The old, but occasionally still visible tracks left by the party of Indians, led towards a midway point in the butte. This fact caused Edge to halt his pony when he was a little over a mile from where the rock reared up from the floor of the barren wasteland. The back of his hand made a rasping sound as he rubbed it over his stubbled jaw. His tongue tasted salt sweat as he moistened his lips. His eyes, which had been narrowed against the harshness of bright sunlight for so long, now became mere slits as they examined the vista ahead of him.
There was no well-trodden pathway up to the lowest point on the ridge and he picked out a dozen ways to the top. But every one of these was wide open to the danger of ambush. For the dying sun, spraying in low-angled, pink-tinged light from the west picked out countless shadowed places where watching braves could be lurking. And if the Sioux had posted sentries to guard the southern approach to their camp, the waiting braves would be able to follow Edge’s progress up to the ridge for almost every foot of the way.
The alternative was to move in close to the start of the rise and then circle around the foot of the butte.
He spent only seconds considering the choice, then signaled his decision by sending a globule of saline saliva into the dust. It there was just one Sioux brave crouched in a shadowed pocket of rock on the butte, he would have had Edge in sight for the past two hours or more.
“Reckon we’ll go over the top, feller,” he said to the pony and heeled the animal forward.
But only to the point where the rise began. There, he halted and dismounted. He looked for and found a cleft in the rock where he could rest and wait out the evening and not be seen from above. Hunger began to gnaw at his stomach now and he untied the jack rabbit from around the pony’s neck. The large gunshot hole in the animal’s head had turned rancid in the heat. The body meat would still be good, but Edge suddenly flung the limp body out of his hiding place, cursing himself for a fool.
He had no means of skinning and cleaning the rabbit. There flashed across his mind an image of the two dead Indian boys back at the water hole - he even saw the knife hilt protruding from the waistband of their pants.
He acknowledged his failure to take one of the knives as a sign that he was not yet the man he once had been. He could still kill as mercilessly as ever, suffer pain and endure privation with the same degree of unrelenting purpose that had strengthened his character before his marriage. But his brain had failed to re-adapt itself at the same rate as his bodily reflexes. The need to achieve was a more powerful force than reasoning the means to the end and Edge knew that, in the task he had set himself, such a situation would inevitably lead to failure.
So it was that, as he sat in the rock cleft under a darkening sky, he forced himself to shed the last vestiges of Josiah C. Hedges. He thought he had achieved this before, but anger and grief had colored his thinking. It had been at its strongest when he had shunned entering the cabin to get his weapons. Time and the miles on the trail of the Indians had seemed to weaken the influences of the twin emotions which the man called Edge would never have allowed himself to feel.
Elizabeth was dead, killed by a band of Sioux raiders. To avenge her death would require detailed planning and cold-blooded execution of the resultant scheme. Only a fool would set out to kill with his mind loaded with anger. Josiah C. Hedges had been a fool a long time ago, when he tracked down the killers of his brother: driven on by white hot fury from Iowa to the Mexican border. He had been lucky. Now he had been a fool for a second time and luck had been with him again.
Edge got to his feet and stared with hooded eyes up the moonlit slope of the rock barrier between himself and the Sioux. Hedges had about used up all the luck any man was entitled to expect. Edge didn’t need it!
Moonlight had toned down and merged the colors of the rock formation to an all-over grey, except where knolls and depressions provided patches of menacing darkness. The half-breed’s eyes raked over the rise time and time again, alert for the slightest sign of danger. But there was none. It meant nothing. He knew the Sioux of old, when he had fought as a boy alongside his parents and brother to defend the family farm from their raids. And in more recent times he had tangled with the Apaches and Shoshonis.* (* See Edge: Apache Death and Edge: Blood on Silver) But whatever their tribe, all Indians shared an inbred patience, cunning and stealth. Thus, Edge realized there could be one or a hundred-and-one braves peering down at him, content to wait for him to make the first move.
He made it - slapping the pony hard on the rump. The sorrel gave a snort of protest and lunged forward, galloping along the foot of the rise and then suddenly swerving and heading up the slope. His hoof beats were very loud against the stillness of the night.
Edge went in the opposite direction, dropping into a crouch and running. He ducked into another cleft, but this one had a sloping floor which gave access to a way to the ridge. He came out of it and halted behind a jagged protection of rock. His eyes made another minute surveillance of the slope. The pony was slowing on the steepening upgrade, but he knew where he was going and did not hesitate before making any move to left or right. He was following a course he obviously knew from habit. Nothing else moved on the slope.
Edge darted from cover, the Winchester leveled from the hip. A boulder was balanced on a ledge up and to his right. Loose pebbles rolled from beneath his boots and sounded like an avalanche. He halted, looked and saw nothing. The night seemed to grow hotter. Sweat stung his eyes and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.
A whistle cut across the diminishing sound of the galloping pony. The sorrel reached the ridge and disappeared from sight. Edge recalled the piercing sound of the Sioux signal a moment before the two braves exploded death on his wedding day. The Indians had posted sentries on the south face of the butte. They had seen him riding towards them through the late afternoon and had waited patiently for him to emerge from the cleft.
As he crouched behind the boulder, more pebbles rolled, but these were disturbed by moccasined feet. The sound came from the right, at least, forty or fifty yards away. But in that general direction there were at least a dozen dark hiding places. The whistle had come from directly ahead, close to the top of the ridge. Nothing moved up there.
Edge tensed himself, readied the rifle for snap shooting and lunged out of his cover. He didn’t see the lance arcing up into the air. But he heard it’s hissing approach from the dark and flung himself into a rolling dive. The lance powered into the rock less than three inches from his leg, spitting tiny fragments. A brave dropped down towards him from an overhang, knife raised at the start of a swinging thrust. His painted face was twisted by a grin of triumph. Edge was on his back, with the barrel of the Winchester momentarily trapped under his thighs. He released his grip on the weapon and threw himself into another roll, which brought him down lengthwise on the lance.
The brave could not adjust his direction in mid-air and thudded to the ground in the space vacated by Edge. He landed on his feet and immediately spun around, the knife slashing. Edge raised himself on to his haunches then, fluidly, into a crouch. The brave grunted as his first slash skimmed over the half-breed’s head. The knife was turned by a flick of his wrist and started on a back-hand, stabbing thrust. But Edge threw himself upright, bringing up the lance in a powerful drive. The brave’s naked belly was sucked in as he tensed for the killing knife thrust. The point of the lance burst into his flesh like a needle entering the skin of a rotten apple. The brave’s scream, as he dropped the knife and clutched at the shaft of the lance, seemed to fill the entire world with high-pitched sound destined to continue for eternity. His eyes expanded to monstrous proportions.
Edge grinned coldly into his pain-twisted face and drove the lance in deeper. Blood erupted from around the shaft and sprayed over the brave’s hands. Death came to him and Edge let go of the lance, allowing the Indian to crumple to the ground, still gripping the smooth wood.
“Bad way to check out,” the half-breed hissed, scooping up his rifle and t
he brave’s knife. “Should have stayed with the reservation.”
He glanced around, finding himself in the open. Another lance arced towards him and he flattened himself against the overhang. The metal tip of the lance glanced off the rock face and slithered down the slope. A shape loomed up among the shadows above him and moonlight glinted on metal. He flung the rifle upwards and squeezed the trigger. The stock recoiled viciously against the top of his shoulder. The death scream of the brave masked his own groan of pain. The body thudded to his feet and emptied blood from a punctured heart.
One glance was enough to see that the Indian was dead and Edge pivoted and peered up the slope as pebbles rattled. He saw movement and pumped the Winchester’s action as he brought the rifle around to the aim. He fired. The bullet took the running man in the hip. He pulled up short and started to turn, fighting to save himself from falling. But shattered bone gave up the struggle and he toppled. He fell over the lip of a ledge and slithered down headfirst, his arms stretched out in front of him. Edge stepped into his path, the knife poised. He rocked back on his heels, then forward, flat-footed. His boots came down hard on the brave’s hands, trapping them. The brave twisted his body, then kicked upwards with his good leg.
Edge swayed to the side, then swung his arm. The knife slashed through the brave’s flesh and severed his Achilles tendon, pouring blood on to his own face as the leg fell away.
“You ain’t very sweet Sioux,” Edge rasped. “Fact is, you’re a bad heel.”
He stooped and the brave screamed. The sound became a gurgle as the knife plunged into his throat.
“But now you’re a good Indian,” he said, straightening up.
He was in time to see another brave, running full tilt, reach the crest of the ridge. He let the knife fall back on to the dead body at his feet and snapped up the rifle to his shoulder. He squeezed the trigger at the moment the full height of the brave was silhouetted against the skyline. The Indian was halted in his tracks, frozen there for a moment, then crumpled. The bullet had shattered his spine and he was transfixed on the crest of the ridge, completely paralyzed.
Edge was not an expert on the lore of the Sioux. But he knew that a brave of that tribe would never run unless the odds were stacked high against him. One white man with a rifle against one Indian with only a knife, or maybe a tomahawk, added up to the brave being a loser.
So, confident he had killed every guard on this side of the butte, Edge started up the slope. He walked erect and whatever cover he had was gained simply because the terrain presented it in his path. But his eyes and ears were alert for the first sign of danger, and the rifle was held in a diagonal line across the front of his body, ready to swing to the aim at an instant’s notice.
But, when a target presented itself, it was just one of at least two hundred. They had advanced up the north side of the butte in a curved line, drawn by the sound of the rifle shots. Thus, every war-painted brave appeared on the ridge at precisely the same moment.
Edge halted, and swung the Winchester to his shoulder.
He aimed for the heavily-feathered sub-chief at the centre of the line, then raked the sight to left and right. Two hundred rifles, supplied by Barker and others like him, returned Edge’s steady aim. The sub-chief was the only man in the unmoving line who did not carry a rifle. Instead, he held a highly-decorated lance. The paralyzed brave on the ground in front of him grunted his agony.
“He run away from you?” the sub-chief demanded of Edge in a guttural tone.
The half-breed settled his aim on the red, blue and white paint striping the spokesman’s chest. “He tried.”
The lance rose slowly, then drove downwards. The paralyzed brave died with a gasp. The sub-chief crouched, drawing a knife. The blade sank deep into the dead flesh, then spurted blood as it sawed in a circle around the bloodied shaft of the lance. The braves continued to train their rifles on Edge. The sub-chief stood up, worked the lance in a circular motion, pushed it to one side and jerked. There was a moist, sucking sound.
He thrust the lance high in the air, staring with cruel eyes at the prize spiked on the point. Blood oozed from the pulpy chunk of flesh and the ripped-out heart. It trickled down the loose hanging tendrils of broken veins and arteries to drip to the ground.
“You see how we treat Sioux cowards?” the sub-chief taunted Edge, unafraid of the half-breed’s pointing Winchester.
“You must have a lot of heart,” Edge answered sourly.
“Pretty damn funny,” the educated Indian shot back, whirled the lance and tilted it. The gristly human meat and heart arced through the air and splatted against the ground only inches in front of Edge. Droplets of blood splashed on to his dusty boots. “You don’t drop that rifle by the time I reach zero, you’ll be pretty damn dead.”
He started to count, beginning at ten and working backwards. Edge continued to train the Winchester on him, raising the aim to the handsome, self-assured face. He saw only the sub-chief, but was aware of every other brave and the unwavering rifles in their hands.
“... seven ... six ... five... four...”
Edge sighed and released his grip on the rifle. It clattered to the ground. “Okay, hold,” he muttered.
The sub-chief grinned. “You don’t want to get blasted, uh?”
“Ain’t exactly over the moon about it,” Edge growled.
CHAPTER TEN
The stories had been right. The Sioux were massing and there could be only one reason for the vista spread before Edge as he complied with an order from the sub-chief and moved up to the crest of the ridge. To the north of the butte there was an enormous depression in the barren land in the shape of an almost perfectly circular crater. Erected in neat rings, spiraling to the centre, were something close to a thousand teepees. The encampment showed up clearly in moonlight which was supplemented by the wavering glow of hundreds of cooking fires. To one side of the camp, corralled here by a dry-stone wall erected by the braves, were a couple of thousand head of ponies. Edge had no doubt that the braves he could see moving among the teepees or sitting by the fires were daubed in similar fashion to those who had captured him. A gathering on such a scale had to mean the Sioux were on the brink of an uprising.
He sensed the eyes of the sub-chief on him and looked towards the garishly-painted face. The grin was still broad and bright, almost charming. In this mood he looked incapable of even thinking about cutting out a man’s heart.
“How about that?” he asked proudly, waving a hand to encompass the enormous camp. “This what you were scouting for?”
Edge rolled saliva around in his mouth and spat it out in a stream. “I was prepared for it,” he answered.
The sub-chief jerked his head and Edge complied with the signal to start down towards the camp. The slope was gentler on this side and less broken, leading into the gigantic depression over which the teepees were spread. The good-looking young sub-chief walked slightly behind him, covering him with his own Winchester. Six braves toted the three guards who had fought bravely and died badly. The others formed into a three file column behind Edge and the sub-chief.
Whatever the braves and squaws had been doing previously, they all considered their tasks unimportant enough to let them wait. Because of the symmetrical way in which the teepees had been positioned, it was possible to enter between any two in the outer ring and have an unobstructed path to the open area at the centre.
The curious bystanders, converging from every section of the camp, formed themselves into silent, orderly rows which clearly marked out the way Edge was expected to take. The lack of sound from so many watchers had an eerie quality, accentuated by the menace emanating from the hundreds of staring, brooding eyes.
As Edge strolled casually between the watchers, his own eyes swung to left and right, replying to their hate with a cold indifference.
“I don’t appear to be very welcome,” he tossed over his shoulder to the grinning sub-chief.
“You killed three of our braves,” came
the guttural reply.
Edge raked his eyes over the crowd again. “Plenty more where they came from,” he pointed out.
“It’s good you regard life as so cheap. Yours ain’t worth a cent.’’
“Didn’t they teach you not to say ain’t in that school you went to, feller?” Edge asked as he emerged into the open, central area of the camp, the focal point of which was a twenty foot high totem pole.
“I’m learning to forget everything I was taught in that place,” came the reply. “Halt!”
There was a sudden disturbance in the crowd, which had been breaking up out of the two lines to form a circle around the open area. This had proceeded as quietly as the crowd had at first formed, but a shout followed by a burst of rapid fire Siouan signaled a general hubbub of excited conversation. Edge looked at the brave who had started the disturbance and found the man pointing at him with a trembling finger.
The half-breed glanced at the sub-chief.
“He says you’re a mad man,’ ‘the Indian explained. “Got an evil spirit in you. He thought you’d been killed over in the forest.”
Edge shrugged. “Maybe I was. Maybe I’m a ghost.”
The sub-chief brightened his grin. “One of the things I won’t forget I learned. Indian superstition is as much crap as the white man’s black cat and rabbit’s foot.”
“Don’t scare you, uh? “ Edge asked.
The sub-chief moved around in front of Edge and met the half-breed’s level gaze. Deep in his own eyes, as brown as Edge’s were blue, was a message that he understood the kind of man he had captured. “Not while I’ve got this Winchester aimed at you,” he said simply.
Sioux Uprising (Edge series Book 11) Page 9
