The tobacco-chewing Tait was more surly than usual, angered by the loss of the cows he was convinced should have been rounded up.
Zeke was relishing the pride of a swollen ego now that an explosion of violence had snatched him out from under the influence of his father.
The elder Taggart was disenchanted, having discovered that toughness in office-bound business dealings did not necessarily mean that a man had what it took to run his own affairs in the outside world. And in realizing this, he was not comforted by the knowledge that his son could so easily assume command. Rather, he detested this aspect of Zeke’s character which he had previously never known existed.
With the exception of the gravely self-possessed Pancho, the Mexicans veered between grief for their dead compadre and anger with three targets—themselves for allowing their position to come about, the Americans they rode with for inviting the situation, and Matt Saxby for his single-minded purpose which had triggered the chain-reaction of danger and death.
But, as this day ran its grueling course—and many more followed the same pattern of routine work across country where nature was the only enemy—time and the necessity to handle the problems of the present dimmed memories of the past and blunted responses to what had happened in the south.
And only during infrequent respites in the exhausting pace of the forward push toward distant Laramie did the drovers have time to consider the implications of the half-breed’s job with the Big-T. This would be at night when he rested in a shallow sleep under his blankets, one hand fisted around the frame of his Winchester: or at a brief water stop in the daytime when he might be spotted riding far out from the herd—ahead, to the rear or at the sides. A lone figure on a hostile landscape whose sole purpose was to seek danger from a source more selective than the terrain and elements of nature. At such times, when a man was held briefly between sleeping and waking in the night or allowed his bloodshot eyes to wander away from the drinking herd in the day, he might respond to the sight of Edge in one of many ways.
Some resented him because of the extra money he was being paid while not having to do any of the back-breaking, muscle-aching, sweat-chafing work of riding herd on the steers. Others were contemptuous of him—recalling how he handled his personal trouble with Edwards in a way that caused him no harm, yet had failed to deal with the men who started the stampede until after a Big-T hand had died. A few were reminded that the half-breed was a symbol of new violence which had been promised.
But then Tait would order the drive forward again and Edge and the reason for his presence would be forgotten amid the heat and the dust and the flies and the stink of almost five thousand head of longhorns on the move.
The drive was a day east of the Pecos when the half-breed justified Oscar Taggart’s decision to hire him. The early hours were cold and moonless, with a sky that was blanketed with low cloud. There was a half-hearted threat of rain in the chill air, lessening by the minute as he completed a wide circle of the bedded down herd. He was a half mile south of the night camp, leading the gelding among a scattering of boulders at the base of a low bluff, when he smelled tobacco smoke in the damp air.
He came to an instant halt and the horse, familiar with the ways of its owner, was immediately as unmoving as the man. And remained still and silent when the reins were lowered to the ground.
A mumbled word had given Edge a bearing on where the smoker was positioned and he paused only a moment to slide the Winchester from its boot before he stepped away from the horse. Not directly towards the cluster of rocks where the word had sounded, instead in a wide arc to take best advantage of cover.
A bottle clinked against metal and a man cursed. Another spoke placating words which were indistinct.
Edge, his bristled features set in a mild frown that did not even hint at the intensity of his concentration, closed in silently on his objective.
The rock fall which had collapsed the bluff had been a violent one, scattering the sandstone boulders across a broad area of grassland. The two, or perhaps more, men were positioned a hundred and fifty feet from the base of the rugged cliff, at a vantage point which allowed them an uninterrupted view of the herd, the night guards and the drovers who rested between the dying fire and the parked chuck wagon.
As the half-breed stepped between two heaps of boulders and saw the pair of hobbled stallions, his frown faded and he curled back his lips to display an icy smile. The men had not been watching the camp and bed ground for long. Or else they would have seen him riding his circuit and been on their guard against his approach.
The two horses eyed him with brief indifference and returned to cropping at the dew wet grass between the debris of the rock fall Edge trod as lightly as before on the moist, sound-deadening ground. The smell of strong tobacco smoke became more pungent. He heard the gurgle of liquor passing down a man’s throat,
Another man growled. ‘Sight of all that beef’s makin’ me mighty hungry, Ellis.’
‘You been eatin’ dust for three days, Hayes,’ the other answered, and giggled. ‘Same as me, Take a drink to wash it down, why don’t you?’
‘On account of one of us has gotta stay sober to keep Boyd from blowin’ our heads off, goddamnit!’
‘Up Boyd’s asshole!’ Ellis snarled. ‘For givin’ us this crummy job in the first place.’
‘Freeze!’ Edge rasped. ‘Or for you fellers this could be the last place.’
Ellis was in process of snatching a cigar from his teeth and raising a bottle to his pouted lips. Hayes was peering down the long, gentle slope towards the herd. Both were seated cross-legged on the ground, Hayes between two boulders and Ellis at the side so that the glow of his cigar could not be seen from below. They snapped their heads around at the first word spoken by the half-breed. And the shock on their faces became more deeply etched as each additional word was built into the threat.
Hayes went for his holstered gun as he threw himself to the side.
Edge was a dozen feet away, seemingly as solid and incapable of movement as the pile of rocks beside him. The Winchester was canted to his left shoulder and he ignored it in his counter to Hayes’s move. He drew, cocked and fired the Remington six-gun, moving only his right arm and hand. In the confident knowledge that there was no need to turn sideways on and thus present less of a target to the man trying to kill him. For Hayes was experiencing uncontrolled fear—the kind that triggers reckless haste instead of thoughtful speed,
And Hayes died while his Colt muzzle was six feet away from alignment with his kill. Taking the bullet through the centre of his forehead on a downward trajectory that drove it behind his left eye and lodged it like an ugly mole projecting through the flesh of his cheek.
‘You killed him!’ Ellis accused as the Remington was cocked and swung a fraction of an inch to cover him.
‘His choice, feller,’ Edge replied against a distant barrage of fearful shouting from the night camp beside the quiet herd. ‘Figure he was more scared of Boyd Ash than me. How d’you feel about that?’
Ellis was about twenty-five, made old before his time by liquor—his complexion a mottled red and his belly hanging over his gun belt. He shook his head, struggling to complete the sobering up process started by the gunshot and its effect. Then he swallowed hard. ‘My old man always used to say where there’s life there’s hope, mister.’
He suddenly realized the situation looked worse as he sobered. So he hurled away his half-smoked cigar and unbuckled his gun belt one handed while he raised the bottle to his lips and attempted to suck comfort from its neck.
It was quiet again down at the night camp, as the first gray fingers of approaching dawn stretched across the cloud above the eastern horizon. Then, as Ellis got unsteadily to his feet, leaving his gun belt on the ground, two riders began to gallop up towards the scattered rocks spread out from the base of the bluff.
Ellis looked ruefully at the empty bottle of rye, then down at his dead partner and across at Edge.
‘He als
o tell you nobody ever finds the answer to anything in a bottle, feller?’ the half-breed asked.
‘Maybe, mister. I never listened to him much.’ Another gulp of predawn air, ‘I guess you wanna know what Boyd has in mind, uh?’
A nod as the half-breed stepped away from the heap of rocks to close in on the overweight, drink-sodden Ellis.
‘Then you’ll kill me?’
‘No, feller. Then I’ll kill Ash,’
‘What about me?’
‘Only kill you if you don’t tell the truth.’
The unwashed and unshaven face of the drunk crinkled as he considered this. Then: ‘How’ll you know, mister?’
The two riders from the night camp skidded their mounts to a halt in front of the rocks Ellis and Hayes had used for cover.
‘Yet another killing, señor?’ Luis Lacalle rasped through the gaps in his teeth.
‘Him or me,’ Edge answered without looking away from Ellis. ‘If me, then maybe you next.’
Zeke Taggart swung down from his saddle to stand beside the Mexican. But his expression was deadpan in contrast to Lacalle’s grim-faced sourness.
‘Just the two of them?’ he growled.
‘Here,’ the half-breed confirmed.
The prisoner’s fear had expanded since Taggart and the vaquero moved in among the rocks. Both men were bleary-eyed from too much work and not enough sleep. And their weariness sounded in their voices. But they wore guns and in the dirty gray light of a cloudy dawn the anxious Ellis drew only a fleeting impression of them. To him they were just two more armed captors. The American was tall and thin, the Mexican short and broad: of equally unkempt appearance. And Ellis saw only their hardness.
When Zeke halted in front of him, Ellis flinched away. But not far enough to escape the upswing of a folded knee into his crotch.
‘Sonofabitch!’ the pained man groaned. And dropped hard to his knees, both hands clawing at the base of his belly.
Lacalle rasped a curse in his native tongue. Then lunged towards Taggart. But Edge was closer, had merely to swing his right arm and extend it out and up to press the muzzle of the Remington against a pulsing temple. The younger Taggart became immobile, both hands clenched into a single fist he had intended to smash into Ellis’s pain-contorted face.
‘What the frig?’
‘You’re a late developer, Zeke,’ the half-breed muttered. ‘But it ain’t right another feller should have your growing pains.’
Ellis went down on to all fours and scuttled painfully away from in front of where Taggart was held in a rigid stance. But there was no possibility of escape and no opportunity for retaliation. Agony was piled on fear to increase his helplessness.
‘Jesus, you were happy enough to have me kill a man the other day,’ Zeke complained.
‘No, feller. You were happy. I didn’t give a shit one way or the other. Best you go down the hill and help get the cows moving.’
‘What’s the frigging difference with this man?’ Zeke snarled in reply.
‘He didn’t try to kill me, is all.’
Zeke was trying to control the pulse which expanded and contracted the flesh of his temple under the pressure of the Remington muzzle. But he could not. ‘And you wouldn’t dare pull that trigger against me!’ he challenged. There was a note akin to childish triumph in his voice as he swung his head away.
Then he screamed. The sound in perfect unison with the crack of a bullet from the revolver barrel. His flesh was seared black by the exploding powder and blood oozed in a crimson line along a shallow furrow across the side of his head. Just above his right ear.
Shock and pain drained the strength out of him and he collapsed into an untidy heap. But he did not lose consciousness. He raised a hand to the superficial wound and almost choked on an indrawn breath when he saw the blood on his fingertips. When he looked up, it was to see Edge pushing the still smoking gun back into its holster.
Then his gaze was trapped by the hooded eyes of the half-breed: which in the first light of day had never looked so blue or so hard between their slitted lids. Each as thin and dangerous as the honed edge of the razor he carried.
‘Listen, feller,’ the tall, lean, brown-skinned man said, his thin lips hardly moving in front of his clenched teeth. ‘Your Pa’s paying me to keep trouble away from his cows. Barney Tait’s along because he knows the cows and the quickest way to get them to Laramie. Lacalle and his buddies are the best drovers Tait was able to hire. Pancho’s a good cook. Your Pa’s our guarantee that we’re all going to get paid.’
‘Not any more you frigging won’t!’ Zeke snarled and scrambled to his feet. ‘When he hears what you just did to me, he’ll fire you faster than you can blink. After all, I am…’
He was holding his blood-stained fingers to the wound, which was already beginning to dry up.
‘Oh yeah,’ Edge interrupted. ‘I almost forgot about you. But that’s easy done, Zeke. You’re an irritation. An itch. And I just scratched you.’
Chapter Nine
EDGE and his prisoner started out ahead of the herd and widened the gap with every mile they covered during the day. Ellis rode behind the half-breed, his stallion forced to follow the gelding by the lead line which linked the two horses. The line was a length of Ellis’s lariat. Other lengths had been used to lash his feet to the stirrups and his wrists to the saddlehorn.
At midday, Edge shoved pieces of jerked beef into his mouth and held his canteen while he drank. For the rest of the time he ignored him and Ellis quickly learned the futility of complaint. And as the horses carried their silent riders closer to the Pecos so the prisoner’s hatred for his captor grew more intense.
First there had been a degree of gratitude for Edge’s calling a halt to the beating. Then the pain of the first and only blow that was struck. Discomfort at having to be constantly in the saddle with little opportunity to shift his posture. Thirst for the unopened bottle of rye whiskey in his saddlebag. Fear of Boyd Ash who was waiting with at least seven other men, as evil as himself, at the Pecos crossing. Finally the hatred which, as it expanded, served to calm the fear that was liable to swell into a mindless terror.
The half-breed was also experiencing a brand of enmity as he rode across the dusty country under the gray sky, the humidity pasting his clothing to his flesh and sending sweat runnels through the dirt and bristles on his face. But his disaffection was directed inwardly, its basis the new-found knowledge of a facet of his character he had previously been unaware of a flaw in his make-up that was both detestable and dangerous.
This was that he could be affected by an event and yet not be conscious of any change within himself.
It had happened before. Long ago, during the War Between the States when, at the height of the bloodiest battles, he had been gripped by a kind of brutal exhilaration—was driven to slaughter the enemy with the momentum of a temporary but deep rooted madness.
But each episode of this kind had taught him a lesson so that, when he found Jamie’s mutilated body on the Iowa farm, the need to kill—although stronger than it had ever been before—was subject to self-control.
Similarly, when he set out on the long search for the Sioux brave he was certain had taken Beth from their Dakotas homestead, there was a solid purpose for his murderous mission.
Perhaps there had been other occasions during his violence-ridden life when a degree of madness had charted his actions. But since his experiences of the war, he had always been aware of his objectives—however vaguely—when he caused injury or death to his fellow man.
Until Oscar Taggart had offered him this job on the dusty street of the nameless Mexican town across the Rio Grande. And he had accepted for a counterfeit reason.
‘You bastard, Edge!’ Ellis croaked, as his stallion pulled up short behind the abruptly halted gelding.
‘No sweat, feller,’ the half-breed replied evenly. ‘I ain’t so touchy in that area any more.’
The liquor-dissipated man astride the stallion had no way of k
nowing what Edge meant. And had no inclination to find out. For, like the half-breed, his attention was held by the men on the far bank of the Pecos River.
It was late afternoon now, the sky still low and leaden with dark clouds which continued to hold back on their threat of cooling rain. Edge had halted his mount four hundred feet short of the east bank of the shallow, smooth running river: in the insecure cover of a stand of sycamores. Immediately ahead was an expanse of low brush which extended to the water. Then the three hundred feet wide river. On the opposite bank the ground rose more steeply and the vegetation was sparse. But boulders, niches in the slope and rock outcrops provided solid cover.
Leading to and away from each bank there was a broad, trampled strip on which only tufts of yellow grass grew, a rough trail fashioned by the passage of cattle herds which had been driven across the Pecos at this point. A half mile to the south the river cut through a ravine. Northwards it curved from sight around a shoulder of rocky hill on the west bank, perhaps a mile away.
Directly across the river from where Edge and Ellis were halted in the timber beside the cattle trail, eight men were in full sight. Men in their thirties and forties, dressed for riding and fighting. Unshaven and travel-stained. Weary from riding and impatient for fighting. Four of them squatting on the river bank, playing poker with pebbles for their stakes. Four more sitting on the ground with their backs against boulders. One of these chain smoking ready-made cigarettes, another reading a dime novel, two others apparently sleeping. But not sleeping. For, like the rest, this pair cast constant glances out across the rippling, gurgling river. And, on each filthy and bristled face that was swung so frequently towards the east, Edge and Ellis could read the bad-humored eagerness for action that belied the men’s relaxed attitudes.
‘But you use any word louder than a whisper, it won’t be your hand that gets a hole in it.’
EDGE: Death Drive (Edge series Book 27) Page 10
