“Yellowtown next place we supposed to give show,” the Nepalese imparted, just for something to say.
The tigers were lying each side of the block of gold: content until they picked up the scent of the intruder. Then they bared their yellow fangs and growled with soft menace, evil hatred emanating from their blazing eyes.
“How well trained are the cats?” Edge asked softly.
“You gonna back off?” Harv demanded, impatience giving his voice a tone of anger.
Despite the situation, Singh could smile with genuine pride. “They best trained animals in the whole world, sahib. I wrestle with them. Put my head in their mouths. They eat from my hand. Rear on hind legs. These fine, well-trained tigers, I am telling you. They do most things excepting only talk.”
Edge grimaced at the gleaming eyes and the vicious teeth revealed by the curled back lips. “Always been a dog man myself,” he muttered. “How’d it be if we turned them loose?”
“Oh, goodness gracious, sahib!” Singh exclaimed.
“No way you can get that wagon outta this hole in the ground!” Harv yelled. “What the hell’s the use of waitin’ around in the hot sun for?”
“You must understand, sahib. They are wild beasts. For most of time, I am their master. They obey me like my many children in Nepal. But wild beasts, you cannot always trust them. Oh, dear, dear me, no. And they have had much annoyance the last night and today. I would not like to trust them. I could not be responsible for the actions of the beasts.”
“No sweat, feller,” Edge said. “I’ll take any complaints.”
The door of the cage was secured by a metal pin dropped through four brackets. It made a piercing screech coming clear. Singh gasped, but the warning stuck in his throat. The tigers pricked their ears and cocked their heads to one side at the sound. Edge dropped the securing pin to the wagon bed and eased open the door with the Winchester barrel. As it swung wide, he stepped to the side of the cage, into the nine inches of space between the bars and the sideboard of the wagon. He kept the rifle aimed at the nearest tiger, in case the big cat decided to try a mauling claw through the bars. The sweat of heat and tension trickled down his back: and seemed to turn to ice when the tiger rose lazily up on to its feet. He completely ignored the man, looking at the open doorway with detached interest. Then he yawned and padded forward. He halted on the threshold of the cage, ears pricked and eyes wide to stare out through the flap at the rear of the wagon. The other tiger joined him, decided to throw caution to the wind, and leapt in a powerful spring: clearing the tailgate and brushing the canvas aside. The second animal gave a low growl of agreement with the move and imitated the jump to freedom.
“God Almighty, Harv!” Jesse shrieked. “The bastard’s turned the cats loose.”
“Blast ’em!” Harv snarled.
“My tigers!” Singh screamed, and lunged towards the rear of the wagon.
On the opposite side of the cage, Edge went forward, knocking aside the front flaps of canvas with the Winchester barrel as a fusillade of shots exploded from the ledge. He could see the two men, raised up behind their barricade to aim down into the ravine. He fired and saw the man on the right fall backwards out of sight. The man’s rifle clattered against the rocky barricade. The splash of blood made less sound.
“I’m hit, Harv!” Jesse yelled in alarm. “God Almighty, I’m hit.”
The injured man’s brother stopped firing and ducked out of sight before the half-breed could swing the Winchester to the second target. Edge whirled around and went fast to the rear of the wagon. Singh was crouched at the tailgate, peering anxiously through the flap. Edge crouched over him to look out at the cats. They were prowling casually towards the spot where the source of the stream sprang from the base of one of the ravine’s walls. Their heads moved from side to side, eyes alert to catch dangerous movement. But there was a certain arrogant nonchalance in the animals’ gait.
“They don’t look so wild to me,” the half-breed muttered.
His voice was low, but the tigers heard it. They stopped in their tracks and turned their heads to look menacingly back at the wagon. They growled.
“Please, sahib, I must request you to be most quiet indeed,” the little Nepalese urged, his voice barely audible. “There is no telling what tigers will do.”
One of the animals padded forward again, and stretched his head out towards the clear water bubbling from the rock face. But the other remained immobile, except for a twitching of his nostrils.
“He has scent he knows,” Singh said. “Perhaps he knows it wrong to be free. Will come back into cage if I order.”
“Don’t reckon it’s curry sweat he smells, feller,” Edge replied, lowering his voice to the same level as Singh. “Guess he knows what fresh blood smells like, uh?”
The tiger gave another low growl, and saliva slavered from his gaping mouth. The second cat finished drinking, raised his head, and caught the same scent of Jesse’s spilled blood. Both animals stared beyond the wagon and up at the rocky wall of the ravine’s dead end.
“Oh dear, dear me!” Singh murmured, shaking his head. “You have shot one of men?”
“Reckon so,” Edge replied. “Less he carries a bottle of ketchup around with him.”
“Oh, goodness gracious me. Indeed, my beautiful tigers have scented raw meat. They will be shot.”
The striped cats were on the move again, staying in the shade at the base of the ravine wall. The heat, or caution, kept their pace slow. Padding along, sniffing the air and dripping saliva, they were easy targets.
“No way to speed them up?” Edge asked, his voice a harsh whisper as the tigers drew level with the rear of the wagon, and sent a pair of sneering looks towards it.
“Perhaps there is, my goodness gracious,” Singh said tensely, and drew the mouth organ from his pocket. “I hate British Raj in India, sahib. Oh, most certainly so. Teach my beautiful tigers to hate, too. Especially do we despise the Queen Victoria, whom I ask God most certainly not to bless. My tigers, they are trained not to like British National Anthem, sahib. I play this song, and tigers they get very angry, oh dear, dear me, yes.”
“So play it,” Edge encouraged.
“But there is danger they turn to attack us, sahib.” Singh’s dark-skinned face was a mask of awesome foreboding.
Edge caressed the stock of the Winchester. “We got nothing to lose except a couple of tigers, feller. And they’re going to be steaks and spare ribs anyway if they don’t quit strolling.”
Singh gave a shrug of resignation and raised the harmonica to his mouth. “If necessary to kill, you do it quick, please? Not wish my magnificent beasts to suffer.”
The half-breed eyed the slavering jaws of the prowling tigers. “No sweat, feller,” he promised. “They won’t even get the time to have their teeth on Edge.”
He aimed the rifle as the anxious Singh took a deep breath and expelled it through the mouth organ. The incongruous strains of God Save The Queen floated through the hot air trapped between the walls of the rocky ravine. Nobody stood to attention. The Nepalese leaned against the barred doorway of the cage. Edge inserted his head and the Winchester barrel through the rear flap. Harv peered over the barricade, concern for his brother, fear of the tigers and bewilderment at the strange music constantly rearranging the lines of his stubbled face. The two big cats halted for an instant, jaws gaping wide and flanks quivering. Both looked towards the wagon from where the music came, then snapped their heads around, eyes blazing in the direction from which their twitching nostrils picked up the scent of fresh blood. Then, with twin roars, they agreed to combine an outlet for their rage with the almost as powerful need to satisfy their hunger.
They lunged towards the rock face blocking off the ravine.
“Play it again, Singh!” Edge rasped, swinging around and squeezing hurriedly through the narrow gap to get to the front of wagon.
“Jesus!” Harv yelled, and a shot rang out.
Edge burst his head and shoulders
through the front flap, slamming the rifle barrel across the top of the seat back rest. Harv fired again. But he had lost all interest in the wagon. He was standing erect, Winchester stock tight against his shoulder as he blasted towards the base of cliff. The tigers, incensed into greater anger by the crack of gunfire against the plaintive notes of the hated music, leapt agilely from rock to rock, foothold to foothold.
“You get ’em?” Jesse yelled, his voice high-pitched by terror. “God Almighty, my arm! You get ’em cats, Harv?”
“Shut your friggin’ mouth!” Harv bellowed.
Edge could have killed him, with a heart or a head shot. Instead, he took careful aim on the man’s right hip as Harv tried frantically to draw a bead on the leaping tigers. Red blossomed on Harv’s pants just above the butt of the six-gun jutting from his holster. He screamed and was powered back against the cliff face. The rifle fell from his hands and he twisted into a crumple behind the barricade.
“Oh, you sonofabitching bastard!” he shrieked.
Singh had leapt down from the rear of the wagon without faltering in his playing. Now, as he watched his tigers climb lithely closer to their quarry, his dark eyes widened with excitement. Edge watched the cats, too, coldly enjoying their natural cunning as they leapt from one piece of cover to the next. They stayed wide of the ledge until they were above it. Then they angled back. One of the brothers on the ledge saw a flash of yellow and black striping. A revolver cracked and rock splinters erupted close to the animal.
Singh stopped playing and the silence in the ravine was complete, save for a low, almost pleasant-to-listen-to growling from each tiger. Then, systematically, his eyes narrowed to glinting slits and his mouth set in a thin line, the half-breed emptied the Winchester towards the rock face. He raked the barrel to left and right a few degrees, sending a spray of lead skimming across the top of the barricade. The brothers yelled in alarm as fragments of blasted rocks rained down on them.
“Are my beautiful beasts not magnificent?” Singh cried, jumping up and down as the two tigers crouched above the ledge.
The Winchester’s firing pin stabbed into an empty breech. The tigers growled, the sound of their anger and hunger resounding between the walls of the ravine. Harv and Jesse screamed. The tigers plunged downwards—claws extended and fangs dripping with saliva. A rifle and a revolver exploded. The bullets whined past the leaping forms to streak high towards the cobalt blueness of the sky.
“Reckon I’ll stay a dog man,” the half-breed muttered, continuing to watch the ledge as he climbed out through the flap, then leapt down from the wagon seat.
The rocks which had formed the barricade began to topple and rain down the cliff face. But the sound of their descent was swamped by the awesome venting of animal rage and human agony. As the barricade crumbled, Edge and Singh were able to see more than just the leaping, quivering forms of the tigers. They saw the two men wrestling with the ravenous cats, fixing and then losing ineffectual hand-holds on the striped coats. Their shirts were already slick with flowing blood. Too much to have spurted from bullet wounds.
“You figure you can get them back in cage, feller?” Edge asked, moving towards the foot of the cliff.
“My tigers always most amenable after eating, sahib,” Singh replied. “Or dear, dear me, yes. I always feed them before show.”
One of the men screamed to the point where his voice broke. Something less solid than rock dropped from the ledge and thudded to the ground beside Edge. He looked down coldly at a bitten off arm, oozing blood from the teeth-marked elbow. A Remington revolver was clutched in the hand. Along the barrel was some scratched lettering: Harvey P. Hill.
“Fussy eaters,” he muttered, and glanced upwards. A tiger, jaws dripping blood, stared down at him, then disappeared. There were no more screams and the tigers had moderated their roars to low growls. The struggle was over. The kills had been made. The wet sounds of tearing flesh and the crunch of teeth on bone had lost the quality of urgency. The tigers were feeding.
Edge went up at one side of the cliff, empty Winchester crooked under an arm and his right hand draped over the butt of the holstered Colt. The Nepalese took another route, making soothing music with the harmonica. He was the first to reach a point level with the ledge, for he went closer to where the big cats were feeding. Pride, rather than horror, showed in his eyes at the sight which greeted him. The half-breed climbed higher, and looked down on the ledge from far to the right. His lean features were set in an impassive expression. Harv and Jesse had twice tried to kill him and they had paid the price of failure. The manner of their deaths was unimportant, so long as they died.
Their faces had been clawed to ribbons of crimson flesh. Their bodies and limbs had been torn to pieces. Great bites had been taken out of their chests and stomach, and gory entrails and organs were spread across the ledge. One of the brothers had lost both arms at the shoulder. The other still had an arm, but both his legs had been chewed through to the gleaming bone. Even as Edge and Singh watched, one of the tigers held a body still while he ripped at a leg calf with his fangs. The chunk of meat was torn free and the tiger ate it with relish. Flies swarmed up from old wounds to settle upon the new one.
The two men watched the half-breed silently and the Nepalese playing soft music, as two more were eaten: until the tigers were satiated with warm, raw meat. Then both animals belched, licked the blood from their lips and stood up, stretching their powerful bodies and limbs in contentment.
Singh lowered the harmonica and sighed. “I cannot be responsible that wild animals are not non-violent, sahib,” he called.
Edge spat. “Reckon they got what it takes to do things their own way.”
The tigers purred, undisturbed by the voices of the men.
“They very amenable now, Sahib,” Singh announced with high confidence. “Do things my way. Go back into cage and sleep or perform in show.”
“Seen them acting up enough for one day,” Edge replied evenly, looking down at the clawed heads, mutilated torsos and scattering of bones which were all that remained of Harv and Jesse Hill.
“They did very well indeed, I think, sahib.” The Nepalese nodded his head rapidly. “You see how they attack when I play anthem of Queen Victoria, who I ask God most certainly not to bless? As hated British say, most jolly good show.”
“I saw it,” the half-breed answered. “The Hills died with the sound of music.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
EDGE wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of a hand and then rasped his fingers over the stubble on his jaw. He was still perched on the rock from which he had watched the tigers finishing their meal of human flesh. Singh was down on the ledge now, muttering softly in his native tongue to the animals. The tigers squatted on their haunches, watching their trainer sleepily. The Nepalese trod softly and moved his skinny body smoothly. Not until he had taken a position between the two animals and was stroking the fur at their necks did the half-breed move his hand away from the butt of the revolver. Singh looked up at him and grinned.
“Is this not a more wonderful sight than a block of gold, sahib?”
“Real wild,” the half-breed replied, and dug into his shirt pocket for the makings as he swung his head to glance down into the ravine.
“Git up there!” Walter Peat yelled, and cracked the reins across the backs of the team.
Arabella was up on the seat of the cage wagon beside him. She was aiming a rifle and Edge powered off the rock. His hip cracked painfully against the stock of the Winchester as he smacked into the sharply sloping ground. He cursed as he recalled he had not reloaded the rifle. The girl’s weapon exploded and rock fragments showered from the cliff face above him. The tigers growled. Edge saw the suddenly terrified Singh as the Nepalese jerked his hands away from the animals’ necks.
The half-breed snatched the Colt from his holster. But Singh’s predicament did not concern him. He bellied forward, around the rock on which he had been perched, and peered down at the floor of
the ravine. The mouth organ began to issue mournful music. The tigers purred. Walter Peat was lashing and yelling the team into a tight turn. The Colt bucked in Edge’s hand, but the range was too long for accuracy with a six-gun. Dirt spurted through the dust raised by pumping hooves and spinning wheels.
The couple’s wagon was parked at the angle of rock where the ravine turned towards its dead end. Seeing it, the two horse team standing contentedly in the shade, Edge realized Peat and the girl must have driven up while he and Singh were climbing the rock face. The struggle of men and animals on the ledge had held their attention: and the roars and the screams had covered all other sounds.
Now, as Edge holstered the Colt and fed a shell into the Winchester’s loading gate, it was the raucous noise of the hurtling wagon that filled the ravine. Two more rifle shots cracked as he slammed the stock against his shoulder. The contented horses in the traces of the parked wagon died on their feet. Both collapsed to the side, gushing blood from the expertly placed wounds between their eyes. The half-breed’s single shot ricocheted off a front wheel rim and spun over the backs of the rear pair hauling the cage wagon. Then the team and the wagon were out of sight, protected by the solid cover of the rock wall. The sound of their hurtling progress diminished.
Edge began to reload the rifle and Singh stopped playing the harmonica. He turned to look sadly up at Edge as he stroked the neck fur of the purring tigers.
“Oh dear, dear me, sahib,” the little Nepalese called, shaking his head. “What a calamity it is. The fire eater and the dancing lady are indeed most wicked people.”
“Don’t deserve to live,” the half-breed answered, continuing to feed shells through the loading gate of the Winchester.
Singh became anxious. “My tigers, they are no longer hungry, sahib.”
“They did a good job,” Edge told him. “You reckon you can get them back to the beach?”
EDGE: The Big Gold (Edge series Book 15) Page 9
