‘Home and dry,’ he continued. ‘I’ll court-martial any man who disobeys an order from here on in.’
He treated each man to another glinting stare, and drew impassiveness for a response. Then Rhett broke the uneasy silence.
‘You won’t get no trouble from me, sir,’ he said.
‘So long as the Captain keeps his back to the wall,’ Bell taunted.
The humor was weak, but the men used it as an excuse to shatter the tension with hollow laughter.
‘I’m obliged to you, mister,’ the old lady said, almost gently, after Hedges had ordered the men to retrieve their weapons and attend to their horses. ‘I figured me and Betsy were in for a bad time, for sure.’
Hedges eyed both women blankly and he resisted the temptation to match the older one’s tone. For he didn’t want to give them hope. ‘Don’t count on them staying the way they are, lady,’ he warned coldly. ‘Right now, fix some breakfast. A lot of it, and good.’
She ignored the tone and smiled. She had no teeth. ‘Sure thing, mister. Come on Betsy. Like I always told your mother and you, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.’
‘Only works if a man’s got a heart,’ Hedges muttered as the women retreated into the kitchen and he went outside to experience the warm sunlight of the new day.
Out there, as he unsaddled and watered his horse, then ground-hobbled the animal on a patch of grass, he sensed the animosity the men directed tacitly towards him. He thought he knew the reason. Basically undisciplined, the men had been little more than a murdering, robbing, raping mob for too long. He had reminded them that they would soon be back in uniform again, exposed to formal military authority. For months they had wanted nothing better than to get out of Rebel-held territory - and Forrest’s uncertainty about whether he himself could lead them to safety was the chief reason he had given his reluctant backing to Hedges. But, now that they were within sight of their goal, they could visualize more clearly what awaited them there. And Hedges’ threat of a court-martial had brought the future into even sharper focus. So, what might have been gratitude and admiration for him - albeit grudging from such men as these - was actually sourness.
But, under the influence of the simple, large and well-cooked meal which Betsy and her grandmother served, the mood of the men underwent another change. As they ate they became mellower and then the luxury of good food in combination with the utter peace of the surroundings heightened their weariness and each man chose his spot and bedded down.
As the sound of stentorian snoring disturbed the peace of the house, Hedges moved a chair to a north-facing window and slumped into it. He was still concerned about the subject of the men’s muttering together as they tended to their horses. But all he could do was stay alert for any move they intended to make, and the sounds of their deep sleeping indicated that would be several hours in coming. So he just gazed fixedly into the north across the scarred battleground of The Wilderness and allowed himself the hope that future battles would be few. For he could see the old woman working in the overgrown turnip field and he visualized Jamie tending to the chores on their farmstead in the heart of Iowa.
He realized he had never been so sick of the war: so sick, he was loathed to admit, that he was even prepared to accept a Confederate victory if it meant he could return quickly to his brother and the farmstead. For, like the men, he no longer had any clear conviction about the cause in whose name he was fighting. And, ignoring this, he had witnessed, experienced - suffered from and taken part in - brutal acts on both the Confederate and the Federal side. So, in such a war, God could be an ally of neither side. Not that he believed in a God anymore: and in a Civil War patriotism played no part. So there was nothing worth fighting for.
His view across the ravaged country grew as fuzzed as his thinking and he became another willing victim of sleep.
Betsy screamed. Hedges was jerked into awareness and, with the lessons of war well learned, he had total recall. He heard only the final remnant of the scream, but he recognized that it was vented by a woman. And through the glassless window he saw the old one hurl away her hoe and pick up her skirts to run towards the house. He saw the desperate anxiety in her ancient face but knew it was not she who had screamed. He also knew, from the position of the fierce summer sun, that he had slept into the mid-afternoon.
This complete orientation to his surroundings and their condition took only part of a second. Then he was on his feet, Spencer snatched from where it leaned against the wall. He pumped a shell into the breech as he raced across the tiny room and jerked open the door. Men were coming out of other doorways, rubbing sleep from their eyes, yelling questions and fumbling with clothing and guns.
One raking glance with his slitted eyes told Hedges who was missing. He saw Forrest and Seward coming fast out of one bedroom, Bell emerging from another, Scott rising from the hallway floor and Rhett stumbling in through the back door of the house.
‘Captain, riders comin’!’ Rhett yelled in high excitement. ‘They look like—’
Scott reached the door of the kitchen a moment before Hedges and flung it wide. The two leaders were bundled through by the pressure of the other men at the back. They all skidded to a halt, the men at the rear jostling to see past those at the front.
‘They look like Union,’ Rhett completed, his voice cracking.
Nobody was listening to him.
Douglas, dressed only in pants and under vest, had Betsy arched backwards across a scrubbed pine table. She was partially nude to the waist, where her attacker had ripped away the dress at one side. The nails of his clawed fingers had gouged three bloody ruts in her bare flesh from the shoulder to the nipple of the just discernible swell of her exposed, developing breast. Terror screamed tacitly from her bulging eyes, but one of Douglas’ hands was clamped over her mouth to hold back further screams. His other hand was struggling to completely uncover her upper body. She had ceased to offer physical resistance and was clutching at a cheap metal crucifix hung around her neck on a cord. She held it high, on a level with the man’s lust-gleaming eyes.
‘Corporal!’ Hedges roared, and sent a rifle shot crashing towards the kitchen ceiling.
But there were cooking pots hanging from an overhead beam. The bullet clanged against the bottom of one and ricocheted. It angled downward and burst into the slack skin of the old woman’s throat as she showed her horrified face at the kitchen window. She died instantly and was thrown backwards by the impact. Now horror was etched into the hawkish features of Hedges as he stared at the bright splash of blood on the ledge of the glassless window. He was blind to all else as remorse for the fatal accident froze him into a harrowing state of suspended animation.
Douglas leapt away from the young girl, who went down into a squat on the floor and began to vent body-shaking sobs as she kissed the crucifix. The corporal’s action brought him between Hedges and the blood-stained window ledge and he had no reason to believe that the ice-cold look in the eyes of the grief-stricken man was not directed at him.
‘Tell him, Frank!’ Douglas pleaded as hoof beats trembled the hot afternoon air. ‘Back me, you guys. Tell him we agreed. Tell him we don’t give a shit for his orders. Any of us. Tell him you all said it was all right for me to have her.’
‘Company comin’, Frank,’ Billy Seward said urgently, pumping the action of his Spencer.
Rhett raced back to the kitchen after making a hurried check on the approaching riders. ‘It’s like I said!’ he shrieked in delight. ‘Union! A whole friggin’ cavalry troop! We’re saved!’
‘Frank!’ Douglas yelled.
Betsy sobbed, dropping forward out of her squat to adopt a kneeling position. The crucifix was held between her praying hands.
‘We didn’t agree nothin’,’ Forrest snarled, and drew his Colt as the sound of the approaching cavalry troop swelled. ‘Right, you guys?’
‘Not me,’ Scott said.
‘Nor me.’ From Bell.
‘You’re crazy,
Hal,’ Seward accused.
Rhett shrugged. ‘Guess not, Sergeant.’
‘What they call unanimous,’ Forrest proclaimed with a curt nod. Then he aimed the Colt and squeezed the trigger.
The second shot jerked Hedges out of the trance-like condition into which the result of the first one had plunged him. He saw the terrified Douglas, then glanced to the side in time to see Betsy die. Her frail, semi-nude body was sent crashing to the floor. Her pasty face was curtained by a welter of blood streaming from the entry and exit holes of the bullet at each temple. Then he swung to the side still further: and watched Forrest toss the smoking Colt at the body, snatch Seward’s Spencer from him and hurl this over to the floor under the window with the blood-splashed ledge.
The Sergeant trapped the Captain’s eyes in a level stare that was at once quizzical and challenging.
‘Federal cavalry troop outside, sir,’ Forrest reported tersely. ‘Looks like we’re home and dry. Been a damn shame these two Reb dames had blasted us right at the last.’
‘Frank?’ Douglas yelled.
‘Shuddup, Corporal!’ Forrest snarled.
Hedges, all his senses functioning once more, looked quickly at each man in turn. Only Rhett expressed his joy at the arrival of the uniformed troopers. Forrest’s eyes continued to taunt. Seward, Bell and Scott were merely expectant. Douglas was still afraid.
They said they’d back me, sir,’ he croaked.
The Captain recalled the mutterings of the early morning and then, fleetingly, remembered older events: isolated incidents which had shown the men’s resentment towards Douglas because he was unfitted to wear his chevrons.
Toss up which one of us they hate the most, Corporal,’ he replied sourly.
‘So what you figure to do about it, Captain?’ Forrest asked as the horsemen broke from an orderly column to surround the house.
‘Whoever’s in there, come on out with your hands high!’
The commanding voice sounded from the front of the house. Troopers, recently shaved, and garbed in newly-pressed uniforms with shining buttons, appeared beyond the kitchen window.
‘Well, Captain?’ Forrest urged.
‘What the man says - for now,’ Hedges replied, pushing his Spencer on to the pine table and starting to unbuckle his gun belt.
‘Never thought I’d be happy to get captured, for Christ-sake!’ Rhett muttered as he and the other’s disarmed themselves.
‘Captain ordered no cussin’, Bob,’ Seward reminded.
Forrest glanced at Hedges and saw he was looking at the slumped body of the young girl. One of her arms was outstretched, the hand opened to show the metal cross lying in the palm.
‘Reckon he’s thinkin’ some real mean things himself right now,’ the Sergeant growled.
Hedges showed the non-com a cold grin that parted his thin lips without reaching his narrowed eyes. ‘No, Forrest,’ he rasped. ‘Just something a little different from what my Ma used to say a lot. Just Betsy’s to heaven.’
***
EDGE was no longer the sheriff of Monksville, but he remained in the law office as the cold night slid through into the colder early hours of a new day. From the point of view of the citizens, perhaps it was because they were all - from the mayor down - afraid to try and evict him. Or perhaps it was because they just didn’t care. The only other survivor of those who had caused trouble to explode in the law-abiding community was Melody Devine. And she was still unconscious from the bullet wound, held in bed and under guard at Doc Hartmann’s house.
The half-breed stayed in the warm office because he had committed himself to awaiting the arrival of the Kansas lawman and it was a comfortable place to kill the time. Since no move was made to get him out, he didn’t consider what counter-action he might take. He just sat, with the stove glowing and the lamp turned down, alternately reading the telegraph and staring morosely into space. He smoked a lot of cigarettes - and was midway through another when he heard the clop of hooves coming down the trail from the north. The approaching rider held his horse to a weary walk and Edge had time to smoke the cigarette at a measured pace before the newcomer moved into the square.
The horse was reined to a halt and the half-breed eased out of his chair, canted the Winchester across his shoulder and ambled to the door. He pulled it open and felt again the bite of the night air on his stubbled face. The brightness of the moonlight seemed to intensify the cold.
‘So the telegraph brought you running, Edge?’ the horseman said flatly. ‘Remember me?’
He was no more than five feet six inches tall and sparsely built. His face had regular features that merged into a kind of nondescript handsomeness. At first impression a forgettable man, garbed in a well-fitting, high-priced eastern suit topped by a low-crowned hat. But the half-breed knew the way in which the man could get a certain look into his coal-black eyes and put a slight twist on his mouth to leave a lasting impression on all who saw him in such circumstances. The expression was a kind of quarter smile, with menace monopolizing the other seventy-five per cent of the look. Men were either warned off by the look, or ignored it at risk of being blasted into eternity by the gunfighter’s Remington revolver or Martini-Henry rifle.
That was in the old days. There had been at least one change since then. The tin star on his jacket lapel displayed the fact that he was no longer a gunfighter.
‘Who could forget Summer, Pike,’ Edge replied evenly.
He wasn’t talking about the season. Instead, a town in the Dakota Bad Lands where the two men had met and then parted. A town where they had shared a bounty but where Edge had beaten Pike for the love of Elizabeth Day.
Perhaps later, the half-breed thought, he might wonder why he had not realized Pike was behind the telegraph. Because re-awakened memories of Beth excluded all else but the woman herself? He set aside the question for later consideration. Faced by a man like Pike, he needed to stay totally alert to the present.
‘It was just luck I found that old wanted poster on you when I got the sheriff’s job,’ Pike said. ‘Just a couple of days after I heard about the way you let Elizabeth die. It didn’t take luck to find you.’
‘You must have wanted to real bad.’
‘You can guess why?’
Edge nodded. ‘I reckon. Personal reasons.’
Now Pike nodded. ‘Real personal. It’s why I needed to pin you down someplace outside my jurisdiction.’
‘I figured.’
‘Nancy didn’t tell you?’
Pike was sitting easily on his weary horse, hands still holding the reins, far from the holstered Remington and booted Martini-Henry. Edge, aware of the man’s speed, poised himself to get rid of the uncocked Winchester and go for his Colt.
‘She didn’t say much at all. But what she did say got her in trouble. The worst kind.’
He saw the slightly-built lawman become suddenly tense, but read the switch accurately. Pike was preparing to make his move. He wasn’t making it yet.
‘What’s that mean, Edge?’ he rasped.
The courthouse clock struck a solemn note to mark the hour of one.
‘Along with a few others, tomorrow she’ll be buried.’
The shock slowed Pike fractionally. He released the reins as fast as Edge dropped the rifle. But the Colt was coming out of the holster ahead of the Remington.
Neither handgun exploded. Instead, there was a deafening barrage of larger caliber bullets belching from the muzzles of rifles. Divots of dirt and puffs of dust rose from around the hooves of the horse. While splinters of wood flew out of the doorframe and up from the sidewalk where Edge stood. The half-breed and the lawman clashed eyes and reached an instantaneous tacit agreement. Their hands left their guns and they raked the square with hard, unafraid stares. The residue of sound from the single fusillade rolled away into the vast emptiness of Death Valley.
‘We’ve had enough!’ Scott Gerstenberg bellowed from cover. ‘Monksville don’t want any more killin’. You guys got somethin’ to settl
e, go someplace else.’
The shots had come from all around the square, high up and low down. The riflemen had had a long, cold wait in secure cover. And they didn’t show themselves now. All the two men in the open could be sure of was that the angry mayor was in the church.
‘Or you’ll kill us?’ Pike called.
‘Ain’t how we want to end it, but we’re ready, if that’s what you want.’ There was the unmistakable sound of a shell being pumped into the breach of a lever action rifle. Then a whole chorus of similar sounds from all around the square.
‘I’m easy,’ Pike said softly.
Edge grinned coldly. ‘You’re too modest, feller.’
Pike wiped the back of a hand across his mouth. ‘You’re easier. Call it.’
‘Ain’t what we want to do, friend, but somehow it’s got to end!’ Gerstenberg called.
‘Poetic, ain’t he?’ Edge posed.
‘Come on, Edge, he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about,’ Pike urged.
The half-breed nodded. ‘Sure knows the verse. We’ll move out. Got to give him and everybody else another chapter.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE blood-run face of the old woman haunted Hedges throughout the remainder of the war. The image of her dying was strong in his mind as he and his men were escorted, under open arrest, to Federal Army headquarters in Washington. It was even stronger during the month-long period into mid-August when, after their identities were established, the men were given a furlough. While Forrest and the others spent the time drinking and whoring around the city’s low spots, frittering away their accumulated back pay, Hedges checked into a Pennsylvania Avenue Hotel that was neither the best nor the worst Washington had to offer.
He did only one constructive thing - mailed home to Jamie the bulk of his pay. The balance paid the rent for his room and a constant supply of rye whiskey. While the battles of Peachtree Creek and Crater were fought far to the south, and Admiral Farragut won the Battle of Mobile Bay for the Union, Captain Josiah C. Hedges drank and slept. And he had hallucinations and nightmares about the face at the window of the tiny farmhouse in the ravaged wilderness.
EDGE: The Final Shot (Edge series Book 16) Page 11