sharply as Edge stepped down from the sidewalk behind the stage.
The half-breed halted and eyed the man coldly.
‘If you wish to ask forgiveness for the tragedy you have brought to this town, my church is across the square. Next door to the saloon.’
Edge glanced at the two buildings beyond the live oaks and then showed the priest a mirthless grin. ‘That arrangement’s real handy, feller,’ he allowed. ‘For folks that thirst after righteousness.’
CHAPTER THREE
ALTHOUGH Hedges had intended that he and his men should remain at the monastery for as long as it was safe to do so, he had started preparations to leave from the first day they arrived. This had entailed ordering the monks to make seven sets of top clothes for the Union men, to replace the motley selection of soiled uniforms and tattered civilian garb they had worn when they entered the monastery.
Thus when, at nightfall, the troopers gathered inside the big main gate of the monastery, they were garbed in pants and jackets fashioned from monastic habits and shirts made from bed linen. The clothes were cut to different styles and had been rapidly aged by hard wear to conceal their newness. Hedges, Forrest and Douglas had gun belts and holsters. The others carried their Confederate Colts in the waistbands of their pants. Each man had a Spencer rifle and pockets bulging with shells.
The atmosphere in the monastery during the afternoon had been tense and there had been no off-duty periods for the troopers. While the look-out platform continued to be manned, the other five troopers kept the monks herded into the main chapel. Then, as darkness fell, each intruder by turn went to dress and arm himself.
Now the entire population of the monastery was out in the quadrangle, partly brightly illuminated by the three-quarter moon hanging low in the eastern sky and partly in deep shadow. The monks were closely grouped in front of the cloisters on the far side from the gate. Despite their religious training and faith, the anger they felt towards the soldiers was like a tangible force suspended in the warm night air separating the large and small bodies of men.
‘We just gonna leave them like that?’ Scott whispered. ‘They’ll be out and runnin’ for the nearest Reb camp soon as we’re outta sight.’
‘We oughta lock ’em up someplace,’ Douglas growled.
‘I say blast ’em!’ Seward rasped, and grinned in eager anticipation.
The monks could not hear the exchange except as an incomprehensible murmuring. But as they sensed their fate was being discussed their mood changed from low-keyed anger to silent anxiety.
Forrest drove the troopers into silence with a sweeping, mean look at each of them in turn.
‘Father abbot!’ Hedges called.
‘Yes?’ the aged, senior man answered.
‘Come here!’
‘What for?’ His voice was abruptly tremulous.
‘Sergeant,’ the Captain barked.
Forrest eyed the troopers again and this time he showed his teeth in a humorless grin. ‘Single file and take aim,’ he ordered. His voice rang out between the high, stone walls. He lowered it to a whisper. ‘If more than one of ’em comes at us, blast the whole bunch.’
‘You reckon heaven can handle the sudden rush?’ Rhett asked as the men formed the line and Forrest joined on the end.
‘Answer enough for you?’ Hedges yelled.
The father abbot took only a moment to make up his mind, and had to shrug off grasping hands as he broke from the group of monks. His face against the cowl was white with fear, but his stride was strong and he held his head high. He stopped two feet in front of Hedges and the Captain ignored him. He stepped to the side.
‘We’re taking your head man,’ he announced. Then had to shout louder as a murmur of protest rose from the monks. ‘Save the words for your prayers!’ he roared. ‘He’ll be with us for two hours. Then he’ll get turned loose. He’s an old man and he’ll be bushed, so it’ll take him longer than two hours to get back here.’
‘How do we know you’ll release the father abbot in two hours?’ one of the monks called.
Hedges’ teeth gleamed in the moonlight. ‘You don’t, feller. Maybe we’ll hang on to him for six hours. Only one thing you can be sure of. Any Johnnie Rebs tag us, the old guy enters the promised land. Some things I lie about, others I don’t.’
‘May God have mercy on your soul!’ a monk wailed from the rear of the group.
‘Obliged for the thought,’ Hedges growled, and turned towards his men, who were still lined up in the attitude of an execution squad. ‘Sergeant, open the gate. Corporal, you take care of our insurance.’
‘I like the Captain’s policy,’ Douglas said with a grin, swinging his Spencer towards the father abbot as Forrest began to shoot the bolts on the gate.
‘Just keep that guy well covered,’ Rhett put in, and giggled.
‘Move out,’ Hedges ordered. ‘But not like soldiers. Which ought to be easy for you guys.’
At the order to move, the men had automatically shouldered their rifles and swung into an about-face. But, with the supplementary command, they became a loose-knit, slouching group. Hedges raked his eyes around the inside of the monastery for the final time, looked fleetingly at the monks, then followed his men and slammed the gate closed behind him. Footfalls thudded against the turfed centre of the quadrangle and, as the Union troopers moved off into the moonlight-bathed country, striking north, they sensed many pairs of watching eyes following their progress. But only their elderly prisoner looked back. Just the once, for Douglas enjoyed power when he had it, and he jabbed the muzzle of his rifle hard into the small of the monk’s back.
Soon, with everyone matching the fast pace set by Hedges, the group were up out of the basin in which the monastery was sited. For a few moments they were clearly silhouetted against the cloudless, star-sprinkled night sky. Then they were gone from the view of the frightened-eyed monks.
Hedges kept the pace fast across the gentle, verdant hills of eastern central Virginia. They crossed a broad belt of farmland, but the local population had been decimated by the South’s hunger for fighting men. For every one thriving farmstead they came upon, there were several which had been abandoned - derelict buildings standing amid fields and meadows choked by weeds. Initially, the glow in the night sky that marked the position of Richmond had been slightly ahead of them, far to the west. Then they drew level with it and finally put it behind them.
They had been walking, without seeing anybody, for more than three hours when they emerged from a large stand of timber and saw the stud farm on the river bank. Of the eight men, only the elderly father abbot felt the strain of the trek, and he sank gratefully to the ground when Hedges raised a hand signal to halt. Forrest moved from the rear of the group to the front and stood beside the Captain, adding his experienced gaze to the survey of the terrain ahead.
‘If I’d enjoyed walkin’, I’d have joined the infantry, Captain,’ he muttered with a grin. ‘That looks nice.’
‘Still calling the shots right?’ Hedges asked wryly.
He had been aware of the soft-voiced gripes of the men as he had led them on the cross-country hike. Growls of protest that became more bitter with each farmstead they skirted instead of attacking. Forrest had not silenced the men, but neither had he voiced his own feelings. Now the tough sergeant broadened his grin.
‘I know you, sir,’ he said. ‘Just as well as you know me. We hate each other’s guts but we got this understandin’ about that, ain’t we? The war can’t last forever and we gotta stomp the Rebs into the ground before we settle our own differences.’
‘Unless I steer us wrong before that?’ Hedges replied, still examining the buildings and corrals of the stud farm which began five hundred yards away.
Both men conversed in normal tones, for the enmity between them and the agreement to bring this to the logical, deadly conclusion at a later date was common knowledge among the troopers.
‘Sure thing, Captain. But you ain’t done that
yet. I figured you was as ready as the rest of us to get out of that house of God freaks back there. And I reckoned, like you, that wasn’t one of them farms had enough of the kind of mounts we need. So you’re still callin’ it right, sir.’ He jerked his Spencer towards the stud far. ‘And that, like I said, looks real nice.’
Hedges nodded, then showed Forrest his own brand of mirthless grin. ‘Then let’s go and mess it up a little, Sergeant. Straight on down then, split back and front of the house.’
‘What about the holy man, Captain?’ Douglas asked.
Despite his ability to remain cool in most circumstances, Hedges could feel as exhilarated as his men at the prospect of killing in the heat of battle. This showed now in the narrowing of his glinting eyes and the way the firming up of his mouth-line stretched the skin taut over his high cheekbones. The aged monk recognized the evil intent in the face and altered his posture from a squat to an attitude of prayer.
‘He ain’t done a thing to us,’ Hedges rasped. ‘But we owe him. Stick with him, Corporal. When it’s over down there, turn him loose and come running.’
Disappointment was displayed on Douglas’s face and he stayed his hand as he was about to pump a shell into the breech of the Spencer. Then Hedges and Forrest swung around and set off towards the stud farm. The others followed close behind, beginning to sweat with the anticipation of killing again after such a long lay-off.
‘He don’t look like he has,’ Douglas snarled softly at the father abbot. ‘But that sonofabitchin’ Captain’s got a soft streak in him.’
‘There is good in all men, my son,’ the monk said, unable to conceal the relief he felt.
‘You reckon?’ Douglas said sourly and spat against the trunk of a tree.
The old man stared at the departing soldiers, moving in a crouching run across a stretch of grassland, then clambering over the fence of an empty corral: intent upon slaughter and probably not remembering the cause in the name of which they committed their legal atrocities.
‘Difficult as it is to have such faith in these troubled times, I firmly believe it, my son.’
Douglas checked that the attacking group was far out of earshot of muted sound from the timber. Then he stared malevolently at the back of the father abbot as the old man got painfully up from his kneeling posture.
‘You believe in crap like that, gotta be somethin’ wrong with your head, holy man!’ he snarled, and allowed the Spencer to slide through his hands.
He had the rifle gripped by the barrel when the old man sensed the menace in the quiet wood and began to turn. The Spencer made a slight hissing sound as it arched through the summer night air. The father abbot tried to duck out of its path, but the aged joints were slow to respond to the dictates of his panicked brain. The lower angle of the heavy wooden stock crashed into the back of his head, powered by every angry ounce of the trooper’s restored strength. Just a tiny gasp - little more than an expelled breath - was uttered as the old man toppled to the ground like a felled tree. In the foliage-filtered moonlight, Douglas was able to see the slick, dark-colored stain spreading over the back of the cowl.
He reversed the rifle and used the foresight to draw aside the blood-soaked cowl. The anger drained out of him and a sneer of enjoyment spread across his face as he saw the white of a shattered skull bone gleaming amid the ooze of blood and brain matter.
‘I was right,’ he muttered and the sneer became a grin and then expanded into a giggle. ‘You got a hole in it.’ Then he had to cover his mouth with his hand to mute the uncontrollable laughing fit that gripped him. ‘Now you really are a holy man,’ he gasped.
He leaned against a tree, his stomach painfully knotted by the effort to contain the near-hysterical joy he felt. None of the Union troopers lived by bread alone. Because of the way in which war had twisted their minds and unleashed the latent evil which lurks deep in all men, they were no longer whole unless they were able to satisfy their lust for killing. First Forrest, now Douglas. Two of the seven who needed to kill as well as to eat and drink in order to exist had ended their long fast.
Advancing on the peaceful stud farm, Forrest anticipated his second helping of violence in one day while the others relished their keen anticipation of the animalistic pleasures which they had been denied for so long.
Hedges had detailed his plan as they approached the objective and it was launched with stealthy silence. First they checked that the stud farm was as flourishing as it looked from its well-preserved buildings and neatly kept corrals. They saw four brood mares in one stable, a half dozen colts in another and ten stallions in the third. None of the doors were locked and the stallions raised no noise when Rhett entered their stable. He held up four fingers to indicate to the men at the doorway that there were that many saddles and bridles strung from wall pegs.
As the New Englander began to cut a coil of rope into lengths, the other troopers split into two groups. Forrest, Seward and Scott remained behind the single-storey frame house while Hedges and Bell went around to the front. All the windows were dark, until Hedges used the stock of his Spencer to bang on the paneled wood door. Then, in quick succession, lamps were lit in three parts of the house. Heavy drape curtains filtered the light which was shed outside.
‘Pa, there’s someone at the door!’ a man yelled.
‘I ain’t deaf!’ an older voice responded with a note of sourness.
‘Shall I get the door, Mr. Weller.’ This was another voice. Also a man.
‘I ain’t helpless, either!’
‘Sounds like a grouch,’ Bell rasped, leveling his rifle at the centre of the door.
Hedges’ teeth glinted in the moonlight. ‘And he don’t even know who we are yet.’
Two of the lighted windows were at the back of the house. Forrest went to the rear door and Seward and Scott closed in on a window each. Hedges eyed the lighted window two removed from the front door, on the right. But the drapes remained firmly in place. He could hear a man cursing softly, then a strip of light appeared at the foot of the door. The man’s tread was lighter than his mood.
Seward heard a fourth voice behind the window at which he was poised.
‘Who can it be at this time of night, John?’ Soft, frightened and female.
Seward licked his lips and drew in a deep breath. The lack of opportunity to indulge his psychopathic enjoyment of killing had not been the sole shortcoming of the long stay at the monastery. Like the rest of the men, he had not set eyes on a woman the whole time he was there. A new brand of excitement stirred inside him.
‘How the hell do I know, Marsha?’ the man sharing the room with her growled.
‘I don’t like it, John. Go with father in case—’
‘Okay,’ the man sighed and his feet hit the floor hard.
‘Atta boy,’ Seward murmured.
At the front of the house, Hedges gestured for Bell to go to the window. The excited trooper went, striding long and silently along the cement-floored porch.
‘Who’s there?’ the obvious head of the household called in the familiar disgruntled tone.
Hedges placed him immediately on the other side of the door and he adjusted the aim of the Spencer. ‘Got some news for you, Mr. Weller,’ he answered solemnly.
‘Who is it?’ John wanted to know. ‘Is it them? They’re early!’
‘Shuddup!’ This to John. Then: ‘What you mean?’
‘Bad news. We’re always bad news.’
There was a gasp, probably not from the old man. When he spoke, there was no fear in his voice. ‘I don’t know who you are, mister, but you ought to know I got me a shotgun pointed at the door. Two barrels.’
‘Obliged for the information,’ Hedges replied.
Then he went down into a crouch and squeezed the trigger of the rifle. He aimed from the shoulder, the muzzle no more than six inches from the paneling of the door. The first bullet penetrated the centre of the wood at about waist level. He pumped the action, swung the rifle to the right and fired. Pumped again
and raked it left to blast a third hole in the door. The much louder report of both loads of a double-barreled shotgun being discharged swamped the crack of the third rifle shot. A gaping hole appeared high up in the door. Blackened shards of wood showered the crouching Hedges as the buckshot sprayed through the air.
Windows had been smashed immediately his first shot had signaled the attack. As he powered upright, he glanced to his right and saw Bell ducking in through the window he had shattered with his Spencer stock.
‘John!’ a woman screamed.
Hedges’ hooded eyes peered through the black-edged hole exploded by the shotgun and took in the lamp lit scene in an instant.
‘Marsha!’
An old man in a night shirt was sprawled on his back. He had been hit twice by bullets on a rising trajectory. One had taken him in the shoulder and the other had gone in under his jaw and burrowed a course through the roof of his mouth into his brain. One dead hand was still wrapped around the frame of the shotgun which had exploded its dual load as he fell backwards.
A younger man dressed only in a sheet draped over his shoulders, had whirled and started to run back down the hallway. The height of the hole in the door made a rifle shot awkward and Hedges drew his Colt. The woman in the back room vented a scream of terror.
‘John!’
‘Marsha!’
‘That can go on forever,’ Hedges muttered, drew a bead on the back of the running man and fired.
The slug took him high up, left of centre, and he pitched forward, the blood-stained sheet dropping from him to reveal his nakedness underneath.
Seward risked cutting himself to ribbons. When he heard the signal shot, he took three backward steps, then lunged forward, rifle held crosswise as he protected his face with his forearms. He smashed headfirst through the window and had the luck of the reckless. He sustained just one deep cut on the back of his hand as he hit the carpeted floor and Marsha shrieked her first plea.
He rolled over on to his back, raising the injured hand to his mouth to suck at the spurting blood. Then he sat up and his eyes widened with heightening lust, for in taking the single sheet to cover himself, John had left his wife with nothing to hide her own nudity. She was about thirty, an unpretty brunette, but with a well-developed body that looked like paradise to the long-denied Seward.
EDGE: The Final Shot (Edge series Book 16) Page 5
