The men ate standing up, using the table to rest their rifles on, and kept one eye towards the door from the opulent hallway. It did not open until the men were on their second mugs of coffee. Bell choked on his when he saw the man framed in the doorway.
He was a giant of several inches over six feet, with the wide shoulders and narrow waist of an athlete. But he was armed with more than mere physical strength. As his steely gray eyes roved over the intruders, he covered them with a Colt Hartford sporting rifle, his massive hands making light of the nine pound cylinder weapon. He was dressed in an elaborately embroidered silk robe from the pocket of which showed the butt of a heavy caliber revolver.
“Uninvited guests are expected to wait on the porch, gentlemen,” he said in a deep bass voice. “It’s considered polite.”
Hedges put down his mug and plate and allowed his right hand to stay on the table, close to the pile of rifles. “Ain’t much time for good manners in a war, Mr. Crane,” he said softly.
Unaffected by what was happening, the cook began cracking eggs and dropping them into the pans with the ham.
“I am a non-combatant and not concerned with the problems of the military,” the giant boomed.
“Welcome to the war, feller,” Hedges said in the same even tone, sensing the eyes of his men on him. “Bragg’s Army of Tennessee is on the run from Chattanooga. We’ll need this house as headquarters for the general.”
“What?”Crane thundered.
“We need your house.”
“Over my dead body!”
“Wrong thing to say,” Forrest muttered with a shake of his head.
“Any way you want it,” Hedges replied to the big man, then shouted: “Hit the floor, Scott!”
Scott was standing in front and slightly to the right of Hedges, screening the Captain’s right hand. While he had been speaking with Crane, Hedges had been inching his hand along the barrel of a rifle until he found the trigger guard. As Scott went down, helped by a thump in the back and an outstretched foot from Forrest, Hedges flicked his wrist to send the rifle forward. He caught the barrel in his left hand, swung it on to the target and fired from the hip.
Crane took the bullet directly in his heart and died with a dry gasp, his thick legs buckling beneath his immense dead weight. The Colt Hartford fell heavily to the stone floor, its hair trigger sending a bullet across the kitchen. Scott howled as the shot whistled in front of his eyes. It pinged against the bottom of a hanging cooking pot and ricocheted towards the woman. It burrowed into the back of her neck and she half turned, surprise appearing as a strange expression on her moon face. Then she toppled backwards, involuntarily feeding her dead flesh to the flames of the fire. Her clothes and hair flared and the sickly sweet odor of scorching flesh permeated the air to mask the stench of exploded powder.
“Hell, she was a great cook,” Douglas complained, reaching for a rifle from the table.
“Right,” Hedges agreed, mildly surprised that his first taste of killing for many days had the effect of deadening the pain in his leg. “She shouldn’t have been fired.”
“Mr. Crane!” the stooped old butler cried, stepping into the doorway and staring in horror at the crumpled body of his employer.
The troopers snatched up their rifles from the table as shouts of alarm resounded along the second floor hallways of the house.
“Out of the way, grandpa!” Forrest snarled at the old man, leveling his Spencer.
“But we support the cause,” the butler implored, his terrified gaze sweeping the room and fastening on the flame-engulfed figure of the woman.
“You picked a loser,” the Union sergeant told him and squeezed the trigger of the Spencer.
The butler sighed and clutched at his stomach. Blood squeezed out between his fingers as his legs buckled and he collapsed on top of Crane. The sound of the shot heralded a fresh burst of panicked shouting from above.
“Take ’em all, Captain?” Forrest snapped over his shoulder, then returned his concentrated attention to the doorway.
Hedges narrowed his eyes to slits and set his lips in a thin, firm line. He looked quickly around the room, taking in the death-twisted bodies, the blood, the drifting smoke of discharged powder and the tense excitement in the faces of his men. His slightly flared nostrils twitched to the awful scent , of charred flesh and expended cartridges. All combined to relegate his pain into non-existence and to feed strength into his weakened body. The sights, sounds, smells and feel of war gripped him with warm fingers of exhilaration. His mind raced into the past, gathering memories of the Shenandoah Valley campaign, the Bull Run rout, the battle of Shiloh and the bitter, bloody fighting for Murfreesboro. On these occasions and during lesser skirmishes which had engaged him during the war, Hedges had always experienced a similar degree of high excitement.
He had long ago identified it as a joy for killing and although he realized that its grip reduced him to the level of the mindless savagery of a wild animal, he knew also that it made him the ideal soldier in the kind of war he was fighting.
“Unless they’ve got a picture of Lincoln tattooed on their chests, how’ll we know which side they’re on?” he rasped, his lips curling back to show his teeth in a cold, killer’s grin.
He leapt across the bodies in the doorway and, with hoarse yells of self-encouragement, the troopers streamed after him. Two men in white nightshirts were halfway down the elegant stairway, a nervous woman in a pink negligee three treads behind them. One of the men held a long-barreled revolver which he swung towards the troopers in a jerky reflex action. The woman screamed and turned to run back up the stairs.
Six rifles exploded into sound and the trio’s thin night clothes blossomed patches of red. Dead bodies crumpled and started to thud down the stairs, spraying blood on the polished wall paneling, “Douglas, Scott: check out the rooms down here!” Hedges ordered, stomping the bodies of the dead as he went up the stairs on the run, trailed by Forrest, Seward and Bell.
At the top was a square landing with three passageways leading off to form a T. The shocked face of a man showed in the crack of an open doorway. Seward fired and the man was flung backwards into the room, blood gouting from his right eye.
“Who said looks can’t kill,” The grinning youngster yelled, charging down the passageway, kicking open doors and firing inside.
Bell adopted similar tactics along a second passage and Hedges and Forrest moved down the third.
A man and a woman held each other in a trembling embrace as they sat in bed. Both held a hand in front of their faces as Forrest burst through the doorway.
“Please?” the man implored.
“Pleasure,” Forrest answered and shot them both through the heart in quick succession.
Two old ladies struggling into dresses turned in terror and showed tear-filled relief as they saw the Rebel-uniformed Bell grinning at them as the door burst open.
“Thank God,” one of them exclaimed.
“Our boys have arrived!” shrieked the other.
“You die happy, but wrong!” Bell told them, the Spencer spitting double death, the lead slamming the women’s frail bodies across a dresser.
The heel of Hedges’ boot smashed against a door and it slammed back against the bedroom wall. A man whirled towards him in terror, releasing his pants and reaching for a ready-cocked Starr .44 on the bed.
“Caught you with ’em down, feller,” Hedges said through clenched teeth as he drilled the man through the heart.
As Forrest shouldered his way through a door, he saw a man on the point of leaping from the window. The sergeant spat and leveled his rifle. Then the evil chatter of the Gatling gun started up. The man thudded back into the room, shreds of bullet-ripped flesh scattering in all directions.
“I got one, I got one!” Rhett screamed excitedly from outside in the wagon.
“You turned one into a crowd,” Forrest snarled softly as he took in the sight of the mutilated body and pulpy pieces of dislodged tissue dotting the roo
m.
Downstairs, Douglas and Scott lumbered from one room to another, their excitement draining away as they failed to discover any occupants. Scott began to alleviate his frustration by destruction of the inanimate. Sometimes he used bullets, but mostly bare hands or rifle stock, smashing, tearing and wrenching at the lavish furnishing of the house.
“Rich bastards, stinking rich bastards, lousy stinking rich bastards!” he chanted as he reduced each room to ruin.
Douglas heard him, checked what he was doing and followed his example, gripped by a fit of imbecilic giggling.
Rifle fire, interspersed with the lower keyed cracks of revolver shots, continued to sound upstairs as the troopers systematically annihilated the occupants of the rooms.
“Stop it, you fools!” a man screamed at the top of his voice.
Forrest and Hedges whirled simultaneously from open doorways, both swinging their rifles towards the man. Hedges saw a short, fat man of middle years with a face gone purple with rage from which bulging eyes stared at him with ultimate revulsion. Something about the man in his seething emotion pierced through the warm glow of exhilaration and stayed Hedges’ finger on the trigger. But Forrest saw only a man: an enemy. The sergeant’s finger curled and squeezed. The Spencer made the dry click of emptiness. Forrest cursed and reached for the revolver at his side.
“Hold it!” Hedges barked, stepping into the line of fire.
“I’m the only one you want!” the fat man shrieked, his voice rising in pitch, the blood vessels in his neck standing out like solid, discolored ridges. “You’re killing the best friends the South’s got. I’m the traitor.”
The man ran out of breath for more words and began to pant, clutching at his chest as if he had a pain in it.
“Dear God, no!” a woman screamed from the far side of the house.
“You got something better than a picture of Abe Lincoln on your chest, ma’am!” Seward yelled. “But the Captain give the order.”
The rifle shot cut across the woman’s scream and the thud of her body against the floor heralded long seconds of a silence so complete it was like a solid weight hanging in the powder-perfumed air.
“What’s the score, mister?” Hedges asked as he was hit by the pain in his leg again and knew the euphoria of killing had left him.
The fat man fought for his breath and won. The purple coloration drained from his features and left them waxy white. “Crane and the others were all genuine workers for the cause,” he said in a hoarse whisper, his flabby chin resting on his chest as he stared dolefully at the rich carpet. “I’m the only one who supplied the Pinkerton Agency with the details of their plans.”
“What the hell—” Forrest started as Seward, leering, and Bell, eyes alight with excitement, came up to flank the sergeant.
“Why were you all here?” Hedges snapped out.
“Crane called the meeting,” the fat man replied. “He’d heard from one of the agents in the field that General Grant was going to New Orleans. Last night they set up three plans to assassinate him.” He looked up now, meeting Hedges’ frank stare. His own eyes held the look of a condemned man. “How long has the army known there was a Union informer in the Secret Service?”
“What the hell’s happening, Frank?” Seward Wanted to know.
Forrest shrugged. “Seems like we’ve blasted open a whole nest of Reb spies, Billy,” he answered.
The fat man stared incredulously at Forrest, his surprise deepening when he looked back at Hedges and saw the snarling line of the mouth become a smile. “Who... who are you men?” he stammered. He couldn’t believe it, but he voiced his suspicion: “You’re Union?”
“Who are you?” Hedges countered, the Spencer still leveled.
“The name’s Bound,” the fat man answered. “James Bound. Dr James Bound.”
Hedges rubbed his leg. “Medical doctor?”
He nodded. “But I don’t practice any longer. I’m an ornithological author.”
“A what?” Bell asked, blinking.
“He writes books about birds,” Hedges supplied.
“When he ain’t spying for our side,” Forrest said.
“Then I wasn’t wrong about you being Federals?” Bound exclaimed, pulling in his protruding belly and standing erect, his relief complete.
“No, doctor, no, you weren’t wrong,” Hedges told him, raising the Spencer and resting it across his shoulder. “We’re Union.”
A long sigh escaped the fleshy lips of Bound. “Well, that’s a turn up for the book,” he murmured.
“All clear upstairs?” Rhett’s voice held a nervous quiver as it rose up from the hallway.
“Who’s that?” Bound asked, startled.
“No one who’d interest a guy sold on birds,” Forrest drawled as Hedges turned and began to limp back towards the landing, the others following.
“A double zero number, no good for nothing,” Bell supplemented.
“The man with the golden ass,” Forrest added.
*****
Edge was certain his left arm was on fire and he attempted to smother the flames by pressing his right hand over the seat of the pain. But this only intensified the agony and he snapped open his eyes and released the grip. Lesser pains clamored at his mind from other parts of his body. Pain can never be a friend, but to this man it was, at least, a familiar intruder. So he knew how to handle it and he began the process by remaining still and closing his mind to it as he examined the memory of what had led up to his condition. He found he had total recall to the point where the stage had toppled over the rim of the mountain trail and he had fallen with it, believing death to be a certainty.
But the sudden plunge into blackness had been unconsciousness rather than death and with this fact established, he began to move his right hand over the rest of his body, at the same time flexing various muscles. There was a cut on his forehead and another on his jaw, both surrounded by roughened areas of congealed blood. Bruises made themselves felt on his legs, limbs and upper torso. The only serious injury was the break in his left forearm. He felt the gentle sway of the overturned stage and recognized the possibility that it was precariously balanced on a ledge: since a plummet all the way to the foot of the ravine would undoubtedly have killed him. Carefully, he raised himself into a sitting position, using the Winchester as a lever. He noted, without any sense of revulsion, that he had been protected from further injury by the dead bodies of the mine owner and the middle-aged woman, which had cushioned him. They were no longer soft and resilient, the cold night air of the mountains having advanced the onset of rigor mortis.
The stage rocked, the front end dipping a good ten degrees into the chasm before Edge leaned towards the back and his weight slammed the side into the ground. The offside door of the stage had been torn free in the fall and the gap it left gave him a wide-angle view of the night sky, glittering coldly with white stars in the clear void. The air had a frosty bite but, as he inched up on to his haunches, boot heels grinding into the white hardness of the woman’s face, sweat broke out on his brow, jaw and the palms of his hands. He could smell himself as pain hit him like a silent scream and the stage creaked into another dipping motion.
His teeth gleamed as they ground together and his body whipped up straight. He leapt towards the rear paneling of the stage and thudded his feet down. The list over the lip of the ledge was greater this time, but his falling weight corrected it. More sweat pumped from his gaping pores, clinging the Levis to his legs and fastening the shirt to his armpits.
His head protruded through the window frame and he could see the brush-covered ledge with a thirty foot high cliff on one side and a yawning chasm of inky blackness on the other. He rested, waiting for the pain in his arm to diminish, willing desperately needed strength into his good limbs. For perhaps five minutes he stood like that, pressed against the rear interior of the stage, feeling the sweat turn icy cold on his skin.
Then, cautiously, he inched the Winchester up and out through the window
. He tossed it and saw it land in the brush. Next he unbuckled his gunbelt and lobbed it in the same direction. He wanted nothing to snag on the stage’s body shell.
By going up on his toes, he was able to hook his good arm out through the window and around the doorpost. But he shook his head, knowing this would not give him enough leverage to raise his body without support from his other arm. He looked ruefully at the wider opening of the doorway, then shook his head again. It was on the wrong side of the centre of gravity.
He lowered himself into a crouch and reached into his shirt pocket for the makings. He had papers, but the tobacco pouch had fallen out. So had the matches. He patted the pockets of the mine owner’s suit and found what he wanted, rolled a cigarette and smoked it slowly. But he felt his muscles stiffening with the cold and stood up to flick the butt out of the window and into the ravine. A slight breeze caught it and speckled the night with sparks.
Then he crouched down again, flexing the fingers of his good hand and looking up at the window aperture with a fixed gaze. He sucked in a deep breath of cold air and powered himself into a sudden, body-stretching leap.
The moment his weight was in mid air, the stage began to tip, narrowing his target area of the window. But his hand, arm, head and shoulders dove through. He had made allowances for the narrowing of the angle, but had been unable to compensate for the fact that the canting of the stage meant that the window rose away from him. The degree of tilt in relation to the height of his jump could be nothing more than a calculated risk.
He bent his arm at the elbow and curled his fingers into a claw. His palm slapped into the wooden doorpost. He closed his grip and channeled every ounce of energy into his wrist His chest came clear of the stage and he knew he had reached the maximum height of the leap. For a long second the entire weight of his body was supported by the wrist, elbow and shoulder muscles of his right arm. His head pounded with the physical strain as his flailing feet kicked out for a toehold on the back panel of the stage. The edge of one boot found a fraction of an inch of support on a length of beading. As he pressed down on this, the wood snapped, but the thrust gave him an extra two inches and he was able to straighten his arm. His torso was hauled completely through the window and as he folded his body, flopping double over the side of the stage, the tilting motion faltered. The stage teetered for a seeming eternity, then thudded down on to the ledge.
Vengeance Is Black Page 4