He lay still, waiting for the sharpness of the agony to become dulled. Then had total recall of every event from the moment he first saw Joe Straw until he exploded the final shot from his Winchester on that brightly moonlit night when four cowpunchers paid the ultimate price for tangling with the man called Edge.
And he grinned, uncaring that the expression caused the skin of his lower face to smart. Felt no sympathy for the quartet of young men who had no way of knowing what kind of trouble they were messing in when stopped that stage. Irrespective of the fact that by their actions they had taught Edge himself what kind of a man he was.
It was very quiet in the room and outside. During the thirty minutes it took him to sit up, ease from the bed and get to his feet, he heard only his labored breathing and the creak of bedsprings. Without hatred to combat pain, he had only rock hard determination to keep him from surrendering to the physical and mental demands for a much longer period of rest.
His clothing was draped over a chair beside the bed and it took him a further thirty minutes to dress. Everything was stiff with stale sweat and the shirt smelled of vomit.
He had to go around to the other side of the bed to get to the bureau with a mirror upon it. And a water pitcher in a bowl. His Winchester leaned against the front of the bureau. His revolver and the razor lay on top of it. He pushed the revolver into the holster after checking it was fully loaded. Then stowed the razor in the neck pouch. Only then looked at his reflection in the cracked mirror.
The blood and vomit had been cleaned from his face, along with the sweat and the trail dust. He saw that his nose was swollen and blotched with dull colors. Likewise his cheeks, but the purple and black areas here were camouflaged by the thick growth of black bristles.
He regarded his reflection for only a few moments, and showed another grin as he rasped softly: ‘Damn shame I never got to see the other fellers.’ Became impassive and icy eyed to ask his image: ‘Where’s Joe Straw?’
Then he picked up the Winchester and knew from its weight that it was empty. Carried it down at his side as he went to a closet door and pulled it open. Inside there was just dust and a rail from which clothes hangers hung. He found it less painful to hoist the mattress and look down through the springs rather than to drop to his haunches to check beneath the bed. More dust was all. The same as in the three drawers of the bureau. So his gear, including a saddlebag with close to three thousand dollars in it, was not in the room.
He elected to go to the window before trying the door. And saw he was in a second storey room of a building on a curve of the trail. It was sited directly on the side of the trail that curved at this point to sweep around the base of a conical hill above the apex of which the sun was poised.
When Edge looked to his right he saw that the trail straightened from the bend to head out in a direct line across the scrub desert to the south. Because the morning was newly born and there was not yet a shimmering heat haze to advance the horizon, he was able to see the ridges, dark and jagged, of the Santa Rosa Mountains that showed above the curvature of the earth.
Way-Station Number Three was not in sight, hidden in some shallow hollow or behind a low rise. Likewise the rocky area where the stage had been ambushed.
Not that it mattered. The southern section of the trail and all that bad happened along it was behind Edge. Just another series of violent events in his past.
His eyes cracked to glinting slits against the brightness of the sun, he swept his gaze in from the desert, over the rocky slope of the hill and out along the trail that cut through other hills to mark the way north. These rises would be the Momoli Mountains, he knew.
He did not know of any town in this part of the territory and from his restricted viewpoint at the window which did not open he could see no other buildings. So another way- station, he guessed.
Edge rolled a cigarette as he surveyed the peaceful scene beyond the window. Then lit it and drew in lungsful of smoke. Every move he made was painful - even when he altered his expression - but he experienced a keen sense of satisfaction. His physical injuries would heal. Of far greater importance to him was that never again would he allow himself to suffer from the more debilitating hurt of mental anguish.
He finished smoking the cigarette and crushed it out against the window pane. Dropped the mangled remains to the floor and experienced the first nagging doubt about his present circumstances.
The sun was now well clear of the hilltop across the trail. And hot enough to form an arc of shimmering haze out on the desert. Yet still the building was locked in silence.
Even if the people off the stage were deeply asleep, recovering from the long day’s trip and the shock of the violence at the ambush, surely whoever ran the way-station should by now have begun the routine chores.
Then he did hear a sound. And took several stretched seconds to identify it as a grunt vented from his own lips. Sweat oozed from every pore, greasing his hands and face and pasting his clothes to his body. But the brief period of tension was gone now. It was just pain and the heat that beaded the sweat from his flesh, for he was thinking clearly. Somebody had taken some degree of care of him. His guns had been left in the room. Which had to mean the door would be unlocked. So he was not a captive and there was no intention to harm him.
Then he heard something else. But he did not utter the sound. And it did not originate within the building.
It came through the hills from the north.
A shout.
He pushed the side of his face close to the window pane, to widen his angle of vision in that direction - so that he was able to see the entire length of the trail until it twisted out of sight between the fold of two hills.
A gunshot and then the thunder of galloping hooves. The rattle of spinning wheels. All of this muted by distance and the intervening high ground.
Then a stage plunged into view. The best part of a mile away: the Concord and its four horse team plain to see for a moment. Then enveloped in the billowing cloud of dust raised by the pumping hooves of the straining horses and the sliding wheels of the Concord as they came too fast around the curve out of the twin hills.
For more stretched seconds the Concord was in danger of listing too far to the side and toppling over the side of the trail. But then it rocked in the opposite direction a moment before two wheels were about to be lifted off the ground.
Edge could see just the two sweat lathered lead horses of the team clearly now. And caught only brief glimpses of the other two and the Concord as it rolled and pitched and yawed for many headlong yards before straightening.
Now men were yelling within the building. And Edge wrenched his intrigued gaze away from the dust shrouded stage to look down at the trail immediately below the window.
A door was wrenched open and two men ran through it. Both clad in nightshirts. One about fifty, six feet tall and very thin. Almost bald, with sunken eyes and very little chin. The other more a boy than a man. No more than eighteen. Blond haired and a head shorter than the man who was undoubtedly his father.
They continued to shout at each other as they fisted the grit of sleep from their eyes, but what they said could not be heard against the cacophony of sound made by the racing stage.
The dust cloud was now elongated - stretched out behind the Concord. And Edge, back from the window, was able to recognize Charlie and Harry up on the box seat as he switched his gaze away from the father and son who had just awakened.
But again he was allowed a mere glimpse before myriad motes of dust were flung upwards to totally engulf the team and the Concord. This caused by the locked rear wheels of the stage which ceased to turn and now slithered along the trail as the brake blocks grabbed at the rims, and the abrupt change of pace of the four horses when they responded to the driver’s demand for a halt.
For the many seconds that it took for the team and their burden to come to a frenetic stop immediately below the window, Edge needed to make a conscious effort to convince himself he w
as awake, that he was not experiencing some vivid fantasy conjured up by his disorientated mind while his body was still recovering from the effects of the beating.
And he did this by concentrating on the pain that wracked him from head to toe. Sleep, of which dreams and nightmares were a part, blotted out pain. So if he was hurting this much, he had to be awake.
Yet something he had seen through the window gave the scene out front of the building the quality of the unreal. Something his narrowed eyes had witnessed for just part of a second before the billowing dust veiled it.
Now the dust began to settle and there was a moment of silence.
The team horses snorted their exhaustion.
The man and the boy shouted in unison, the tone of their voices questioning.
The ropes! Edge’s mind filled with the memory of what he had seen during that instant of clear vision. It was Joe Straw who was scheduled to be hanged. Yet Harry Dodds and Charlie had ropes tied around their necks.
A fusillade of gunfire exploded and the shouting voices were curtailed.
If there were screams, the din of the rifle shots masked them. For the father and son must have died instantly, at least one of the bullets tearing into their flesh striking deep into a vital organ. They were hit where they stood, with no opportunity to turn and run for the cover of the building when they saw the danger. Crumpled to the ground, the grey fabric of their nightshirts blossoming with bloodstains, separate for a moment, then merged into one great dark area. Edge instinctively reached for his holstered Colt and released his hold on the empty Winchester as he folded to the wall beside the window.
The shooting ended and when he peered out from one side of the window he ignored the inert, bullet-riddled corpses to survey the ancient Concord and the men who were climbing from it, their repeater rifles covering the dead and the facade of the building.
Six of them. Five coming through the door of the stage and one down from the roof. Five Indians and one half Indian. All with Comanche blood running through their veins.
‘What did I tell you, man?’ Joe Straw yelled as he hit the ground after jumping the final three feet from the roof. ‘Didn’t I tell you it’d be a piece of cake? Easy as friggin’ pie!’
He was in a state of high excitement which did not infect the wretched looking full blood Comanches who seemed not to hear him as they kept cautious watch on the facade of the building, raking their suspicious eyes over the open doorway and the windows, blinking whenever they glanced at the panes of the upper storey, dazzled by the sunlight striking the glass.
Then one of the braves growled: ‘We not want to hear talk of food, Joe Straw. We want to eat it.’
‘Then come and get it,’ the half breed invited confidently, pushing between two of the tensely apprehensive Comanches to step around the blood stained corpses and head for the doorway. ‘Weren’t nobody here but these two.’
One of the braves tracked his Winchester around to aim at the back of the swaggering Straw. But the obvious leader of the band put out a hand to direct the rifle muzzle down at the ground. And shook his head in mild rebuke, whispering a few words which drew a response of nods.
Then the leader aimed his own repeater straight up at the sky and triggered three shots in quick succession. They all looked back along the north trail and within moments another Indian showed himself between the hills. Riding a pony and leading a string of others roped together.
‘Now, we eat,’ the Comanche announced as he lowered his rifle and started for the doorway through which Joe Straw had gone.
Edge jutted out his lower lip and softly blew a draught of cool air over his bruised and sweat sheened features. Then muttered: ‘Big order, but somehow I got to see you fellers have bit off more than you can chew.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE elderly driver and shotgun had taken several bullets in their chests. They were held upright on the high seat by ropes encircling their waists and tied to the handrails at either side. This in addition to the ropes Edge first saw - noosed around their necks and lashed to the rails of the baggage rack.
It was a ploy that would have fooled no one if the Concord had come into view at a sedate place. But the billowing dust erupted by the headlong gallop had masked the limp postures and the restraining ropes. Likewise, Joe Straw stretched out full length among the baggage, steering the team with reins that were lengthened with another piece of rope. And the shattered windows and bullet- pocked timbers of the stage "which provided further evidence of a hold up of far greater violence than that undertaken by the grudge carrying cowpunchers.
Edge surveyed the stalled stage only briefly and gave no consideration at all to the fates of Dora Naulty, Franklin Carver and Dwight Tait. Watched the sixth Comanche bring the string of unshod ponies to the front of the building, dismount and join the others inside without tethering the animals.
The ponies were as underfed, unhealthy and sorry looking as their owners. But far less dangerous, and as soon as the sixth Comanche was inside, Edge curtailed his disjointed thinking about how this threatening situation had come about to concentrate upon surviving it.
He could hear them downstairs. Shouting and laughing, banging doors open and closed, rattling pots and pans and breaking glass. Much of what was said was in the Comanche tongue, but Joe Straw often yelled loud enough to be heard above the general din. Obsequiously boastful of how he was responsible for the good fortune.
‘And ain’t it like I said it would be . . . All this grub and liquor for the takin’ . . . Ain’t you glad you listened to me instead of . . . When we’re through here, we can head down the trail . . . Pull the same trick at the next way- station . . . But we gotta take care we don’t kill the woman that’s there . . . Anyway, not until after we ... ’
Edge moved painfully and silently from the window to the door, right hand draped over the butt of the holstered Colt and left fisted around the frame of the Winchester. He no longer concentrated upon picking out what Straw was yelling above the din. For he was certain the half breed Comanche did not know his former captor was in the building. Which would have been very puzzling to Edge had he allowed his mind free rein to drift back into thoughts of what happened between the time he slumped into unconsciousness and when he came out of it in this room.
What he did know for certain was that the hapless Joe Straw was as much a prisoner as he had been before Edge took the beating. And was in line to be killed as soon as it pleased the leader of the hungry, filthy, ill-clothed and murderous Comanches to give the order.
It was just as certain that Joe Straw knew this. For his high excitement at the success of the attack on this way- station had begun to ring more false with every shrill word he yelled. His attitude was at once a bravado attempt to convince himself that his suspicion was unfounded and a constant plea to convince the Comanches that he could continue to be useful to them. With his actual terror
discernible just beneath the paper thin surface of his desperate raucousness.
But a man like Joe Straw was familiar with desperate situations. Had he known Edge was close at hand and chosen not to reveal this to the Comanches, he would have had the wits to signal by gesture or words that he knew.
Edge cracked open the door of the room and peered out across a small landing with the top of a narrow stairway directly opposite. He smelled smoke and during a momentary lull in vocal sounds from below heard the crackle of burning wood. He eased the door open wider and thrust his head out to look to left and right.
Saw the landing ran for the width of the building with several doors in the facing walls. The doors had numbers on them. Which explained why he did not hear the father and son roused from sleep before they left the building. The private quarters of the way-station were downstairs.
He stepped out on to the landing, which had no windows except for the stained glass transoms above each door. He closed the door of the room in which he had rested and this diminished the level of light to a pleasant green hue as the harsh
blaze of the sun filtered through the coloured transoms.
There was still a lot of loud noise downstairs, the Comanches continuing to revel in unaccustomed plenty. While Joe Straw sought shrilly to impress upon the braves that it was all due to him, and that their good fortune did not have to end at this way-station.
‘Look, man, we don’t have to use the stage again! The guy and his wife who run the place down the trail know me! Guess they’ll be real curious to see me ridin’ up to the station, but they won’t - ’
The Comanches had stopped talking among themselves to listen to him and when he realized he had their full attention, Straw lowered his voice without allowing the tone of false enthusiasm to fade. The thud of a blow was muted, too. Perhaps by the man’s red hair? He broke something made of glass as he fell, but the actual sound of his frame crashing to the floor was masked by a chorus of Comanche voices raised in delighted approval of what had happened.
Edge crossed the landing and entered a room of identical proportions and furnished in the same way as the one he had just left. But the view from its window was out over a fenced yard to a stable block built at the base of a fifty feet high cliff. The empty corral was enclosed alongside of the stable, the yard and the main building.
This window didn’t open either. And, anyway, there was a fifteen foot drop to the hard packed dirt of the yard, which caused Edge to grimace at the fleeting thought of what fresh pains such a jump would erupt within his hurting body.
There was far less noise rising up the stairway now. The braves were eating and drinking and talking at a normal conversational level in their own tongue. With just an occasional guffaw or thud of a fist on a table that rattled crockery. So Edge trod carefully on the bare boarding as he moved to the end of the landing. And was just as cautious in crossing another familiar looking room. This one at the far end of the building from the room in which the Comanches were gathered. Again at the rear of the building, at the angle formed by its comer and the fence that enclosed this side of the yard. Its window was of the non-opening kind.
EDGE: The Prisoners Page 12