‘Obliged,’ he said, taking the money and pushing it into a side pocket of his coat.
‘He also asked me to tell you he is sorry for his attitude during the confiscation of the Delta Dawn. He acknowledges that you were right to act in the way you did. And he offers you command of the mission.’
‘Pay and conditions in this war are a hell of a lot better than the last one,’ the half-breed muttered.
Charity stood up.
‘You still have the letter, ma’am?’
She cupped her left breast, then pulled her hand away quickly when the ice-blue eyes looked up at her. ‘Sewn into the bodice of my dress. May I keep it there?’
The thin lips curled back from the teeth. ‘Ain’t nowhere better to keep valuable property than in a fancy chest.’
Again, there was no coloring of her complexion. ‘You’re hurt, Edge.’
She was looking towards the hole in the lower part of his coat. Through this it was possible to see the tattered pants just above the knees and the congealed blood on the torn flesh below.
‘I’ll attend to it when it’s your turn to rest, if you like?’
‘Figure it’ll only hurt if I kneel down, ma’am. Never yet got on my knees for anything.’
She started to form an angry frown, but controlled it. ‘Perhaps when this is all over we could . . . could start from scratch.’
‘We already did,’ he told her. ‘If it wasn’t so cold I’d maybe show you what you did to my back - when it wasn’t so cold.’
This time, her embarrassment was too great to control. Her entire face was bright scarlet. Then she whirled and went across the decking as fast as she could, her boots slithering on the hard-packed snow. Her vocal response was delayed: a howl as she went down the stairway to the Hurricane Deck.
Rhett’s grinning face showed at the front of the wheel-house. ‘Women can be a real pain in the ass, can’t they, Captain?’
‘How would you know that, feller?’
The other man continued to grin as he nodded. ‘Right, how would I know that?’
‘Watch the bank.’
‘For what, Captain? There hasn’t been time. Nobody knows.’
‘Just do it, uh?’
The Delta Dawn ploughed upriver through the afternoon and into evening. There was no stop at Sioux City, where the Missouri swung north-west, to form a fork with the Vermilion River which continued on northwards. It was dusk then, the moon low and still weak. The lights from the town’s crude buildings winked across the water and were reflected on its surface.
Edge had slept and shaved and eaten and was again on watch at the starboard side of the wheelhouse. One of the roustabouts tending the boilers came up the stairway to report that the stock of cordwood was dangerously low. Men on the Sioux City dockside yelled and waved at the stern-wheeler as she steamed by, smoke billowing from her stacks and paddle turning at full speed.
The half-breed ignored the shore and told the roustabout he would order a halt at the first stand of timber that showed on either bank. The man was a middle-aged central-European with a strong accent. He was short and broad and strong, with a face that had been battered in many brawls. Edge trusted him. He also trusted the Negro, the two silver miners and a fair-haired young steward. Which left two roustabouts he was unsure of. One elderly and fat with a drinker’s belly and the other in his mid-twenties but with eyes that looked far older.
So far, the only caution he had shown towards these two was to ensure that they never had the same duty assignment.
After Sioux City, the river formed the boundary between Nebraska to the south and the Dakotas to the north. There was no visible change in the terrain - low, rolling country blanketed with almost solid whiteness. As the moon brightened, the temperature dropped. The currents lost their strength and a new sound became as constant as the thud of the engine, hiss of escaping steam and thrash of the paddles: the splinter of thin ice as the water began to freeze.
It was close to midnight when Linn opened a window in the wheel-house and pushed his head through as the mid-European roustabout came up the stairway to report that the fuel was all but exhausted.
A stand of fir trees grew tantalizingly close to the Dakota bank. But the way to a landing was barricaded by the snags of old, uprooted trees: their boughs protruding up through the water like the skeletonised limbs of countless dead men.
‘We either get our keel ripped out or we get grounded, sun,’ Linn told the pensive Edge. ‘Or we could anchor out here and use the yawl as a ferry. Take time, though. And I reckon we’d be froze solid before the chore was half done. We just gotta keep movin’, suh.’
‘Obliged,’ the half-breed acknowledged. Then, to the roustabout from the boiler room. ‘Do like the man says, feller. Keep moving.’
An angry frown showed on the battered face. ‘Vhat vith? Ve need fuel.’
‘Ten men and one woman aboard, feller. We don’t need a boat big as this.’ He rapped a fist on the side of the wheel-house. ‘Mostly built of timber, ain’t she?’
The black and the white roustabout both grinned broadly.
‘I vill get out the axes.’
‘Do that, feller.’
The white crewman hurried down the stairway, still grinning. Linn vented a gust of laughter before withdrawing his head and banging the window shut.
‘What’s the joke, Captain?’ Rhett asked, showing confusion as he appeared in front of the wheel-house.
‘Choppers are coming out. Makes some fellers feel gay.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The stern-wheeler slid past Yankton and the mouth of the James River in the pre-dawn hours of the bitterly cold night. At sun-up the Niobrara could be seen snaking westwards between its snow-covered banks. The Delta Dawn turned to starboard to follow the course of the Missouri towards Fort Randall where she left the Nebraska line to head into the Dakotas.
Randall was a huddle of crude buildings: an army and trading post with a landing stage. A south-bound stern-wheeler was moored to the dock. Aboard her and on the shore, people stared in amazement at the Delta Dawn. For the churning riverboat was already stripped of much of her superfluous equipment and even as she sped beyond the small community men continued to swing sun-glinting axes into her woodwork.
Every rail had been removed, the forward spars and derricks were gone, all but a couple of her cabin doors were out of their frames, holds were minus their hatches and several areas of deck boarding had been torn up.
Wood smoke belching from the stacks now had the smell of burning pitch in it.
Laughter sounded from the shore, drowning the voices of those who yelled inquiries towards the Delta Dawn.
Every man not engaged with the boilers, engines or wheel-house duty was wielding an axe and piling up heaps of timber. But all had a rifle close at hand. And, while ignoring the overt responses from the people on the shore, most kept careful watch for signs of trouble.
During the night, when the men had to work their hardest to rebuild a stock of fuel, Edge had become aware of mounting resentment - which had acted to dampen the enthusiasm, which most of them had exhibited initially. Even Linn had started to mutter his disgruntlement: complaining he could not see the need for constant high speed and relentless vigilance.
And Rhett had growled: The way I heard it from Bob, Captain, you weren’t always so close-mouthed. Used to tell your guys what you had in mind.’
Ferris had been in the forward hold with them, helping to smash open crates and chop the timber into boiler fuel. He answered for the taciturn half-breed.
‘The quicker we get where we are going, the quicker the job will be done,’ he explained breathlessly. ‘And we have to keep careful watch for the enemy.’
‘I know that, suh,’ Linn croaked. ‘But what enemy? Where? How they know where we are?’
‘You know the enemy, mister. Rebels not ready to put on uniforms again yet. Since Omaha they’ve known we were aboard this ship. They have already made three attempts to stop
us getting through. Two such attempts unrelated to the third. The news has been spread along the length of this river. With the enemy ahead never certain whether those on the lower reaches have succeeded in stopping us.’
‘And the fact that we are on a Government mission is common knowledge now. There will be no more subtle attempts because subterfuge is now pointless. Surprise would not be, of course.’
‘Says it all, I guess,’ Edge had acknowledged when Ferris looked at him.
‘Except what the enemy’s after, suh?’ Linn posed.
‘Kill us, feller. Ought to be enough to convince you and the rest to keep working and watching?’
‘Ain’t nothin’ more important to a man than his own skin, suh,’ Linn allowed. ‘Be it black or white.’ Then he grinned as Charity came into the hold with mugs of coffee. ‘Or pretty. I’ll spread the word around, suh.’
Later, Ferris and Edge had taken a break together, in a cabin fitted with four beds. Rhett and the fair-haired steward slept on the other two.
‘I don’t think the Rebels are working so haphazardly, Mr. Edge,’ the older man said through the cold darkness of one of the few cabins which still had a door.
‘New Orleans is a big, tough city, I guess?’
‘Yes.’
The kind where a man doesn’t get rich with just party-trick knife-throwing. He has to be smart.’
Ferris sighed. ‘The attempt on my life during the poker game was well planned.’
‘Execution was a little off.’
‘Likewise when Edward Manx came aboard. And the raid at the fuel stop landing. The Rebels are hedging their bets. Every plan was laid before the first one was put into operation.’
‘Learned from their mistakes in the last war, feller. But they ain’t hindered by Robert E. Lee and Jeff Davis this time.’
‘I fear that the closer we get to Fort Sully, the more stubborn their final line of defense will be.’
‘You’re smelling better by the minute, feller.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘On account of not talking bullshit.’
Another day and a night passed after Fort Randall was astern of the Delta Dawn. The stern-wheeler, virtually empty of combustible cargo and almost completely stripped of everything wooden that was not essential to keep her afloat and under-way and give shelter to those aboard, had the river to herself. They were beyond Fort Thompson then, heading for Fort Pierre. There was still a lengthy and relatively well-populated stretch of river ahead, to Fort Bulford on the Dakotas-Montana line: but it was the weather and water conditions that held most other boats at their moorings.
The sky was leaden with low clouds, poised to race and unload their threat of snow when the next norther was unleashed from beyond the Canadian border. On either bank, the Missouri was already frozen solid, the new ice trapping the larger floes which had drifted down from the north. The boat was constantly breaking thin ice, which immediately re-formed again when the water astern became calm beyond the wake from the paddle-wheel.
It was mid-morning when the roustabout with the beer-gut put the Delta Dawn aground on a sandspit.
Edge was in the wheel-house, taking a turn at pilot. Linn and Rhett were outside on the port and starboard superstructure. The channel of thin ice at midstream was about a hundred feet wide. To either side of this was a strip of thick ice, extending the bank some thirty or so feet into the river. On each bank there was a heavy growth of mixed fir, pine and spruce with only the taller brush showing above the thick layer of snow.
The half-breed saw the hump of the sandbank, lengthways along the river, in line with the port side of the boat.
‘Go left,’ he instructed and the helmsman complied, turning the wheel to swing the bow towards the eastern bank.
‘Straight ahead, feller.’
‘The boat veered again, with ample water between her starboard side and the ice: and enough room to stay clear of the sand.
Until her bow drew level with the nearest end.
She was still going at full speed, cracking ice with her prow and thrashing up white water astern.
The helmsman spun her wheel hard over and she hit the sand with an audible smack. Her bow reared out of the water and she came to an abrupt halt, the impact sending a violent judder down her whole length. The paddle-wheel continued to thrash at the river, broiling it to white spume but unable to make way.
‘You’re through, you bastards!’ the helmsman bellowed.
Like everyone else aboard, he and Edge had been shoved forward by the abruptness of the halt. But the roustabout had been prepared for the impact and had the wheel for support. He also had a Colt in his coat pocket.
Edge had to regain his balance and stoop to pick up his fallen Winchester. He had turned and was pumping the lever action as the roustabout leapt backwards and leveled the cocked revolver.
The South will—’
His knuckle whitened around the trigger. But the explosion was too loud for a revolver. And there was no smoke or muzzle flash.
At first, a hail of broken glass as the starboard windows of the wheel-house were blasted into a million splinters. Then the roustabout’s head disintegrated. One instant his face glared hatred towards Edge. The next there was the bloody stump of his neck and nothing above it.
The beheaded corpse crumpled. The windows on the port side of the wheel-house suffered the same fate as the others. But, on the frames and the shards of glass that remained, there was liquid crimson: oozing and bubbling, then freezing. Dotted here and there were fragments of solid tissue.
Rhett’s shocked face appeared in the shattered and blood-sprayed framework. The pallor of the rest of his complexion emphasized the red-rims and dark bags that exhaustion had given his eyes.
‘Sonofabitch, what was that?’ he shrieked.
Edge shifted his gaze to the other window and saw Linn scowling into the wheel-house, the sawn-off shotgun still aimed and smoking from both barrels.
Down below, the engineer disengaged the drive and the paddle-wheel ceased to beat at the water.
‘Obliged to you,’ Edge told the Negro. ‘Makes two I owe you for.’
‘Never could count worth a damn, suh,’ Linn growled, breaking the gun open and flipping out the spent cartridge cases.
‘You could have killed me!’ Rhett accused. ‘You realize that, boy?’
Linn pressed fresh cartridges into the twin breech and snapped the shotgun closed. ‘About all I can do in that line is figure out Mr. Edge counts more than you do, mister!’ he snarled.
Charity raced up the stairway from the Hurricane Deck, followed closely by the rest of the oddly-assorted crew. ‘What happened?’ the woman demanded.
‘I almost got killed, that’s what!’ Rhett snorted.
Edge stepped across the wheel-house, put the engine telegraph to STOP and moved around the headless corpse to go outside.
Charity peered in through the smashed window on the starboard side and made a retching noise when she saw the dead man. ‘How disgusting!’ she shrieked, whirling away from the gruesome sight and covering her mouth with her hands. ‘What a horrible way to die!’
Edge shifted his expressionless eyes for a final look at the dead man: the body unmarked below chest level, but the stump of the neck and the coat at his shoulders stained bright crimson with slick, still oozing blood.
He spat into the hard-packed snow on the decking. ‘Sure enough came to one sticky end, ma’am.’
A howitzer exploded the threat of further death towards the helpless Delta Dawn.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The shell sped through the freezing air with a high-pitched whistle. A solid shot, it cracked out of the timber on the south bank of the river, smashed down on to the solid ice, bounced high and arced over the forward Hurricane Deck canopy.
‘They got artillery!’ This from the silver miner with a beard. They got friggin’ artillery.’
‘Twelve pounder, I figure,’ his normally smooth-shaven but now heavily
bristled companion growled.
From deep in the timber came the strident blast of a bugle sounding the charge. Then a fusillade of rifle shots and a chorus of screaming battle-cries.
They got a whole friggin’ army!’ the young steward shrieked as everyone else near the wheel-house and on the stairway started to move.
Many of the wildly fired bullets thudded into the trunks of intervening trees. Some ricocheted and a few reached the river clear of obstruction. And the Delta Dawn suffered her first battle scars at the hands of the enemy.
The blond-haired youngster seemed petrified by fear. His mouth stayed open after the shouted words and he remained half-turned from the waist: staring with wide eyes into the timber. He flinched with the spasms of fear as each bullet thudded into the hull and superstructure of the stern-wheeler.
As the half-breed sprinted past the boy, he curled out his free hand, hooked it around the waist and lifted him clear of the decking.
‘Catch!’ he yelled.
Another volley of shots exploded through the timber, to the accompaniment of a new burst on the bugle: this time off-key.
Ferris and Charity, Rhett and the miners and the European roustabout were already across the Hurricane Deck and starting down the next stairway. Linn and the young crewman with the old eyes were trailing.
They crouched and Edge ducked under the new hail of lead.
Both stacks were holed, woodwork was peppered and glass shattered across the lower deck from smashed windows.
The treads of the stairway were slippery with hard-packed snow. The two roustabouts below looked up and saw Edge had the now struggling steward under one arm and the Winchester fisted in his other hand.
‘Now, suh!’ Linn roared, running forward and releasing the shotgun, throwing out his arms to receive the youngster.
Edge swung sideways-on to the head of the stairway and used the momentum of the turn and a shove with his hip to hurl the heavier burden away from him.
The boy arced through mid-air, kicking his legs, flailing his arms and screaming. Something glinted in his right hand: even in the dull light under the low, dark clouds.
Edge: Echoes of War (Edge series Book 23) Page 13