Edge: Echoes of War (Edge series Book 23)

by George G. Gilman

  ‘No!’ the terrified man gasped, and took a backward step.

  Moonlight glinted on spinning metal between the dark doorway and the back-stepping man. The man swung up his hands, but by then the knife had penetrated his clothing and found flesh. Skin and its underlay of tissue was opened up and the Englishman’s gaping mouth suddenly snapped closed as the honed point of the blade cut into his heart.

  Already dead, but with his nervous system still reacting, he banged against the companionway rail, teetered for a moment, then slammed down on to the deck. He became inert oh his back, head rolled to the side so that his staring but glazed eyes peered sightlessly into an upside-down image of Rhett’s face.

  As if shocked into consciousness by the proximity of a fresh corpse, Rhett flicked open his own eyes.

  ‘Holy Mother!’ the roused man shrieked softly, whipping up into a sitting posture. ‘Who the hell—’

  ‘One of the enemy,’ Horace Ferris said as he stepped on to the threshold of his cabin, his stout form clad in a white nightshirt. ‘His name is Manx.’

  Edge had already taken two long strides to cover the distance between the cabin doors. As Ferris turned towards him, his ruddy-complexioned face set in an expression of sadness, the half-breed swung his free hand. It bunched into a tight fist after it started to move, and the flatness between the knuckle joints slammed viciously into the Southerner’s nose. Ferris was unconscious on his feet, and toppled without a sound until his unsupported weight crashed to the cabin floor. Blood from his crushed nose was warm for an instant on Edge’s fist, before the biting river air chilled it.

  Rhett seemed unaware of the punch and its consequences. Still disorientated from his own period of unconsciousness, he tried to get to his feet, his eyes trapped by the dead man’s stare. He fell hard to the deck again.

  ‘Sonofabitch, help me get away from this damn corpse!’ he pleaded.

  Edge holstered the Remington and reached down one hand to fasten a grip over Rhett’s shoulder. He pulled him erect with smooth and easy strength.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Charity Meagher asked from the threshold of her cabin.

  Edge released the trembling Rhett and glanced towards the woman. She was holding her topcoat together in front of her nakedness.

  Rhett backed away from the corpse to stoop and retrieve his dented derby.

  ‘Manx!’ Charity gasped, and dragged up her fear-filled gaze to look from Edge to Rhett and back again. Is he dead?’

  If his heart’s in the right place,’ Edge muttered.

  Rhett shook his head violently. ‘I’m okay now.’ He touched gingerly at the place where his hair was matted with crusted blood. ‘Guess it was getting hit like that. But waking up to find those eyes staring at me like that, I...’

  ‘Forget that!’ Charity snapped. ‘And get Manx inside out of sight.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Edge growled. ‘A cat can look at a queen.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘He’s killed Mr. Ferris!’ the woman gasped as she tripped and almost stumbled over the bulky heap of the unconscious man in the cabin.

  The splashes of blood from the man’s crushed nose looked very dark on the whiteness of his nightshirt. As Charity recoiled from the sight, Edge brushed past her and crossed the cabin to a shelf beside the bed.

  ‘He’ll live,’ the half-breed growled as he struck a match and lit the bedside lamp, turning the wick high to allow light to flood in to every corner of the cabin. ‘But maybe only long enough to answer some questions.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ the woman demanded huskily as Rhett dragged the corpse of Manx over the threshold.

  ‘Depends,’ Edge answered as he recrossed the cabin, stooped and lifted the inert Ferris out of the path of the corpse.

  ‘Depends?’ Charity croaked, her wide eyes hinting that she was not far from the brink of hysteria.

  ‘On his answers.’

  Edge dropped the unconscious man unceremoniously on to the rumpled bed. Then he jerked a blanket roughly out from under Ferris and tossed it towards Rhett. ‘Cover him up and then stay by the door, feller. We could get company. Looking for trouble or maybe just checking for it.’

  Rhett released his hold on the corpse in the middle of the cabin and used the blanket for a shroud. He went to stand by the door, but through the pain on his face was visible another emotion. His right hand was inside his jacket, resting close to the hole drilled through his clothing by the shot earlier.

  ‘I heard your warning this morning, Captain,’ he said evenly. ‘But you can forget about me forgiving you after shooting Jase. For I’ll sure do more than just point a gun at you if you try to hurt Mr. Ferris anymore.’

  ‘It’s gone midnight, so I’ll remember that, feller,’ Edge told him, glancing around the cabin and then dropping down on to his haunches.

  ‘What’s midnight got to do with it?’ Rhett asked.

  ‘Maybe you don’t deserve two bad days in a row. So you could get lucky - if you’ve got the speed.’

  He had been searching for something containing water: and failed to locate anything until he saw the chamber pot - which had been used.

  Charity grimaced as he came erect, holding the pot with its acrid-smelling contents. ‘I can explain!’ she blurted out.

  ‘You’re quite an organ grinder, ma’am,’ the half-breed growled. ‘But it’s this monkey I want to listen to right now. Need him awake for that.’

  He tipped the pot and yellow urine splashed down over the blood-run face of Horace Ferris. The liquid, long cold from being out of his body, roused him to groaning awareness. Then its acid content burned the split skin inside his nostrils and he gritted his teeth as he snapped open his eyes. Their darkness was dull for a moment, then filled with the light of memory.

  ‘You hit me!’ he accused, keeping his head pressed hard against the pillow, while his eyes swiveled in their sockets: seeking to see the other people who he sensed were in the cabin.

  ‘On account you killed an unarmed man while I was covering him with a gun, feller,’ the half-breed responded, slowly, distinctly and with a total lack of emotion. ‘That ain’t my way. You got a good reason why I should overlook it this time?’

  Ferris pushed out his tongue to lick his lips: then withdrew it quickly when he tasted the bitterness dripping out of his moustache. ‘What did you wake me with?’ he asked, and gagged on rising bile to show that he already knew the answer.

  ‘When I’m pissed off, other people sometimes get to feeling the same way, feller.’ Edge said evenly.

  Ferris used the tips of both stubby index fingers to explore his damaged nose. ‘I hurt bad.’

  ‘Nobody ever hurts good. Possible to hurt a lot worse, though.’

  ‘He’s a dead man if he tries anything like that, Mr. Ferris,’ Rhett assured. ‘Not everything Bob wrote about him was good.’

  Ferris dropped his hands back to his sides. ‘You knew Rhett’s brother in the war, isn’t that so?’ His eyes, with grim determination behind the pain, directed their stare towards the overhead bulkhead. ‘Fighting on the side of the Federal forces?’

  ‘He tell you how many times I spat while we took Lookout Mountain?’ Edge asked sourly.

  Because he did not try, Edge could not recall if Bob Rhett had been in his troop at Lookout and Missionary Ridge. When the name Rhett had been added to Henry earlier, the half-breed’s mind had been flooded with countless memories. Predominant was a mental image of Bob Rhett’s body sprawled beside that of Jamie in the yard of the ruined Iowa farm -the intestines of the New Englander swinging aloft in the hot air, from the beak of a triumphant buzzard.

  Another strong image was of Trooper Rhett after the escape from a Richmond prison. Aboard a commandeered Confederate ironclad on the blood run down the James River. When the younger Rhett had announced he had a brother who was a Mississippi riverboat gambler before the war.

  ‘There are some on the defeated side who would wish to restart the war, Captain,’ Ferris said.


  ‘I surrendered the rank when I gave up the uniform, feller.’

  ‘He prefers to be called Edge, Mr. Ferris,’ Charity supplied.

  The injured man seemed relieved to hear the woman’s voice. His gaze shifted from the blank overhead to find the impassive face of Edge. ‘Did you also surrender the hopes and values for which you fought the war?’

  ‘No, feller. Lost them after it was all over.’ There was a harshness in his tone.

  ‘Edge likes to get straight to the point, Mr. Ferris,’ Charity prompted, with a trace of bitterness.

  ‘Thank you,’ Ferris told her, then to Edge: ‘May I get up?’

  The half-breed had delved into a shirt pocket to bring out the makings. He was wetting the paper to complete the cigarette. ‘If you want to get knocked down again, feller.’ He struck a match on the bulkhead.

  Rhett shuffled his feet and cleared his throat as Edge hung the cigarette at the corner of his mouth. The half-breed whirled and drew the Remington in a single, smooth action. Rhett stared at the rock-steady gun in the tall man’s fist and froze, his own hand still deep inside his coat.

  ‘Something on your mind that means I don’t have to kill you, big brother Rhett?’ Edge asked.

  The man at the door paled visibly, but Charity made a throaty sound of disgust before he could speak.

  This is ridiculous!’ she snapped, and moved forward, stepping across the line of fire. ‘And I’m not scared of you, Edge.’

  She crouched in front of a bureau, opened the lower doors and took out a basin and pitcher. There was water in the pitcher and she poured it into the basin. The splashing sound was very loud in the silence of the room.

  Edge pushed the Remington back into the holster and Rhett withdrew his hand from inside his coat - empty. The grin he pasted on to his thin face did not entirely cancel out his earlier fear.

  ‘You acted like you were on our side out there, Captain.’

  Charity circled the bed to the other side from Edge. Ferris looked at her gratefully as she ripped a portion of sheet, soaked it in the icy water and began to wipe the blood and urine from his face.

  ‘Acted for my own benefit, feller,’ Edge corrected, and returned his attention to the grimacing Ferris and the defiant woman. ‘Figured to hear both sides of the story.’

  Charity had only partially cleaned up Ferris, but he pushed her hands away. ‘Thank you, my dear.’ His eyes, filled with earnestness, were directed up at the half-breed. ‘Mr. Edge, are you prepared to assist in preventing a reoccurrence of secession and its bloody consequences?’

  ‘One war is enough in anyone’s lifetime, feller.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Trust him, Mr. Ferris,’ Charity urged. ‘There are a lot of things he isn’t, but I think he possesses a sense of honor.’

  ‘Yes!’ Ferris responded emphatically, and pulled himself up into a sitting position against the head of the bed. Edge continued to eye him coldly through the smoke rising from his cigarette. ‘He proved that. I apologize, Mr. Edge. For my over-reaction to seeing Edward Manx. But the mission with which I have been entrusted makes it essential that I act first and ask questions later.’

  Edge dropped the cigarette, crushed it under his boot and jerked a thumb towards the draped corpse. ‘He ain’t saying much. Nor are you.’

  Ferris nodded and sucked in a deep breath. ‘Miss Meagher and I are agents of the United States Government, Mr. Edge. We have been operating in New Orleans to uncover a plot that, if it succeeds, will plunge this country into another civil war.

  ‘Miss Meagher and I were not working alone. There was a group of us and one of the group came into possession of a letter. A most damaging letter - for either patriots or traitors, depending upon who sees it.’

  Edge thrust out a hand. ‘You want to let me read it, feller?’

  ‘I trust no man that much, sir!’ Ferris snapped, then brought his voice under control. ‘But I will tell you that it pledges money and allegiance to a new uprising of the southern states against the national government of this country. And that it is signed by sixty-seven of the most powerful, influential and wealthy citizens of this country. Men in government, business, commerce and industry. Each of whose position would, in the event of civil strife, be worth a thousand men in the Rebel army - in terms of the damage they could do to the defense of the nation.’

  Ferris paused and both he and Charity waited anxiously. for a response to the verbal bombshell.

  ‘You must realize the vital importance of such a document, sir?’ Ferris growled when the half-breed remained impassively silent.

  Charity sighed. ‘Edge is not the demonstrative type, Mr. Ferris.’

  ‘Unless his feelings are strong enough,’ the injured man muttered, using his fingers to explore his damaged nose again.

  The woman touched the bruise on her cheek raised by the half-breed’s backhanded slap.

  ‘Bob used to say he was a real cold fish most of the time,’ Rhett supplied. ‘Hell on two legs when the time was right, though.’

  ‘Anyone got the right time?’ Edge asked evenly.

  ‘I intend to deliver the document into the hands of President Calvin Coolidge,’ Ferris said hurriedly. The eight other members of our New Orleans group died in obtaining the letter. We all knew the dangers and we all knew that - because so many highly placed men in government had signed it - it was imperative that the president should receive it personally.

  ‘Apart from obtaining the document, we have been fortunate in only one respect. Mr. Coolidge is away from Washington at the moment - far removed from the men who appended their signatures to the letter and perhaps countless others of similar sympathies. He is at present on a hunting trip in the Dakotas, using Fort Sully as his base. It is there that Miss Meagher and I intend to hand him the letter.’

  ‘Which he is unaware he is to receive,’ Charity added. There are so many traitors in high places that we did not dare send word ahead about what we have.’ Her tone became abruptly more solemn. ‘Not all the group were murdered in obtaining the letter, Edge. One died because he attempted to communicate through normal channels and was betrayed to the enemy.’

  The channel this tub is following ain’t exactly free of snags,’ Edge pointed out flatly.

  ‘We reached Omaha without incident,’ Ferris said. ‘But we have always known there was a strong possibility the Rebels would locate us. When Mr. Rhett and his friends burst into the shipping company office, we thought it had happened then. We knew it was so when the attempt was made to assassinate me at the card table earlier this evening.’

  ‘It was a set-up, Captain,’ Rhett put in. ‘Hold-ups and picking pockets aren’t my style.’

  ‘It showed, feller.’

  Rhett ignored the remark. ‘I’m a gambling man, but Lady Luck turned her back on me at the Omaha tables.’

  ‘She had nothing to worry about.’

  Again Edge’s interruption was brushed aside, this time with a wave of the hand. ‘I know cards, Captain. And I know all the tricks a man can work with cards. That guy tonight was working those pasteboards every way there is. Smooth and smart. But there was a switch from the normal routine. He was cheating to lose, and he dropped a bundle. Same as me and the kid with the rat face. And it was being done to make Mr. Ferris win and look like it was he who was the crook.’

  Rhett’s grin of pride had a childlike quality about it.

  ‘You were on the team when you used that crazy little gun?’ Edge asked.

  ‘It’s French,’ Rhett answered eagerly, still grinning. ‘Called an Apache Knuckleduster. Don’t ask me why.’

  ‘That ain’t the why I’m asking about, feller.’

  The weakly handsome features of Henry Rhett became set in a solemn expression. ‘Mostly on account of I’m broke, Captain. You loused up the robbery and I only got a small stake from lifting leather. Mr. Ferris won most of that before I realized what was happening. And I figured he could use a bodyguard, after that guy pulled a gun.’
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  The man at the card table was not known to me, Mr. Edge,’ Ferris amplified. ‘And neither was Rhett until Charity told me he was one of the hold-up men. After Rhett explained the shooting to the satisfaction of the ship’s master, he offered his services to me. And I accepted, after explaining my situation and its dangers.

  ‘Knowledge of these dangers caused me to act without thought - out of fear, if you like - when I saw Manx outside the door. Manx was known to me. He killed several of the group in New Orleans. I acted instinctively and I sincerely apologize for involving you in such a ruthless killing. But he was, himself, a dedicated murderer for his own cause, totally without scruples.’

  ‘It’s the truth, Edge,’ Charity added. ‘Everything we have told you is the absolute truth. If you believe us and are willing to help, you will not find Mr. Ferris lacking in generosity. I was also telling the truth when I said he is a wealthy New Orleans businessman.’ ‘When he’s not putting his life on the line for Uncle Sam?’ Ferris snorted. ‘I can assure you I am not involved in this for glory, Mr. Edge. I would be only too happy were my light hidden under a bushel. I am doing it because I feel I must. But I realize that, like Rhett, you require financial reward. I have advanced him five hundred dollars against a final payment of five thousand when I hand the letter to the President.’

  ‘With no reduction for services already rendered by the school-teacher here?’ the half-breed asked sourly.

  Despite the circumstances, Charity was still able to flush with embarrassment.

  ‘There is no need for shame, my dear,’ Ferris assured her, then looked sheepishly at Edge. ‘Our methods were crude in more than one sense,’ he admitted. ‘Again, my fear - for myself, Miss Meagher and our mission - is to blame. Despite the fact that the gunmen in Omaha were not sent by our enemies, we knew it was only a matter of time before they did find us. And your actions during the robbery attempt showed us you were just the kind of man we needed. But we could not be sure you shared our brand of patriotism, Mr. Edge. Miss Meagher set her cap at you, as it were, to try to discover where your loyalties lay. In the last resort it proved an unnecessary ploy, for Rhett was able to tell me of your war record.’