“I don’t want to shoot no lawman,” she told Edge.
“They die as easy as anybody else,” he said, and dug his elbow into her skinny side. “Now.”
She opened up without aiming, just pushing the gun over the edge of the shelf and firing. Up on the right the second marshal mistook the first few shots for covering fire and came clear of the brush, took three fast paces out into the open towards a cluster of rocks before he saw the flashes coming from the wrong place.
He didn’t live to learn by his error. He fired on the turn, his bullet whining low along the shelf, ricocheting, tugging at Edge’s blanket, spraying rock chippings into his face. Edge fired three times before the marshal had completed his turnabout. The first bullet plowed a deep furrow across his chest, the second took him in the ear and the third went into his back, lodged in his lungs and sent him sprawling in death towards the brush he had so desired in life.
Silence was a heavy weight settling on the gully, pressing against the ears and intensifying the coldness.
“Ned?” the marshal below shouted, the name coated with concern. “You okay, Ned?”
“I’m dead,” Edge whispered, pressing his lips against the woman’s ear. “You tell him that. You say you’re innocent and tell him to hold his fire.”
“I don’t know if …”
Edge dug his teeth into the lobe of her ear and she squealed in pain. “Lady, you do what I tell you, and then you do what he tells you.”
“Ned?”
“Edge killed him,” the woman called, a tremor in her voice so that it barely sounded above a whisper.
“What?”
“The other man’s dead,” she answered, louder now. “They killed each other.”
“A woman?” the marshal said in surprise. “That a woman up there?”
“It’s the way I was born,” she answered. “Did you hear what I said? They’re both dead.”
“I don’t believe you.” A pause. “Not about Edge.”
“Throw down the revolver,” Edge hissed.
“Look, here’s his gun,” she called, and her arm arced. The Remington clattered down the side of the gully, bounced and thudded to the bottom.
“He had a rifle,” the marshal shouted.
Edge picked up the empty Harmonica and thrust it into her hands.
“Here it comes.”
The rifle went the way of the Remington, making more noise. Moments of silence, then:
“Who are you?”
“Name’s Amy Ridgeway. Edge picked me up on the desert. I had supplies and I cooked for him. I didn’t know he was no outlaw, mister. I’d have known that, I wouldn’t have rode with him.”
“Show yourself.”
She shot a scared glance at Edge, small pointed teeth gnawing at her lower lip. “I’m scared,” she whispered. “He might shoot at me.”
“Take your pick,” Edge told her. “The lawman might. I will.”
She drew in her breath, knew he was not making an idle threat. I’m going to stand up, mister.” she called. “I ain’t armed.”
“Make it slow and easy,” the lawman instructed.
The woman pressed herself against the rock face at the back of the shelf and inched her way up, holding her breath. When she was standing erect, seemingly frozen against the rock face with her face a mask of fear in the pale moonlight, Edge inched forwards.
“Move so he can see you,” he whispered.
“I can’t,” she hissed back at him. “I can’t move a muscle.”
“I’ll help you,” he said, swung up the Henry and jabbed the muzzle hard between her legs, felt it sink in.
The woman gave a low moan. Edge grinned wryly. “You just been screwed by Henry,” he said.
“You kill me,” she muttered, stepping forward.
“Yeah,” he said, rolled on to his side and kicked out. His boots hooked around her calves and she stumbled forward, a scream of alarm leaping from her throat as she went off the shelf, smashed her skull on a projection of rock and cartwheeled down to the floor of the gully, the snapping of bones accompanying the dull thud of her body as it completed each turn.
“Have a good trip, Amy,” Edge murmured when the final thud announced her fall had ended.
The silence then was solid enough to cut with a knife. The cold bit deeper and Edge wrapped the blanket around his body more securely, prepared to wait for as long as the marshal deemed safe.
“Edge?”
It wasn’t what Edge wanted to hear.
“Edge, you up there?”
Edge grinned into the darkness. He kept his breathing low and did not move a muscle. There was a vocal sound from below: one word that was inaudible in meaning but said in a tone that meant the marshal had cursed. Silence for long moments, then a slap of hand on horse flesh, a whinney and pounding of hoofs. One of the animals, either the bay or the piebald, galloped away down the gully. Edge didn’t look to see which one. It wasn’t the right sound. Then, after another long pause, came the unmistakable crunch of a human footfall on hard rock. Pause. Another footfall. The marshal was making slow progress out of the cover of the cleft of the rocks. Edge raised his eyebrows in surprise, figured the lawman had taken no more than fifteen minutes to make his move. But Edge remained absolutely immobile, knowing that nervous eyes would be focused upon the shelf, an anxious finger curled around a trigger.
Then the footsteps sounded closer together as the man moved more quickly. Then they stopped and Edge counted to three and shot himself forward on his elbows, angling the Henry down the steep slope. The marshal heard the sounds and came up from his stoop over the woman, face clouding with horror.
“Drop it,” Edge commanded and the man complied, his rifle thudding to the ground.
“You pushed her?”
“She didn’t have a lot to live for. Who put you on to me?”
“Liveryman recognized your picture on the wanted poster,” the marshal answered. “Waitress at the restaurant said you’d headed north. Her boss backed her up. We figured they were lying.”
“Obliged,” Edge said and shot him, cleanly through the heart. The man collapsed on to the woman in an embrace of death.
Edge rose, draped the blanket around himself and started down the slope. He didn’t even glance at the bodies as he crossed to the cleft, discovered it had been the bay the marshal had spooked to try to flush him out. He found his Remington and walked slowly down to where the lawmen’s two horses waited patiently. He selected the big chestnut mare with a new saddle. Each horse carried a canteen, both half full and he tipped one into the other. Then he reloaded both the Remington and the Henry and mounted, urged the animal forward, south again.
Oh beat the drum slowly, and play the fife lowly
Play the dead march as you carry me along.
He tried to finish the song which Amy had sung, but could not recall the final lines, so hummed it to its conclusion.
“Five more including two lawmen,” he said pensively to his inattentive horse. “Guess I must be piling quite a bounty on my head. Be glad when I cross the border.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
HALF a night’s ride ahead of Edge, El Matador and his bandits approached the Mexican village of San Murias in the cold early hours. It was the way of their brutal leader to attack his objectives such a time. For, he reasoned, that at such an hour a raid was never expected, and those who might attempt retaliation were at their most unready. Sleep robbed a man of his defenses and in the few seconds it took him to realize his danger, a bullet or a blade could dispatch him with a simplicity that placed every advantage with the attacker.
Matador and eighteen of his men went into the village on foot, leaving two to attend the horses. There were not more than a dozen buildings in the settlement, most of them rude shacks providing squalid living quarters for the poor peasants who sweated to earn a living from the arid soil to the west. One, a little larger, was a cantina and another, larger still, a storage barn for farm produce. The reason the settle
ment had been built in that particular place was a well that had been bored down in the very center of the square around which the building rose.
Not a light showed as the bandits crept into the square, forming a group around the well. And they made not a sound, their leader indicating with a stab of his finger his plan of campaign. As their turn came, each bandit broke from the group and moved swiftly over to a house until each door was flanked by dark, evil looking figures, rifles at the ready. Finally, Matador was alone in the square’s center and as he stopped to haul up the bucket from the well the bandits leapt in front of the doors and kicked them open, firing at random into the inky blackness beyond.
Cries of alarm and screams of agony echoed the cracks of rifle shots as the bandits crashed into the houses. While, in the center of the square as if in the heat of a peaceful summer’s day, Matador pulled the bucket clear of the well and pressed his face into it, sucking up the icy, clean tasting water. As he drank, his eyes watched over the rim of the bucket and he saw a naked man run from an open doorway, a shot from inside whining over the head of the retreating figure. Without interrupting his drinking, Matador swiveled his right holster and squeezed the trigger of the Colt. The man flung forward his hands and went to the ground, lay unmoving. Matador, his thirst assuaged, dropped the bucket and heard it splash into water far below. Then he spun slowly on his heels, eyes going from one doorway to the next around the square as the surviving occupants of the houses were herded outside. There were men, women and children showing varying degrees of terror. More women than men, most of them young for not all the shots had been wild ones. A few children because some of the bandits retained a streak of sentimentality.
When he had turned full circle, Matador went halfway round again, his eyes fastening upon a tall girl of some sixteen years with long black hair and a beautiful face marred by a red welt on her cheek. He strode arrogantly across to her, found his face came on a level with the breasts which thrust forward under the rough thickness of her long nightgown. She looked down at him with fear-filled eyes. He stepped back a pace, hooked the muzzle of his blunderbuss under the hem of the gown and raised it as high as her stomach. The girl’s legs trembled as the bandit leader examined her body with lustful interest.
“Your name, girl?” he demanded, letting the gown fall back, feasting his eyes upon the still-concealed breasts.
“Maria,” she said hoarsely.
“Pretty, like you. Except for the mark. Who hit you?”
The girl glanced to her left, where her father stood, frustrated anger twisting his handsome face.
“I did,” he blurted out, taking a step forward. “For showing her body to another pig of a man last night.”
Matador raised the blunderbuss, halting the man.
“Who?”
“Filipe Manola.”
“He is dead,” a woman cried from across the square.
“My son. My son Filipe is dead. You have killed him.”
Matador made a face. “It is a pity. I like to kill my rivals myself. Maria is mine.”
As the charge from the blunderbuss cut the girl’s father in half, Maria’s body was suddenly naked with the downward rip of Matador’s fingers. She screamed and it was the signal for an orgy of killing and rape as men and children and old women were blasted into death before the bandits pounced upon the girls, ripping the nightwear from their bodies and driving them to the ground.
Some of the girls screamed and fought vainly against the hysterical lust of the men while others submitted frigidly to the attack. Hands smashed into faces to demand an end to resistance and those bandits who had to wait their turn yelled encouragement at the others who sweated upon their victims, thrusting their lust into unwilling bodies.
One man, incensed by the constant screaming of a twelve-year-old girl drew his revolver and fired it into her open mouth.
From one of the houses emerged a man, his left arm shot away at the shoulder, dragging up a heavy rifle with his good hand. His horror-filled eyes roved the square, fastened upon the spread-legged figure of his daughter as a second raper was about to straddle her. He knew he would only be able to get off one shot and he took aim, praying to heaven for an accurate bullet. It was answered. The shot hit the girl in the side of the head, releasing her from further agony a moment before her father went down in a hail of revolver fire from the furious bandits.
Their sexual lust spent, the bandits were engulfed by another kind of desire. Matador again provided the signal, rising from Maria and whipping out his Colts in a two handed draw, crossing his forearms and drilling a hole down through each of her firm, young breasts. Torres slashed open the throat of his girl just as he reached climax and Miguel sliced off both breasts of another girl with a forward and backward flash of a saber. Other bandits contented themselves with emptying their rifles and revolvers into naked flesh.
The stillness after the carnage was suddenly filled with the heavy, exhausted breathing of the satiated bandits as they surveyed the scene before them. But Matador allowed them only seconds in which to recover.
“Food and tequila,” he shouted. “Then we ride for Hoyos.”
The square burst into movement again as the bandits went on the run back into the hovels that comprised the greater part of the village. There was, no shooting this time because the men found nothing at which to shoot. Instead, the houses exploded with the sound of hurried, careless search as the marauders sought supplies. And soon, as Matador watched from his position in the square’s center, they emerged with the little they had found. Only the four who had chosen to raid the tiny cantina had difficulty in carrying what they had—many bottles of tequila and dark red wine.
From the hayloft in the barn, Luis Aviles looked down upon the looters and their dead victims, his eyes shining with excitement and his lips parted in a smile of relish. The loft was Luis’ home and had been for many years, ever since he had first come to San Murias. It smelled of hay and horse-dung and of Luis himself, for as he grew older he became less fastidious about his personal cleanliness and Luis was very old. As near as he could calculate, he was seventy. He was small and slightly built, with a wizened face burned almost black by the sun. It was a dull face, with small, matt black eyes and an unexpressive mouth, framed by surprisingly thick black hair, fringed over the forehead. A face that surveyed his world of the hayloft and the cantina where he earned a pittance of pesos for sweeping the floor with a constant expression of sourness. Only when his feeble brain recalled the events of the past did his face become animated and he needed a strong cue to set his recollections into motion. The scene below him, as he peered through a knot hole in the front of the barn, was an ideal memory aid for it was a repetition of many such raids in which he had been involved.
He had seen the whole thing, from the stealthy arrival of Matador and his bandits—the forced entry into the houses, the shooting of those villagers who had no sexual attraction for the attackers, the rapes and murder of the girls and now the looting. He had watched every moment and every move, his mind participating via his greedy eyes in the events he knew his body would never again enjoy. His admiration for Matador knew no bounds. For Luis Aviles had ridden with many bandit groups, but never had he seen before an attack carried out with such skill and disregard for human life.
As the horses were brought up and the food and drink packed away there was just one thing which nagged at Luis’ mind. The bandits had done something wrong, or perhaps had neglected something. Luis’ face took on even more creases as he puzzled over the irksome doubt, but as the men in the square swung astride their mounts and prepared to ride out, Luis had to shake his head in perplexity.
Matador, mounted at the head of the column of bandits, suddenly took off his sombrero with a sweeping gesture and bowed in the saddle to three sides of the square, across the untidy litter of dead bodies.
“El Matador thanks the people of San Murias for their hospitality,” he said in sardonic tones.
“Especially t
he ladies,” Miguel put in and the night was suddenly noisy with laughter, to be drowned by the thud of hoofbeats as the horses were heeled into a canter.
Dust rose in clouds as the riders went south, and Luis remained in concealment until the sound had died into the distance and the dust had settled. Then he pulled himself to his feet, his movements slow with age, and went down through a hole in the loft floor, using a ladder to descend to ground level. He opened the barn door just a crack to peer outside. Nothing moved and after he had waited for a full minute, he went out. Excitement shone in his features again as he moved among the bodies. He smiled with satisfaction as he looked into the dead face of the cantina owner who had paid him so cheaply; he kicked the head of the ugly woman who charged him a week’s wages to come into the loft and spread her flaccid body beneath his; he showed a parody of regret as he stooped over the headless body of a young girl and cupped his bony fingers over a breast that was already cold and beginning to set into rigor.
Not until he had finished his exploration, went to sit with his back against the cantina wall and lift to his lips a bottle of tequila that the bandits had dropped, did his mind lock on to the reason for the stab of anxiety he had experienced as the raiders took their leave. He, Luis Aviles, was the only citizen of San Murias left alive. For several moments his body trembled at the realization. But then he spat and his mouth took on a grin.
“El Matador,” he shouted aloud. “I no longer admire you. In the old days we would have made sure nobody was left to tell the tale.”
Then he raised the bottle and drank long and deep, enjoying the warmth of the liquid as it combated the cold of the night. It had been many years since he had been able to drink a whole bottle and now, as he took advantage of his good fortune, the fire inside him burned bright, was not extinguished until it consumed his mind and he toppled sideways into drunken oblivion.
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN Edge rode into San Murias just as the sun of the new day was beginning to reach the full promise of its heat, Luis Aviles was no longer against the cantina wall. Thus, the hooded eyes of the lone rider saw only death in its many forms spread across the square. He looked at the scene impassively, giving his horse free rein to pick her way among the scattered bodies, offered no command until he reached the well, when he called a halt and slid to the ground. The big mare stood obediently as Edge spun slowly on his heels, his eyes fastening momentarily upon each open doorway, moved on when nothing could be seen beyond. Only when he was satisfied that San Murias was a village of the dead, did Edge step up to the well and begin to haul on the rope to bring the water filled bucket to the top. Just as El Matador had drunk only hours before, Edge pushed his face into the bucket and sucked up the cool, refreshing liquid.
Ten Grand Page 5
