The deafening noise lasted for just a part of a second. Then came the thuds of debris raining to earth after hurtling upwards. Rifle fire, screams and the full-throated whoops of attacking Apaches pierced the bedlam of the explosion’s final sounds.
‘Mine town like Vintonville would have a good supply of dynamite, I guess?’ Edge asked the whore as all eyes focused upon the black smoke billowing through the heat haze.
‘Black Cloud would know that, smart Injun like him,’ came the heavy-hearted response.
‘Seems like it was a friggin’ mistake makin’ for the friggin’ railroad!’ Sullivan snarled.
‘It was all we could do,’ Kirk replied miserably.
Garcia beat Kelly to the defense of the captain. ‘It was a good plan, captain,’ he croaked. ‘You could not know it would go wrong. No one is to blame.’
Edge spat as he slid from the pony. ‘Except the Apaches,’ he muttered. “They blew it.’
Chapter Twelve
THE valley did not end at a precipice. Instead, it finished at the top of a short, sharp incline forming part of the side of another valley cut through the mountains east to west.
Edge threw himself full length to the ground at the finish of a fast sprint, and narrowed his eyes to look down into the lower valley. The army railroad ran along the valley floor - twin threads of sun-glinting metal appearing from and disappearing into the slick-looking shimmer at east and west.
The wreck was a quarter of a mile to the east, at a point where the track passed a huge pile of boulders heaped there by an ancient rock fall. The twisted ruin of the locomotive lay on its side, almost at right-angles to where the track had been before the explosion shattered it into non-existence. The first two day cars had telescoped and reared to form a stunted, inverted vee. The three behind, and the brake car, had been crunched into a derailed zigzag, but were still upright.
Smoke and steam continued to billow and hiss from the locomotive. Other puffs of smoke showed intermittently from the windows and underneath the cars. But the Apaches had the larger force. From the cover of the rock fall, and from hollows and outcrops on either side of the valley, they traded shots with the wreck survivors, the odds looking at least three to one.
Sonny Boy thudded down beside Edge. Then Kelly, Kirk, the troopers, Evers, Pedro, Bassett and the whore.
‘Sir, they don’t stand a chance!’ the panting non-com gasped.
‘Don’t no bastard friggin’ wait for me!’ Sullivan snarled, dropping heavily to the sandy ground.
‘If they don’t, we don’t,’ Kirk responded, wiping stinging sweat from his eyes with his fists.
‘Anyone see a friggin’ blonde-headed bitch of a woman?’ Sullivan demanded.
The cadence of the shooting changed. It lost impetus, faltered, became sporadic and then ceased. There was a moment of eerie silence. Then the moans and cries of the wounded scraped against the stillness.
Most of the injured soldiers were still inside the wrecked cars. A few - and many more dead - had been hurled out to spill blood from gruesome wounds on to the thirsty ground.
‘Soldier blues, you give me silence to speak!’
‘Black Cloud,’ the whore gasped.
‘Look, sir!’ a trooper blurted.
The wounded had subdued the sounds of their pain. The whites, aboard the train and watching from above, looked towards the highest point on the north ridge of the valley. A war-painted Apache had moved into sight, sitting erect astride a saddled horse. He held a lance in a firm grip. A slight movement of the weapon signaled more braves into full view along the ridge. Perhaps fifty of them, evenly divided on either side of the powerfully built Black Cloud.
‘You see, then I speak!’
‘There’s the friggin’ nag you’re after, Edge,’ Sullivan growled. ‘And that bastard ain’t been nowhere to spend your roll.’
‘It sure wasn’t money got spent on the women,’ the half-breed answered softly.
‘My God!’ Kirk gasped.
‘Coralie’s there, frig it!’ the fat man said gleefully.
Up on the ridge, the line of braves had shuffled their horses to the side to open up a gap. Immediately, the stolen stage coach was man-handled into the gap, to be halted with its rear wheels an inch short of where the ground fell away in a steep slope. Straining braves gripped a rope lashed to the coach’s tongue. Four white women, naked to reveal the ugly marks of repeated assaults, were held tight to the boot by stout ropes.
‘You see!’ Black Cloud shouted. ‘Now I speak!’
‘Say your piece, Injun!’ a gruff-voiced man responded from the wreckage of the train.
‘Hard to see she was a real friggin’ beauty one friggin’ time,’ Sullivan growled.
‘Shut your filthy mouth, mister!’ Kirk snapped.
‘Soldier blues will all come from train! Hands in air! With no guns! You surrender, women live! You not do this, women die!’
‘And when we surrender, Injun?’ the soldier in the train countered.
‘You die quick, soldier blues! You not surrender, big battle! Mescaleros and soldier blues die! But Mescaleros win! Take prisoners! Prisoners not die quick! I, Black Cloud, have spoken!’
‘No friggin’ army punk calls me friggin’ names!’ Sullivan rasped.
‘Edge is lammin’ again!’ Sonny Boy exclaimed, dropping a grip over Sullivan’s gun hand as the fat man tried to draw.
The half-breed had bellied back from the vantage point, and pushed himself erect when he was out of sight of the Apaches.
‘The friggin’ hell with him!’ Sullivan snapped, shaking free of the Negro, but not pulling his revolver from the holster.
‘We’ll all be in hell if you loose off a shot, civilian!’ Kelly said icily. He swung his rifle so that its muzzle was a half inch from Sullivan’s moustache.
‘He’s right, Mr. Sullivan,’ Evers agreed.
‘And how,’ Bassett added.
‘I think so,’ Pedro said.
‘All friggin’ right!’ the fat man surrendered.
‘What about Edge?’ Sonny Boy asked anxiously as Kelly withdrew the rifle muzzle from in front of Sullivan’s sweating face.
Kelly spat and the saliva was trapped in his beard. ‘He ain’t with us, nothin’ he does attracts attention to us. Right, sir?’
Kirk nodded, and continued his anxious survey of the valley.
‘He never was with us,’ Garcia put in as he staggered the final few yards to where the group was sprawled, and dropped to his knees, then fell full-length. ‘Just moving in the same direction, that is all.’
‘You give me your answer, soldier blues!’ Black Cloud bellowed.
Edge was moving fast in a loping run. The ground on this side of the valley through which the railroad cut was higher than the opposite ridge. By staying twenty yards back from where the ground fell away, he remained out of sight of the Apaches. He heard Black Cloud’s demand above the rasping sound of his own labored breathing. It acted as a homing signal and he veered off the straight course, to cut a diagonal back to the lip of the slope again. He ran in a crouch now. Then went down on to all fours. Finally, he bellied forward, inching towards the slope’s lip. He stopped when he had a full view of the valley again. The braves crouched in cover on the slope below him. The train wreckage. And, immediately across from him, the Mescalero sub-chief astride the saddled horse.
‘Let me hear the women speak!’
‘I’ll be happy with just one miracle, feller,’ Edge muttered as he nestled the Winchester stock against his shoulder and aligned the sights.
The range was about four hundred yards, the angle downwards a few degrees. The sliver of ice blueness that was his left eye concentrated its focus on the chest of Black-Cloud - left of centre. But he had already seen enough of the bruised and battered nakedness of the women to make a guess about them.
Black Cloud laughed. ‘Women are unconscious, soldier blues! In a trance! Sent there by the ecstasy of love given by my braves!’
‘They’re dead, Goddamn it!’ the soldier in the train roared. ‘You bastards! Let ’em have it!’
A fusillade of shots exploded from the derailed cars. Three braves were blasted off their ponies. Anger scorched an ugly path across the paint-daubed features of Black Cloud. He shrieked an order and thrust his lance high.
The stage was shoved forward.
The mounted braves reared their horses and heeled them on to the slope. On each side of the valley, other braves rose from cover and lurched into the attack. The Winchesters stolen from Waycross cracked out. War cries screamed from gaping mouths.
Edge fired and missed, Black Cloud sloping his body as he lunged his horse into movement. Amid the crackle of gunfire and yells of men, the single shot from a new position was not noticed.
Except by the half-breed’s former companions.
They saw the puff of smoke from the Winchester’s muzzle. Perhaps even saw the man behind the rifle go rigid for a moment, with the self-anger of missing the shot. But they also saw that the battle in the valley had erupted once more and was immediately past the point of no return.
Six of the men were army. Other men in the same army were in trouble. Kirk surrendered to his conscience and Kelly and the troopers responded instinctively. They were a split-second behind the young captain in exploding rifle fire towards the charging Apaches.
The stage hurtled down the rough slope, swaying from side to side and sometimes leaping high over low obstacles of rock. The women lashed to the boot were wrenched this way and that against their bonds like the lifeless figures Edge and the soldier on the train had guessed them to be. Dust spewed up from under the spinning wheels. It merged with the gun smoke to partially veil the attackers.
A group of braves veered to the side, to head for the new pocket of resistance which had been announced. Obscenities streaming from their mouths, Sullivan and his men were forced to join the troopers in blasting lead towards the whooping, howling Indians.
Edge bellied forward, then raised into a crouch to head down the slope. Apaches charged away from him, their excited attention concentrated on the train. The braves racing down the opposite side of the valley had the same target firmly in view. Only when a bullet drove the life from a brave was his concentration broken - forever.
The half-breed made the cover of the rock fall.
The stage smashed into one of the reared-up cars. The dead women became smears of crimson pulp, the ghastly gore glinting with shards of shattered bones. The car teetered, then toppled, crashing down to smash the stage to matchwood.
Another, greater cloud of dust billowed into the stifling air.
Edge picked his way carefully down through the rocks. He gained a safe position some thirty feet above the valley floor. He shared it with a brave still spilling dark blood from a jugular vein severed by a bullet.
Apaches on foot crouched in cover, having to take careful aim to avoid hitting their mounted blood brothers, who were circling the wreck at a high-speed gallop.
As Black Cloud had predicted, the Mescaleros were destined to gain victory. The cost was high, after the trick with the dead women had failed to work. But the troopers trapped in the wreckage paid more dearly.
Inexorably, despite leaving many dead in the dust, Black Cloud’s warriors reduced the fire power exploding from the train cars.
Then, in an anti-climax of silence after the bedlam of the battle, it was over. A final shot from the train drew a volley of fire from the Apaches and Black Cloud thrust his lance high and reined his horse to a halt.
Edge drew a bead on the sub-chief, but did not exert more than first pressure against the Winchester trigger. He had not been spotted, so there was still time. And, with time, he might yet be able to survive.
Every surviving brave looked away from the main scene of the battle, towards where the skirmish had been fought. Loose ponies stood stock still on the slope below the end of the higher valley. Their former riders were slumped in attitudes of death among them. Nothing disturbed the natural line at the top of the slope.
Black Cloud barked an order in his native tongue. Six mounted braves wheeled their ponies and heeled them into a gallop. The remainder of the Mescaleros - perhaps fifty - closed in around their chief as he dismounted and moved towards the train. Gunshots cracked, finishing the agonized lives of the wounded.
Edge glanced to his left again. The six braves were slowing their mounts as they started up the slope. Then his hooded eyes shifted back to the wrecked train. And his thin lips curled back. His teeth gleamed brilliantly white against the dirt and stubble of his flesh.
The cold grin was not because he had a clear shot at his prime target. Nor because the horse he had come so far to find was wandering loose with other stolen mounts and Apache ponies.
Rather, the grin was triggered by the sight of a bundle of dynamite sticks: held together by twine and wedged in the twisted wreckage of a day car and the stage coach.
He had lowered the rifle. Now he raised it again. His stubble rasped against the smooth side of the stock.
Fifty Apaches, spread out along the length of the wreckage.
One bundle of four sticks would not be enough. But maybe there were other bundles he could not see. A single explosion would start a chain reaction if there was more dynamite under the crushed stage and smashed car.
Above and to the left, rifle-fire cracked. Cries and shouts were vented from the main group of Apaches. On the periphery of his vision, Edge saw fleeting movement.
He squeezed the trigger, threw himself backwards and rolled, covering his head with his cupped hands.
The explosion seemed to rock the world. Edge felt the ground tremble beneath his prone form. He heard the report - far louder than the one which had wrecked the train - then was deaf. The ground continued to tremble. New debris, reshaped by violence from its previous form, whistled through the stinking air and smashed into rock and hard-baked earth.
Then, as at the end of the battle, the silence came. Longer this time, because his punished eardrums refused to accept sound. He got to his feet and swayed. For part of a second, he thought he was blind. Then his vision cleared, blurred, cleared again and stayed normal.
There was a black hole in the ground where the two day cars and the stage had been. Chunks of meat, red or charred black, were scattered in a wide area around the seat of the explosion. The locomotive had been hurled thirty feet along the track. The three cars and the caboose were no longer upright. They had broken their couplings and rolled several times before coming to rest again. Recognizable parts of the human head, torso and limbs lay around these sections of the train that were still identifiable. Beyond the immediate vicinity of the crater were whole bodies and complete horse carcasses. Some moved with faint signs of life.
Edge uncapped his canteen and sipped the tepid water. He spat it out, with the taste of dust and gun smoke. ‘Should be red wine with red meat,’ he muttered, and heard his own words.
Then he heard rifle shots, flung aside the canteen and pumped the action of the Winchester as he whirled.
But Apaches were no longer the danger. Two of the braves sent to check the valley slope had survived and were galloping their ponies - away from the battleground. Up at the top of the slope, four figures were standing erect. Two were firing rifles after the escaping braves.
Edge retrieved his canteen, hung it over his shoulder, canted the Winchester to the other shoulder, and climbed down through the rocks.
The saddled horse was dead, its belly ripped open by a chunk of flying debris. The inevitable flies fed on its entrails as the half-breed squatted and started to unfasten the saddlebag.
‘We had no use for White Eyes dollars.’
Black Cloud lay three yards away from the horse. He had lost his left leg at the knee and his right foot was attached only by slimy tendons. There was a large hole in his right cheek and his voice bubbled on blood.
Edge glanced impassively at the terribly injured Apache, then continued to
open the bag. Inside were two scalps, crusted with black blood. His anger remained ice-cold and controlled. He had lost yet again and was near exhaustion from the effort of trying to win.
Shadows fell across him as he started to rise. He saw Sergeant Kelly first and the tough non-com looked as if he had been crying. Or perhaps it was just sweat that had streaked the dirt-grimed flesh above his beard.
‘The captain and the troopers are dead, senor,’ Garcia reported in a rasping whisper.
‘He don’t give a friggin’ damn about them, dude!’ Sullivan snarled, staring into the crater with its scattering of human fragments. ‘Nor for all them of my bunch that bought it!’
The other survivor was the whore. ‘You only care about yourself!’ she accused.
‘Any of you want to trade places with the dead?’ the half-breed asked evenly.
He raked his ice-cold stare over their faces and saw the silent answers they gave.
‘Right, Edge!’ the fat man growled, scratching himself pensively. ‘We’re alive and at least you and me got what we friggin’ wanted.’
‘We light camp fire with dollars of White Eyes,’ Black Cloud rasped.
Sullivan expressed amazement for a stretched second. Then he vented a harsh laugh. ‘No friggin’ money? Well, maybe that’s how it friggin’ oughta be. I didn’t get to kill that bastard lieutenant. And there ain’t enough of Coralie left for me to pee on. We stay alive, but we friggin’ lose.’ He shrugged his massive shoulders.
Edge nodded, continuing to hold his emotions deep inside him. He was so familiar with failure, he did not even need to spit out its bitter taste. But the perceptive Garcia was able to penetrate the outer shell of the tall, lean man. And he realized that the latent violence needed an outlet.
‘Senor,’ he said, soft but urgent. ‘What we spoke of.’ He licked dust off his lips. ‘I think there has been enough killing.’
‘No friggin’ prize, no contest,’ Sullivan snapped.
He pumped the action of his rifle, spinning the live shells out of the magazine until it was empty.
EDGE: Sullivan's Law (Edge series Book 20) Page 13