‘You will tell this to the people of San Parral and to the soldiers who man the post there. You will tell them that I require the woman to be given back to me merely as a sign of good faith. If this is done and the villagers do not take up arms against me and my followers, I will ensure that only the gringo bounty hunters and the Federales are killed. If it is not done, or a single Mexican peasant tries to fight us, everyone will die. You understand this?’
Edge nodded.
‘Good!’ The Colt was drawn and cocked and aimed. The grin spread across the face again, ‘Now take off everythin’ except your boots, your underwear and your hat, Saint Edge of San Parral.’
The half-breed had experienced cold fear after witnessing the wantonness with which Gonzalez killed. It had expanded as he realized escape was impossible. Then he felt nothing. Now anger was a colder and harder ball in the pit of his stomach, threatening to erupt into snarling words and reckless actions. He was skilled in the art of concealing his emotions—to the extent where many who had known him considered he was devoid of such human frailties. But Gonzalez was concerned only with the lack of response to the order.
‘If you do not do this, you will die now. And all in San Parral will die without knowing some were offered continued life. I think the latter is of little consequence to you, señor. But the former … Would such a man as you sacrifice his life to save his dignity?’
Edge remained silent for a few moments longer, to be certain he was in full control of himself. He looked from the carved lettering on the back of Martinez to the butchered corpse of the old-timer. If there was ever dignity in death, it would never be seen if the instrument of dying was at the command of Ortiz Gonzalez.
‘You drive a hard bargain, feller,’ he said evenly, and began to unbutton his shirt.
There were some grunts of disapproval. Matches were struck on rocks and rifle stocks, and cheroots were lit.
‘Not so very hard,’ Gonzalez taunted. ‘Unless you feel your life is worth no more than a few old clothes.’
He moved away, beckoning for Toni and Romero to follow him. All three went into the darkness of the cave.
Edge stripped down to his red, all-in-one underwear. Only the two youngsters at his back kept him covered. Others relaxed, smoking, talking or staring morosely into space. One led the half-breed’s gelding to the far side of the basin, picking up the discarded gun belt on the way. Two others joined him and there was a low-voiced argument about the division of the spoils.
Toni and Romero, who were the most mean looking of the whole band, emerged from the cave. One carried a narrow plank, about five feet long. Another a length of rope.
‘Now you lay down on your belly, Saint Edge of San Parral,’ Gonzalez ordered from within the deep shade of the cave mouth. Balls of cigar smoke were expelled with each word, quickly disintegrating as they emerged into daylight. ‘With arms straight out at each side.’
A rifle muzzle was thudded against Edge’s spine as the bandit leader spoke the final word,
‘Hey, take it easy with him, Carlos!’ Gonzalez called from the shadows. ‘It is only my intention to dent his pride.’
Edge lowered into a squat, rolled on to his side and sprawled out in the manner demanded.
‘A man must salvage what he can, señor,’ Gonzalez called with a short laugh. ‘You lacked grace, but at least you did not have to be on your knees in our presence.’
The lean, hooded-eyed face of the half-breed who had suffered so much was totally without expression. He watched, guessing what the end result would be, as Toni and Romero lashed the corpse of Pedro Martinez to the board, face down. There was ample rope left when this chore was done. And this was used to lash the plank and body to Edge—at wrists, forearms, elbows and armpits. If anything could be said to be to the advantage of the half-breed, it was that the burden concealed the telltale bulge at the top of his back which no one had suspected was a concealed weapon.
‘Up!’ Gonzalez ordered, and advanced out of the cave. ‘On his knees for a moment.’
It would have been impossible for Edge to rise unaided. Toni took hold of one arm and Romero the others Then wrenched the prisoner into the position demanded. Gonzalez halted two feet in front of the cross-like, kneeling form of the half-breed. He blew cigar smoke into the impassive, sweat-run, dust-streaked, bristled face.
‘You see, señor. Ortiz Gonzalez may be insulted in his absence. But in his presence, he cannot be beaten. On his feet and release him!’
Edge was hauled erect and abruptly had to bear the weight of the timber and the corpse alone. It was uncomfortable, but not yet a strain or painful to a man of his strength. The agony would come later.
‘I walk, uh?’ he asked.
‘Si.’ The broad grin with the gappy teeth again. The exercise will do you good, Saint Edge of San Parral. For when you reach the village, will you not be relieved of a great deal of excess weight?’
His laughter resounded between the cliff faces and was picked up by his men. Edge screwed his eyes to the narrowest of slits, so that their clear blueness was almost totally concealed. But even had Gonzalez stopped enjoying his own joke for long enough to notice the menace in the glinting slivers, the threat would have seemed hollow from such a helpless man.
The half-breed held back a sigh of relief as the scornful laughter ceased to beat against his eardrums.
‘Go now!’ the bandit leader ordered. ‘We will be at San Parral tomorrow. What will happen then depends upon you.’
Edge eased around, head held high and gaze fixed directly in front of him. Thus, just as he had avoided kneeling of his own volition, so he continued to keep hold of the few remnants of dignity left to him.
His footfalls against the rocky ground were the only sounds until he entered the narrow cut where he had been captured.
‘Hey, mi amigo!’ a familiar voice called from above. ‘Don’t you fall down on the job, eh! You do, there’s not any way you’re going to get up again!’
‘And it is important you get to the village,’ the other man on the opposite rim of the cut yelled. ‘For you have a message vital to many people.’
‘Yeah,’ Edge rasped through gritted teeth, his voice no louder than a harsh whisper, ‘And all I planned was to give a single lady a ring.’
Chapter Five
THE sun sank into the distant Pacific Ocean and the sky above the western ridges turned from blue to pink, to red to black. Coolness dropped down over the Sierra Madre, coming through the atmosphere with the light of the moon and the stars. But the sweat of pain and exertion continued to bead the contorted leanness of the half-breed’s face. And to paste the underwear to his firm flesh.
His arms had been numb for a long time. But there was a vicious pool of hot agony centered between his shoulder blades, which sent searing streaks down the length of his rangy body each time he set a booted foot to the ground.
His head was still held high and his gaze remained trained on the trail which arrowed due south in front of him. But for a more practical reason than abstract dignity. For, whenever he had allowed his chin to slump towards his chest, he had staggered and been in danger of losing his balance.
For a while, when the agony had attained a peak of intensity—just as he reached the trail—he had sought to detach his mind from his punished body and experienced an odd feeling of admiration for the sadistic Ortiz Gonzalez. Perhaps the man killed without giving the act a second thought. But the method he had chosen to get his demands to San Parral showed that his mind worked on other levels.
He had heard Edge was regarded as a hero by the villagers. Of all others, Pedro Martinez would have made that abundantly plain. And, as an obviously well educated Mexican, Gonzalez understood the mentality of his less sophisticated fellow countrymen. So it was not merely to make Edge suffer pain and humiliation that he had taken away the half-breed’s clothes and tied the corpse to him. More importantly, it would show the simple peasants of San Parral what their hero had been reduced to after
a run-in with Ortiz Gonzalez. And the loss of morale this produced could be worth more than a dozen extra men if it came to a pitched battle,
The mental exercise completed, Edge continued to fight the exhausting effects of pain and exertion by recalling past humiliations. Capture by the Rebels. The public flogging in Andersonville prison camp. The discovery of Beth’s body and the knowledge that he could have saved her life. An unpaid debt owed two women who had saved his life when he was delirious enough with fever to try to return to the Iowa farmstead.
Hatred directed towards others—some dead and some not—and at himself. Hate piled upon hate with no outlet yet save a vocal one.
‘Gonzalez!’ he yelled at the top of his voice. The name seemed to hit the high ground on either side and bounce back to assault his ears over and over again. But the valley was too wide for that and he knew it was his mind, as punished as his body, playing tricks on him.
He recognized the danger of this, knowing how easy it was for a man to die by electing to follow the urges of a disturbed mind instead of taking heed of the pain from his tormented body; that deserts always appeared to be filled with cool lakes and that death was a convenient shore around a sea of pain.
So he forced himself to suffer the agony of his grisly burden. He gaped his mouth unusually wide to suck in the cool mountain air. And his eyes remained abnormally large for most of the time—staring ahead for a first sight of the village. He narrowed them only when the salt sting of dripping sweat beads blurred images beyond recognition.
Occasionally, the pain was deadened across his shoulders. But there was no relief; for the aches in his thighs, behind his kneecaps and where his ankles were chaffed by his boots would start to claw with greater intensity.
The decay of Pedro Martinez’s remains had not yet progressed to where it stank. But Edge could smell the odors of his own body. Until the gentlest zephyr of a south wind brushed his contorted face—and he caught the fresh aroma of growing lemons.
The features of the valley’s terrain ahead of him were blurred by moisture across his eyes. He blinked. And saw a pinprick of light—like a distant star, but against the land instead of the sky. In an involuntary reflex action he tried to tear a hand free of its bonds and fist the distorting sweat from his eyes. The entire length of that arm seemed to catch fire and burn fiercely. He groaned his agony.
Then expressed a brutal grin of hard won triumph. The single light he could see came from the open rear door of the cantina. He blinked rapidly and received a starkly clear image of the buildings which formed San Parral.
‘How about that, feller,’ he growled, screwing his head around to try to see the face of Martinez. ‘I got you home.’
He could see only the shoulders and upper arms of the corpse at either side of the plank.
‘Dead silence was the quiet reply,’ the half-breed muttered, and laughed.
Then curtailed the mirth abruptly, forcing his mind to think logically as he wondered if the sweat squeezing from every pore of his body was a symptom of a delirious fever.
The smell of lemons was becoming stronger by the moment: the light at the rear of the cantina larger and brighter. The buildings of moonlit adobe appeared to rise higher from the valley floor and swell outwards before his eyes,
A man shouted a short burst of Spanish at him.
‘Hail the returning hero!’ Edge growled with heavy cynicism.
A fusillade of shots exploded.
Brief splashes of orange light showed at the top of the north wall of the Federale post. Divots of dusty dirt were kicked up from the trail a yard in front of Edge. Doors and shutters were flung open along the street of the village beyond the post. Raised voices from further away competed with the shouts of soldiers. More lights showed in San Parral.
‘Hold your fire, you crazy sonsofbitches!’ Edge roared, not halting his measured forward progress, ‘Or else you won’t get to hear about the fine print.’
‘It’s Señor Edge. It’s Señor Edge!’
The night-gowned figure of Jesus Vega was the first to appear on the curving street. He came out of his father’s house in a lunging run. And sprinted towards the arms-spread figure of the half-breed. Then the street behind the running boy filled with other villagers. Their movements were slow and fearful. For a few moments, as Edge reached the area in front of the post’s entrance, all voices were stilled.
Then: ‘Get those gates open!’ Major Alfaro commanded.
Edge stopped, turned half towards the swinging gates and half to the approaching villagers. Jesus skidded to a halt six feet away, his wide eyes filled with horror as he stared up into the sweat-run face of his hero.
‘What have they done to you?’ the boy gasped as the five bounty-hunters burst out from the press of night-attired Mexicans, and Alfaro, Romero, another teniente and a sargento named Riaz marched out through the gateway of the post.
The grin Edge pasted to his face served only to make him look more haggard, ‘Wait till you see what I do to them, kid,’ he rasped.
‘But, Señor…’
‘Beat it, kid!’ Edge told him, his tone snarling.
All the bounty hunters were fully dressed and drunk. The sight of Edge’s agony and humiliation had sobered four of them. Al Gibbon continued to grin foolishly as he surveyed the tall, lean half-breed.
‘Do as you’re told, boy,’ Timothy Parker augmented ‘This is men’s business.’
‘Federale business, Señor Parker!’ Alfaro corrected sharply. ‘You will come inside!’
His hard eyes bore into the face of Edge. Romero and Riaz moved cautiously around to look at the half-breed’s burden.
‘I ain’t moving another step until somebody cuts me loose from Martinez, feller.’
‘He is dead, comandante,’ Romero reported.
There were gasps of shock from the villagers. Then a scream from the wife of Pedro Martinez. She tried to run forward, but a faint pitched her headlong to the ground. Father Vega and several women stooped around her.
‘He’s also friggin’ heavy!’ Edge snarled, ‘So cut him off me, you bastard!’
He stared at Alfaro, who had hurriedly donned his uniform pants and bemedalled tunic before leaving his quarters. Romero and Riaz, fully dressed for night duty were back with the post’s commander: the teniente reporting in a whisper what was carved into the exposed back of the corpse.
Jesus Vega had not done as he was told. He made to run towards Edge, but the grinning Al Gibbon fastened a pudgy hand on the thin shoulder.
‘I’ll take care of it, pint size,’ the fat bounty-hunter assured, drawing a knife from a sheath just in front of his holster. ‘Kid like you don’t wanna be around this guy when he’s turned loose.’ He released the boy and advanced on Edge, his mirth-filled eyes running up and down the underwear-clad frame and back and forth along the outstretched arms. ‘He looks more than a little cross to me.’
His grin expanded into a giggle as he moved behind Edge. Then he grunted.
‘Hey, Tim! He’s had a run-in with Gonzalez!’
‘Just cut the man free, Al!’ Parker snarled, as he watched anger expand to engulf the pain in Edge’s hooded eyes. ‘And keep your loose mouth shut.’
There was no deepening of shock among the silent villagers as the fat man spoke the name of the bandit leader. For all had known from the moment they saw Edge that Ortiz Gonzalez had been responsible.
‘Sure, Tim,’ Gibbon responded, subdued.
There was silence as the fat man sawed at the ropes holding the corpse to the plank. Until Gibbon asked Hawkins and Tyree to come and take the weight of the body.
Edge enjoyed the relief of sharing the burden for the first time in many hours. But showed nothing of his feelings. He ignored the men and boy close to him and raked his eyes over the faces of the villagers. He failed to spot Isabella.
Martinez was cut loose and lowered to the ground. Alfaro, Parker and Burton screwed their heads to the side to read the moonlit message carved into the dead
flesh.
‘No hard feelings against us, Edge?’ the tall and handsome dude asked. ‘You knew the woman was bait when you rode out of town.’
Now the plank was lifted off the half-breed’s back. His arms swung down to his sides, the wrists thudding hard against his hips. The movement exploded a fresh wave of sickening pain between his shoulder blades. The only sensation of his arms was a great heaviness that threatened to drag him to the ground. He shifted his feet wider apart to help his balance.
Gibbon, Tyree and Hawkins moved back to join Parker and Burton. Expectant silence was like an ominous, physical presence in the village. It buffeted Edge from the post and the street.
‘You have more to tell us!’ Alfaro demanded, as insensitive to the suffering of others as Edge was himself. The major stepped to one side and gestured for the half-breed to enter the post.
‘Got a couple of other things to take care of first, feller.’
He tried a step, staggered, and controlled his balance. The second step was easier. The bounty hunters parted to allow him passage. Jesus Vega moved in close beside him. The villagers opened up a corridor for him as the widow of Pedro Martinez rose from among the group tending her.
‘Nothing is more important than the killing of Ortiz Gonzalez!’ Alfaro snarled at his back.
‘Won’t give you no argument on that,’ Edge rasped through gritted teeth, having to concentrate very hard on the simple process of placing one foot in front of the other.
‘So?’
‘He won’t be here until morning, feller. There’s liquor in the cantina right now.’
‘Don’t reckon we drank old Julio dry,’ Gibbon said cheerfully, falling in behind Edge with the other Americans. ‘And I guess he won’t be insistin’ on you wearin’ a black tie to get into his place.’
‘Keep it shut, Al!’ Parker warned,
‘Señor Edge?’ the plain young widow of Pedro Martinez called softly.
‘Yeah, lady?’
‘My husband? Was it bad for him?’
EDGE: Savage Dawn (Edge series Book 26) Page 6