“In my book it’s what makes me so popular,” the half-breed answered. “You want to start making payment on that loan now?”
“How?”
“Tell me what I don’t have to do to keep from getting trussed up and hung out in the rain?”
“Easy,” Gabb answered. “Stay clear of Paradise.”
Edge’s lips curled back to show his teeth in a mirthless grin. “Most people figure I’m headed in the opposite direction.”
Gabb spat on to the ground between his knees and nodded downstream. “The Paradise I’m talkin’ about is for the livin’,” he said dully. “Couple of miles along the valley to the north.”
“If you can call what them God-crazy folks do there livin’,” Mackinlay managed to stutter between his chattering teeth.
“Name of a town,” Gabb went on. “Only town in this neck of the woods.”
Edge shook his head. “Then it ain’t easy, feller. My horse needs shoeing and decent feed. And I need supplies.”
“You asked and I told you,” Gabb growled.
“You did more than visit the store in town,” Edge accused evenly.
Gabb tried to hold the half-breed’s steady, blue-eyed gaze but couldn’t make it. He shook his head and rose from the squat. “Look, we didn’t do nothin’ that would have riled up ordinary folks in an ordinary town,” he said quickly, holding the windblown hair away from his eyes. “I told you to stay away from Paradise and that’s all you gotta do to keep clear of trouble in these parts.”
Edge took more tobacco and a paper from his pocket and used his body as a shield to keep off the rain as he rolled a cigarette. He lit it, aware of Gabb’s malevolent stare. But then the trapper showed an awkward, unpracticed grin as the cigarette was handed to him in long, brown fingers. Then Edge crouched, drew the razor and sliced through the ropes binding Mackinlay.
“Last town I was in, they hanged a man for spitting in the street,” he said conversationally.* (*See—Edge: A Town Called Hate.)
“Sounds like you been to Paradise already, mister,” Gabb replied in the same tone, more at ease now he had got both his requirements filled.
“All we done was talk to a couple of girls,” Mackinlay supplied, his mood improved by the new freedom. But he was still weak and in pain and had to rub his body vigorously before he could stagger to his feet.
Edge slid the razor back into the neck pouch and narrowed his eyes as a slight movement disturbed the natural pattern of falling rain on the periphery of his vision.
“Just talk is all,” Mackinlay continued, losing the stutter with a struggle and talking unnaturally fast. “Passin’ the time of day as you might say. Me and Gabby and this guy Pat O’Rerry we teamed up with couple of weeks ago. Just funnin’ the dames. Then, like from nowhere, these God-crazy guys moved in on us with irons like I ain’t never seen before. Real wild guys. We figured we was goin’ to get blasted right there and then.”
“You mean like now?” the half-breed asked, just loud enough to be heard above the storm. He had not seen a signal pass between the two trappers. But, since they had been partners for so long, it was possible no sign was necessary. It could be that when they were in trouble they acted in unison with an instinctive understanding of what each was required to do. Edge, as Lieutenant, then Captain, Josiah C. Hedges of the Federal Cavalry, had survived a war because of such a rapport developed with the six men who formed the nucleus of his command.
“What?” Mackinlay croaked.
“Like you’ll get blasted now if your buddy moves another inch towards my horse.”
He saw the shock of discovery freeze on Mackinlay’s face. Then he whirled, corkscrewing down into a half-crouch. His right hand moved in a blur, fingers curling and thumb hooked. The Colt came clear of the holster, thumb cocking the hammer and index finger taking first pressure around the trigger.
Gabb was like a carved statue for a split-second. He was on his toes, leaning to one side. His left arm was bent in front of him, the hand in process of taking the cigarette from his lips. The other was stretched to its fullest extent, fingers clawed to grip the steel frame of the Winchester and draw it from the-boot.
The tall trapper caught his breath as the Colt leveled at his heart. When he snapped open his mouth to yell, the wind snatched away the cigarette in a shower of sparks that stung his eyes. Then the Colt raked away from its fatal aim. The single shot was repeated time and time again on a diminishing note, resounding between the rearing rock faces of the gorge. The final echoes were drowned out by the genuine scream and the bouncing imitations. Gabb’s agonized gaze was held for a split-second by the ice-cold gleam in the half-breed’s piercing eyes. Then he looked along the length of his outstretched arm and saw the hole drilled through the palm of his clawed hand. The wind captured the gouting blood and hurled it up the gorge in a fine spray. Then he fisted the hand and folded the arm, bringing the wound to his lips to suck at the blood.
Edge’s crouching form whirled again, and Mackinlay stumbled backwards, away from the menace of the revolver muzzle as it drew a bead on him.
“I didn’t do nothin’, mister!” he yelled in terror.
“Just talk is all,” Edge repeated the man’s words of a few moments ago. “Called creating a diversion. Helping your partner. But I guess that wasn’t the kind of hand he was hoping to get.”
“Please, mister!” Mackinlay begged. “We got nothing. Those crazy people in Paradise took our guns, our horses, our supplies ... we ain’t got nothin’...”
“Quit it!” Gabb snapped, allowing his injured hand to fall from his face as he craned his head forward in a listening attitude.
The moment Mackinlay’s words were cut in mid-sentence, he and Edge heard the new sound, too. Distant at first, but swelling by the moment against the angry noises of the storm: the beat of many hooves as a group of horsemen galloped their mounts into the mouth of the gorge. Abruptly, the smaller trapper’s fear of the leveled Colt was swamped by a greater terror. And the shudder which rocked him from head to toe had nothing to do with the cold and damp.
“I’m leavin’,” he shrieked at Edge, like a challenge for the half-breed to shoot him.
Then he powered into a run—taking the only course open to him to escape the swelling volume of the beating hooves. He raced upstream: on the bank until the sheer walls of the gorge closed in, then plunging into the rushing water.
“I’ve got good cause to remember you, mister!” Gabb snarled, brandishing his bleeding right hand in the air as though it were a weapon. “And I’ll see you pay for this.”
“Guess you’ve got a bloody right,” Edge muttered.
Then Gabb whirled and sprinted in pursuit of his partner. His gait was awkwardly lopsided, with his injured hand held low at his side. The handicap of the wound was even more apparent when he plunged into the waist-deep stream. The moment he stepped off the bank, he was almost knocked off his feet by the power of the white water sweeping through the narrows. But friendship for Gabb transcended Mackinlay’s terror of the approaching horsemen and selfish desire for escape. Braced against the rocky wall, he reached back and clasped the taller man’s outstretched good hand. Then, leaning into the surge of angry water, he plunged forward, dragging Gabb in his wake.
Edge watched them out of sight amid the driving rain and flying spume, expecting at any moment to see them reappear—hurled into view like pieces of inanimate, storm-tossed driftwood. But the only trace of them he saw was a faint pinkish tint in the broiling, bubbling whiteness of the rushing, crashing water.
Perhaps blood from the hole in Gabb’s hand or maybe from a larger, rock-inflicted wound.
Then, as the thunder of hooves filled the gorge, masking all other sounds, the half-breed turned to watch the bunch of a dozen riders rein their snorting, rearing horses to a halt. He looked at them through hooded eyes, his lips set in a quizzical line. The cocked revolver was held loosely at his side, pointing at the sodden ground. Before the final echo of the stamping, skidding,
snorting halt had faded, the horsemen jostled into further movement. Well-schooled animals complied instantly to the demands of heel pressure and the tightening of reins. Within moments, during which not a word was spoken, the men had broken out of the tight-knit group and formed into a line blocking the mouth of the gorge. On both banks and in the rushing water of the stream, the horses stood stock-still. Their riders were as stoically unmoving. Twelve pairs of eyes stared blankly at Edge.
“What has become of the two sinners who were left here to suffer the punishment of the Lord?”
The speaker was directly in front of Edge and ten feet away from him. He was a tall, grey-faced man with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. His skin was scored with deep lines, cut through more than sixty years. His hair was stark white, the utter purity of the lack of color perhaps owing something to the vivid contrast with the solid blackness of his clothing. Stovepipe hat held on against the wind with a chinstrap, bootlace tie, shirt, calf-length frock coat, pants and boots were all as black as a raven’s plumage. Every man was dressed in identical garb. And their weapons were also of a pattern: each carried an ancient .54 Starr muzzleloader with a 36-inch barrel. It was a model familiar to Edge, for one such gun had belonged to his Mexican father and had hung above the mantelshelf in the Iowa farmhouse before the spread was burned to the ground.* (*See—Edge: The Loner.)
Each strangely attired, impassive-faced man held his musket one-handed slanting across the front of his body, leaning against a thrust-forward shoulder. The posture was neutral but suggested a latent threat of aggression.
“The Lord took his time,” Edge replied evenly. “I got here first.”
The white-haired man dropped his steady gaze from Edge’s face to the severed ropes which had been cut from Mackinlay’s body. “You set the sinners free?” he intoned in his oddly resonant voice.
“We made a trade,” Edge told him. “One good turn deserves another.”
“A man who aids a sinner is equally a culprit in the eyes of the Lord.” As the white-haired man spoke, he snapped the ancient Starr to the aim, gripping it two-handed. His fingers looked like skin-hung bone with no flesh between.
The other men were only a moment later in leveling their muskets at the half-breed. But in that sliver of time, Edge had brought up the Colt to draw a bead on the heart of the white-haired man.
“Killing’s a sin, feller,” Edge said. “You’ll pay for the whole bundle. Maybe one other.”
The aged face of the group’s leader lost its blankness as the corner of his mouth took on a nervous twitch. And the confidence had drained from his voice. “We are the Earthly Angels of the town of Paradise,” he croaked. “We are not people of violence. You may pass in peace.”
He lowered the musket, turned in his saddle and thrust it into the boot. The others followed his example.
“Something you ought to know,” Edge said flatly, still pointing the Colt at the white-haired man: not trusting the fast back down.
“Yes, sinner?”
Facing into the wind, Edge spat from the corner of his mouth. The globule of saliva was whipped past the side of his head. “Names, I sometimes let ride. But the biggest mistake a man can make is to point a gun at me and not squeeze the trigger. Because I only make allowances for one mistake.”
He let his arm drop, thumb easing the hammer back to the rest as he slid the Colt into the holster.
“Threats do not frighten the Arch Angel Luke!” a man at the far left of the line called. “Nor any of us. Whatever happens, it is the will of the Lord.”
“Reckon it’s His will I get supplies and feed and shoes for my horse in Paradise?” the half-breed asked.
Luke backed his horse out of the line to leave a gap. He beckoned an invitation for Edge to pass through. Watchful, the half-breed turned the stallion around, then swung into the saddle. But he held the horse to a standstill and shook his head.
“Obliged, Luke,” he said, showing his teeth in a humorless grin. “But I ain’t rushing in to act like a fool with this bunch of angels backing me. You guys take the lead.”
The corners of his thin mouth turned up in secret amusement as the theatrical analogy struck him. And then his expression hardened once more when his memory flipped forward a recollection from the violent past: of an impromptu dramatic performance which led to him and six others being the first Union soldiers to enter the Confederate capital of Richmond.
Luke shrugged his thin shoulders and wheeled his horse, beckoning his men to fall in behind him. “As you wish, sinner.”
“Big of you to see things from my point of view, feller,” Edge called. “Just that I wouldn’t want to die the death—what with all these Starrs around.”
CHAPTER TWO
IT was in the April of 1864 when Captain Josiah C. Hedges surrendered himself and his six Union cavalry troopers to the custody of the Rebels. The time was after midnight and the place was the office of Jefferson Davis, President of the breakaway Confederate states.* (*See—Edge: The Biggest Bounty.)
The Civil War had dragged bloodily on for almost four years and it had seemed like a brilliant idea when, at a Chiefs of Staff meeting in Washington, somebody suggested the assassination of Davis as a means to bring about a speedy end. Whether or not the theory had been brilliant, the assassination attempt had been put into practice. And seven men had slaughtered and connived their way to within a hairs breadth of success. But, because of that narrowest of margins, the seven tasted the bitter opposite of success—rank failure.
Now, on the day that the Rebels recaptured Fort Pillow in Tennessee and General Ulysses S. Grant first mooted his intention to halt prisoner exchanges to reduce Confederate manpower, the seven were escorted into Richmond’s Riverside Prison. They knew nothing of what was happening in the theatres of war far beyond the non-combat zone of the Rebel capital. And even had they been aware of Grant’s decision it would have been of no concern to them. For they had been captured in the Capitol Building while wearing civilian clothing: and were thus regarded as spies rather than soldiers. They had no military rights: and, in addition, the seriousness of their abortive mission called for swift retribution. There had not even been a summary trial—a secretary had filled out the names on the seven execution orders and a grim-faced Jefferson Davis had scrawled his signature on them. The manner of death was specified as hanging and the time set for dawn.
It was two o’clock in the misty morning when the fully-enclosed carriage drawn by a four-horse team swung in through the gates of the prison sited on the northern bank of the James River on the eastern fringe of the city.
“I say we crash out and take our chances,” a voice growled in the pitch blackness of the windowless carriage, just loud enough to be heard above the clatter of slowing hooves and rumble of braking wheels on a cobbled surface.
“I’m with you all the way, Frank.”
“Captain? If anyone goes out fast the Rebs’ll likely blast all of us!”
In the four years since he had first fired a shot in this war, Hedges had been molded from a shy, almost gentle farm boy into a vicious killer. And almost every minute of every day and night in that time he had been in the company of the six men who now shared the prison wagon with him. He didn’t have to see the men, or even know where they were positioned in the cramped confinement to recognize who was speaking.
Sergeant Frank Forrest had made the crash out suggestion. The oldest man in the group, he was a mean-faced, mean-tempered man who had been a bounty hunter in the southwestern territories and Mexico before the war. But he was also a good non-com—when he respected his commanding officer. And to earn the respect of Forrest a man had to prove himself smarter, tougher, meaner and a more cold-blooded killer than he was himself. So far, quick to learn the deadly lessons of a dirty war, the farm boy from Iowa had always come out on top in the run-ins with the professional murderer. Thus, because of this, Hedges had retained his tenuous authority over the whole bunch. For the other five, resigned to their lot of follower
s rather than leaders, had made it plain they would be as happy to take orders from Forrest instead of Hedges if that was the way the breaks went.
In this instance, it was Billy Seward who had voiced his support for the sergeant’s plan. He was a fresh-faced country boy who had come to enjoy war when he discovered within himself an insatiable lust to kill for the pure enjoyment of the act.
Bob Rhett was the inevitable objector: a tall, thin, weakly handsome New Englander from Boston who had proved his cowardice on countless occasions. He was never in favor of any move that was in the least part dangerous. Unless, perhaps, the reward offered an opportunity to indulge his homosexuality.
As the prison wagon came to a halt, the springs creaking and the team snorting, Hedges sensed the other three men awaiting his reaction to the plan. Hal Douglas, possibly the most incompetent corporal in the Union Army, who had been given his chevrons simply because he could read and write. And Roger Bell and John Scott, both troopers. All three of them ideal soldiers to fight this kind of war, whether the action be a full-scale battle like Bull Run, Shiloh, Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge or the behind-the-lines guerilla operations they had been forced to take part in during their escape from Andersonville. * (*See—Edge: Seven Out Of Hell.)
Not so coldly professional as Forrest or as hysterically homicidal as Seward, but nonetheless prepared to kill and to destroy with wanton disregard for everything save their own skins. Because Hedges had himself become detached from the broader issues of the war, he asked nothing more than this from his men who, discounting Rhett and assuming Forrest was prepared to stay in line, had been molded into an almost perfect fighting unit.
The six-man army guard jumped down from the wagon and more footfalls rang against the cobbles as prison guards ran from the surrounding buildings. A heavy gate was slammed closed.
“Well, Captain?” Scott urged.
“I’m fine, trooper,” Hedges replied evenly. “Might stay healthy at least until sun up if a bunch of crazy guys with the shit scared out of them don’t get me killed right now.”
EDGE: Blood Run (Edge series Book 14) Page 2
