The priest and his two assistants expressed pity for her.
The clicks of the rifle’s lever action being pumped had a dry sound.
The gun exploded and belched death.
Father Ramon fell forward. The two other men in clerical garb showed their terror. The action was pumped and the trigger squeezed. Then again.
Still in line, the three prisoners were stretched out full length in the dusty courtyard, face down and wrists tied behind their backs. At the nape of the neck of each of them there was a small hole. At the crowns of their heads, much larger holes. Their hair was soaked with crimson blood.
Isabella dropped to her knees and crossed herself.
‘The gringo is dead?’ Alberto asked.
‘He is human,’ Luis replied, just as calmly. ‘So he does not have a head of iron.’
‘Good. You will do what you wanted. Felipe and I will find the gold.’
He rested his Winchester against the porch wall and gestured for the fat bandit to join him. They ambled casually across the sun bright courtyard to where the wagon was parked just inside the closed gateway, the oxen still in the traces.
‘You will take off your clothes, Isabella,’ Luis Perrero said softly.
The girl was still on her knees, hands clasped, eyes closed and lips moving to form the words of a prayer. The demand of the boy she had once loved shocked her into speechless paralysis.
‘Since my father died and I was left to scratch at the dusty soil of San Parral, I wanted to become a bandit,’ Luis said. ‘Do as I tell you, Isabella. Stand up and do it. Or I will shoot you in each ankle and strip you myself.’
She could move now. Turn and look at him. See him lower the aim of the rifle. See from his face that he was ready to carry out the threat. She stood up. She smelled the sweat of her body. The scene in the blisteringly hot, dusty, dry courtyard blurred. She struggled against the threat of a faint. And began to unbutton her shirt with trembling fingers.
‘But I had nothing to offer the bandit group of Alberto Bravo. When I went to them, they beat me and sent me back to San Parral. Then I received the letter from your father to my father.’
She drew the shirt off her shoulders. Beneath it was a white chemise, stained dark by sweat. She began to unfasten her pants at the waist. Her large breasts were firm, trembling with each movement she made.
‘Then, the group did not beat me. They listened and agreed to my plan that we should wait here for your wagon. Do not all the people of San Parral who come to the United States stop here at the mission? I knew you would come here.’
She pushed her pants down over her legs. Then had to sit and take off her boots first. Her underwear was all in one, covering her from ankles to chest. There were button fastenings from the top hem to her midriff. She was trembling less violently now. She stared at the wagon, as the men inside began to toss out its contents. But she showed no interest in what was happening.
‘We waited to the north of here,’ Luis went on, his dark eyes shining brighter as he watched the girl’s full body being uncovered. ‘When we saw you coming in the far distance, we came to the mission. We sent the Indian children back to the reservation and we took the priests prisoner. Then we waited for you as the dust storm came.
‘So now I am really a bandit, Isabella. Trusted by Alberto Bravo. And allowed to have that which I most regretted losing when I made my decision. You.’
Every item of the girl’s clothing was removed now, heaped untidily at her feet. She stood rigidly erect, arms at her sides. Every olive-brown plane at the front of her body was revealed to the burning gaze of Luis. Her shoulders, her large, slightly sagging breasts, her stomach, her thighs, the flesh smooth and firm, the nipples cresting her breasts and the triangle of luxuriant hair arrowing down at the base of her belly providing the only areas of faintly contrasting coloration.
‘You will lay down and spread yourself for me, Isabella,’ the young bandit said, his voice croaking with passion. ‘Out here in the open. On the dust with the sun on you. In the life I have chosen, there is no place for the luxuries of privacy and comfort.’
The girl’s expression suggested she was in a world removed from the scene of death and lust happening around her. But she could hear his words and she complied.
Luis allowed the Winchester to fall from his shaking hands and took two forward steps to stand between the splayed and naked legs of the unmoving girl. He unfastened his pants and groped into the opening to expose his thrusting want before he dropped to his knees.
The sweat had dried on Isabella’s body. But there was wetness on her face as she spilled tears for what might, have been. Then she vented a moan of pain and revulsion as Luis guided himself into her. The blood of her lost virginity was on his hands as they clawed at her breasts. His breath was hot on the flesh of her neck as he sighed his release.
Neither he, nor Isabella, nor Alberto Bravo and Filipe saw a hand reach out from the shaded interior of the church to claim the rifle leaning against the porch wall.
Likewise, nobody saw Edge move slightly as he regained consciousness.
The half-breed was awash on a sea of agony. But he did not cry out. His right cheek was pressed against the threshold of the schoolroom doorway. When his eyes cracked open, his vision was blurred. It cleared and he received a tilted view of the scene in the courtyard. Four slumped figures with flies feeding on congealing blood. A fully clothed man thrusting his lust into the naked body of the girl. Items of the wagon’s freight being hurled out over the tailgate. The sounds of the scene comprised the panting of one man and the cursing of two others.
‘Luis! There is no gold here!’
Alberto and Felipe jumped down from the rear of the wagon. Luis reached a frenetic climax and emptied himself into Isabella. The girl groaned, and her body spasmed as vomit gushed from her mouth.
Luis wrenched out of her and leapt upright, revulsion changing to terror as he whirled and saw the angry Alberto striding towards him. His pants were still open to show his shrinking flesh, splashed with the blood of Isabella.
Edge withdrew into the schoolroom and his vision became misted again as he clawed himself upright against the wall. Flies buzzed away from the crushed, blood-soaked crown of his hat. He felt for his gun and his hand fisted around the butt jutting from the holster.
Cold anger struggled against searing agony. And won. He could hear voices outside in the courtyard. Speaking Mexican, the words indistinct. He went away from them, between the neat rows of dusty desks. His rage was entirely directed inwards, at himself for allowing himself to be taken by the young Mexican. Maybe later there would be some to spare for what had happened to Isabella Montez.
Silently, he opened the shutters at one of the windows and climbed outside.
‘If all this is for nothin’,’ Alberto snarled, halting in front of Luis as the youngster fastened his pants.
‘There is gold! I will make her tell where! I swear it, Alberto!’
‘So talk to her! Not me!’
Alberto Bravo stood with a hand fisted around each of his holstered Colts. The fat Felipe was beside him, Winchester held across his chest. Luis turned to glare down at the naked, still spread-eagled girl. He was now more afraid than she was.
‘Isabella! The gold! Where did you leave the gold?’
‘If I do not tell you?’ she whispered, her vomit-run lips hardly moving. ‘What will you do to me? Kill me?’
Luis reached to draw one of his Colts.
Alberto reached out an arm and thrust the boy aside. ‘Stupid! If you kill her - Listen, bitch!’ He crouched between her splayed legs, clawed both hands and fastened them hard over the mounds of her already bruised breasts. ‘We have already spent much money by shooting bullets. They brought quick death. To kill you slowly will cost nothing. And we will still be rich with gold. Because you will tell us where you hid it. You understand, bitch?’
He squeezed her flesh, his filthy fingernails digging in hard enough to break the skin an
d draw tiny spurts of blood.
Isabella screamed. Louder than ever before. It rang between the implacable facades of the surrounding buildings like a sound compounded of all the agony, misery and desperation in the world. And did not stop until Alberto Bravo dropped a knee and thudded it into the girl’s crotch. She gasped as he eased the pressure of his hands.
‘Yes, I think you understand. You will tell now? Then one bullet. Very quick.’
‘It is on the wagon,’ Isabella gasped, and gagged as more bile rose from her throat into her mouth. ‘The metal, it is not all iron. Much is gold, painted to look like—’
‘Stay here, stupid!’ Alberto snarled as Luis matched the whirling movement of himself and Felipe.
The youngster obeyed, looking cowed, as the other two bandits ran towards the parked wagon.
‘The fields and house of your father were not much,’ Isabella gasped. ‘But you were master of them.’
‘Be quiet!’ Luis snarled.
‘What will you do? Kill me? Without the permission of that other animal who leads you?’
‘Shut your filthy mouth!’ He took two strides and drew back a foot to launch a kick at her head.
She flinched instinctively.
‘It is here!’ Felipe yelled in high excitement. ‘Under the paint! Like she said!’
Luis froze in the kicking attitude.
‘Kill her, boy!’ Alberto called. ‘Quick, so we can leave!’
Edge stepped out into the sunlight, pumping the action of the Winchester.
A shot exploded. From high up.
Edge, Isabella and the three bandits looked towards the top of the church tower. Mr. Ree was up there, standing in a broad aperture. Alberto’s Winchester was aimed from his shoulder and he was steadying himself with his back against the big bell.
His bullet went wide of the target and dug up a divot of dusty dirt ten feet away from Luis.
‘One we did not see!’ Felipe yelled, bringing his own rifle to the aim.
Alberto and Luis went for their Colts.
Edge shot Luis. He fired from the hip and Isabella screamed and rolled clear as the young Mexican was knocked forward and down, blood staining the back of his shirt and gushing from the exit wound in his chest.
‘And one with a head of iron!’ Alberto snarled.
He and Filipe whirled, ignoring Ree as the Siamese sent another shot downwards and hit one of the oxen in the wagon traces. The animal fell heavily, without a sound of pain.
Edge turned from the waist and levered the action of the rifle. He squeezed the trigger and his bullet took Felipe in the neck. The fat bandit staggered backwards, hurling away his Winchester and flinging both hands to the bloody hole in his flesh. His skull made a dry sound as he fell and his head was split open on a wheel rim. What flowed out was very wet.
Alberto had both Colts leveled at Edge. His fingers were taut against the triggers, the knuckles white. The half-breed was in the process of pumping the action again.
Ree fired and the bullet dug adobe out of the schoolroom wall.
Isabella squeezed the trigger of Luis’s Winchester. Alberto was hit in the stomach and folded forward. Both his guns exploded, and the bullets drilled into the dirt of the courtyard. The rifle in Edge’s hands belched another bullet. The top of the bandit’s head fountained blood. He whipped erect, then fell backwards, rigid for a moment. Then limp.
The girl was prone now, her exposed back caked with dust made wet by her sweat. She released the rifle and came up on to all fours. Then gathered her clothes, covered herself as much as she was able, stood up and sprinted for the privacy of the shaded church interior.
Edge rested his rifle against the stable wall and took off his hat to grimace at the dried blood on the crushed crown. He explored the crusting on his skull.
‘Sir!’ the Siamese called down from the top of the tower as Edge winced at the pain triggered by his probing fingers. ‘I have never fired a gun before today.’
Edge re-shaped his hat, replaced it on his head, and squinted up at Ree, narrowed eyes glinting out of the shadow of the brim. ‘It showed, feller!’
‘But I was of assistance to you, was I not?’ He sounded proud.
‘Always a help to have a highly-placed friend.’ He beckoned. ‘You want to come on down now?’
‘So that we may all finish the journey to San Parral?’ Isabella asked from inside the church. She sounded breathless. From her experience, or perhaps merely with the effort of hurriedly donning her clothes. ‘The best I could give to a man is now gone, señor. But, if you are still—’
‘About time you learned not to make plans for the future,’ Edge cut in.
‘No!’ the girl screamed.
The single, shrill word cut across the intoning voice of the Siamese poet.
‘When the past has been so full/With trials and pains and death/Perhaps the future is—’
Edge whirled, arms snaking out and hands clawed to snatch up his rifle.
The bell at the top of the tower clanged. Ree had been standing unsupported, speaking the lines to the barren terrain stretching out to either side of the dried up River Chaco. The swinging bell hit the back of his thighs and tipped him off the narrow ledge.
He screamed once, then was silent. Perhaps claimed by merciful unconsciousness as he plummeted downwards, his gown billowing in the hot slipstream and his flat hat scaling off his head. His falling form turned over twice, almost gracefully. Then he hit the courtyard. Dust billowed around him. His flesh was burst open by the impact. Blood sprayed out on all sides. Bones broke. He was still and the dust settled, adhering to the crimson wetness soaking through his gown. The flies swarmed in to feed.
‘Father Ramon’s third helper!’ Isabella Montez moaned as she advanced slowly from the church, fully dressed now. ‘He lived after he was shot. He tried to rise. His hands were bound at his back. But he was able to use them. To try to pull himself up. On the bell rope.’
She was out in the bright sun now, on the corpse-littered courtyard of the Mission of Santa Cristobel. But she looked only at the shattered, burst-open remains of the last man to die. Then covered her eyes with her hands.
‘How horrible!’
‘He’s a mess now, sure enough,’ Edge muttered, canting the rifle to his shoulder. ‘But he looked real good coming down.’
Isabella began to weep, and staggered across to kneel beside her brother’s corpse. Before turning to get the horses from the stable, the half-breed allowed his glinting eyes to travel from the top of the bell tower to the body at its base. Then, ‘Yeah,’ he murmured. ‘Poet Ree in motion.’
Other titles in the EDGE series from Lobo Publications
#1 The Loner
#2 Ten Grand
#3 Apache Death
#4 Killer’s Breed
#5 Blood On Silver
#6 The Blue, The Grey And The Red
#7 California Kill
#8 Seven Out Of Hell
#9 Bloody Summer
#10 Vengeance Is Black
#11 Sioux Uprising
#12 The Biggest Bounty
#13 A Town Called Hate
#14 Blood Run
#15 The Big Gold
#16 The Final Shot
#17 The Final Shot
#18 Ten Tombstones To Texas
#19 Ashes And Dust
#20 Sullivan’s Law
#21 Rhapsody In Red
#22 Slaughter Road
#23 Echoes Of War
#24 The Day Democracy Died
#25 The Violence Trail
#26 Savage Dawn
And More to Come…
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EDGE: Violence Trail (Edge series Book 25) Page 13
