‘Excellent, my man!’ the American congratulated and there was no doubt that he was sincere. ‘A fine, smart challenge. I would guess your officers are soldiers after my own heart. Now be kind enough to inform the post commander Timothy Parker has something which will be of keen interest to him.’
The man’s cultured tones placed his origins in New England and implied he came from a family rich enough to pay for the best education available. From the man’s voice, Edge guessed he was older than he looked at a first, distant impression.
‘He talks strange, Señor Edge,’ Jesus said in a hushed whisper. The boy had sensed the tacit suspicion which for a few short moments had seemed like a palpable presence in the hot air between the half-breed and the men astride the horses.
‘It’s what a man says that matters, kid,’ Edge answered evenly.
The Federale’s first order had been for the American to halt and stand still. Now he demanded the man to drop his gun belt as a pre-condition of admission to the fort. The language was Spanish.
‘Sorry, my man. But the only foreign languages I took were French and Latin. Don’t you speak English?’ Impatience gave his words a quality of toughness.
The Federale stared at him blankly, the carbine still gripped in a rock-steady aim.
‘Hey, Tim!’ This from the shortest and fattest of the riders as he swung awkwardly and wearily from the saddle. He had been in charge of the woman and now he unhitched the lead line and jerked on it to force her to her feet. ‘Dames’ve always been good for talkin’ as well as screwin’, ain’t they?’
He was a good twelve inches bigger around the waist than the chest. His belly hung over the front of his gun belt and trembled rhythmically as he waddled towards his boss
‘Beat it, kid!’ Edge rasped,
‘But Señor —’
‘Do it!’
The boy looked up at the man and saw his face in low angle profile. That much of the expression he could see was solid backing for the harshness of the order. Abruptly he was afraid of the man he admired. He turned and raced along and across the street. But only as far as the cover of the nearest house.
Edge had not sent the boy away because of any threat of physical danger. He simply considered that Jesus was not yet old enough to see the naked female body, nor to witness the scars which male lust could leave on a woman’s flesh.
In fact, the woman was not entirely naked but the torn and meager clothing she wore served to make the tableau in front of the Federale post even more obscene. She was a Mexican—tall and statuesque—perhaps beautiful under the mask of pain and exhaustion and dust and sweat-pasted hair which distorted her features. She wore a gray dress which had once covered her from throat to ankles. But it had been savagely ripped from neckline to hem and was now held together only at the waist by the tightly-knotted lead line. Thus, as the grinning fat man dragged her forward, the bodice and the skirt gaped to expose her large breasts, the curve of her belly, her sex and her legs to the cruel glare of the sun and the eyes of any man who cared to watch.
Her captors were satiated with her as a woman and needed her at this moment simply as an interpreter. The Federale was unable to maintain his concentration on Parker and the crotch of his uniform pants bulged visibly as his attention was trapped by the woman’s body. Edge eyed her as bleakly as he studied most things of passing interest. And, before she jolted to a halt and used her hands to clutch the dress together at the neck and lower down, saw the dried blood, the bruises, the bite marks and the scratches which marred the smoothness of her olive brown skin.
‘Fine idea, Gibbon,’ Parker allowed. He backed away from the Federale to stand beside the stoop-shouldered woman who was pressing her chin hard against her chest to stare down at her bare feet. Then he bunched a handful of her hair and she vented a gasp of pain as he wrenched up her head. ‘Tell the smart soldier boy I want to see his commanding officer, my little beauty.’
She screwed her head around to glare into his face at close quarters. Then spoke softly and fast to him. A quiver of rage moved her body. Parker signified a similarly powerful emotion by becoming rigid for a moment. Then, with the speed and smoothness of a skilled gunman, he drew, aimed and fired.
He used the silver-plated Remington from his gun belt holster. And put the bullet through the centre of the woman’s left foot. He released her as she screamed and had the smoking .44 back in the holster before she hit the ground and clutched her bleeding foot in both hands.
The four men still astride their mounts drew with the speed but not the style of Parker. Their revolvers were also Remington .44s, lacking the rich finish of their leader’s weapon. Two aimed at the Federale sentry and the other two covered Edge.
‘Fine!’ Parker called, raising his voice and addressing Edge as the frightened and shocked Federale dropped his carbine and snapped to attention before thrusting his arms high in the air. ‘She is in distress but she is no lady, my man! You do well not to attempt any foolish heroics!’
His voice grew louder, to be heard above the shouts and thud of running feet which the shot had triggered inside the post. Then he moderated his tone to speak to his men. They replaced their guns in the holsters and the sentry snatched up his carbine as the twin gates of the post were flung wide and a dozen or so armed Federales skidded to a halt, carbines and revolvers swinging this way and that in massed confusion. There was one junior officer and the rest were non-coms and enlisted men. Whether in full uniform or not, the soldiers were clean, recently shaven and smartly turned out.
Parker nodded his approval, in the manner of a visiting dignitary reviewing a guard of honor, as the noise stopped. He was unconcerned when the carbines ceased to waver and became trained on himself and his men.
Edge recognized the voice of Comandante Alfaro yelling behind the high adobe wall of the post. The young, harassed looking Teniente Romero snapped an order and the men in the gateway shuffled aside to allow exit to the commander of the post. Face ruddy, dark eyes gleaming and medals glinting in the glare of the sunlight, the tall and slim Alfaro strode pompously out of the safety of his fort. And was careful to halt behind the aimed guns of his men.
‘I regret I do not speak your language, Comandante,’ Parker said quickly, as Alfaro was still drawing breath to power an order or a demand.
‘You speak mine, feller!’ Edge called evenly. ‘So listen and understand good!’
Alfaro glanced towards the half-breed with unconcealed contempt. Just briefly. Parker and the other Americans gave him their undivided attention.
‘When a man points a gun at me for the first time, one of two things happen. Either he shoots me, or he gets a warning? Warning for you is that any of you aim a gun at me again, you better squeeze the trigger. And if you figure there’s a chance you’ll miss, make your peace with your maker before you draw.’
The shot had not only alerted the Federales to possible trouble. It had drawn Father Vega from his church and the villagers in from the irrigation work. Edge heard their footfalls on the street behind him.
‘I will certainly remember that, my man!’ Parker called. ‘I tend to take most things in life lightly! But not threats!’
There was a toughness back in his tone. And an implied counter-threat. Despite the aimed guns of the Federales, the four mounted men draped their holstered guns with hands which waited only for a one word order. But Parker chose to dismiss the exchange by leaning down, grabbing a handful of the woman’s hair again and jerking up her head—to display her exhausted and pain-wracked face to the angry Alfaro.
The woman’s past and present suffering was too great to allow room in her mind for abstract considerations of modesty. She sat with naked legs splayed and sagging breasts bared without making any attempt to cover herself. But if any of the Federales were aroused by her nude humiliation, the presence of their commanding officer assured their concentration on the Americans.
The woman submitted without a struggle as, with easy gentleness, Parker used his free
hand to brush the long black hair off her face.
‘You don’t know her?’ Parker said with a sigh as Alfaro looked from the woman to the dudish American with the same brand of scorn.
‘It is apparent that you and your men have come to know her well,’ the Federale commander growled.
Gibbon sniggered. ‘Real well, Major. Guess you could say she’s become just a part of the daily grind to us. And I only ever knew one that was better. It’s no wonder she’s special to Ortiz…’
‘Shut your mouth!’ Alfaro roared and the abrupt rise in his anger obviously surprised the Americans.
The villagers of San Parral had halted in a tight-knit group twenty feet behind Edge. The half-breed heard several gasps from them, as Alfaro shifted his glowering eyes from Gibbon to the crowd of Mexicans and muttered a rasped curse that he had failed to interrupt the American in time,
‘What’d I say?’ the short, fat man defended.
‘Too much in public, apparently,’ Tim Parker answered and there was a lilt of amusement in his voice now. ‘And enough to earn us the hospitality of this fine looking post, I think?’
He looked quizzically at Alfaro and was rewarded with a curt nod. Then the commander of the Federales executed a snapping about-face and marched back into the post. Parker made a gesture for his men to follow him, released his hold on the woman’s hair and strolled in the wake of Alfaro. Gibbon released the lead line and the other four dismounted. The young lieutenant shouted an order and the men holstered their revolvers and ported carbines before hurrying forward to take charge of the prisoner and the horses.
‘Either you’re fast with a gun or you’ve got a fast nag, man!’ the back-marker of the Americans yelled towards Edge. ‘’Cause you better be ready or be gone when our business is done in this place—you know what I mean, man?’
He had halted in the gateway of the post. As tall as the half-breed, but heavier from the effects of richer living. He tipped his hat on to the back of his head, in a gesture of challenging confidence. The face exposed to the harsh glare of the sun was round and fleshy, bearing the scars of old knife wounds on the forehead and right cheek. His teeth were crooked and tobacco stained and there didn’t seem to be any white surrounds to his pupils. Edge guessed his age at somewhere in the mid-twenties.
‘What’s your name, feller?’ the half-breed asked.
‘Why, man?’
The horses were all gathered and two soldiers were supporting the crippled woman between them. All waited in the hot sun outside the gateway for the exchange to be completed faces sheened with sweat and polished buttons and buckles glinting.
‘You’re the one who’s making it personal.’
The scar-faced man laughed. ‘You’re gonna call me, uh, man?’
Edge nodded. ‘Have to be just plain stupid if you don’t tell me your name.’
The expression of cruel humor remained frozen in silence for a split second.
With no outward sign of it, the half-breed tensed his muscles for a sideways turn and draw,
‘Sort out your own problems later!’ Parker snarled from within the post.
The scar-faced man remained visibly keyed-up for a full two seconds. Then became loose-limbed while the sweat beads on his fleshy face continued to look like drops of the venom of his hatred.
‘It’ll have to wait a while, man,’ he growled, and turned to start across the threshold of the gateway. Then: ‘Oh yeah, the name of the guy who’s gonna kill you is Bruce Wayne.’
Edge nodded, ‘Whenever you’re ready to go into bat, man.’
Chapter Two
‘THAT hombre, he has bitten off more than he can swallow, eh Señor Edge?’ Jesus Vega called.
The gates of the post had been slammed closed and now there was just the sentry standing to immobile attention in front of them. Edge had turned with a sigh and the boy ran towards him, eyes serious while his lips were split to show a beam of delight.
Some of the villagers, their dark faces and white clothing dirt-streaked and sweat-stained from backbreaking toil on rock-hard ground beneath a blistering sun, stared at the half-breed with a mixture of sadness and disbelief. They had enjoyed hearing and talking about the stranger who had helped the Montez family throughout a long and dangerous journey. But, at second hand and embroidered from their own imaginations, nothing he had done had smacked of foolishness. Unless for love of a fine woman—and as Latins they could understand this.
But they no longer considered him a stranger. He had lived among them for three months: eating, drinking, sleeping and waiting for a nod of encouragement from Isabella Montez. And what such a man had just done appeared foolish in the extreme—provoking a gunfight with a total stranger on what seemed to be the slimmest of pretexts. The action of a loose-tongued drunk concerned to prove the legend?
‘We’ll find out pretty soon, kid,’ Edge told the boy.
The majority of the dispersing crowd started to backtrack along the curve of the street. For the arrival of the Americans with their woman prisoner, and the name half-spoken by one of them, had presented the village of San Parral with a problem of greater consequence than a gunfight.
Many of the villagers hurried into their houses, to prepare and eat a meal as they discussed the unwelcome newcomers and the terrifying events which were certain to follow.
A few formed into a smaller group and went quickly along the street ahead of the ambling Edge. Cirilo Banales, the storekeeper and recently elected mayor of San Parral. Sorrano, Manuel Vega and three grove owners. And Isabella Montez. All of these forming the cabildo which took care of all the civic duties of the village.
Meetings were held in a room of the fruit packing station and all the members of the cabildo were inside and in session by the time Edge resumed his seat on the bench beneath the dusty shade oak. Isabella had been ushered in ahead of the men. And there had been time for just a brief backward glance over her shoulder towards the half-breed before she was lost in the deep shade inside. But time enough for Edge to recognize anxiety in her expression. Whether for him in the immediate future or the town during the few days ahead, there was no way of knowing.
‘Get lost, Jesus,’ he told the boy.
He had been unaware the youngster was trailing him until he put his back to the closing doorway of the packing station, sat down on the bench and discovered the solemn eyes studying him.
‘A matter of honor, eh, Señor Edge?’
‘My business. Yours right now is to go cook up some tortillas for your pa.’
‘You will eat with us if…?’ He shook his head with great determination and made it an unequivocal statement. ‘You will eat with us.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Si.’
The boy turned and ran away along the street. He went into the house just beyond the church and the dust he had kicked up settled. After that, the only visible thing which moved in the entire broad valley of San Parral was the smoke whisping up from the chimneys of the adobe houses.
Then Edge took out the makings from a shirt pocket and rolled and lit a cigarette. He spat once, when the first intake of tobacco smoke merged distastefully with his liquor breath. A couple of large flies buzzed in to investigate the saliva, but the thirsty ground was fast to claim the meager moisture. The frustration of the flies had a weary sound and they took off to seek a shady place to rest during the hottest time of the day.
The half-breed set little store by the brand of honor the Vega boy had spoken of. But he had managed to preserve a few principles during the cruel years which had forged him into the kind of man he had become. Although, he was prepared to acknowledge, some people might choose the word ‘idiosyncrasies’ rather than ‘principles’. But all had a solid basis of reason in past experience. Like his aversion to pointed guns.
That had its beginnings in his youth, on the Iowa farmstead where he lived with his parents and younger brother, Jamie. His name had been less clipped then—Josiah C. Hedges. The pointing gun had been in his young ha
nds, aimed at Jamie, when an accidental pressure against the trigger sprang the hammer. And Jamie was made a cripple for the rest of his life.
Fate decreed it was not to be a long life for the boy with the shattered leg. Jamie did not go to the bloody and bitter War Between the States. While Josiah was away, fighting, killing and becoming the best and the worst of a man, Jamie remained on the farmstead. Their parents were dead then and the crippled boy worked hard and long to ensure that he and his older brother would have the basis of a fine future when the war was over.
But it was not to be.
Six Union soldiers reached the Hedges farmstead ahead of the cavalry captain they had served with through so many brutal battles. Five left.
And what Captain Hedges discovered when he returned home set him out on the trail which had led to this Spartan village in the Sierra Madre range of Sonora. For the buildings and fields of the farmstead were charred black; and buzzards were feeding on the bullet-punctured flesh of Jamie and a trooper named Rhett.
During the war, Josiah C. Hedges had killed for the cause of a united country. He had killed with rifle, revolver, knife, his bare hands and the unorthodox but lethal weapon of the straight razor. And Jamie’s death ordained that he must call upon these deadly skills again. In the cause of revenge. The ravaged body of Bob Rhett told him who he was looking for five of the meanest, most vicious killers who had fought for either Union or Confederacy. Men confident enough of their individual and joint supremacy over their former captain to leave an easy-to-follow trail.
Their self-confidence had been misplaced and they paid with their lives for the mistake. Another man—a stranger named Elliot Thombs—also misjudged the revenge-bent ex-cavalry officer. And Josiah C. Hedges became a wanted man on a charge of murder in the state of Kansas. He also, by the slip of a Mexican’s tongue, became Edge.
Edge became a loner and a drifter; wandering the west and Mexico in search of a life to replace that which was gone forever when he found the tortured body of Jamie. But the cruel fate which had decreed his single-minded vengeance hunt and the many aimless trails he was to follow afterwards, continued to dog his tracks or lay in wait for him.
EDGE: Savage Dawn (Edge series Book 26) Page 2