EDGE: Massacre Mission

by George G. Gilman

  Edge stoically watched the frenetic departure of the German drummer, and when the sounds of the galloping horses and fast rolling wagon had faded from earshot, could make sense of some of the questions and answers being yelled from house doorway to doorway.

  ‘…foreigner take off on his own?’

  ‘Just saw the one guy up on the seat!’

  ‘Wonder why he’s in such an all-fire rush?’

  ‘Get away from the tall, mean one, maybe!’

  ‘Hush your mouth, Jonas!’

  ‘Afeared of the Injuns is my guess!’

  ‘No skin offen our noses, you folks! Let’s all get back to bed for some more sleep!’

  ‘Damn good idea!’

  ‘Language, Ed!’

  A few more phrases were muttered. Then doors were closed and lamps were doused. Far across the mountain ridges to the west, a coyote howled at the moon. When the echo of this had died away, the high country became silent. And the half breed moved away from the window, intending to bed down again. But something white at the foot of the door caught his eye and he crossed to pick it up. A folded sheet of paper from which several bills fell. He retrieved these - a five and six ones - before he opened the door to read by the moonlight what was written on the paper.

  Herr Edge:

  I had no money when I came to Santa Luiz. This is all 1 made from sales to the women here. You may ask them about this if you doubt me. Maybe you can buy a horse for this. If you cannot, I feel it is enough to discharge my debt for the contribution I made to the accident which befell your previous horse. I leave now so that I may be far away from here when the Apache Indians come. A man travelling as I am cannot travel fast. Auf Wiedersehen.

  Fritz von Scheel.

  ‘Guess it’ll have to do, feller,’ Edge murmured, pushing the bills into a hip pocket then screwing the note up into a ball and tossing it into a corner of the room.

  Following a hunch, he crossed to go into the bedroom and saw that the drummer had been so anxious to leave without hindrance he had chosen to leave his bedroll rather than risk arousing the suspicion of his fellow house guest. He claimed it and added it to his own so that the remainder of the night was spent more comfortably.

  He rose at first light and shaved with the razor from his neck pouch, used to the lack of a mirror and able to scrape off the bristles by touch without cutting into the line of his Mexican-style moustache. A faint trace of wood smoke flowed in through the unglazed windows on the cool morning air.

  A tentative knocking on the door brought him back into’ the parlor just as Amelia Randall entered carrying an empty cup and a fire blackened pot giving off coffee smelling steam. She was attired in the same shapeless dress as yesterday, but her face had a well scrubbed look and her grey hair was neat and sheened from brushing.

  ‘Figured you’d be wantin’ to make an early start, young man,’ she said. ‘Won’t be fixin’ breakfast for my Elmer for awhile yet.’

  ‘Obliged to you,’ he told her as he took the pot and cup and poured himself a coffee. Smiled with his mouth as he said, ‘Figure you and some of the other women will be making real good breakfasts this morning.’

  She shrugged her thin shoulders, then showed a smile of her own. ‘I reckon we will.’ She leaned against a doorpost. ‘Our menfolk will be mad anyways. But there ain’t nothin’ they can do about it now. We got our fancy perfumes and paints and powders and the drummer that sold them to us is. long gone with the money.’

  ‘Hard saved money, I guess?’ He had sipped half the cup of coffee and now he dropped on to his haunches to begin furling his bedroll.

  She sighed. ‘That’s true enough, young man. Don’t suppose there’s any of us Santa Luiz folks had easy lives. And a lot of us got sick workin’ so hard. The clean air up here in the mountains and whatever kind of stuff is in the water springs inside the church is worth every cent we pay for it’

  ‘Who do you pay, ma’am?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not pay like that, young man. Folks that come here from the cities have to pledge all they got to the town. So we can have supplies hauled in. Grub for the table and lumber and suchlike to build new places for new folks who want to come. Pay the Apaches for takin’ care of the heavy buildin’ work. A travelin’ man comes here twice or maybe three times a year sellin’ clothes and shoes. He was by a few weeks ago and it was money we had left over from buyin’ from him that we used for dealin’ with that foreigner.’

  She sighed again as she scanned the plaza with the first shaft of the new day’s sun falling across it. ‘First luxury we’ve had since we got here - not countin’ better health, of course. Foolishness I know and we’ll get bawled out for doin’ what we done. But old as us biddies are, we’re still women. And there’s more to bein’ one of them than cookin’ and cleanin’ house for a man. And when the menfolk get through with yellin’ at us I guess we’ll figure it was worth it. When we sit in front of our lookin’ glasses and get started at tryin’ to paint out the wrinkles and usin’ the fancy perfumes to cover up the stink of old age.’

  Edge had packed his gear and now he finished the cooled coffee in the cup at a swallow and refilled it from the pot. Then he took a dollar from his hip pocket and pushed it through the handle of the pot.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Mrs. Randall asked.

  The half breed gestured with the cup. ‘This and the stew last night, ma’am. Always pay for what I have,’

  ‘There ain’t no need, young man.’

  ‘For me there is.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘Usually do.’

  She nodded. ‘So it suited you for the drummer to take off on his own last night? I saw you standin’ at that window just watchin’ him.’

  ‘He was nothing but a ride to me, ma’am. And if I’m going to have to dodge fired up Apaches I figure the chances are better on foot than aboard his rig.’

  He finished the second cup of coffee and hurled the dregs out through the window.

  ‘It could be there won’t be trouble from the Indians,’ the woman suggested as she took the empty cup from him and picked up the pot with the dollar bill through the handle. ‘That brave you shot. I’m not so sure he’s one of Chief Ahone’s people from the Gallo Rancheria.’

  Edge raised his gear from the floor. ‘How’s that, ma’am?’

  ‘Ain’t none of us folks hereabouts ever laid eyes on him before. And we seen a lot of Apaches from Gallo. Come down here in bunches of five or six at a time and set up camp out back of the church. Nice, quiet, friendly folks - most of them. For Apaches. Carry knives and them tomahawk things, but only to work with.

  ‘That one you killed ... he come ridin’ into Santa Luiz last evenin’ yellin’ at our workers fit to bust. One of our workers, he says this brave has seen two whites headin’ for town. That maybe there’ll be trouble and we oughta be ready.

  ‘Well, we don’t have no guns. Never did have need of them here. So we all goes into the church. To hide and wait to see what’s gonna happen. Never did see the goin’ of the Apache that caused the scare. Until he was layin’ dead there under the bell tower. Seems some of the menfolk tried to get our workers to tell us why the strange Apache tried to shoot somebody. But they just shut up tight as clams.’

  Edge grinned, but his narrowed and glinting eyes remained mirthless. ‘Figure that sounds fishy, ma’am.’

  ‘Amelia!’ the morose faced husband of the woman yelled angrily from three houses along the south side of the plaza. ‘Amelia, where are you, woman? Where’s the coffeepot?’

  She sighed ‘Pity you’re leavin’,’ she said wearily.’

  ‘Elmer always has been somethin’ of a bear with a sore head first thing mornin’s. But pretty soon I reckon you’d be the only good tempered man in Santa Luiz.’

  She stepped out on to the walk and called to her husband that she was on her way. Edge followed her.

  ‘Oh,’ she remembered. ‘Since you ain’t ridin’ the wagon, quickest way to Thunderhead is t
o cut through the hills.’ She pointed south between two of the houses. ‘Ain’t such easy goin’ as on the trail, but a lot shorter for a man on foot or horseback.’

  Edge flicked the underside of his hat brim with a forefinger and answered, ‘Obliged to you, ma’am.’

  And as the woman returned to the house she shared with her husband, he started in the direction she indicated. The sun was fully risen above the eastern ridges now and already beginning to feel hot on a man’s face. After he and the woman were off the plaza it was empty, but several chimneys of the flanking houses were wisping wood smoke as evidence that many of the elderly health seeking citizens of Santa Luiz were up and about. In the tranquility of the early morning, the trickle of running spring water was just discernible from within the mission church.

  But the tall, lean half breed did not have to trudge very far up the sloping ground to the south of the small community before the setting down of each booted foot provided the only sound he could hear. Just a few yards in back of the gardens of the adobe houses, the land was parched and dusty, and a man with a more imaginative streak than Edge might have needed to look over his shoulder to remind himself of the well tended gardens and the shade trees which made Santa Luiz a virtual oasis in the high country desert. But he did not glance back until he was almost to the top of the slope, about a mile distant from the community.

  Thirty minutes had elapsed by then and in that time the sick and crippled inhabitants of the former mission had started the chores which were necessary to hold back the desert from the place: moving in and out of the church with pails and sprinkling cans, to draw water from the spring which they poured on to the thirsty ground wherever any greenery grew. It was hard work for such elderly people, and painful for those with age stiffened or diseased joints. But, Edge reflected as he shifted his impassive gaze to the south again, such tasks filled the oldsters’ time and gave purpose to the lives they sought to prolong by coming here. So there was neither cynicism nor pity for the old people in the half breed’s line of thought. For if there was purpose to their lives, they were better off than he was.

  A man ordered, ‘Halt!’

  Edge complied, bringing his trailing foot forward and freezing to the spot where he stood in the early morning shade of a rock outcrop on the crest of the rise.

  ‘Drop rifle. Then take revolver from holster and also drop.’

  The man giving the orders was twenty feet above him, on the top of the outcrop. He spoke American with a more pronounced accent than Fritz von Scheel. But even before Edge had let go of the Winchester, then taken the Colt from his holster and dropped it to the ground, he knew the man on the rock was as American as they come. For he had recognized the guttural tones of an Indian.

  He tilted his head back to look up at the Apache brave who showed just his head, shoulders and one hand and arm against the bright blueness of the sky - the hand fisted around the butt of a Navy Colt.

  ‘You do good to do as I say, white eyes.’

  The half breed shifted his unemotional gaze from the single brave to a line of ten more who rode their ponies out of a dip some hundred yards to the right on the southern slope.

  ‘You weren’t expected until nightfall,’ he drawled evenly as the riders advanced slowly up the slope, grim faced and each carrying a rifle or carbine, butt resting on a thigh and barrel angled skywards.

  ‘And from the north the white eyes think we will come,’ the Apache sprawled out on his belly at the top of the outcrop said. ‘To do always what is expected is unwise.’ The mounted braves reined in their ponies ten feet away from Edge. ‘But now you will be very wise if you do as I expect and go with my brothers back to the place where the elders live.’

  Edge looked up at the lone brave and then back at those astride the ponies as the rifles and carbines were leveled at him. And rasped:

  ‘Easy. Intend to do what’s expected of me.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  As THE half breed turned and started back down the slope toward Santa Luiz he felt no self anger at allowing the Apaches to get the drop on him. In a situation where a white man was out in the open and had no reason to suspect there were Indians in the immediate area, any brave worthy of the name would always take the advantage of surprise. What he did feel, though, was fear. An ice cold fear that required considerable effort to confine at the pit of his stomach.

  On the high ground to the north of Santa Luiz, he saw other Apaches ride their ponies into sight and start down the decline at the same slow but relentless pace as his walk dictated to the mounted braves at his back.

  It had been a necessarily fast yet a coolly taken decision to submit to the demands of the Apache on the rock. Made on the assumption that the brave was not alone, that an attempt to retaliate would invite certain death. He had been right, but what had he achieved beyond another quota of borrowed time?

  The Indians had not wanted to gun him down out of hand. So what did they have in mind for their prisoner who the day before had killed one of their tribe? These Apaches on the southern hill and those to the north. Who with a single exception were all similarly attired in buckskin pants and waistcoats with single feathers in headbands. Some with bare feet and others wearing moccasins. Just a few favoring decorative necklaces and armbands and all except for the distinctively dressed Indian toting a rifle or a carbine.

  This singular man, who rode at the centre and slightly to the front of the score or so Indians on the northern hill, was obviously the chief. He was dressed like a white man, in a store-bought suit that had once been white, and a black Stetson hat. His riding boots were also black, as was the string tie which was fastened around his throat. But he wore no shirt.

  Long before the two groups of Apaches got close enough for Edge to notice such details about the chiefs clothing, the morning chores in Santa Luiz had come to a premature end. The shouts of alarm as the old timers first spotted the advancing Indians had been followed by a tense silence while wives sought the reassurance of being close to their husbands, couples forming into groups all over the plaza.

  Edge and his escort reached the shade of the aspen grove moments ahead of the Indians from the other direction, and was, aware of a mixture of hostility and sympathy directed toward him from his fellow whites. A few of the old timers nodded, smiled tentatively or forced a bright greeting for those of the braves who had done some work on renovating and expanding the former mission. But there were no responses from the dour faced Apaches.

  It was the half breed who called the halt, when he reached the aspens and sat on one of the rustic benches, setting his bedroll, saddlebag and canteen down beside him. He took out the makings and began to roll a cigarette with practiced ease while he watched the Apache dressed white-style lead his group between the houses on the north side of die plaza.

  There was a flurry of voices and movement out front of the church and a great many guns were raked toward its source. Until the Indians saw and recognized the tall, thin, one-eyed Phil Frazier wrenching free of the hold a woman had on him to stride purposely toward the chief.

  Lloyd DeHart, favoring his left leg, was first to move up alongside Frazier. Then John Newman, finger combing his pointed grey beard. The crimson complexioned Arnie Prescott and the stockily built, totally bald Jake Donabie advanced together to bring the group to five. Amelia Randall had to rasp angry words and glower at her morose faced husband before he would align himself with the men who obviously comprised the ruling body of Santa Luiz.

  ‘Mornin’ to you, Chief Ahone,’ Frazier greeted without enthusiasm, as Edge lit his cigarette and noticed that the brave to whom he had surrendered was not on the plaza. ‘Folks here are real anxious to know you ain’t blamin’ any of us for the killin’ of the brave last evenin’.’

  The Apaches were in an age range from early twenties to the mid forties. Well fed and healthy looking, as if the Gallo Rancheria was better run and supplied than most Their chief was among the oldest, his Indian handsomeness matched by the solidnes
s of his taller than average frame. Had he been grinning the lack of a shirt from his city-style attire might have appeared faintly ridiculous. But the stony expression he wore as he shifted his dark-eyed stare from Frazier to Edge and back again left little room in anyone’s mind for anything except fearful reflection upon the chiefs intentions.

  ‘Your people and mine have always been friends, white eyes,’ Ahone said slowly, as he dismounted smoothly by swinging a leg over the neck of his pony and sliding off the bare back. The brave who had ridden closest to him also got to the ground and held the rope bridles of both pinto animals. ‘It is my wish that this will always be so.’

  ‘It was self-defense, Chief Ahone!’ Frazier came back quickly, and triggered renewed tension among the old timers just as they were enjoying relief at what the Apache had said. ‘Your brave fired first from the bell tower and this man—’

  ‘Joe Winchester was not one of my braves,’ the chief interrupted, turning his back on the group of old timers to face Edge. ‘When Ahone on feet, you also stand,’ he said menacingly.

  Edge nodded and rose from the bench. ‘No sweat. You outnumber me.’ He held up the cigarette. ‘It okay if I smoke?’

  ‘If you got to, white eyes.’ He swung his head to look up at the bell tower, and then back to the side of the aspen grove where the impressions of wheelrims in the dust showed the night parking place of the drummer’s wagon. ‘I was told what happened. That was a fine shot.’

  ‘I was told you wouldn’t be here for a long time. That was some riding.’

  Ahone shook his head. ‘The braves did not have to bring their dead brother all the way to Rancheria, white eyes. It was learned many days ago the Apache killer was in these mountains. So we were camped close by.’

  ‘Apache killer?’ DeHart rasped, and stared hard at the half breed.

  There were similar responses from many of the old timers scattered around the plaza. Ahone’s revelation also drew reactions from the majority of the Apaches, but their anger seemed to have no tangible target.