EDGE: A Ride In The Sun (Edge series Book 34)

by George G. Gilman

  "Captain knows naturally ain't the way Bob does it," Bell came back, and brought smiles to their faces and a snort and a scowl from the effeminate New Englander.

  "She was in better shape then," Forrest said with a note of remembered lust in his voice, then glanced down at the wasted, gaunt-faced woman and grimaced at her present condition.

  "If you like a woman with beestings for tits and ribs that stick into your belly," Hal Douglas rasped.

  Without shifting his narrow-eyed gaze from the over­head canvas, Hedges said, "Guess it won't help how you feel, ma'am, but I'm obliged to you."

  "She feels fine, sir," Scott said with a leer and a flex­ing of his fingers. "If you ain't so friggin' particular as Hal."

  "Obliged to the Walters dame, but not to us, uh?" Seward snarled.

  "We already covered that, Billy," Forrest snapped. "Captain knows as well as we do we didn't nurse him back to health outta the goodness of our friggin' hearts. Wasn't on account of we love him that we went without tobacco and whiskey and meat and regular pussy our­selves just so he could—"

  "You ..." the woman started, and her voice caused Forrest to curtail his embittered words. She tried again as all attention was shifted to her. "You are the first man in this terrible place ... to offer me a kind word, sir. It is not . . . not much, but anything is . . . something."

  Her voice sounded pained and husky, as if her throat was as devoid of saliva as her eyes were of tears.

  "It talked," Seward said, surprised.

  "That unusual?" Hedges asked.

  "She did a lot of beggin' and pleadin' when the Rebs first tossed her in here," Forrest replied. "Not much to say for herself after she started screwin' around. Prayed some for a while each time the Rebs brought her back."

  "Brought her back?" Hedges asked.

  Forrest recognized there was more than mere idle cu­riosity behind the question and he was abruptly more interested himself in the exchange.

  "Yeah. Somethin' Olsen fixed up for. Every couple of days the Rebs come and get her and take her into one of the forts that guard this stinkin' prison. Give her a bath and wash her hair and that kinda stuff. They'll be by for her sometime this afternoon, I guess."

  "Woman that does what she has to, she gets pretty dirtied up, you know what I mean, sir," Roger Bell aug­mented. "Can't change what she is, but she smells a lit­tle sweeter when she comes back in. And the sweeter she smells, the better deals Olsen can make with her."

  "She sure don't smell sweet as her name now, do you, Rose?" Scott growled, pushing forward a booted foot to nudge one of her filthy ankles.

  "Why can't you leave her be?" Bob Rhett snarled. "Now that she's served her purpose."

  Since she had spoken to Hedges, Rose Walters had reverted to her attitude of unmoving silence, seemingly detached from her squalid surroundings—withdrawn into an imaginary world probably more nightmarish than the real one. Her leg moved like dead flesh in re­sponse to Scott's touch and she appeared not to hear the words spoken about her.

  "Don't tell me what to do, you swish bastard!" Scott countered.

  "Shut up, you lunkheads!" Forrest rasped, still in­trigued by Hedges' thoughtful silence, but showed a cynical grin to the men who turned resentful eyes to­ward him, and moderated his tone. "Captain's awake, but only just. Reckon he'll need some peace and quiet for his ideas to start comin' like they always used to."

  "How much peace and quiet, Frank?" Seward asked. "And for how long? I've had this shit place, up to here."

  The other Union prisoners remained silent, but their tacit eagerness to get free of Andersonville was more vocal than that of the youngest trooper as they directed their hollow-eyed gazes toward Hedges.

  "Maybe you'd like to take a stroll around outside to see what this place is like, sir," Rhett suggested at length.

  "I've already seen, trooper," Hedges answered, and continued to look up at the canvas after a surreptitious glance at Rose Walters, who had suddenly revealed a flicker of interest in the world beyond her personal suf­fering.

  For a few moments, Hedges did ponder on what lay immediately outside the confines of the reeking she­bang. During this time three gray-uniformed guards ap­proached the shack and two of them aimed rifles through the entrance while the third dragged the woman out.

  The prison, as he recalled from when he and a train-load of other captured Union soldiers were brought in, sprawled close to the small village of Anderson with its South Western Railroad depot. It was sited on a swamp, encircled by a fifteen-foot-high fence of pine logs. There were four forts built outside the fence. In­side, a short distance from the foot of each fence was a length of twine, known as the deadline because any prisoner who stepped over it was assumed to be escap­ing and was shot down. The prisoners lived—or died—in tents, holes in the ground and shebangs of all kinds of contraction. From the north and only gate in the fence ran a pathway known as Main Street, with spurs going off at intervals. A stream, inappropriately called the Sweetwater River, trickled this way and that across the fenced enclosure.

  "Well, Captain?" Bell asked eagerly after the woman had been hauled out of the shack. "What do you think? Any ideas?"

  "Why did they give her to us?" Hedges asked, tested his ability to get up into a sitting posture and found he could make it.

  "What?" Douglas asked.

  "This feller Olsen is supposed to have all the pull. So why did the Rebs give Rose Walters to us?"

  They all looked at Forrest, who allowed a grin to spread across his face, so that the gaunt, bearded fea­tures of the former bounty hunter seemed to glow with pride. "Olsen called on us while you was still out for the count, Captain. First day here. I made it known we wasn't gonna be soft shit in his hands like the rest of the guys in this pigpen." He shrugged. "I dunno, Captain. I guess a place like this needs an Olsen. Long as all the prisoners go along with the idea. Maybe the fat slob tried to stir up trouble for us on account of us tossin' him out on his butt. And maybe the Rebs figured it'd be easier if there was two Olsens. Competition, like. Why? What's on your mind?"

  "That woman."

  Seward giggled. "You figure you're strong enough to do more than have her on your mind, Mr. Hedges?"

  "Billy?" Forrest said evenly. "Yeah, Frank?"

  "How come you can get your rocks off when you ain't got the brains you was born with?"

  "Uh, Frank?"

  "He means your mind is between your legs, idiot!" Rhett rasped.

  Seward scowled, then grinned as he thought of a re­tort. "So it gets wet every time I take a leak, Bob. Don't get dirtied up when I crap."

  "Shut your friggin' mouths, all of you!" Forrest snarled. Then, to Hedges, "You figure she's a plant? What for?"

  "You say she does some talking whenever she comes back from being cleaned up, Sergeant. Why not ask her?"

  Silence descended over the men in their cramped, stinking quarters, as the troopers pondered the doubt which had been raised over the presence of Rose Wal­ters. After a few minutes, Seward made to pose a ques­tion, but was driven back into silence by a glower from Forrest. Later, Rhett pointed out:

  "If she is a Rebel spy, what could she possibly dis­cover from us and the rest of the guys in this place?"

  "Mouth, Rhett," Forrest said.

  "Pardon, Sarge?"

  "Only one we want to hear workin' is the woman's."

  There was no further talk until supper time, and that was confined to sour-voiced complaints about the food.

  Since he was now conscious and able to feed himself, Hedges received no preferential treatment and ate the same prison fare as the rest of the captives.

  "Shit, ain't it, Captain?" Seward muttered when the meal was finished.

  "Figure you'd recognize the taste, trooper," Hedges answered. "Way you have to keep on eating your words."

  The putdown drew some smiles and a curt laugh from Rhett. Then followed another period of silence, as evening gave way to night and the sounds of activity throughout the whole o
f Andersonville dropped in vol­ume. Nobody made a move to light the lamp which Forrest had taken from Olsen for no payment on the first day Hedges and his men entered the prison.

  "They're bringin' her back," Douglas announced as a din of half-hearted whistles, ribald catcalls and cheers sounded outside.

  "How you going to make her say what you want to hear, sir?" Bob Rhett asked, in keen anticipation of being a witness to suffering.

  "Maybe I'll go for her pride, trooper," Hedges re­plied. "Tell her that if she doesn't talk, she'll lose her job to you."

  Rhett scowled through the darkness at this latest taunt, but only Seward giggled at the New Englander's discomfort. The tramping footfalls of the prison guards came to a halt in front of the shebang.

  "Wake up, you bluebellies," one of the Rebels snarled. "Compliments of Captain Wirz, your dreams have come true again."

  The woman's head was tilted forward and she was given a vicious shove in the back. She groaned as she staggered inside, then gasped with shock as a man's arm encircled her waist, forcing her to an unexpected halt.

  Outside in the moon-silvered Georgia night, the guards laughed and swaggered away toward the north gate. As Rose Walters' vocal response to shock was curtailed—trapped in her throat with her venting breath by a hand clapped over her mouth and nostrils.

  Holding her tight against him, Hedges grimaced, feeling suddenly as weak as a new-born foal from the exertion of getting to his feet and from the involuntary reaction to embracing a soft-skinned, slender-framed, clean-smelling woman whose no-longer-lank hair brushed against his sweating and bristled face.

  "I'll whistle somethin' if you wanna dance, Captain," Frank Forrest growled.

  And this time it was only Bob Rhett who guffawed. Then cried out in pain as the elbow of Hal Douglas jabbed him hard in the ribs.

  "You have the choice, lady," Hedges forced out through clenched teeth, sweat oozing from every pore as he struggled to overcome his initial response to holding her. "You can die slowly or fast. First choice comes when I take my hand off your face. Scream and you'll wake up dying. Slow."

  He removed his hand and the breath rattled out of her throat. Then she made a slightly louder noise as she sucked in fresh air—or what passed for fresh air in the reeking atmosphere of Andersonville.

  "I ... I don't understand," she forced out. "Aren't you the . . . the one who—?"

  "Lived off your immoral earnings," Hedges cut in on her. "But times have changed. I'm well enough to start killing Rebels again. And you're first in line."

  His voice was less thick now, as he spoke the threat­ening words through her hair into her right ear.

  "I'm not a Confeder—" she started.

  Hedges hit her backhanded across the mouth and then cut her scream in half with the palm, as he raised a knee behind her legs and forced her over it. He lowered her to the dirt floor and dropped into a crouch at her side. Then he took both hands away from her.

  She sucked in her breath and held it, as the other six men in the shebang shuffled forward and adopted simi­lar attitudes to the captain, totally encircling her.

  "You're a Confederate, lady," Hedges said softly, looking across her rigid body at Forrest and miming the act of drawing a weapon from a neck pouch.

  The sergeant nodded and produced the straight razor from his pants pocket.

  The woman saw the blade glint in the low level of moonlight which entered the shack and gaped her mouth wide.

  "Hold her!" Hedges ordered, and fixed a vice-like grip over her throat as Scott and Bell clutched a wrist and elbow each and Seward and Douglas pinned her knees and ankles to the ground. Rhett did not touch her, but uttered a low sound of anticipation as Forrest used the razor to slice through the ropes which held the blanket in place.

  "Don't scream until you're hurt," Hedges said, his voice soft and even again, as he released his hold on her throat and she made a retching sound in expelling her breath. "Then you won't be able to help it. But only you will hear it, lady. Inside your own head."

  He showed her what he meant, taking hold of a filthy kerchief and holding it two handed a few inches above her mouth. Forrest flipped open the blanket to bare her pathetically thin body.

  "Why are you doing this to me?" she asked, terror making her voice a rasping whisper. "What have I done?"

  "You're a good actress, lady," Hedges answered. "But the best whores always are. Part of the job."

  "Please, I don't know what you mean?" she moaned.

  "But you let the real you show through earlier today, lady," the captain continued. "The mask of suffering slipped and for a second or so you were all ears, as the saying is."

  He had to make an effort to keep watching her wide-eyed, terror-stricken face, to fight against the compul­sion to let his gaze wander over her exposed body. Not from fear that the sight of her nudity might spark a fresh arousal of lust. Instead, to keep from feeling pity for her.

  There was no doubt in his mind that he was right about Rose Walters, that she had been given to the pris­oners to spy upon them. A task that as a woman she could accomplish far better than any Rebel soldier who might be infiltrated among the Union men. Because she was able to move from one group of captives to another at their will, be used and cast aside—ignored in the aftermath of lust, weak and humiliated, but capable of listening to the talk of the men. And every two days, when she was taken to the fort outside the pine trunk fence, she could report what she had heard.

  So, he had no doubt of this. He was also certain of something else—that Rose Walters was one of the bra­vest women involved in the War Between the States. Which was why he avoided looking at her naked body, which from slender thighs to the thin shoulders above her small breasts carried countless marks of the suffer­ing she had endured for a cause in which she believed. He found it much easier to shun compassion by concen­trating his attention on her face, watching her terror ex­pand with each word he spoke.

  And he spoke for upwards of two minutes, conclud­ing with:

  "It's the only way to explain why you were given to us, lady. We tried to escape before we got here. And that feller Wirz who runs this place figured that making an example of me wasn't enough to stop my buddies here from trying again to abuse his brand of Southern hospitality.

  "And I guess Wirz wasn't too bothered when the prisoners started sharing you around. Gave you the op­portunity to listen in on what a lot more men were talk­ing about. How many plans for escape have you told Captain Wirz about, lady? Apart from the snatch of talk you heard earlier today—and let your mask slip to show me you'd heard?"

  "Smart figurin', Captain," Scott congratulated.

  The woman, who had constantly moved her head from side to side in an unbroken gesture of desperate denial to every word of accusation leveled at her, now blurted, "No, it's not true. None of it's true. I'm on your side. It's your men who have ... I swear it. I was reporting to General Grant about Confederate troop movements when I was captured and—"

  Her voice ceased to be a hoarse whisper and began to get shriller. Hedges scowled and clamped the ker­chief between her parted lips. She squeezed her eyes tight closed.

  "Keep it down, lady," the captain hissed.

  Then her eyes snapped open to their fullest extent. Her body became rigid. And a main artery stood out through the skin of her thin neck like a length of thick, dark cord.

  "Atta boy, Frank!" Billy Seward said with brutal glee.

  Now Hedges' narrowed eyes looked down at the woman's body. And saw that the heel of Forrest's right fist rested on the center of her belly. And that a thin trickle of blood came out from under his hand, oozing up from the deep wound into which the full length of the razor's blade was sunk.

  Hedges was not aware he had eased the pressure of the kerchief across the woman's open mouth. Until, as he stared with ice-cold anger at the sergeant, he heard her gasp:

  "You'll pay, you Yankee sonsofbi . . ."

  Forrest's expression of anger—a match for that
of the captain's—was suddenly displaced by a grin of pure evil as he swept his fist to the side to open a long, gap­ing wound from the woman's navel to her hirsute sex organ. And her threat was left unfinished, punctuated by the death rattle sighing in her throat.

  "That tell you what you wanted to know, sir?" the sergeant asked through his clenched teeth, as he pulled the razor free of the blood torrenting flesh.

  "You sure enough got her to open up, Sarge," Rhett gloated.

  The sensation of the ice-cold anger draining out of Hedges was almost a physical one and as the final heel­taps went, the grinning face of Forrest seemed to blur. Again he had to make a great effort to struggle against a bodily demand.

  There had been doubt in his mind about Rose Wal­ters. He had told himself there was none as a salve to his conscience. What if her sympathies were with the Union and he discovered this new torture he was inflict­ing was not deserved? Throughout the war, even amid the degradation of Andersonville, he had been as one with his men and yet always endeavored to remain frac­tionally above the depths to which their brutality and evil lowered them. But if the woman's dying words had not incriminated her. . .

  "What'll we do with the corpse?" Bob Rhett asked, suddenly anxious.

  "We toss it in the Sweetwater and the dead wagon'll pick her up like it always picks up the dead," Douglas suggested.

  "But Wirz might—" the New Englander started.

  "He won't do nothin'," Forrest cut in. "That sneaky little bastard claimed she was Union and he ain't never stirred no shit when other prisoners got wasted in this pigpen. One less mouth to feed is how he's gotta pre­tend to look at it." He had never shifted his gaze off Hedges' face while he replied to Rhett's objection. Now he posed, "Wouldn't you say, sir?"

  The captain was deep in thought, forcing his mind to work as he continued to fight the danger of a faint that threatened to claim his sickness-weakened frame. He thought about the woman's bravery. About whether she was a whore from some Atlanta bordello impressed into serving the cause, or maybe a once-decent woman who had suffered tragedy by Union action—was made em­bittered enough to volunteer for this terrible duty.