Killer's Breed

by George G. Gilman

  Table of Contents

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  EDGE

  KILLER’S BREED

  By George G. Gilman

  First Published by Kindle 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by George G. Gilman

  First Kindle Edition: March 2012

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events,

  locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Cover design by West World Designs © 2012

  This is a High Plains Western for Lobo Publications

  Visit the author at:

  www.gggandpcs.proboards.com

  ]

  For M.H.

  who was in at the start but is

  now with the opposition.

  WARNING!

  This is not for the fainthearted reader!

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  This is a fictional story set against a background of the American Civil War which did, of course, actually happen. Although the sequence of actual events is correct, it has been found necessary to alter certain details so that the man now called Edge could play his part in the battles of the Shenandoah Valley, Bull Run and Shiloh. I trust war historians will forgive me.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE man called Edge was sick and he was tired and as he crossed the Kansas-Missouri Stateline he thought he might die before he reached the place that had once been his home. He couldn't recall how long he had been riding on the box seat of the flatbed wagon: how many hours, days, weeks, he had looked at little else but the hindquarters of the four big horses which had valiantly hauled him all the way from the massacre at Rainbow towards a dream that had turned into a nightmare. Once the wagon had been weighed down on its springs by a fortune in Mexican gold, but the army had not allowed Edge to claim it for his own. The cavalry troop which had galloped into Rainbow too late to prevent its annihilation by Apaches had seized upon the gold as a substitute victory, the commanding officer hopeful that Washington would accept a million dollars worth of bullion as a fair if not humane exchange for the lives of eighty troopers and their officers and every citizen who had lived in Rainbow, Arizona Territory.1 (1 See - Edge: Apache Death)

  Edge, the entire back of his head seeming to be on fire from the blood-encrusted furrow which a bullet had gouged across his neck, and surrounded by a company of cavalrymen suspicious of the reason for his survival, was in no position and had little inclination to argue his case. If he were a man to have any belief in the vagaries of fortune he might have considered himself lucky to be allowed to leave Rainbow with the wagon and horses and a Winchester 66 with a full load of ammunition. In point of fact, being the kind of man he was, he felt that the circumstances in which he left the ravaged town were the best that he could expect.

  It was not the first time he had been within moments of obtaining a fortune only to have it snatched from him and he had .learned to accept such defeat philosophically. He was alive when all the rest were dead and. if this were not enough, the future held as many alternatives as a man had time to explore them. So Edge drove the wagon and team away from Rainbow with a mind which had already blotted out all thoughts of what had happened and what he had lost there. He was a man alone again—the way he preferred to be—and if, as he headed north over the arid mountain country, a mind vacated by the past did not concern itself with the future and the courses it opened, this too was characteristic of the man. For, in truth, he had nothing to live for, unless it be the day, and this day was fined with pain.

  The pain got worse, spreading like a flame to engulf his entire head and as the days passed it ate its way downwards, through his shoulders and chest and into his stomach. Then numbness set in and he could bathe the bullet wound without setting off fresh waves of agony. For a day and a half as he crossed the Continental Divide in the northern region of the New Mexico Territory and started down towards the Rio Grande, experiencing the falling temperatures of approaching winter, he felt almost fit, but refused to allow himself to acknowledge hope. For he knew that the wound, untreated except by un-boiled stream water and the application of a soiled kerchief, had become gangrenous. His exploring fingers could feel the ugly swelling of poison at the edges of the wound, and his nose could detect the stink of it.

  The searing pain had begun shortly after that, and rode with him like a demon spirit across the southeastern comer of Colorado and into Kansas. The further north he travelled the lower the temperature dropped and Edge knew this, despite the fact that his own body was burning with fever, for as the sweat formed on his body it was immediately chilled by the brisk air. He was on the plains now, the great sprawling flatlands of the Middle West: cattle and farming country and the settlements and towns became more numerous as the land became richer. But Edge, ignoring them, sometimes drove the team through them, blind to the curious stares of bystanders; otherwise he skirted them. For his dream had been born. Created by lightheadedness and fed with involuntary, disjointed memories of inter-mingled peace and violence, it was a vision of home. A beautiful Iowa landscape peopled with wonderful parents and a hero-worshipping kid brother contributing to a rich and full life for a man named Josiah Carl Hedges. Although Edge struggled to hold on to this mind picture, the blood from a hundred gaping wounds kept washing across it to the sound of gunfire and the swish of a flashing blade. He saw his parents dead, countless mutilated men in uniforms of blue or gray, a man who was no longer a man swinging at the end of a rope, a woman's crumpled body at the foot of a cliff, another woman with bloodied patches where her young breasts had been, the head of a man with no body and no eyelids swinging in the morning sunlight.

  Then, finally, as the blood was wiped clean, he saw the farm again, but not as it used to be before the war and the aftermath of violence. Now it was merely a burned-out shell of a house surrounded by vast expanses of fired wheatfields. This was a picture to which the tortuously sick Edge could cling, for he was determined to see it in reality. This was his dream, for he knew that the pain which rode the wagon with him was a messenger of death and before he died he wanted desperately to see the place where, in life, he had been most happy.

  He did not trouble to eat or rest any more as he felt the time running out and it was an instinct, like that of a wounded animal, which communicated his desire to the team as it toiled due north out of Missouri and into Iowa.

  The fever increased, spreading across the man's pale face a waxy redness out of which his blue eyes shone with a brilliance too bright, too intense so that those who saw the wagon roll past were certain it was driven by a man who was insane. With this sudden, dangerous rise in temperature, there came also a fire in his mind, at first flickering, then bursting into a raging flame. Edge was willing himself not to die and with this determination the dream became a nightmare, not springing from the past, but threatening from out of the future. He wanted to live because now he was certain that if he could get back to the farm, he would have a chance to start afresh. It seemed an eternity ago that he had last ridden towards the farm with hope filling his heart: an earnest desire that there he could forget the horrors of war and revert to the man he had once been. But violence had preceded him and he had gone
forth to reap revenge with like violence. His lust for vengeance had been assuaged now and from the depths of his sickness he saw a chance to turn back the clock and grasp again at the opportunity for peace.

  But the nightmare of death threatened to rob him and in a mind contorted by fever he was certain that death would be defeated if only he could reach the farm in time. He was unable to reason out an explanation for his faith but he had never been more certain of anything in his life before. When the rain came, gusted across the rolling plain by a north wind and lashing directly into his face, he experienced it only as a further weapon in death's armory and he urged the team into greater efforts, cursing at the almost exhausted beasts as they strained to force themselves and their burden through the mire into which the rain had transformed the grassland.

  Edge wore no topcoat and the teeming, wind powered rain quickly soaked his black shirt and pants, pasting his underwear to his burning skin. His hat had blown off in the first gust and his shoulder-length black hair danced about his head in turmoil. But he drove on relentlessly through the gathering gloom of the storm, eyes blazing and teeth gleaming between lips curled back in a sneer which challenged the elements. And then, as a fork of lightning slashed across the grey sky and an instantaneous clap of thunder cut through the hiss of the rain, the horses bolted in terror and Edge laughed insanely, triumphantly, as the sudden speed strengthened his hand against the passage of time.

  But the horses had little reserves left upon which to call and their pace slackened. When the skies were next split asunder by lightning and its accompanying thunder they could do no more than whinny and roll their eyes, white in their terror. Then; as Edge screamed his demand for further speed, one of the lead horses put a hoof in a gopher hole and the shinbone broke with a sharp crack, like a distant rifle shot. The other lead horse veered sharply to the left and the wagon slewed round, a rear wheel hit a rock and the rim sheared off the spokes. As the wagon canted sharply Edge was rocketed from the seat and in his deranged mind experienced a sensation of exhilaration as his body sailed through the rain-streaked air. He thudded in the rain-softened ground and lay still on his back for several moments, his mouth open to drink from the storm. This period of inactivity seemed to have a calming effect on his mind and there was a sense of logical purpose in the movements of his mud-covered body, an expression of impassive intent as he picked himself up and moved slowly towards the overturned wagon and pathetically struggling horses. The lid of the box seat was still shut and he grunted with surprise when he discovered the extent of his weakness. But eventually he raised the lid and took out the Winchester. Terror left the eyes of the injured horse as he approached it and the animal looked at the man with trust. It did not move as the rifle muzzle pressed against its head. The crack of the rifle was lost in a clap of thunder and in the blue flash of lightning the eyes of the horse became glazed. The animal's final breath gushed from its nostrils and then the horse collapsed, setting off the others into renewed struggles. Edge's hand was slow going to the back of his neck, but the movement was sure. The reaching fingers avoided the purple and yellow swelling of the festering wound and closed upon the handle of the cut-throat razor. He jerked it clear of the pouch and then began to slice through the traces which held the other three horses in the wagon shafts. As each animal was freed it moved a few paces away and there waited patiently as if expecting some new demand from the man. But the next stab of blue lightning and the smash of the thunderclap sent the animals into a stumbling gallop that would not end until physical fatigue overtook mental anguish.

  Edge watched them out of sight, then turned to follow his instinct home, and instinct was all that kept him going now. The elation of the team's terror-fed dash, the exhilaration of the crash and the smashing of his body into the ground had robbed his mind of the last vestiges of unreality. His body was wracked with pain, fatigue was an unbearable weight on every muscle and his brain communicated only defeat. There was no longer any vision to lure him on nor any abstract struggle with the angels of death to drive him forward. He was just a terribly sick man in search of relief, forced on by sheer determination to get to where he was going.

  Thus, when another lightning streak bathed the country ahead of him with an instant of blue brilliance, he knew that what he had seen was true. There really was a house where, when he had last been here, there had been only blackened timber. And there was a new barn, too, over to the right of where the old one had been. The picket fencing enclosing the yard might have been the same one Edge and his brother had put up so long ago, but it had been painted since—perhaps more than once. And the fields spread out around the farmstead, last seen as the sooted remains of a wheat crop, were now either golden with stubble or black with ploughing for the next planting.

  What made it so real, confirmed to Edge that he had come home at last, was the big live oak inside the yard, not far from the gate in the fence. It was almost leafless now, surrendering its foliage to the onslaught of fall, but Edge had seen the tree in every season and he recognized it instantly. If every other feature of the country had been wiped out by a natural disaster, providing the oak tree had survived, Edge would have known he was home.

  He moved forward at a faster pace now, the view blotted out by the rain, but the position of the oak had been impressed into his retina. His feet felt like lead as he dragged them through the mud and he staggered from side to side as his head swayed drunkenly on his stooped shoulders. He cannoned into the fence several yards wide of the gate but was reluctant to waver from his chosen course. He hauled his protesting body up on to the fence and then pitched forward into the sea of mud on the other side. His breathing was ragged from his demented haste and at first he could not haul himself to his feet. He crawled on all fours for several yards, until he arrived in the inadequate shelter of the leafless branches of the tree. He used the rough bark of the oak and the additional leverage of the Winchester to drag himself upright and then, still relying upon the support of the tree, moved around to the far side.

  The mound of Jamie's grave had grass on it now, neatly trimmed and with a cleanly cut edging. The crudely formed cross with the boy's name and the date of his death upon it was at the head of the mound, weathered but still legible. New, in the center of the mound was a tin pot, rusted but serviceable, empty of flowers when Edge first saw it. But then a pair of delicate finely-boned hands reached out and tenderly placed a posy of blood-red roses into the pot.

  Edge forced his head up off his chest, his hooded eyes taking in the stooping figure of somebody in a yellow waterproof to the left of the grave. He cracked his mouth to say something but all that emerged was a pained grunt as every ache in his burning body was drawn into his skull to gather into a single lump which exploded with tremendous force. The world lit up and he saw the terrified face of a beautiful girl. Darkness rushed at him and he fell forward into it.

  *****

  Grace Hope screamed with all the power in her lungs as she saw what she firmly believed to be an apparition rising from the grave. For the tall man was covered from head to foot in black mud and in his head she could see two gleaming rows of teeth and the wildly staring eyes of a skull. Then, as he fell forward she was certain the ghoul was leaping at her and the scream ripping from her parted lips rose to a crescendo and was abruptly swamped by a new crash of thunder.

  After the brilliance of the lightning flash she was temporarily blinded but when the instant had passed she could see the form slumped at her feet and watched, trembling, as the teeming rain pelted upon the man's face and washed it clean from forehead to stubbled jaw. Her mouth was still wide in the attitude of a scream, but now she stepped forward and stooped over the man, reaching out a shaking hand to touch the white cheek, almost luminescent against the surrounding darkness. The flesh was burning and the sound she uttered now was a low-keyed cry of alarm.

  "Mother!" she called, remaining in the stoop and looking over her shoulder, through the curtain of falling rain to where the dark
form of the house loomed against the grayness of the afternoon.

  In the house the woman at the sink continued with her task of preparing the vegetables for the evening meal. She could hear the rain hitting the roof and rushing down the drain pipe into the perpetually overflowing barrel. And she could hear the intermittent crack of thunder as the windows gleamed with blue fire. But no other sounds could pierce this barrage.

  "Mother!" Grace called again, louder but once more failing to attract the attention of the woman in the house. She probed with her fingers through the mud on the man's throat and for a moment thought he was dead. She came erect, turned and ran through the mire of the yard towards the house.

  "Grace, you'll catch your death," her mother rebuked as she heard the door open. "You didn't even know whoever's buried in that grave. Don't see why you have to tend it so regular, and in all weathers, too."

  "There's a man in the yard," Grace blurted out as she caught her breath.

  Her mother turned then, and saw the fear inscribed upon her daughter's pretty features. The older woman had been brought up in the wilderness on lonely farmsteads and learned from bitter experience that fast action was often the only way to survive. Thus she strode across the room to where a fully-loaded Spencer rifle was hung over the mantelshelf and was reaching up for the gun before her daughter caught her breath to explain further.

  "He's sick, mother. He's out there lying in the mud and burning up with fever."

  Margaret Hope stayed her hands for a moment, then continued, lifting the rifle down from its resting place and cocking it as she turned. "No sense in being careless," she said, heading for the door. "My father and yours always told me never to trust a man alone. Just 'cause he's sick don't mean he ain't up to no good. Come on, girl."