Sioux Uprising (Edge series Book 11)

by George G. Gilman

  He squeezed the trigger and the crack of the rifle shot silenced the braves. The bullet made an insignificant water splash less than three-quarters of the way across the lake. Edge snarled and aimed high. The second bullet travelled a greater distance, but plopped harmlessly into the soft mud under the bank. The sound and futile result of this shot signaled a renewal of rejoicing among the Sioux braves, but this time their screams and yells had a derisive ring, taunting the lone white man.

  The first brave burst clear of the yard and the others, raising their voices to a full-throated roar, streamed after him. Elizabeth’s dress was like a flag of scorn among the vividly painted bodies. Edge gave vent to his own emotions, and a low growl rasped from his lips as he staggered to his feet and began to run down the slope towards the lake. He reeled from side to side on legs that seemed to have no bones or muscles. His right hand worked in a fluid motion, pumping the lever action and squeezing the trigger of the Winchester. The bullets set up a wild, crazy pattern across the surface of the lake and mud on the far shore. The Indians galloped away in triumph, riding in a wide curve that took them tramping across the wheat field and into the spruce forest behind the cabin.

  The rifle ejected its last shell and Edge pulled up short, gasping for breath, his vision blurred by anger as he watched the stragglers disappear among the trees. Smoke curled from the kitchen chimney, rising lazily into the hot air. From this distance it was not possible to see the sign left by the unshod hooves of the Indian ponies and the spread looked peaceful and inviolate.

  Then the sound of shod hooves caused Edge to whirl around. He snapped up the empty rifle and sighted along the barrel. Jed Hayhurst burst over the crest of the rise and started down the slope, casting a mere glance at the exhausted horse struggling to regain its legs.

  He hauled hard on the reins, bringing his own mount to a skidding, snorting halt ten feet short of where Edge stood. The older man’s stern face was pale beneath its weathered top surface. His eyes held Edge’s demanding gaze with resolute steadiness.

  “You chase them off?” he asked.

  ‘“From here I couldn’t touch them,” the half-breed replied. “But they got what they came for.”

  “Elizabeth?”

  “Right. I need your horse, feller.”

  Hayhurst’s expression did not flicker. “They already hit your place,” he said. “Mine might be next.”

  Edge shook his head. “They went into the trees. Your spread’s over to the south.”

  “So maybe they already been there,” Hayhurst countered. “You want this horse, you’ll have to kill me for it. I got a wife, too. And kids.”

  “Your problems I don’t want to know about, Hayhurst,” Edge said softly.

  “Yours I can see for myself,” Hayhurst replied. “A horse you run into a ground and a gun you emptied into the lake. I counted the shots.”

  He dug in his heels and the horse leapt forward, swinging around to the side of Edge. The half-breed lunged, swinging the rifle, but the wild blow went wide.

  “Don’t expect any help from town!” Hayhurst flung over his shoulder as he headed off on to the spur trail which led to his farm.

  “I’ve learned to get along without help,” Edge muttered, gazing scornfully up the slope to where fat Jake’s horse had finally made it upright. “But I guess I forgot some of my lessons for awhile there.”

  As he hobbled up the hill, he became aware of the pain which attacked every part of his body, and of the intensity of the sun beating down out of cloudless sky. He talked softly to the dejected animal, coaxing him to stay still as he reached out and caught hold of the bridle. Then both man and beast moved slowly down to the shore and drank thirstily, the clear water warm in the shallowness of the lake’s edge.

  It was the only complete rest the half-breed allowed. For when both had drunk their fill, he gripped the bridle again and led the horse at an easy walk on a half circuit of the lake. When he reached the picket fence bounding the yard, he angled away from the waterside, keeping his eyes averted from the cabin. His own Winchester was inside, fully loaded and with a great many spare shells. So was his Colt, a Bowie knife and the razor. But his need of these weapons was negated by the knowledge that the cabin was also host to a thousand and one memories of happy times. And with Elizabeth, numbed by terror, in the hands of the painted savages - perhaps already suffering disgusting tortures or, mercifully, dead - he wanted no part of what once had been. Later, maybe, when he had avenged her torment.

  It was easy tracking across the fields to the forest, and easier still among the trees. In the shade of cool green foliage, both he and the horse recovered quickly from their exertions. After an hour, when the animal’s breathing had returned to a normal cadence and his eyes had become clear, Edge swung up into the saddle. The horse snorted a mild protest and tried a half-hearted buck. But Edge stressed his dominance, then made no attempt to drive the piebald faster than a steady trot. The horse settled into the pace contentedly.

  The going was easy for the trees grew at adequately spaced intervals and the earth was for the most part free of tangled brush. The braves were moving at a fast rate and making no attempt to cover their tracks. When the signs showed the war party had swung to the south, in the direction of Jed Hayhurst’s farm, Edge noted the fact without emotion.

  The great forest cloaked a vast area of gently rolling ground but from the McCord place the bulk of it lay to the north and east. Edge had been travelling three hours, horse droppings giving an indication that he was closing with his quarry, when he reached the southern tree line. As he neared open country, the horse gave a whine of alarm and Edge reined the animal to a halt, eyes and ears straining for the first sign of danger.

  The dappled sunlight was abruptly swept away, as if a dark cloud had moved into the sky. The horse snorted and Edge smelt the reason for the animal’s nervousness: smoke. He dismounted and stalked forward, leading the horse. A shaft of sunlight pierced the billowing cloud of black smoke and dazzled him for a moment. He blinked and shaded his hooded eyes with a hand.

  Jed Hayhurst’s wheat fields were untouched, but in imminent danger of exploding into a raging series of fires as sparks from the blazing farmhouse drifted down on to them. Hayhurst was among the earliest settlers in the Dakota hills and had spent most of his waking hours building up his farm. He owned an entire valley, with better than two thousand acres of fine growing soil, naturally irrigated by a fast running stream with half a dozen tributaries. And at the centre of all this had stood the once fine house - ten rooms and all of them furnished with loving care, each item constructed and fashioned by Jed and Bertha Hayhurst themselves. And every piece made of wood so that Jed could put his carving talent to use.

  Now the fine house was fast becoming a blackened shell, the heat-shattered windows spewing out roaring flames and billowing smoke as the comfortable interior was consumed by the fire.

  From his vantage point, at the top of a rocky escarpment overlooking the centre of the valley, Edge could see Hayhurst standing before his life’s work. The main stream which watered the fertile valley curved in close to the east wing, but Hayhurst made no attempt to douse the flames. He seemed like a statue, rooted to the spot. The blacksmith’s horse was hitched to a gatepost, snorting and stamping in terror as it struggled to tear free and flee the flames.

  “Obliged for your help, feller,” Edge said to the horse he had taken from fat Jake. “You can go on home now.”

  He released the bridle and the animal wheeled abruptly and broke into a gallop, racing clear of the danger which smoke signified to its horse sense.

  Edge, clutching the empty Winchester, climbed down the rocky cliff face, finding ample foot and hand holds in the weathered surface. Even before he reached the bottom, he felt the heat of the fire, which seemed to be held low within the valley by a sun determined to accept no challenge to its own burning intensity.

  A new fire was already springing up among the wheat stalks in a field to the east and E
dge broke into a run towards the solitary figure of Hayhurst. Soot and sparks whirled in thermals and were showered out to be wafted to the ground. They stung Edge’s face and he smelled the dry odor of burned cloth as his shirt and pants became speckled with charred spots.

  A freak air current kept the area in front of the house clear of fire detritus. But it did not protect it from the fierce heat of the flames. Edge shielded his face with his hands as he strode towards Hayhurst and halted beside him. The dour face, set in lines of depthless melancholy, was scorched in patches of bright red and snow white. Yellow heat blisters swelled on his forehead and jaw. He acknowledged Edge’s presence with a quick glance, then returned his concentration to the house. Tears squeezed from his eyes and became vaporized in the heat.

  “You could have had the horse,” he said, and the words were as parched as the man himself.

  “You see them?” Edge wanted to know, turning his back on the house as the ceiling of one of the rooms crashed in, exploding a fresh wave of scorched air.

  “No, it was done when I got here. They butchered them all. Bertha, the kids. They cut the unborn child from her womb and defiled it. He was a boy.”

  “How’d you know, with this?” Edge asked, jerking a thumb over his shoulder towards the blazing house.

  “Weren’t them,” Hayhurst muttered. “I burned the place. Didn’t want anybody to see them after what the Sioux did to them.” He looked at Edge now, for a long time, then asked. “Did you get any shells for that rifle?”

  Edge shook his head.

  Hayhurst nodded. “Have to be the way I planned it then.”

  He turned to face the house again, then started forward, holding his body ramrod stiff as the heat grew more intense.

  “Hayhurst!” Edge called.

  “You can’t talk me out of it,” Hayhurst answered, halting.

  “Don’t figure to,” Edge told him. “Was a time I wouldn’t give a damn about stealing from a dead man. But I’d like to have your permission to take the horse.”

  “Do whatever you like,” the older man answered, and continued his walk towards death.

  “Obliged,” Edge acknowledged, and loped across to where the frightened horse was still struggling against its tether.

  He spoke softly to the animal, quietening him, and stroked the scorched hair of his neck as he swung up into the saddle. He waited a moment before unhitching the reins, to look across at the house. Some of the kerosene which Hayhurst had poured around the rooms must have splashed on to his clothing. For he was still more than six feet from the fiercely burning doorway when his shirt front exploded into flames. He screamed once, high and shrill, before bending at the knees and then leaping forward. His flaring body dropped short of the doorway and his fingers clawed at the dirt as he tried to haul himself inside. But death beat him and his body became motionless. The final shreds of burning clothing dropped from him and yellow heat blisters swelled up from the naked, roasted flesh.

  “Didn’t quite reach what he wanted,” Edge said softly, making his voice a soothing whisper in the ear of the frightened animal. “But he sure got warm.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  All the fields close to the house were raging seas of fire as Edge unhitched the horse and forced him into the swift-running stream. The animal fought against entering the water, but he plunged ahead gratefully when he realized that coolness combated the heat. Edge followed the stream in a north-east direction, veering his mount towards the centre of the water-run as he passed between the Haling wheat-fields. Sparks stung and singed him again, and black smoke swept across his course like ugly night fog. The horse snorted and wanted to turn back, but Edge snarled at him and pounded his sides with his heels. The horse complied with the order to go forward, but elected to make his own pace. Water foamed and spray flew as the animal attempted to gallop through the stream which was fully three feet deep at the centre.

  Then animal and man burst clear of the smoke and swirling sparks. The green of trees on the valley sides and pasture on the lower slopes looked cool. The higher reaches of the stream had an icy sparkle. But this was all merely a trick of the imagination and Edge enjoyed only a few brief moments of comparative relief from the heat and discomfort. Then the afternoon sun reasserted that it had many hours of fierceness left to run. And, into his mind, seared the memory of the red and green dress standing out so starkly against the war-painted bodies of the Sioux raiders.

  He had escaped the fire by the only route open to him. If he had been the kind of man who set any store by omens, he might have considered it lucky that the murder-crazed braves had left sign that they had fled the valley in the same direction. As Josiah C. Hedges, it was conceivable that he would have accepted this fact as an indication that fate was prepared to smile upon him. But as Edge, he merely saw the sign and followed it. It was simply there to be put to practical use. Had it not been, he would have circled the burning spread until he found it. An abstract factor such as luck played no part in his thinking: for it to be so, he would have had to have imagination. And a machine - which was what Edge became when the cold urge to kill possessed him - had no emotions. What he was, as he steered the horse up out of the stream and on a diagonal line towards the northern point of the valley, was little more than a series of reflex actions encased in a human form. The Sioux braves had taken his wife - he had to find them. They, or others of their kind, had murdered Jed Hayhurst's family and left tracks. Therefore, follow the tracks. When he found what he was seeking, he would have no weapon except an empty Winchester rifle. He had no idea what he would do then - for such a projection into the future required imagination.

  When he reached the top of the valley side, he was confronted by the forest again. The tracks of the ponies - at least as many as he had seen leave his own farm - followed the tree line for half a mile, then turned into the timber at the rim of a narrow ravine which split through the forest like a gigantic knife cut. It widened and deepened as he moved in the wake of the Sioux. Sunlight only reached a halfway point on the far wall as the afternoon grew old. The white water of a fast-flowing stream showed at the bottom and he could hear the roar and crash as water was forced between rocks. It looked cool down there.

  Then the ground began to fall away in a gentle slope and he could see across a vast expanse of country. The sun had lost a great deal of its brightness and the approach of evening was sucking off the heat haze. To the east the forest appeared to go on forever and to the north-west the rich green carpet extended to the long ridge of a high rise which limited the horizon. But due north, the timber began to thin, giving way to a barren tableland featured with rock outcrops and gently undulating sweeps of sun-browned grassland.

  Wisps of smoke traced lazily moving patterns of grey against the azure background of the sky. Edge narrowed his eyes and pinpointed the campfire to the far side of a low butte in the middle distance. The clarity of the air played tricks with perspective, making it impossible to estimate how far it was to the camp - certainly more than twenty miles. The comparative freshness of the sign he was following indicated that the fire was not at a camp set up by the war party which had butchered the Hayhurst family.

  The sight of the fire reminded Edge that he had not eaten since the breakfast prepared by Elizabeth before he left for town. But he discovered he was not hungry.

  The horse seemed satisfied with the long, richly green grass he had chomped while Edge made his survey of the country ahead. And the animal responded willingly to the rider’s demand for greater speed on the downgrade. First a trot, then a canter, until Edge called a halt at the bank of the stream. The Sioux raiders had also rested at this spot, to refresh themselves and their ponies with the cool water, which glided past smoothly here, before entering the rapids in the ravine.

  Edge rolled a cigarette, and smoked it as he rode on, moving along the natural trail of a broad, grass-covered bank which sloped between the trees and the stream. The declivity and spongy texture of the earth suggested that the w
ater rose to the timber line when the winter snows melted.

  After a mile of straight running, the stream, narrowing with every yard, curved to the east and disappeared beneath thick growing brush. The Indians had left sign showing they had plunged into the trees and Edge went that way. He had been in the deep shade for less than fifteen minutes, his pace slow as the pony tracks became more difficult to see, when the twitter of a bird song took on a note of alarm, then abruptly ceased. Edge brought his mount to a silent halt and froze in the saddle, slitted eyes peering ahead and ears strained for the slightest scratch on the cone of stillness which had dropped over his immediate surroundings. Sweat held the leather reins tight against his palms. The horse’s ears pricked and one forehoof raked the ground.

  There was a twang of suddenly released tautness, a swish of disturbed air. The arrow streaked across Edge’s vision and thudded into a tree trunk six feet to his left. Edge’s eyes swiveled to peer into the timber on his right.

  “You so much as think about reaching for that rifle, you’re dead, mister.”

  It was a man, his voice scratchy with age and querulous with ill-humor. Edge turned towards the twig-snapping sound of his approach and regarded him with cold indifference as he emerged from the trees. He was tall and skinny, dressed in buck-skin pants and coon-skin hat: nothing else. In his bony hands he held a Sioux bow, ready slotted with an arrow and with the string drawn taut. The feathered ends of many more arrows showed above his left shoulder. His naked feet and upper body had a deep brown coloration from long exposure to sun. His face and utterly bald head were toned to an even darker brown, almost black. Age lines made his thin face ugly but his eyes - magnified enormously by the thick lenses of wire framed spectacles - were a paradox. They were black, with very white surrounds: clear and youthful looking. They sighted along the shaft of the arrow with steady intensity, promising deadly accuracy.