EDGE: Blood Run (Edge series Book 14)

by George G. Gilman

  Another shell whistled away from Rhett’s gun and the New Englander uttered a shrill shriek of delight as he scored a direct hit on the head of a milk cow grazing peacefully at the lush grass of a waterside meadow. The animal’s dead legs supported the headless body for a full second before collapsing.

  “Tell dead-eyed dick cows are neutral in this war!” Hedges yelled as Scott and Seward got tentatively to their feet, peering around them for sign of a fresh attack.

  Scott spat off the deck into the river. “Bob reckons all women are cows, sir,” he drawled, his voice loud in the relative peace as the hand-to-hand fighting in the compound came to an end.

  “Maybe sinking that barge sent him loony,” Seward suggested with a grin. “He ain’t never hit nothin’ with any kind of gun before.”

  “He sure enough scored a hit, though,” Scott announced, peering back upriver to where the barge had half-filled with water through the shell hole. “Must have known it was a guy like Bob.” The list of the barge increased abruptly and then, with a hiss of escaping air and a gurgle of inrushing water, she turned turtle. “Hey, will you look at that, Bob!” Scott yelled. “Bottoms up, boy!”

  “We free and clear, Captain?” This from Forrest, hoisting himself up on to the citadel through the grating Seward had opened to get his supply of shells. His face was sooted with gun-smoke, which had the effect of brightening the evil glint in his grinning eyes as he sucked in the fresh, river air. Then he pulled himself completely from the hole and looked all round him.

  The south bank of the river offered no threat. The few buildings beyond the prison had petered out and the vista was a broad one of the rolling fields of Virginia. Stretching so flat and featureless than a train could be seen hauling west along the tracks of the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad two miles away. To the north was a residential area of the city: expensive-looking frame and brick-built houses set back behind a strip of swampy meadowland. Downstream, to where the river curled around a bluff, it was open country all the way.

  “Unless the Rebs have got half a dozen frigates waiting for us the other side of that high ground, I reckon we’re clear for awhile,” Hedges called in reply.

  “But you ain’t authorizing no deck tennis, right Captain?” Forrest said with a grin.

  “Just appointing a ship’s doctor,” Hedges told him. “That’s you, sergeant. Come up here and dig this lead out of my shoulder.”

  Forrest’s grin broadened. To Hedges, who was suddenly feeling no pain as numbness set in, the sergeant’s tobacco-stained teeth seemed to stretch from ear to ear. It was still early morning and only an Eastern spring. Yet the pale sun felt as if it was blazing down out of a desert sky at noon.

  “That’s the third friggin’ time Hedges’ has been hit,” Seward said in a whisper.

  But, in his oddly light-headed state, the Captain seemed to hear every sound with heightened clarity. The rumble of the engine, the slap and hiss of the river against the hull the creak of timbers, the squeak of an ungreased bearing on the stern wheel and the voices of the men.

  “Tryin’ for the million dollar wound,” Scott muttered sourly.

  Although there was no longer any pain in his shoulder, Hedges imagined bolts of agony striking out from the older wounds in his right hip and left thigh. Sweat trickled over them and seemed to catch fire.

  “What the friggin’ use would that be to him in this neck of the woods?” Forrest snarled. “Come up and help me get him down, Billy. Scott, you take the wheel.” He raised his voice to a bellow that beat painfully against Hedges’ eardrums. “Rhett, come up here and watch from the bow. Bell, get to the stern. Rebs ain’t gonna let us sail outta Richmond like we was pleasure cruising in New York harbor.”

  Footfalls clanged loudly on the iron sheeting of the citadel. But abruptly the noise receded, as though the men were running away from Hedges instead of towards him. At the same time, the sun seemed to be obscured by a dark cloud which cast a gigantic, advancing shadow across the countryside. Blood, he thought. A massive loss of blood through the bullet wound. Slowing his heart and starving his brain. That was what accounted for the illusion of heightened awareness. And now he was swamped by the after effect. The retreat of sound and advance of darkness were symptoms of oncoming unconsciousness. His one-handed grip on the wheel slipped loose and he crumpled to the deck of the pilothouse. The sweat seemed to freeze over his pores.

  “The bastard don’t look so goddamn tough now,” somebody said from a great distance, shouting down a tunnel.

  “Sleepin’ like a baby, Frank. What say we blow a bigger hole in him and light out for Iowa right now?”

  The farm was in Iowa. The farm being taken care of by Jamie with money Hedges sent home as regularly as the war allowed.

  “You ever been to Iowa, Billy?”

  “No, Frank.”

  “It covers a lot of area. Bigger than your mouth, even. Besides which, the longer this war lasts, the bigger our pay off.”

  “Some of us may not be alive to collect, Frank.”

  A wet spit, spattering against iron. Then a laugh. “Smaller the payroll, even bigger the pay off.”

  “You’re too smart to be just a sergeant, Frank. I always said you ought to be an officer.”

  “Forget it, trooper,” Forrest snarled, pulling rank. “I’m happy with the Captain here. He did okay busting us out. Maybe he’s got some idea what the hell we do now.”

  “I hope he can think up somethin’ fast. We’ll be like sittin’ ducks soon as they get us spotted.”

  “Looks of him, Hedges won’t be doin’ anythin’ fast for awhile.”

  The injured Captain had been hovering on the brink of unconsciousness for a long time, hearing the words but unable to make sense of them or to attribute them to the speakers, whom he knew so well. Then, as the pit of total unawareness opened up for him and he began to tumble down, the words became crystal clear. But only for a moment, before they were driven deep into the recesses of his subconscious. Forrest’s final remark seemed to hammer their evil meaning too far out of the reach of understanding.

  “So let’s help him get the lead out.”

  * * *

  THE coffee had been good and the acrid sting of the cigarette smoke on his tongue heightened the pleasure of the aftertaste. He had made camp after two hours of easy riding from execution rock, in a small hollow at the side of a stream which probably fed the Columbia River tributary flowing past Paradise.

  It was a good place for a man not in a hurry to rest himself and his horse. A high stand of timber shaded the hollow from the direct heat of the sun, there was ample brush for a fire, good grazing for the stallion and clear flowing water to refresh a weary body. First the half-breed had attended to his horse, then he had lit a fire and set the coffee pot to boil. Next, he had stripped the dusty, sweat-stiffened clothing from his hard, lean, sun-burnished body and stretched out naked in the shallow coolness of the stream until the coffee pot began to steam aromatically. He had dried himself with a blanket from his bedroll, dressed, drank two mugs of coffee and found enough tobacco in his keep to roll a single cigarette.

  Throughout all this, his hooded blue eyes kept a constant surveillance over his surroundings and the cocked Winchester was never more than an arm’s length away from him. That he could remain alert for a sign of danger threatening from any direction was the most important factor in his choice of the campsite. It was what he always sought first. Resting, eating, drinking, bathing and comforts for his horse were luxuries for a man like Edge when stacked against the need to survive. And the need to survive—to be constantly on his guard—had become a necessity to the half-breed. Too many men had a real or imagined reason to kill him, so that he could never completely relax, even in such an idyllic setting as this one.

  But it was not the impassive, cool blue eyes peering out through a drifting screen of grey cigarette smoke that picked up the first danger signal. It was his ears, attuned to the regular noises of his surroundings, which detecte
d an intrusion of strange sound, marking the approach of a rider.

  “Steady, feller,” he murmured to his horse as the stallion pricked his ears and stared nervously into the trees.

  The stand of timber was the hollow’s defensive weakness. To the west, north and south there was an arc of open terrain at least two hundred feet across at its narrowest. A small army of men could reach the timber fringe, fifty feet away, without being seen. But with the half-breed fully alert, they would have to be very quiet.

  Edge flicked the cigarette butt into the stream, raised his knees and lifted the Winchester. He rested the barrel across the small vee between his kneecaps and curled a finger around the trigger. A lone rider, he guessed. Still quite deep in the timber and not paying particular heed to the need for silent progress. He aimed the rifle at the spot where he expected the rider to break into the open. But several times he had to readjust the aim as the rider veered to left and right, seeking the easiest path through the thickly growing trees. Edge had ample opportunity to glance often in other directions, checking that the rider in the timber was not a decoy. The hot spring sun continued to shed its bright light over an empty and unmoving land.

  “Thank you, Lord,” Angel Sarah said with a sigh as she steered a piebald gelding out of the trees.

  She was offering gratitude for having found a way out of the timber. Her green eyes were tightly closed, her sweat-run face turned up to the sky and her hands clasped in prayer at her breasts. Edge elevated the aim of the rifle, bent his head low to sight and squeezed the trigger. The bullet drilled through the woman’s poke bonnet with enough velocity to skim the hat from her head. Long, blonde hair tumbled out to frame the mask of terror which had gripped her features. Her mouth gaped to utter a scream, but fear constricted her throat, silencing the sound.

  “Unless you brought my bankroll, lady, you got nothing to thank Him for,” Edge said softly, levering another shell into the breech. He altered the cant of the rifle, drawing a bead just to the right of her clasped hands.

  Her eyes seemed as wide as her mouth, the bright green of each pupil surrounded by an ocean of pure white. Then they snapped closed, her hands fell apart and she toppled sideways from the gelding. The well-schooled horse remained absolutely still as the woman thudded to the ground beside it.

  Edge sighed and stood up, eyes raking the tree line and ears straining for another sound against the cheerful babbling of the stream. Then, certain Sarah was alone, he ambled up out of the hollow towards her. At first, he ignored her inert form, concentrating on the saddlebags. Both of them were empty. There was no canteen hanging from the horn and no bedroll strapped to the cantle. Making absolutely certain, he unbuckled the cinch and pushed the saddle off the gelding’s back. No money fluttered out from underneath. As a final resort, before turning his attention to the senseless woman, he moved to where her bonnet had fallen and checked inside it. It was empty except for a faint, stimulating scent of female. He went back to the woman, straightened and rolled her into a supine position and raked his eyes over the high-necked, long-hemmed black dress. There were no pockets or pouches.

  He crouched down beside her and hit her hard, back-handed, across the cheek. The blow flung her head to the side and left a vivid red mark on her wan skin. She made no sound and continued to breathe steadily. He pondered a moment, then withdrew the razor from the neck pouch. Because of the sideways twist of her head her jaw was no obstacle as he inserted the blade into the neck of the dress, honed edge against the serge. A thousand woven threads parting made a continuous, pleasant sound as he dragged the razor down the length of her body and legs. Sometimes it snagged on undergarments, but the keenness of the blade met the challenge with ease.

  His expression impassive, he put away the razor, moved to the other side of the woman and crouched again. He gripped one half of the sliced dress and jerked it, standing upright at the same moment. She was slender and might have been weightless, so easily was the lean half-breed able to lift her. Her inert form came clear of the ground before her arms slid out of the dress sleeves. Then she fell hard to the ground dipping down into the hollow and began to roll. Naked except for a pair of scanty and now tattered pantaloons, she rolled over and over down the grassy bank: blonde hair flying, arms and legs flailing and small breasts bouncing. She did not scream until she plunged into the reviving water of the stream. By which time Edge had checked the inside of the dress and the under-garments for secret pockets. There were none.

  His cool eyes surveyed Sarah’s nakedness for the first time. She was sitting upright in the stream, spitting out water and gasping for breath. It took her several moments to return to full awareness. Moments during which the brown-crested breasts jutted in full exposure and the blonde triangle at the base of her flat belly was magnified by the clear water. Then she screamed again. In horror instead of alarm, as she clasped the tattered undergarment across her belly and thrust a forearm in front of her breasts.

  “Dear Lord, what have you done?” she shrieked, the flush beginning at her face and rapidly spreading to diffuse color over her entire marble-smooth body.

  Edge dropped the ruined clothing, picked up the Winchester and met her shocked gaze with a bland one. “It’s all right, ma’am,” he said softly. “You took a tumble from your horse is all. Doesn’t make you a fallen angel. Where’s my money?”

  “But I’m naked!”

  “All you lost was your clothes. I’m the one that got screwed— out of more than a thousand bucks.” He started down the slope. “Where is it?”

  The sun was behind the half-breed and she squinted up at his tallness as he approached: there was no free hand to shade her eyes. Vulnerably naked, with the shoulder-length blonde hair framing her screwed-up face, and the water rushing around her, Angel Sarah was stunningly, erotically attractive.

  “Please don’t hurt me that way?” she pleaded as his shadow fell across her. “I’ll tell you. It’s why I came to find you. Please don’t hurt me that way?”

  He squatted down on the bank of the stream and sighed as he pointed the Winchester at her. “I’ll allow I’ve been a long time from the well, but I reckon I can hold until there’s something more satisfying than holy water,” he told her softly. “And right now, I’ve got a more urgent need to fill—the space in my hip pocket where my bankroll used to be. That space has been aching like a pulled tooth ever since I made camp here. Stripped off to take a bath and found I’d already been taken to the cleaners.”

  “Look, I came to—”

  “Shut your mouth, ma’am,” he said in the same even tone. “Except to answer the questions. Where’s my money?”

  She swallowed hard. “Paradise. I came to—”

  The half-breed canted the rifle and squeezed the trigger. Sarah screamed. The bullet hissed through the water between her splayed legs. It hit the bed of the stream and kicked mud up over her belly. He levered another shell into the breech and sighed.

  “I’m angry, ma’am,” he said. “Only two things make me really mad. Folks pointing guns at me and folks stealing from me. Just answer the questions. Where in Paradise?”

  “With the cathedral fund,” she replied hurriedly, her wide green eyes searching his face and figure for a sign of the anger he spoke of. But he seemed totally at ease; perhaps a little bored. “In the house of Arch Angel Luke.”

  “Who picked my pocket?”

  “I don’t—”

  The Winchester cracked again. She didn’t scream this time. But her naked flesh quivered in an uncontrollable fit of trembling as the bullet dove into the water, fractionally missing her flesh.

  “Reckon you do.”

  “Angel Francis!” she shrieked, dropping both hands into the water to cover the hirsute centre of her body. The dark brown nipples of her jutting, unfettered breasts were distended by fear. “In the store, after you’d paid for the supplies. While they were taking the body of Angel Angus out.”

  Edge gave a curt nod, then curled back his thin lips to show his
teeth in a cold grin. The blue slits of his narrowed eyes were colder as they stared arrogantly at her exposed upper body. The flesh, almost transparently white again, continued to ripple with her fear.

  “Always better to make a clean breast of things, ma’am,” he said as he straightened. Then he touched his hat and turned away. He began to gather his gear together and saddle the stallion.

  The woman remained silent for long moments, sitting in the gurgling water of the stream, struggling to bring the trembling under control.

  “May I talk now?” she asked at length.

  “All you like,” he answered, not turning from his chores.

  “I was the only one to get away from Paradise. Everybody else is still there. The lucky ones are dead. Those two white sinners and the Indians … they are doing unspeakable things. I saw it. I came to ask your help.”

  “Is Francis dead?” Edge asked as he straightened from tightening the cinch.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t stay to watch for long. They are torturing—for revenge and for the money...” Her voice trailed off. Then: “Oh, dear Lord!” she exclaimed. “If Angel Francis isn’t ... you’ll kill him!”