Kelton, hovering on the edge of consciousness, saw his discarded rifle with his good eye. His hand inched forward towards the stock. A bow string was released and Kelton screamed. His hand was pinned to the ground by an arrow.
“Scalps?” a brave said in English and the chief nodded.
Kelton screamed his last as a knife slashed along his hair line and a hand tugged at the trophy. The entire top of his head became a pulpy mass of bubbling blood as the hirsute skin was torn free. Another brave claimed the scalp of Lambert and a third held Bolan’s head as a fourth peeled off the topknot
Then the whole party streamed into the centre tunnel with the chief in the lead.
Edge and Pike waited until all trace of movement had gone from the cave mouth before they galloped out into the open. They demanded every last ounce of power from their horses as they raced for the river, splashed through the slow flowing water and up the far bank. Without preplanning, Edge went to the left of the cave and Pike to the right, skidding their mounts to a halt behind the parked wagons.
Rifle fire sounded, far off in the depths of the cave-riddled sandstone, as they tied the animals to the wagons. The Indian ponies stamped nervously and snorted, but stayed in a close group. There were fourteen of them.
“That fancy rifle got a fast action?” Edge called to Pike, and nodded to the ponies.
“All of them?” the smaller man asked as he slid the Martini-Henry from the saddle boot
Edge shrugged. “Just one of those redskins get away and we might have to fight the whole Sioux nation to get back to town.”
Pike nodded. Then, with a fluid, incredibly fast movement, he brought the stock of the rifle to his shoulder and began to fire and work the lever action. Before Edge could unboot his Winchester, four of the ponies were on their sides, pumping blood from neat bullet holes between their eyes. The other animals reared and kicked in their panic to get clear of the group as more of their number tumbled under the hail of lead from smoking rifles.
Six broke away unharmed and galloped for the river in blind terror. Edge lowered his rifle and began to feed fresh rounds into the breech as he watched Pike continue to fire. The small man in the long coat placed his shots with cool speed and not one was wasted. The sixth horse died on the river bank and pitched into the water.
“You ain’t bad,” Edge allowed evenly as Pike began to reload his rifle. Then added: “At shooting horses.”
“There has to be a good reason to use it on people,” Pike answered. “But it shoots just as straight at them.”
“So let’s give it a whirl,” Edge said, striding into the cave and stepping over the mutilated bodies of Kelton and Lambert.
“Once more into the breech, dear friend,” Pike misquoted as he fed the final bullet into the rifle.
“Quit sweet-talking the Martini and shake it up,” Edge growled over his shoulder, stepping towards the tunnel entrance.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THREE braves who had heard the shooting from outside the cave emerged at the tunnel mouth and hesitated a fatal second as they saw Edge and Pike bearing down upon them.
Edge shot away the jaw of one and he fell writhing to the ground. Pike drilled a bullet through the heart of another. As the enraged brave in the centre drew back an arm to hurl his tomahawk, the two white men fired together and the Indian clutched at the twin spouts of blood gushing from his stomach.
Edge drew his razor in a blur of hand and arm movement and Pike slid out the stiletto as he bobbed into a crouch and straightened. The two braves who had not died under the rifle fire stared up in terror as the white men approached. Razor and knife slashed under their outstretched arms and the Indians choked on their own blood as gaping wounds were opened in their throats.
Edge and Pike leapt across the blood-drenched bodies of the Indians and broke into a run along the tunnel. There was a continuous barrage of rifle fire now, as each report was echoed and re-echoed along the rock walls. They raced around a turn and pulled up sharply, peering through the drifting gunsmoke at the lamp-lit scene before them.
The tunnel gave entrance to a large cavern with a high, vaulted roof and smooth, yellow-tinted walls. The floor, where it showed, was of hard-packed clay. But for the most part it was covered by elaborately patterned Persian carpets. On the carpets stood English and French furniture - a four-poster canopied bed, a circular rosewood table with accompanying high-backed chairs, a mirrored chest of drawers, an oak desk, a glass-fronted bookcase with leather-bound volumes lining the shelves - even an enamel bathtub. On the furniture and on the floor there was a fortune in crystal, china and silver. Leaning against the walls or resting upon natural niches in them were many gilt-framed landscapes and portraits - including one of Haven in a Colonel’s uniform - done in oils. The heavily ornamented lamps glowed with the dull sheen of unpolished silver.
Pike gave a low whistle as he took in the incongruous luxury of the cave dwelling. “Haven’s got taste,” he murmured, and dived flat to the ground as a ricocheting bullet tugged at his coat sleeve. The Martini bucked in his hands and the bullet blew open the back of a brave’s head.
Edge’s lips curled back into a scornful sneer as his eyes raked over the cave’s elaborate furnishing. “My army was never like this,” he muttered, spotting the Ball brothers and Bean pinned down behind a hastily erected barricade of a sofa and three wing chairs in one corner.
The Sioux braves were spread out across the cave in a half circle, using the stoutly made furniture as cover. Glass shattered and wood splintered at each crack of a rifle. Two Indians had been killed before Edge and Pike reached the inner cave and now three more died as the newcomers blasted at the exposed braves.
An Indian climbed on to the bed canopy and fired an arrow across the top of the pile of chairs. It made a peculiar sucking noise as it entered Bean’s right eye and pierced his brain.
Ed Ball, tears of fear stinging his eyes, every muscle in his obese frame quivering, launched himself forward, leaping over the barricade, screaming at the top of his voice and firing as he ran. A volley of shots rattled and the fat youngster’s face disappeared in welter of cascading blood.
The brave on the bed canopy took a bullet in the leg and another in the heart as he tumbled. Tom Ball, his coolness unaffected by what had happened to his brother, waited for the braves to be panicked by the crossfire then placed his shots as they broke cover. Edge, in a half crouch and Pike, still prone on the ground, aimed at the terrified braves with professional accuracy, dropping a man with every shot.
The pattern on the high-priced carpet became obliterated by dark stains of blood and pieces of sopping flesh rained down upon the beautiful furniture.
“I think they’ve had enough,” Edge rasped as he, Pike and Tom Ball fired together, the three bullets ripping into the flesh of the Sioux chief and blasting him backwards into the bathtub. His blood dripped through the unplugged drain away.
“There aren’t any more redskins,” Pike pointed out, getting slowly to his feet and scanning the Utter of bodies scattered among the luxurious furnishings.
“So they’ve had enough,” Edge answered with a shrug, covering Tom Ball with the Winchester. His hooded eyes met and held the other man’s cold gaze. “How about you, feller?”
Ball hesitated, then sighed and tossed his rifle to the ground as he came out from behind the bullet-holed barricade. “Me, too,” he answered, unbuckling his gunbelt and letting it fall. Sadness entered his eyes as he looked down at the bloodied body of his brother. “You got us into one hell of a mess, Ed,” he accused softly.
“And he’s left it to you to get the mess out,” Edge told him. He jerked a thumb towards the tunnel. “All this junk, on the wagons.”
Anger flared in the green eyes. “On my own?”
Edge glanced quizzically at Pike. “You want to help him, doc?”
Pike showed his crooked smile. “We saved his life. I don’t think he should expect anything else from us.”
“Except that
we shouldn’t take it away from him,” Edge said, raising the Winchester so that Ball was looking straight into the muzzle.
Ball’s shoulders drooped in submission. Then he swung towards the nearest piece of furniture - one of the upended chairs - and lifted it.
Edge and Pike took turns in escorting him along the tunnel with his burdens and he was allowed to halt only when the bulk of a particular item meant it had to be dismantled so that he could carry it. The removal took up the rest of the morning and was not completed until midway into the afternoon. The smell of death in the inner cavern and at the mouth of the cave grew thicker and more cloying with each minute that passed.
Following instructions from Edge, Ball harnessed the saddle horses into the shafts of the wagon. Edge climbed up on to the seat of one and Pike boarded the other.
“What about me?” Ball demanded as he stood between the two wagons, breathing in deeply of the cold air, his face crusted by frozen sweat.
Edge finished rolling a cigarette. “We got about as much as these animals can haul,” he replied evenly. “Can’t take no excess.”
Ball raked his suddenly desperate eyes across the ballpark. All the Indian ponies were dead, sprawled in the frozen pools of their own blood. The team that had struggled clear of the overturned supply wagon had galloped off in terror and was unlikely to return for as long as the smell of death hovered in the frosty air. And that would be for a longtime.
“Take me with you?” Ball implored. “I’d rather hang than be left alone out here.”
Edge spat over the side of the wagon and flicked the reins to urge the horse forward. “You heard me, teller,” he said coldly.
Ball whirled towards Pike. “Please, mister?” he pleaded.
“Leave him!” Edge snarled, and Pike’s head snapped around.
He saw the Winchester resting across the half-breed’s knees, pointing at him. One olive-skinned hand was curled around the rifle and he knew a finger was resting against the trigger.
“Seems Fm not making the decisions,” he said, and clucked his horse into motion.
Ball stayed rooted to the spot as the wagons rumbled away from him. Then he saw the “rifles dropped by those braves who had been killed before they reached the cave. He side-stepped towards one of them, keeping his eyes focused on the departing wagons. But as he stooped, to ~” pick up the weapon, a shot rang out. He was flipped over on to his back, blood blossoming across his chest.
Edge straightened up on the seat and rested the smoking Winchester against the brake lever. A satisfied smile curled up the corners of his thin mouth as he arced the cigarette stub into the river.
“You knew he’d make a try,” Pike accused.
Edge shrugged. “I didn’t need him anymore, but I needed him to give me a reason.”
Pike stared hard at Edge, his mind searching for an explanation of such a man who dealt out death lightly and yet only killed by the rules of his own moral code. Then they reached the narrow ravine which provided the only exit from the ballpark and the wagons had to get into line to pass through. Edge took his to the front and that was where he stayed for the rest of that day and through the night. And Pike felt happier to be the back marker on the long, slow journey to Summer. For he had a suspicion that the half-breed might consider the opportunity to claim the entire reward as sufficient justification to kill him.
But, for his part, Edge gave no thought to the man on the wagon behind him. Pike had earned his half of Haven’s reward money and Edge had learned enough about human nature to recognize those men he could trust and those he could not So the tall, lean half-breed allowed his mind to wander ahead, across the lonely hills, to consider the grief-stricken Elizabeth Day. But at times this train of thought was interrupted and his mind travelled backwards in time, recalling another woman. Her name had been Jeannie * (*See - Edge - Killer’s Breed.) and as he thought about her his hooded eyes showed an expression close to sadness. For she had been the only human being he had loved outside of his family, And now, a violent, blood-soaked eternity after Jeannie had died, Edge tried to discover whether his feelings towards Elizabeth went deep enough to be termed love.
He could not answer the question and justified the failure by telling himself that a brain could not be expected to function properly after two days and two nights without sleep. But when he drove the wagon across the rattling bridge and along August Street in the frosty sunlight of morning, he found his answer in the sight of the woman.
She was standing in front of the stage line office, dressed entirely in borrowed black, her pretty face pale and drawn. Millie Pitt and Mann flanked her as if waiting to catch her if she fell.
As Edge and Pike angled the wagons across the street and reined in the exhausted saddle horses, The Gates of Heaven spilled out its clutch of drifters and bounty hunters. They blinked in the sunlight and then a rumble of discontent ran through the group as they realized what the wagons contained.
But they kept their curses low-keyed and made no forward move as Edge and Pike dropped to the ground, rifles held loosely in their hands.
“Heading for home, Miss Day?” Pike asked, touching his hat.
She shook her head sadly. “With Byron and John both dead, I have no home. Miss Pitt says there’s plenty of work for a seamstress in Deadwood,”
Pike nodded and looked into the stubbled face of Edge. “How about you, Edge?” he asked.
“My business,” the half-breed muttered, bringing up the rifle as a man burst through the line of watchers in front of the saloon.
But he eased his grip as he recognized the military figure of Haven. The man was carrying a valise and from the avaricious glints in the eyes of the watchers, Edge knew it contained the reward money.
“You’ve got it?” Haven demanded in high excitement, striding to peer into the rear of the first wagon.
“Little the worse for wear, but we got it,” Edge answered.
Haven gasped. “My God, it’s covered in blood!”
Pike stared levelly at the half-breed. “It’s the way things have to be in Edge’s book,” he said softly.
“But let’s make that enough for this one,” the half-breed rasped, bringing the Winchester to bear on Haven. “You made the deal - no strings.”
Haven regained his composure and held out the valise. “I did, and I do not welch. This can all be restored. Who wants the money?”
“Fifty-fifty?”Pike said.
Edge nodded. “I’ll count it.”
, He took the valise and rested it on the sidewalk. The men in front of the saloon surged forward, but pulled up short as Pike’s ornate rifle swung along the line. Edge snapped open the valise and Mann gasped at the sight of the money.
Then Millie Pitt touched Edge on the shoulder as he began to count out the bills. “Don’t suppose you want to buy a hotel, mister?” she asked.
Edge ignored her and she looked questioningly at Pike. The man in the long coat showed her his crooked smile and shook his head. “It’s going to be rather short on guests after today,” he pointed out.
“Bad buy,” Mann agreed.
“Nobody asked you, pint size!” the madam snarled, and lashed out at the drummer, slapping him across the cheek.
Edge, his calculations completed, stood up and began to push his share of the money into his pockets as Mann massaged his stinging cheek, staring malevolently at the madam. Sheriff Truman, his hand heavily bandaged, appeared in the doorway of the stage line office. His eyes poured hatred on Edge.
“Where were you when the Pitt hit the Mann?” the half-breed asked.
“Checking if there’s a spare seat on the stage,” the lawman hissed. “There is, if you want it”
Edge held the steady stare of hate for a few moments, then glanced at Pike. “What about you, doc?” he asked as the smaller man stooped and picked up the valise.
“What I need this money for is in the opposite direction,” he said cryptically.
Edge avoided looking at Elizabeth as he hel
d out a bill towards Truman. “Buy me a ticket, sheriff,” he said.
Truman grinned mirthlessly as he took the bill. “My pleasure.”
“Better hurry it up,” the Pitt urged, looking over the heads of the men in front of her hotel, towards the high ground behind the town. “The Deadwood Stage is a comin’ on over the hill.”
Now Edge’s hooded eyes met Elizabeth’s blank expression. “Mind if I ride along with you, Miss Day?” he asked.
“For goodness sake, you’re free to do as you please,” she answered, and cast her eyes down to the ground.
“Looks like someone’s got a secret love,” the Pitt murmured as the stage rattled along August and scattered the men in front of the saloon.
Pike stepped down from the sidewalk to cross towards the church house. “Goodbye, Miss Day,” he said, touching his hat. “Perhaps we’ll run into each other again some time.”
His eyes met those of Edge for an instant before he turned his back on the group.
“Whatever will be, will be,” Edge muttered as the stage pulled in, blocking his view of the small man in the long coat.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
TITLE
DEDICATION
CREDITS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EDGE: BLOODY SUMMER (Edge series Book 9) Page 13