Edge grinned at her. ‘Nice I’m a good influence, ma’am.’
She grimaced. ‘Is that what you are? Maybe you are, if it’s only bad men who die whenever you’re around.’
She got that sightless gaze in her eyes again, as she stared out through the tepee entrance. Blue Moon had squatted on the ground and John Elk, looking suitably proud of how he was being rewarded for his capture of Edge, rose from among the watchers and stepped forward.
‘Death’s a lot older than me, ma’am,’ the half-breed said softly. ‘And he carries a bigger blade - up here.’
He rested his hand on his shoulder, then delved under his coat collar and through the hair at the back of his head to draw the razor from its pouch. The woman ignored him but Warren licked his lips in eager anticipation.
‘Time and place for everything, feller,’ Edge told him, folding the blade into the handle and clenching it in his fist as he thrust the hand into his pocket. ‘Just enjoy the show, and maybe pray.’
Warren showed he was insulted, but was unable to tear his attention away from John Elk. Laura made it known she was aware of the exchange.
‘Pray for what, Mr. Edge?’
‘That these Indians are like most Indians.’
‘They are not stupid.’
‘Except when there’s liquor around, ma’am. You just pray they got two bottle thirsts and one bottle heads.’
Edge joined the Warrens then, in watching the scene outside. But nobody watched the young John Elk more closely than the five captives who were aware of their plight.
The castrated brave was tied to a pole at one end of the line, sagging against his bonds. John Elk snarled an order at him. When the command drew no response, he fisted a bunch of the injured brave’s hair and jerked up his head. For a moment, the eyes in the pain-wracked face remained closed. But another snarl from Elk caused them to snap open. Elk took a knife from his weapon belt then and held it high, twisting it slowly so that the polished metal glinted in the red firelight.
The other five prisoners stared straight ahead, over the heads of the seated audience. Shouts of encouragement were yelled at Elk, between swigs from the bottles. The breathing of the men tied to the poles quickened. Sweat stood out on their faces and naked torsos. Pulses beat at the side of their throats.
Elk used his knife on the injured brave. There was no scream. Just some groans of disappointment from the watching Indians. Elk moved to the next prisoner in line and the knife was used again. Then the next and the next. The groans died and the pace of the drinking increased. Low talk began, rising and falling, but the excitement heightening.
‘The savages!’ Dan Warren hissed between clenched teeth.
‘It’s their way, Dan,’ his wife countered, softly and absently. ‘We always knew it.’
The man was staring at the line of prisoners with horror etched deeply into his fleshy face. The woman had the glazed look in her eyes.
Edge switched his attention lazily from the prisoners to the audience and back again. The glinting slits of his eyes and the relaxed set of his mouth line revealed nothing of what he thought about the scene.
‘Mr. Edge?’ Warren asked, unable to tear his gaze away from the evil on display beyond the tepee entrance. ‘Laura? Won’t they listen to … can’t we do somethin’? The chief and some of the others...’
‘No, Dan,’ his wife told him as John Elk returned to stand in front of the castrated brave. ‘We cannot do anything.’
Warren shot a quick glance at Edge.
‘They friends of yours, feller?’ the half-breed asked.
‘No, but...’
‘So look on the bright side. If they were, you’d feel worse about it.’
A roar of approval caused Warren to snap his head around and stare outside again.
John Elk had wrenched up the head of the injured brave again. There was blood on the prisoner’s face, oozed from a long, shallow cut that ran from the corner of his left eye, down his cheek, across his chin and up across the other cheek to the corner of the right eye.
The knife of the rewarded brave slashed twice: and if any sound of agony or terror was vented from the abruptly wide mouth of his victim, it was masked by the roar from the audience. Blood torrented from the face of the castrated brave. For a moment the head was held high, for all to see his agony as the crimson gushed out of the deep wound, which followed precisely the line of the initial cut.
Then John Elk relinquished his grip on his first victim’s hair and the head dropped forward. The vicious wounds were hidden, but the blood continued to flow, curtaining down the chest.
The second prisoner in the line had a shallow cut across his belly, from hip to hip. Aware of his fate, he sucked in his flesh, but the brave who stood before him made allowances for this. The knife swung from left to right, the blade slashing an inch deep furrow. The lips of the wound opened wide and another torrent of blood erupted, to crawl across flesh and drip to the ground.
The audience of Sioux were howling and roaring their approval and encouragement in a continuous barrage of noise now.
The third prisoner was cut open from the base of the throat to the navel. The fourth was attacked at chest level, the wound he received almost a perfect circle, wide around his left nipple. The fifth felt the knife slicing into the flesh of his face, and spurted blood from ear to ear, along a line that took in his mouth - so that the lower halves of his cheeks flapped downwards to display his teeth amid the bubbling red froth.
The final prisoner suffered a slash across the forehead, then was cut open from the right shoulder to left hip.
John Elk had used the knife with great skill, digging in the point deep enough to cause a massive loss of blood without touching any vital organs.
The single word which he roared as he stepped away from the last prisoner in the line was not heard above the massed excitement of his audience. But somebody had been expecting it, and a buckskin bag was tossed at his feet. Broadening the grin of enjoyment he had displayed since the torture began, the young brave re-sheathed his knife and stooped to pick up the bag and open its neck.
‘What else?’ Dan Warren groaned. They’re gonna bleed to death anyway.’
No one heard him.
John Elk, his hands, arms and clothing drenched with the spurting blood of his victims, moved along the line again. And the shrill screams of agony from the throats of the helpless prisoners rose stridently above the noise of the watchers. For the young brave halted in front of each injured Indian, delved a hand into the bag and, with calm deliberation, rubbed into their wounds a fistful of powdered rock salt.
Dan Warren covered his ears as the first brave screamed. He turned away when the second one added his anguish to the sound. He was vomiting a partially digested Sioux meal before the third shriek of agony was added to the cacophony. Then he collapsed into his own mess.
Elk completed his torture and the audience of Sioux was silenced by a raised hand gesture of Chief Blue Moon. The screams continued, less powerfully as the vocal chords of the suffering braves gave in to the strain.
‘He’s warning the rest of them,’ Laura Warren said dully as the chief began to boom out a speech, his words louder than the sounds of intense pain. ‘They will obey him or suffer a similar fate.’
One by one, the braves doomed to die in agony lost the ability to give voice to their suffering. Blue Moon continued to address his warriors, lowering his tone as the competing sounds diminished.
‘Now I guess he’s telling them about the fine opportunity they have to strike a blow for the Indians against the whites,’ Edge muttered.
Laura sighed and turned away, to look sadly at her unconscious husband. ‘Yes. About how the whites are divided and when there is division, the enemy is at its weakest. Poor Dan.’
The spilled contents of Warren’s stomach was beginning to smell. His wife moved to him and struggled to turn him over on to his back. Then started to wipe the mess off his face with the hem of her dress. Edge s
hifted his blanket closer to the tepee entrance, spread it out and lay down on it. He pushed his hat over his face.
Dan Warren returned to awareness. The chief completed his address and applause was thundered at him. Then the drinking began again. There was talk and laughter. Then the drums and chanting. The ground beneath Edge’s blanket trembled with vibration from the feet which thudded the hard-packed mud in a war dance.
The Warrens talked softly. Laura was despondent at the outset. Gradually, her husband’s voice lost its tone of determination and he became as miserable as she was. Edge stared into the darkness of the inside of his hat and fisted his hand loosely around the razor in his coat pocket.
Later, the Warrens became silent. Outside, the sounds of drunken merriment diminished. The prisoners sagged weakly against their bonds. The fire burned low. The cold of the night penetrated the Sioux encampment. The chill air neutralized the stink of death and dying, human waste and sickness, cheap liquor and burned tobacco.
Later still, Edge raised the brim of his hat. On the periphery of his vision, he saw the Warrens huddled together, staring at him. But he concentrated on the figure of John Elk. The young brave, his flesh and clothing crusted with congealed blood, was squatting at the entrance to the tepee, facing inwards. He was holding his Winchester, the hammer cocked.
‘You have not been sleeping,’ the handsome young brave said. ‘Your mind works. Thinking of a way to escape. All this time wasted.’
The hands of the brave tightened their grip on the rifle as Edge swung up into a sitting position, placing his hat back on his head. One handed.
‘Something else I should have been doing, feller?’
‘Regretting that you were not born an Indian, White Eyes.’ He smiled. ‘But then, you would not have needed to try to do what you failed to do. Perhaps it is better if you sleep.’
There was only the crackling of the fire and the movements of the horses in the rope corral to disturb the stillness of the camp now. The wind had dropped.
‘John Elk speaks fine English, doesn’t he?’ Laura Warren said. ‘I taught him.’
‘What I learn, I learn well,’ the young brave boasted.
‘Who taught you to torture?’ Dan Warren snarled softly.
‘My father,’ John Elk answered, smiling.
There was another series of sounds in addition to those from the fire and the horses. The deep breathing and muted snoring of the sleeping braves. Edge knew he had been hearing this for a long time but, once he accepted it, he ignored it. Until he was forced to consider again the possibility that other braves in addition to Elk had been ordered to stay sober. But he dismissed this along with all the other variables of the situation. Time was running out, which meant the time was right. He had no control over any actions or reactions except those he triggered within himself. It had been so ever since the proud young brave got the drop on him.
But even the man called Edge, stripped of so many failings and virtues accepted as a part of being a human being, could not always keep doubts and wishful thoughts from interfering with the cool workings of his mind. He could only do his best to set them aside. And take risks calculated to the extent of his knowledge. In this instance, John Elk had to die. And whatever new dangers this invited was a decision in the hands of fate.
‘He figured it was what you were cut out for?’ Edge asked wryly.
‘My father foresaw great things for his son, White Eyes. Soon all Sioux chiefs will be forced, like Blue Moon, to accept that I am destined to be a great warrior.’
Dan Warren grimaced. His wife looked disappointed.
‘You always said I was a fine pupil, Laura,’ John Elk recalled, still filled with pride.
Edge took his right hand out of his pocket. The folded razor was held along the palm and wrist, kept in place at one end between the two middle fingers. John Elk watched without suspicion as the half-breed cupped both hands in front of his mouth and blew on them.
Warren was still looking at the brave with unconcealed revulsion. But his wife saw Edge’s actions and recalled seeing the razor earlier.
‘That’s right, John,’ she replied casually and sadly. ‘You were fine at your lessons. Many were, but you were always the star pupil. But it seems I did not teach any brave more than the language of the white man.’
‘For the White Eyes, it is a shame you did not realize this before you and your husband came here, Laura.’
Edge used his teeth to half open the razor. Then bent his knees and pushed his elbows into his thighs. The woman did not look at him. She pretended a deep and melancholy interest in what the young brave was saying. John Elk glanced at the half-breed, but saw the movement as simply an attempt to combat the cold of night.
‘Your father before me did not teach you about trust and honor,’ the woman went on, recapturing Elk’s attention.
‘Yes!’ he said, anger rising. To my own people deserving of it.’
The distance was four feet. Edge forced his feet back further, until the heels of his boots were hard against the backs of his thighs.
‘You are not of my people. And those who are dying at my hand deserved the punishment. For they...’
Edge channeled every ounce of his strength to his feet and ankles. He leaned forward slightly: then powered into a forceful lunge.
John Elk turned his head.
Dan Warren gasped.
Laura did not alter her expression.
Edge reached forward with both hands, the right one making a flicking motion to swing the blade fully away from the handle of the razor.
The brave grunted and tracked the rifle on to the target. One of Edge’s knees slammed against the barrel of the Winchester and forced the muzzle to the ground. Then his free hand was curling around the brave’s neck. Terror was inscribed momentarily on the handsome young face. But training and the inbred knowledge of the Sioux came to the fore and his expression became set in hard lines. He was resigned to whatever .the Great Spirits had in store for him.
The half-breed’s right hand drove through the air on a slightly curved line. And the blade sank into the flesh of the Indian’s throat. John Elk’s Adam’s apple bobbed once more. The accompanying sound was a muted gurgle, as expelled breath met flowing blood. His mouth fell open, much wider than his eyes. A crimson froth spilled over his lower lip. His hands held on to the rifle, a nerve spasm away from squeezing the trigger. But his heart stopped and the final response of his nervous system was to make his muscles go limp.
The new, still warm corpse started to fold. But Edge scrambled up on to his haunches and held the sagging body in a semblance of its former sitting posture. His glinting eyes stared out of their narrowed lids, seeking a sign of danger. Menace was latent beyond the dark entrance of every tepee. But no alarm was raised.
‘Holy cow!’ Warren hissed. That was incredible.’
‘The kid said he learned fast,’ the half-breed muttered, allowing the body to fold to the ground. ‘One lesson and he died real good.’
‘I meant...’
‘He knows what you mean, Dan,’ Laura cut in, all traces of her trance-like state missing now. ‘What next, Mr. Edge?’
The razor had come clear of the flesh as the corpse slid into a heap on the ground. Edge wiped the blood from the blade on the back of Elk’s shirt and replaced it in the pouch. Then he jerked the rifle out from under the dead weight.
‘You’ve got a choice, ma’am,’ he replied, moving to the rear of the tepee and going out full length on the dirt. ‘Fighting them here on your own. Or making a try for town where there’ll be help.’
‘You think we can make it back to Democracy, Edge?’ Warren asked.
‘What can we do here?’ his wife answered tensely, moving to follow Edge.
‘Kill the braves one by one and hope none of them scream,’ the half-breed offered as Warren remained seated, shaking his head. ‘Or maybe set light to the wagons and pray the booze keeps everyone asleep until the shells explode.’
He lifted the bottom of the tepee canvas and bellied outside. He was in a squat, having made a survey of the encampment and its surroundings, when Laura Warren slid out into the open. Her husband was only a moment behind her.
‘We’re with you, Edge,’ Dan whispered, glancing fearfully around. ‘On our own, we ain’t done nothin’ right.’
‘Yeah,’ the half-breed growled. ‘And you ought to carry a quarantine flag. It’s catching.’
‘What do...’ Laura started to say.
‘Must do what I do,’ Edge interrupted. There ain’t no sugar to make things easier to swallow. And there sure ain’t no guarantee that it’ll keep what ails us from being fatal.’
‘Okay,’ Dan said.
‘All right,’ Laura augmented.
Edge dropped forward on to his hands and knees and started away from the tepee, heading initially for the cover of the horses in the rope corral. Laura stayed close behind him and Dan brought up the rear. The half-breed spent as much time looking away from the ring of tepees as towards it: aware that boredom, resentment and jealousy might cause the sentries to cast frequent glances back towards the braves who had been allowed to enjoy the revels before the battle to come.
But the three escapers made the relative safety of the corral without an alarm being raised. The Warrens had built up a resistance to sudden death and its aftermath by now. Thus, when they saw the now cleansed corpse of Fay Reeves slumped in the middle of the stream, her eyes staring sightlessly at them as her hair billowed to the tug of the current, they neither showed nor uttered any sign of horror. Just as they could look back at the now dead braves tied to the tepee poles and perhaps think, just as Edge did, only that the Indians were six who were no threat.
The half-breed halted only for a few moments, to glance in every direction. Then he moved out into the icy water, still crawling but using just one hand. The other held the rifle in the dry. The noise of the crossing added little to the constant rippling and bubbling of the water over its uneven rock bed. There was no pause on the far bank. Instead, Edge went out full length and bellied on a parallel course to the water, until he reached the end of the grade with the bluff beyond it.
EDGE: The Day Democracy Died Page 12
