EDGE: Violence Trail (Edge series Book 25)

by George G. Gilman

  The Indians were gone. Their own dust had hidden them for most of the way. Now they were beyond the slick-looking curtain of heat shimmer. Edge backed out from under the wagon and straightened. Now that the threat of death had once more receded, he was again aware of the painful stiffness in his limbs.

  ‘And so will not help us now that we need you?’ the girl asked. ‘I cannot blame you.’

  ‘We need the help of nobody!’ Pedro snarled. ‘Ride on, hombre. Go about your business which is none of ours. And leave us to go about ours.’

  At last it was Senalda Montez’s turn to emerge into reality. Her words and the grief-stricken tone in which she vented them revealed that what she discovered was worse than the waking nightmare she had experienced.

  The mother, the son and the daughter gathered close around the unresponsive form of the father.

  Edge went to the black mare and checked the animal was unscathed. Then he slid the fully-loaded Winchester into the boot and moved around to the other side of the wagon to examine the broken wheel. It was not a rock or deep rut which had caused the spokes to fracture. Merely the strain of travelling too many miles supporting too many heavy loads. His impassive eyes raked over the old Studebaker. The timbers were holed by termites, rotted by damp or warped by age. In contrast, the metalwork was in good shape. Perhaps it was new. Certainly it had recently received a coat of fresh black paint.

  ‘My father breathes easily,’ Isabella announced dully as she crawled out from under the wagon and stood up. She smoothed down her blouse, tucking it more tightly into the waistband of her pants. Then brushed dust off her hips and thighs. The first action acted to display the contours of her breasts more sharply. The second caused the full, firmly conical mounds to tremble beguilingly. ‘He may live - if we can bring him to the doctor in the town of Amity Falls.’

  Perhaps it was a measure of the man called Edge that he could glance at the girl and feel again the stirring of carnal desire. But if it was, he felt no self-disgust. Neither did he indulge in wishful thinking or sense hope for a future when the circumstances would be different.

  ‘A three-wheeled wagon won’t bring anyone anywhere, lady,’ he replied. ‘You want to get your kid brother out from under there to give me a hand?’

  ‘I am not her kid brother, hombre,’ Pedro countered, emerging from beneath the rear of the wagon. ‘We are twins. Isabella is one second older than I, that is all.’

  ‘Okay, kid,’ Edge allowed. ‘But sometimes a second makes a difference. I can’t fix the wheel alone.’

  The boy’s temper flared. ‘You make jokes while my father is dying?’

  ‘He is human, Pedro,’ the girl said, looking hard at the half-breed. ‘With feelings. Perhaps it is just an act?’

  ‘He acts well only when killing,’ the young Montez growled, massaging his bruised right hand.

  ‘You and your old man performed pretty well, kid,’ the half-breed answered, shifting his narrow-eyed gaze out to survey the bullet-shattered and dust-covered corpses of four Shoshone braves. ‘We sure slayed them.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT was an exhausting chore, in the blazing heat of afternoon, to raise the wagon, take off the broken wheel and fit the new one. The women were enlisted to help unload the big Studebaker, then to stack various items of freight beneath it while Edge and the boy used brute strength to inch it upwards.

  The sweating half-breed was no longer having lustful thoughts about the body of Isabella Montez. When he gave consideration to anything except the muscle-straining, bone-creaking work in hand, it was concerned with why the boy and girl had reacted so aggressively when he showed up. For there was nothing of any great value among the unladen cargo of the wagon. Mostly it was personal and household chattels, the items old and well cared for. There could have been a large quantity of paper money in one of the two trunks or four valises, but the Montez family appeared no more protective of these than any other item hurriedly offloaded.

  During the fitting of the new wheel, Antonio remained beneath the wagon, a folded coat under his head and a pad of cotton lint strapped to his wound. He was unconscious.

  The flies were no longer a problem, having abandoned the living to gather in frantic black masses on the dead, feeding greedily on the fresh blood of Indians and horses.

  When the new wheel was securely on the axle, Pedro checked on the unchanged condition of his father and then moved away from the wagon. While his mother and sister loaded the cargo again, leaving a space in which Antonio could lay, the boy examined the dead at close quarters: squatting beside horse carcasses with as much keen interest as he showed in Shoshone corpses.

  Edge took a drink from a canteen and watered the black mare. Then, recalling that he may have been unconscious for longer than he thought, he checked his saddlebags and gear. He carried little that was worth stealing, and nothing had been stolen.

  ‘We are a family of four, Señor Edge,’ Isabella said as she climbed wearily down from the rear of the wagon and saw the half-breed complete his search. ‘We have our faults, like any four people anywhere. But, like you, we are not thieves.’

  Edge slid his Colt from the holster, turned it upside down and rotated the cylinder to eject the spent shell cases. ‘You took more persuading than I did, lady.’

  ‘We all regret what happened,’ she answered, hanging her head, then looking to where her mother was stooped over her father in the wagon’s shade. ‘And we have been punished severely for our sins.’

  The half-breed finished loading the revolver. Then he took shells from a saddlebag and slotted them into his gun belt.

  ‘Your brother takes his punishment real well.’

  Isabella looked sadly towards Pedro, who was down on his haunches, peering closely at the brave with a hole in the top of his head. ‘Sometimes, he can be strange, señor. We worry about him. You heard him taunt you when you were helpless. Saw him with the snake. Now this. Pedro has a – a - an unhealthy fascination for death.’

  ‘Yeah, I noticed,’ the half-breed muttered. ‘Ain’t nobody told him it’s catching?’

  ‘It is my father’s state of health that concerns me now, señor. Will you help us get him into the wagon? My mother says there is a doctor in Amity Falls. The town is many miles away and the people there do not like foreigners. But a doctor, he must tend the sick, is that not so?’

  ‘Please, señor’ Senalda called. ‘Do us this final favor, Then go your own way with our blessing for your help.’

  The woman seemed to have aged ten years since the start of the Shoshone attack. And appeared somehow smaller and thinner in her shabby gown. She looked to be even weaker and closer to death than her resting husband.

  ‘Hey, kid!’ Edge yelled. ‘Like I told you people, a dead Indian ain’t no more trouble.’

  Pedro resented the interruption to his study of the corpse.

  His handsome face wore a scowl as he returned to the wagon. But then his mood changed. He displayed deep concern and careful consideration for his injured father as he and Edge lifted the unconscious man and placed him on a crudely-made bed inside the wagon.

  Then, at no small cost in effort, he showed a wan, tight-lipped smile and bowed stiffly from the waist. ‘Our thanks, hombre. And our apologies. I am now capable of taking my father’s place until he is recovered.’

  ‘Ain’t enough,’ Edge said flatly, swinging up into the saddle of the mare and reaching forward to unhitch the reins from the wagon.

  Inside the Studebaker, Senalda Montez gasped. Isabella looked shocked. Pedro made a low snarling sound and dropped a hand to cup the butt of the Griswold in his holster.

  ‘I’m hoping there’s a saloon in Amity Falls, kid. Figure the least you folks owe me is a rye with a beer chaser.’

  ‘You are to ride with us?’ the girl blurted with excited relief.

  Pedro was scowling again, and jerked a thumb against his own chest. ‘I require to prove to my family that I can take care of them, hombre. You have no need to c
oncern yourself with us.’

  Edge took the makings from a pocket of his shirt and began to roll a cigarette. ‘I’m just concerned with me, kid,’ he replied, and ran the tip of his tongue along the paper. ‘And the four Indians you didn’t get to see close up.’

  ‘Pedro!’ the woman in the wagon called dully.

  The boy ignored his mother’s plea, but responded sullenly to the urgings of Isabella.

  By the time Edge had finished the cigarette, the surviving horse was hitched to the tailgate of the wagon and the saddle and bedroll had been removed from the dead animal. Pedro took the reins and Isabella sat beside him. The wagon moved off slowly, to conserve the energy of the ox team under the blistering sun and to make Antonio Montez’s ride as comfortable as possible.

  Edge rode at the same pace for most of the time, occasionally moving ahead of the lumbering team or dropping back beyond the rear of the wagon. At first impression, his attitude was casual. But Isabella, who watched him surreptitiously while her brother stared morosely ahead, saw that the half-breed’s eyes were hardly ever still under the narrowed lids. And she recognized there was a grim purpose behind the surface nonchalance as his head turned from side to side. Just as when he turned from the waist to look behind him, to where buzzards had ceased to circle against the unbroken blue sky, fighting now among themselves amid rising dust as they challenged for the tastiest morsels of human and horse meat.

  The man was as he had been as he approached the wagon - physically at ease but mentally alert for the first sign of danger.

  ‘You think the Indians will try to avenge their dead, Señor Edge?’ she called, to end a long silence which had been marred only by the sounds of their slow progress across the barren plateau.

  ‘No, lady. But there’s a chance they could try again for what they missed out on first time around.’

  Pedro spat over the side of the wagon. ‘Si, I think they are stupid enough, hombre.’

  ‘Do you think they are stupid, Edge?’ the girl asked, no longer trying to hide her interest in the half-breed.

  ‘Hungry,’ Edge answered, aware of the girl’s attraction to him as he maintained his surveillance of the surrounding terrain. ‘For food and women.’

  Isabella shuddered at a mental image.

  Pedro snorted. ‘But mostly stupid, I think.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘They could have killed us like that and taken what they wanted. But they were stupid and waited too long.’

  ‘Scared of dying and lazy,’ Edge went on, as if Pedro had not said anything. ‘Ain’t no man lazier than an Indian brave.’

  ‘What do you mean, hombre?’

  ‘Indians have got a reputation, kid. Well-earned. Lot of whites are scared to hell just thinking about Indians. That bunch tried to trade on their rep. Less tiring if folks just surrender. And cuts down the chance of getting killed Maybe they’ve done it before and got away with it.’

  The boy snorted again, and sucked at his bruised hand for a moment. ‘They will know next time that we do not surrender.’

  ‘But they’re still hungry, kid. And even Indians are ready to work real hard to fill empty bellies. If it’s the only way.’

  ‘I am glad that a man of experience is riding with us,’ Isabella said.

  The half-breed’s slitted blue eyes locked on her wide brown ones for a moment. Then she flushed with embarrassment as his gaze once more travelled over the womanly fullness of her body.

  ‘Ain’t no man so experienced he’s not ready to try something new,’ he said lightly.

  ‘My sister was thinking of Indians, hombre,’ the boy snarled.

  Edge showed his teeth in a thin, wry smile. ‘But women are known for changing their minds, kid.’

  The talk finished. Hooves of horses and oxen clopped against the rock-hard ground beneath a layer of dust. Wheels turned and aged timbers creaked. While he continued to watch the country in every direction, all the way to the shimmering curtain of heat haze veiling the horizons, Edge thought of other women and other Indians.

  His blonde-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned Swedish mother on the Iowa farmstead. There had been Indian trouble then. Of a minor nature compared with what was to come. But to the young Josiah C. Hedges the occasional raids on the farm by renegade bands of Sioux had seemed terrifying. As he grew older, he had held a bucking gun in his hand as he helped his Mexican father beat off the attackers. Protecting the farm, its crops and its livestock. The man and youth willing to see all this lost, providing their wife and mother and young Jamie were saved.

  When the war came their parents were already dead. Jamie was a cripple and stayed in Iowa to take care of the farm while Josiah went to the battlefields of the east. There were no Indians there. Just countless thousands of Confederate soldiers dedicated to killing the Unionist enemy. And six Union troopers who many times came close to murdering Lieutenant, then Captain, Hedges.

  The first woman to mean anything to him outside of his mother was the only good thing in the war for the young soldier. Until the body of Jeannie Fisher, upon which he had been introduced to one aspect of manhood, was burned and mutilated: became another casualty statistic.

  Then the war was over and the soldier headed back towards the midwest, anxious to become a farmer once more, Jeannie already forgotten—and prepared to put out of his mind everything else which had happened to him during the long, bitter and bloody battle for a tarnished cause.

  But it was not to be.

  The six troopers, who had often been a greater threat to him than the Confederates, reached the Iowa farmstead before the ex-Captain. They had left it a burning ruin, with the tortured body of Jamie and the corpse of one of their own providing food for the buzzards.

  Everything that had happened to him in the war, every lesson he had learned about the art of killing to survive, came to the forefront of his mind. And guided his actions in tracking down and taking revenge against the murderers of his kid brother.

  One killing—curiously not of one of the ex-troopers—had resulted in Josiah C. Hedges becoming a wanted man in the state of Kansas. And the name—and man—Edge had come into being. A man destined to drift across the west, using war-taught skills honed further by experience to survive the constant dangers which either dogged his tracks or lay in wait along the aimless trail.

  Apaches had threatened his survival. Mexicans and Americans, too.

  Then there had been Elizabeth. A woman who had come to mean more to him, perhaps, than his mother had. They married and for a few short weeks on a farm in the harsh Badlands of Dakota Edge became Josiah C. Hedges again. He discovered there was more to life than mere survival. There was love and hope and ambition.

  But there was also the Sioux.

  An opening attack warned him. But, although he did not ignore the omen, he did not recall everything which had been taught to him so harshly during the war between the States and its cruel aftermath.

  And Beth died. An awful death. And the same fate which had made him wanted for killing a man who meant nothing to him, took another brutal twist. Planning his wife’s death in such a manner that he was made to feel responsible for her terrible end, driving home the lesson he had forgotten. That he was destined to be a loner, forever denied the opportunity to enjoy more than mere survival for its own sake.

  He buried Beth’s body and set out once more on a trail to nowhere. Killing when it was necessary and remaining more cold and detached than ever when the opportunity of establishing a human relationship occurred.

  Instead, he chose the rewards of big money. He had elected such a course long before, in Mexico. And the prize of ten thousand dollars had been cruelly snatched from him.

  This time, it was Indians again. Apaches. And he surrendered to the inevitability of being a loser as well as a loner. Taking what he could get when he could get it - coldly, impassively, even brutally. Submitting to the ultimate tragic result of his involvement without grief, remorse, regret or anger.

  Food, drink, a horse, a gun, a b
ed or a woman.

  Charity Meagher had been the last woman he had taken - and the first since Beth. And she had died in the Dakotas, too. On the frozen waters of the Missouri. Un-mourned by any who watched her violent end.

  There were no Indians on that storm-lashed night. But they had been at Democracy, the Nebraska town which had been Edge’s last stopover along the aimless trail. The Sioux again. No woman who mattered, or could matter, until he saw Isabella Montez.

  ‘A penny for your thoughts, señor.’

  There was an earnest expression on her pretty and almost beautiful face.

  Edge shook his head. ‘You’ve got troubles enough. You don’t want to buy more.’

  ‘Are yours in the past or the future?’ the girl asked.

  ‘He has made it plain that his business is not ours, Isabella,’ Pedro growled.

  Edge had no business in Colorado. And nothing planned for the end of the trail he was riding when he happened upon the wagon with the broken wheel. The black mare which had once belonged to a black man had set the south-westerly course. The rider had given the animal its head, passing through isolated communities and halting at only one to restock for his needs.

  ‘Past’s gone and the future ain’t here yet,’ the half-breed answered evenly, then gazed briefly at the hard-set lines of Pedro’s profile. ‘Right here in the present the only trouble I got is remembering I told the kid the slate was wiped clean.’

  The boy both spat and snorted.

  ‘Pedro is young, Edge,’ Isabella placated. ‘But he is his father’s son and perhaps one day will be as wise.’

  Now Edge spat. ‘That won’t take much effort, lady. To match a feller that sets off for Mexico in a wagon only fit for burning. With no spare wheel. And with just a single shot rifle and an out-of-date handgun to protect his family.’

  Both youngsters flared with anger. But it was the girl who got in first with a snarling retort.

  ‘From the far north of Montana we come! With little money to spare! In the cheapest wagon we could buy! Made as strong as my father’s skills as a blacksmith could make it! With two spare wheels, both of which we have used! All of us knowing the dangers! All of us agreeing it was time to return to San Parral! Trusting in providence, not guns, to protect us!’