Just the man with a bullet in his belly screamed now. His mouth worked but no words were uttered to punctuate the high-pitched wails. His eyes pleaded for mercy and, for an instant, Hedges almost weakened to extend it to the Rebel. But he sensed the six pairs of excited eyes boring into the back of his neck and this drove him on to finish the job. He brandished the razor to distract the man’s attention. Then he launched a powerful kick towards the jaw of the sitting man. The toe of his boot connected with the point of the chin and the head was snapped back with tremendous force. The neck broke with a sharp crack, and it was over.
‘Welcome back to the man we know and love,’ Forrest rasped.
The words opened up Hedges’ ears to the sounds of the battle, which had now moved north towards Five Forks, leaving him and his men behind in a smoke-draped capsule of relative tranquility - if there could be tranquility amid so many blood-spilling corpses. He looked up and raked his hooded eyes over the faces of the squatting men. They all wore grins, with subtle admiration visible behind the wryness.
‘Captain sure gave that guy somethin’ to chew on,’ Seward said, nodding to the man who had been shot in the mouth.
‘And I reckon that one didn’t see things the Captain’s way,’ Scott said, jabbing his rifle towards the Rebel blasted in the eye.
‘Drove that one half out of his head,’ Bell added, indicating the man who had been almost decapitated.
Douglas spat at the dead man with the saber protruding from his belly. ‘Don’t think he appreciated the point you made, sir.’
‘And he had more than a close shave,’ Rhett guffawed, raising a trembling finger towards the Rebel with the cut throat.
Forrest turned his grinning face towards the crumpled body of the soldier with the broken neck. ‘Least he got a kick out of it,’ he growled.
Hedges drew the saber from its fleshy resting place and wiped it and the blade of the razor on a uniform of a dead man before sliding the weapons into their accustomed places. Then he retrieved the Henry and the Remington, and checked that the handgun’s action still worked despite the dent from the bullet.
‘Had your fun?’ he asked evenly when all this was done.
‘Sure Captain,’ Forrest said, extending a hand down into the body-littered trench and hauling Hedges aloft. ‘Nothin’ me and the boys like better than watchin’ an expert at work.’ He licked his lips. ‘We’re glad you still got what it takes.’
Hedges nodded curtly. ‘Glad I had an attentive audience.’
‘As Shakespeare said, sir, all the world’s a stage,’ Rhett offered brightly.
‘Sure,’ Hedges rasped, looking towards Five Forks, where the Union advance was sweeping the Rebels into a disorderly rout. The intervening ground, spread with acrid-smelling, drifting gun smoke, was humped with the unmoving dead and screaming wounded of both armies. ‘Lousy play, ain’t it?’
‘I reckon it’s slayin’ ’em,’ Seward countered with a giggle.
‘We gonna get back into the act, Captain?’ Forrest asked.
‘Guess so,’ Hedges replied, moving off around the trench. ‘I take the lead?’
‘Who else, sir? You’re the one they were all screamin’ for.’
***
EDGE used fifty dollars of his pay as sheriff to buy a horse from the Monksville Livery Stable and then he and Pike were escorted out of town by Gerstenberg and six members of the council. Both men were allowed to keep their weapons because, by tacit agreement, the old-timers forming the escort decided it would be unwise - probably dangerous - to try to disarm them.
It was a slow, cold ride up into the Funeral Mountains and the mayor did not call a halt until the group had put two miles and a high ridge between it and the town. Here, at the centre of a small plateau, he reined his horse and turned in the saddle.
‘If this place suits you men, it suits us,’ he announced, his breath turning to grey vapor. ‘Out of sight of town and none of the folks back there’ll hear anythin’ that goes on up here.’
Edge glanced around, blowing on his hands. ‘Ain’t often I get the choice of where to kill a man,’ he muttered.
Pike eyed him levelly. ‘It’ll do,’ he said.
Gerstenberg nodded. ‘Obliged the way you co-operated with us, young feller,’ he said to Pike. Then he glowered at the half-breed. ‘Can’t bring myself to thank a man like you.’
‘You paid what you owed me,’ Edge told him flatly.
‘Let’s get outta here, Scott,’ the town treasurer urged, wheeling his horse.
Gerstenberg broke his eyes away from the trap of Edge’s impassive stare and thudded in his heels, jerking on the reins. His horse turned to trot back along the tracks left on the ride out and the other members of the council fell in behind him.
Edge and Pike were left, sitting astride their mounts, six feet apart, at the centre of the plateau. The surface for a quarter of a mile in every direction was absolutely flat, dust-layered and completely lacking in any kind of cover. The moon shed a clear, unmoving light on the featureless terrain.
‘Tell you something,’ Edge said when they had both made another survey of their surroundings.
‘What?’
‘Sit here for long, we’ll both be dead. Frozen clear through.’
Pike had donned buck skin gloves during the ride out. He flexed his fingers in them. ‘Without witnesses, you’re likely to plug me in the back,’ he accused.
Edge flicked a glance towards where the senior citizens of Monksville were disappearing over the rim of the plateau to the west. ‘Witnesses wouldn’t make any difference,’ he answered.
Pike stared hard at him, incredulous at first: then contemptuous. ‘I guess it wouldn’t.’ He spat into the dusty ground between them. ‘Okay, we sidle our horses away.’
The half-breed neither voiced nor nodded agreement. And, when Pike began to move his mount to the side, Edge and his newly-purchased horse remained like statues. Anger flared in the lawman’s coal-black eyes and Edge concealed his own feelings behind an impassive mask.
‘Move, you bastard!’ Pike roared.
‘Okay,’ Edge said.
Pike’s hands were still busy with controlling the reins while, his legs augmented the instructions to the horse. His mind was boiling with hot anger. Edge, ice-cold and poised, had only to release his reins, draw, cock and fire the Colt. This was the move he made, the combination blurred into a single, fluid action. Pike had to overcome the surprise of the unexpected and alter his physical responses, both with a brain in a turmoil of rage. Even so, he was fast. His Remington was clear of the holster and cocked as Edge’s Colt was leveled and fired. The bullet crashed into Pike’s wrist and burst clear on the far side after smashing the joint. The Remington dropped to the ground and blood rained down to stain the dust around it.
Pain contorted the lawman’s features. The physical kind, from the searing agony in his wrist, and worse - the mental sort from knowing he had failed to do what was so desperately important to him. He groaned and made the effort to die while still trying to complete his mission. He fumbled awkwardly with his left hand in an attempt to slide out the Martini-Henry. Edge allowed him to draw the rifle half out of the boot. Then he squeezed the Colt’s trigger a second time. Not at the man. The trigger and part of the guard was blasted away from the rifle. Pike grunted and snatched away his hand. The rifle slid back into the boot.
Rage caught fire inside him again, and burned the misery out of his eyes. ‘All right, you wife-murdering half-breed!’ he yelled. ‘Quit playing games! Put one in me!’
‘I didn’t kill her,’ Edge said flatly.
‘You could have saved her!’ Pike challenged.
Edge remained icy cold. ‘Words won’t change how either of us feel, feller. It’s over. Ride.’
Pike gulped. ‘Ride? Which way? You’re letting me go?’
‘Maybe. Or maybe I’ll shoot you in the back. You’re owed a bullet the hard way for using Beth’s name for this lousy stunt.’
‘I
loved—’
‘I told you,’ Edge cut in, eyes narrowing to glinting slits. ‘Words won’t change anything.’
Pike became as cold as Edge and the two men sent matching stares at each other. Then the lawman showed his crooked grin. ‘Next time, Edge,’ he warned, and wheeled his horse. He looked back over his shoulder. ‘And there’ll be a next time. Because you can’t shoot an unarmed man. So you sure as hell can’t shoot a man in the back.’
Then he thudded in his heels and his horse lunged into a gallop. He held the reins in his left hand while his right hung low at his side, leaving a trail of blood splashes. Edge watched him, unmoving for a few moments. Then he holstered the Colt and drew the Winchester from the boot. He pumped the action and thudded the stock into his shoulder. With his cheek against the cold wood, he sighted along the barrel, drawing a perfect bead on the back of the retreating Pike.
But it was the same as when he had been facing the slightly-built lawman. It was crazy, but his actions were influenced by the convictions of the other man. He was responsible for Beth’s death. And, even crazier, if Beth had chosen to marry Pike instead of himself, she would still be alive.
He allowed the Winchester to sag, until it was aimed at the blood-spotted ground. But Pike didn’t know this. Nor could the Kansas lawman be certain Edge would not put a bullet in his back. So, when a six foot wide chasm appeared across the path of his galloping horse, he thudded in his heels and tugged at the reins to urge the animal into a leap.
But the gelding was still suffering from the exhaustion of the long ride to Monksville. The headlong gallop had weakened him still more and the jump demanded his final ounce of stamina. His forelegs came up and stretched out, but his hind legs collapsed with the torment of pulled ligaments as he tried to power forward. With a high-pitched snort of pain, the gelding writhed as he struggled for a footing where there was none. His thrashing forelegs found only thin air and he tipped over the lip of the chasm.
Pike’s scream was louder than the animal’s cry of terror, as he kicked free of the stirrups. But then he knew there was no way back and he clung to the neck of the tumbling horse - with a faint hope at the back of his fear-frozen mind that the fall would be short and the animal would cushion him.
But the drop was over two hundred feet to the rocky floor of the chasm, and Pike smashed down first, with the crushing weight of the horse on top of him. There was no pain. Just an end to terror as his skull caved in, spewing blood and brain matter across the rocks. Then the pulp of his insides burst from split-open skin. Finally, the gelding was rent asunder by the force of the impact, and the gore of the man and the animal became merged.
The position of the bright moon shed light into the depths of the chasm and Edge was the first to look down upon the heap of crushed flesh and shattered bone spread over the rocks. Scott Gerstenberg, who had waited below the rim of the plateau to witness the outcome of the feud between the two men, reached the lip of the chasm five minutes later. Not trusting himself to ride too close to the drop, he dismounted and walked forward. Then he drew back in horror at the moonlit scene he looked upon.
‘What a way to go!’ he rasped. ‘When I saw you pointing that rifle, I was sure you was gonna finish him with a bullet in the back.’
Edge shrugged and spat into the chasm. Then he wheeled his horse away. ‘So did he, I reckon,’ he answered evenly. ‘But sometimes you can’t stop a man jumping to the wrong conclusion.’
EPILOGUE
CAPTAIN Josiah C. Hedges’ war ended on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. His final shot in the War Between The States was fired on the morning of the day when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant. His bullet brought a Rebel sharpshooter tumbling out of tree. It was the last of many shots he had fired after the Battle of Five Forks. For, as part of Sheridan’s victorious army, his troop blazed the trail west along the route of the Southside Railroad - to Burkville, Farmville and then to Appomattox. Resistance was sporadic, but fierce when it occurred.
His final act while a serving officer in the Union army was to strip Hal Douglas of his corporal’s chevrons. It was a private ceremony, with just the two principals, Forrest, Seward, Scott, Bell and Rhett present. Private because, as Hedges told the men, they had fought the war on their own for the most part. It was therefore fitting they should end it so.
Then, after he had distributed the discharge papers to the six ninety-day volunteers who had been soldiers for almost four and a half years, he shook hands with each of the men. And, in the genial atmosphere which surrounded all seven as they acknowledged their new-found freedom, old quarrels and animosities seemed forgotten. Even Douglas’ resentment at losing his ranking was swamped by his joy at being a civilian again.
Not until the six were mounted and on the point on riding out of camp did Forrest hint that the past might have an effect on the future.
‘Maybe we’ll be seein’ you, Captain,’ he said with the familiar evil smile on his mean face. ‘Or maybe we won’t.’
‘Be your choice, Forrest,’ Hedges replied.
Then the six raised their hands in farewell, wheeled their horses and heeled them into a fast gallop. Hedges watched their dust cloud until it faded from sight, then sighed.
‘I’ll be looking for you,’ he muttered. ‘But I hope I never see you.’
He was soon to change his mind.
***
JAMIE Hedges counted six riders and there should have been only one. But Joe was surely among them and so he didn’t worry for he would willingly shout aloud his happiness to the whole re-united USA if that was the way it had to be. His brother was coming back home after more than five years away at the war and Jamie did not care whether five men or five million were there to witness his jubilation at the event *
* This is the opening paragraph of the first book in this series - Edge: The Loner.
DON’T MISS THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE
OF
GEORGE G. GILMAN’S
BEST SELLING SERIES ABOUT THE MAN KNOWN AS…
EDGE
COMING SOON!
Other titles in the EDGE series from Lobo Publications
#1 The Loner
#2 Ten Grand
#3 Apache Death
#4 Killer’s Breed
#5 Blood On Silver
#6 The Blue, The Grey And The Red
#7 California Kill
#8 Seven Out Of Hell
#9 Bloody Summer
#10 Vengeance Is Black
#11 Sioux Uprising
#12 The Biggest Bounty
#13 A Town Called Hate
#14 Blood Run
#15 The Big Gold
#16 The Final Shot
And More to Come…
EDGE: The Final Shot (Edge series Book 16) Page 13
