‘Edge,’ he said, his voice rich and mellow. ‘That answer you just gave these homesteaders is about the most important thing you ever said in your life. Means you get to go on livin’ it.’
‘What life is all about,’ the half-breed said softly. ‘Living.’
‘Mr. Ryan!’ Kelsey croaked.
A Winchester was tipped forward and fired. Kelsey yelled and jumped a full twelve inches into the air as the bullet thudded against the ground between his boots.
‘You guys are through with talkin’,’ Carver growled, resting the stock-plate of his smoking rifle on his thigh.
He was on Ryan’s right. Harding was on the rancher’s left. George was among the men, too. Edge did not recognize the rest. Harv London was not there.
‘What’d my horse do?’ the half-breed asked.
The big stallion had reared once against its tether when the noise exploded. A few moments later the animal had been hit a dozen times. He lay now where he had crumpled and rolled, the blood no longer oozing from the head and side wounds.
‘Got in the way of Big R guns,’ Ryan replied simply. ‘I breed the best animals west of the Mississippi and you’ll get one to replace him. Later. Right now, I’ll thank you to disarm yourself and step aside.’
Edge knew it wasn’t going to be as easy as Ryan made it sound. If he was to be allowed to ride away from the river bank - and he trusted Ryan’s word on this - it would not be without payment. And the rich rancher had no need of further money. But the half-breed could do nothing except resign himself to what was to happen. There was an alternative, but it was suicidal. So he allowed the Winchester to drop from his loosened grip. He followed it with his gun belt.
The blade, snot-nose!’ Carver ordered, sneering in triumph as he leveled his rifle.
Edge eased the razor from the neck pouch and let it fall onto the discarded gun belt.
Harding vented a harsh laugh as he joined Carver in training a rifle on the tall, impassive-faced half-breed. ‘Guess you got that bad feelin’ again, drifter? Being on the wrong end of guns.’
Edge nodded. ‘You know the score, feller.’
‘We sure do!’ George called gleefully. ‘Twelve to four.’
‘Ain’t the final innings yet.’
‘Step aside, Edge,’ Ryan repeated, and moved his shotgun. He aimed it at Yates who was at the centre of the short line of farmers.’
‘Please?’ Selby cried.
Yates looked over his shoulder at Edge as the half-breed moved out of the line of fire from the shotgun. With the inevitable set to happen, Yates managed to inject controlled bitterness into his tone. ‘Thanks for nothin’,’ he rasped. ‘They got the weapons off you easy as takin’ playthin’s off a baby.’
Edge showed a cold grin as he stopped and turned beyond the margin of safety from shotgun blast. ‘They got such a disarming way about them,’ he muttered.
Ryan squeezed one of the triggers: and Yates died before he could swing his head and see his killer again. The range was ten feet and the charge took him in the centre of the chest, with the outer fringes of the pattern hitting the face, arms and belly. Yates, blood spraying from his limp body and pieces of flesh dropping away from him, was lifted and hurled several feet across the turf. Even before his shattered corpse hit the ground, Selby had turned to run and Kelsey had dropped to his knees and clasped his shaking hands together.
‘Mr. Ryan, I beg of you!’ Kelsey pleaded.
Only the title and name were heard. The second barrel of the shotgun exploded its awesome noise to drown the rest of the entreaty. The lumbering Selby was hit in the back of the neck and his body smacked to the ground a full two seconds before his severed head. That was hurled several feet farther to drop into the ashes of Edge’s fire. Dust rose from under it as the flood of escaping blood hissed and sizzled, dousing the remaining embers.
‘It’s not happenin’, it’s not happenin’,’ Kelsey screamed, toppling forward and clawing at the grass with hands become talons.
Ryan, eyes as empty as those of the two dead men, stared at the prostrated man and reloaded his smoking gun by feel. Both barrels. Kelsey had crawled three feet towards his executioner when the shotgun was locked together and aimed down at him. Kelsey raised his head to transmit a final, tacit plea. His mouth worked frantically but the only sound to emerge was something between a gurgle and a choke. He stared down the double black holes of the gun muzzles, then pushed his face into the grass and clamped his hands over his head.
The first barrel belched shot, smoke and noise. The hands, arms and head of Kelsey disintegrated in a great splash of crimson flecked with white. The gun was elevated a fraction and exploded again. An enormous red hole appeared in the lower back of the already dead man. Soggy red flesh scattered across the rich, dark green grass.
Ryan raised the shotgun to slant it across the front of his broad, expensively garbed chest again. But one handed this time. The barrels were too hot to hold.
‘You keep bad company, Edge,’ the rancher said evenly, with just the trace of a rebuke behind the words.
The half-breed raked unemotional eyes over the remains of the farmers. Selby’s torso and head; Kelsey’s body with the gaping hole in the back and a head and parts of his limbs reduced to scattered pulp; and Yates who had a bubbled red pool where once his chest had been.
‘Two’s company, feller,’ he said, matching Ryan’s tone. ‘And you sure turned three into a crowd.’
Chapter Three
ONLY Woodrow Ryan remained mounted after his nod had signaled the others to slide from their saddles. All the rifles were back in the boots and it was just six-guns which were aimed at the half-breed as the dismounted men encircled and closed in on him.
‘I’m a hard man, Edge,’ the big rancher said, taking out a ready-filled pipe and clamping it between his teeth. He continued to speak, around the stem. ‘A man don’t get to be what I am with what I got by bein’ soft. But I claim also to be a fair man.’
Edge nodded. ‘Guess there was a chance that scatter gun could’ve blown up in your hands and made a hash of you instead of them,’ he allowed wryly.
Ryan made a dismissive gesture with his free hand. ‘Those men abused the fair shake I gave them. Let them keep workin’ on my spread and make enough to take care of themselves and their families. But I heard every word of that proposition they put to you. Dogs that bite the hand that feeds them deserve what them three got.’
‘Some put down,’ Edge said softly as the two biggest of Ryan’s men moved in to flank him, holstering their guns.
Both were at least two inches taller than the half-breed and there was nothing lean about their frames or faces. They were taller and even broader versions of Harv London and, like the Big R foreman, neither of them carried any padding of fat. The two handed grips they fastened around Edge’s upper arms and wrists felt like iron claws as they locked into position.
‘Forget about them, Edge,’ Ryan went on after he had lit his pipe and the aromatic smoke was covering the acrid taint of exploded powder. Their problems are over. A man like you has many still to face.’
Harding and Carver stood in front of Edge, guns in their holsters and grins of anticipation on their faces. Three men were aligned on either side, also with guns back in the leather. But eager hands draped butts. A glance over the shoulder showed the half-breed that a scowling George was behind him.
‘You turned down a job I was prepared to offer you,’ Ryan continued, drawing against his pipe with contentment. ‘Man has a right to do that. It’s a free country.’
‘Some folks are freer than others,’ Edge replied, sharing a glance between his two beefy captors. Only the weighty giants were close enough to read a threat into the glance. But, in their present position, they could afford to grin in response.
The rancher ignored the wry comment. ‘Knowin’ what a hothead my brother-in-law and foreman is, I’ll even allow you was provoked to turn down the job in the way you did.’ He shrugged and stared ref
lectively out across the quietly gliding water of the river which made his valley such a green and pleasant strip of country. ‘But Harv’s popular with the boys and they don’t take kindly to how you altered his looks.’
‘Can we start on in now, Mr. Ryan?’ George asked eagerly.
‘Hold on,’ the rancher insisted and looked hard at Edge through the blue smoke curling from his pipe bowl. ‘I just want to make my position clear to you, Edge. You’re the kind of man I admire. You got guts and you can handle yourself. You did a good job gettin’ to Greenville and I’d have been happy to have you work for me. But you didn’t want to. And neither did you want to work for folks fixin’ to go against me. So you and me got no quarrel. Except over the matter of your dead horse. But, when the boys here are through with you, you’ll get the best mount we got here. And they’re all good.’
His dark eyes requested a response. ‘Then we got no quarrel at all, feller,’ Edge said.
Ryan nodded his satisfaction. ‘Just one more thing - to steer clear of any chance of misunderstanding. I said my piece not on account of I’m scared by you, Edge. But you’re a drifter. A saddle tramp. You move around. Just want to be sure that, when you talk about me, you let folks know I’m a fair man. What’s goin’ to happen now is somethin’ between you and Harv London’s buddies. If things get out of hand and they look set to kill you, I’ll stop them. That sound fair to you, Edge?’
The half-breed spat. At nobody. Just down between the toe-caps of his own boots. ‘You got the pack, feller,’ he answered. ‘And I ain’t in no position to argue with the deal.’
Ryan’s gaze wandered out across the river again. ‘Do what you have to, boys,’ he invited.
George was a quiet mover. He had approached to within reach of Edge at the back. Edge wasn’t aware of it until a punch thudded into his kidneys. Harding and Carver staged the distraction, inching in close at the front. The giants did not move. A grunt was vented from Edge’s throat as the impact of the bunched fist arched his body forward. Harding and Carver shed their diversionary roles and become a full frontal attack. The taller, blond hand swung a left. The dark-eyed Carver threw a right in tandem. Both fists made simultaneous contact. Low down at either side of Edge’s belly. The new sound forced from the half-breed’s lips was the whoosh of escaping air. His body was driven backwards this time, on the pivots of his shoulder joints while the giants held his arms utterly still.
With an almost girlish giggle, George stepped forward and brought up his knee. It smashed into Edge’s crotch from behind.
‘How about that?’ George shrieked.
Edge’s feet were lifted clear of the ground by the force of the impact. Agony demanded vocal outlet from two new sources as the giants held him rock steady and his arms threatened to be torn from their sockets.
‘He dances good!’ one of the watchers yelled.
‘And if he sings it’ll be soprano!’ another countered.
Edge heard the voices at normal level. He could even hear the steady breathing of his captors and the faster, excited respiration of the three men delivering the beating. His hooded eyes received vivid images of the men in front of him, the mutilated corpses spread on the ground and the backdrop of timber, river and grassland. His sense of feel was as potent as ever.
When he slammed back down to his feet, the jarring pain rose from his ankles to the top of his skull, sharpening the agonies in his belly, his crotch, at the base of his spine and across his shoulders. Another pair of punches from Harding and Carver smacked into the hard ridges of muscles at his belly. But the flesh was not tough enough to protect the nerve-endings behind it. Pain exploded like a star shell, red hot fragments scything through him to every part of his body. A grunt and warm saliva spilled from his lips. ‘Yeah, you got guts all right, snot-nose!’ Carver taunted. ‘And they’ll be spillin’ out through your ass when we’re through with you!’ Harding snarled.
The pattern was maintained. As the two men at the front arched the half-breed’s body backwards, the one at the rear attacked. George used his fist and knee at the same time. The knee went wide and cracked against Edge’s thigh. But the blow with his hand struck home. The half-breed had been able to hold his head erect - until George’s work-toughened knuckles smashed into the back of his neck. Then Edge’s head fell forward and he screwed his eyes tight against the pain. When he snapped them open and brought his head up again, all the previously clear images were blurred.
But the pain was as well defined as ever. Voices were yelling and screaming but he couldn’t understand the words. Could not even be sure the voices were not inside his head. People shrieking at him from out of his memory.
Jamie Hedges, his brother.
Carver caught Edge in the throat with a heel-of-the-hand chop.
Elizabeth.
Harding landed a fist against the victim’s heart.
Bob Rhett.
George smashed a toecap into the back of the right knee joint.
Sergeant Frank Forrest.
‘Lower!’ somebody shouted.
The giants eased out of their rigidity. They maintained their vice-like holds on arms and wrists. Edge sagged under his own weight to rest on his knees. If he had not been held up, he would have collapsed into a heap.
Pike. Seward. Bell. John Scott. Corporal Douglas.
George caught hold of two fistfuls of the half-breed’s long hair and hauled. The head was forced up.
Cheering. Not from out of the past. Though the men whose names had flipped through the pain-assaulted mind would have cheered.
Harding smashed a fist into the exposed and defenseless face. The hair was almost yanked out of George’s hands, but he held on, shrieking his delight.
Everyone except Jamie and Elizabeth would have cheered if they could have witnessed this beating. But none of them could. They were all dead. Edge had not killed all of them. Most.
Carver hit him and the tough skin split where it curved tartly over the cheekbone. Harding’s fist split the corner of the mouth.
Edge heard somebody groaning and knew it had to be him. It, and the dull thud of flesh against flesh were the only sounds he could hear now. Everything beyond his own existence afloat in a.sea of bright crimson pain was too far off for him to experience. He felt the warm stickiness of blood sheening his face. There was warmth and moisture coating every plane of his body, but this would be sweat.
Numbness spread a merciful sensation of well-being through him. He had reached that far limit of agony where nothing they could do to him would cause him further pain. At this moment. His nervous system had been overloaded by punishment and had shut down because it could take no more.
He felt and heard the fists hitting him but the feeling in the impacts was as blunted as the sounds were distant. They became blunter and further away. He guessed there was blood in his nostrils and in his throat because he seemed to be drowning in a deep pool of warm wetness. He could not hear himself making any more sounds.
He was not aware when the two giants unfastened their big hands from around his arms and wrists. He did not feel himself fall to the side and he expected to hear a splash. Night dew on the lush grass sprinkled his punished face and its freshness and coolness held him back from plunging over the brink into unconsciousness.
A toecap smashed with tremendous force into the centre of his chest and the pain it exploded was powerful enough to put sharpness on all the others.
‘Hey, George, you never oughta kick a man when he’s down!’
Edge heard this comment clearly. Also the burst of laughter that followed it. He thought he replied: ‘Because here’s one that’s sure gonna get up again, feller.’ But, if he didn’t say it, he thought it. And meant it.
‘Enough!’ another voice bellowed. Familiar. Pike? Jamie? Forrest? Bell? None of them. A man with a beard and neat clothes. Ryan. Woodrow Ryan.
‘Okay, Mr. Ryan,’ a voice confirmed. ‘I guess we’re through with this snot-nose. Paid him out good for what he done to Ha
rv, didn’t we?’
‘The odds were entirely in your favor, Carver,’ the big rancher said. Even through his pain, Edge thought he detected a note of regret in the rich voice. ‘When he speaks of you on his travels, the word fair will not spring to his mind.’
‘I never speak ill of the dead.’
Edge knew he had definitely uttered this comment aloud. His voice was croaky and wet-sounding. The sudden, tense silence that greeted the words was confirmation they had been heard.
‘Hey, this tough nut’s still awake. You hear what he said, Mr. Ryan? You want we should do it some more?’
‘I told you enough, George!’ Ryan barked. He raised his voice: ‘Edge, if you can hear me, listen good. Fair warnin’ from a fair man. Don’t make futile threats. You’re not comin’ back to this valley. If you show your battered features here again, you’ll be killed on sight.’
There was another silence, but it wasn’t words which ended it this time. Edge sucked in painful lungfuls of air to power a response. But the beating finally had its inevitable effect. As he opened his mouth to speak, his mind plunged him into a pit of blackness where nothing existed except bad dreams that would never be remembered.
George crouched at the half-breed’s side and rolled him over on to his back. Limp arms and legs swung without resistance.
‘He’s passed out now, for sure, Mr. Ryan,’ the stockily-built hand reported. ‘Man, what a mess he’s in!’
‘Hey, you sound almost sorry for that guy,’ one of the giants taunted,
George rose with a grin. ‘He don’t need that from me. When he wakes up, he’s gonna be plenty sorry for himself.’
‘Give him back his weapons and tie him to your horse!’ Ryan instructed sternly. ‘You’ll ride back with somebody else.’
‘What about these, Mr. Ryan?’ Harding asked, waving a bruised hand to encompass the shattered corpses of the farmers.
Edge: Vengeance Valley (Edge series Book 17) Page 4