The groan which Danny vented this time had a note of desperation in it. He leaned closer to the window, to widen his angle of vision. Glass shattered behind him and he started to whirl. A man laughed and a gunshot exploded. Danny froze, in mid-turn, as the window he had been looking through was smashed by a bullet.
‘Drop the rifle, punk!’ Royd ordered, pushing his Colt, his arm, and his head and shoulders between the curtains hanging across the room’s rear window. ‘Or I drop you!’
Maria screamed and flung open the bedroom door to lunge into the room and pull up short. Royd’s gun swung to cover her instead. He did his sneer into leer transformation.
‘Same thing but different party,’ the gunman rasped.
‘Jamie, everything all right in there?’ Doyle called.
‘Do it, Danny!’ Maria implored.
Her husband hesitated for a moment. Then, as the sweat beads dried on his wan face, he released his double-handed grip on the Winchester. The rifle clattered to the floor.
‘Couldn’t be better, John!’ Royd called, kicking loose clinging shards of glass as he swung a leg in through the broken rear window and climbed into the room. ‘But I reckon it will be,’ he added, his voice lower. He gestured with the gun. ‘Outside, both of you! I never did get laid in the open air before.’
Danny was still standing close to where the rifle had fallen. He had been regretting the surrender from the moment he released his hold on the Winchester. Better Maria should be dead than endure what Royd planned to do to her. And yet he had let go of the rifle as a natural instinct when he saw his wife threatened with death. Now it was too late. If he made a try for the rifle, Royd would kill him: and Maria would be completely on her own.
He was utterly helpless and found it difficult to look at Maria, for he knew she would read the hopelessness he felt in his face. But he did look at her, and was momentarily confused by the expression in her eyes. Their dark irises continued to show shock and terror. But there was something else in them, too. Pleading? No. A question? No. A request? She turned slightly and reached behind her. She fastened a hand on the edge of the door and drew it closed. An odd action, which Royd was too drunk and too sexually aroused to notice.
But Danny got the message, and shot a glance through into the bedroom just before the door closed off his view. He saw the top half of the bed, with the stranger’s head on the pillow. The stranger had turned his head towards the door and his eyes were open. Not much. But they were ice blue eyes which showed up clearly as glittering threads between the cracked lids. Not opened wide enough to reveal an expression. And the rest of his features were too brutalized to show anything but pain.
‘I warn you . . . !’ Danny started, knowing that he had only one tactic to play - to use time.
‘Right friendly of you, punk!’ Royd taunted. ‘Never do get warned in a cat house. But I reckon I’ll risk it for a piece of this Mex tail.’ He aimed the Colt at a kerosene lamp on the table and squeezed off a second shot. The glass of the lamp shattered. ‘Now!’ he bellowed. ‘Move out, both of you.’
The explosion and crash of glass almost drove Maria over the brink into hysteria. She controlled it by forcing herself to move - almost running across the room to the door. She didn’t trust herself to speak, and there was no need. Danny took long strides towards her and was at her side as she stepped out onto the stoop and down onto the hard packed dirt at the side of the meadow. Royd was close behind them.
Doyle had moved his position and was standing close to the horses, barring the way to the two booted Winchesters. But that had not been his prime purpose. He had got a second bottle of whisky from Royd’s saddlebag. Down on the bank of the river, the two surveyors were standing close together, staring fearfully up the slope of the meadow.
‘Don’t look like them city slickers is gonna to be any trouble, John,’ Royd said. ‘How about we try a double-up on this Mex broad?’
Danny suddenly realized there was no part he could play that would be of any use. Time had run out. Doyle had drank far into the new bottle and was wearing the same brand of leer as the shorter man. Both of them were aching for access to Maria’s body and delay could only be earned by a bullet. He felt Maria insert her hand into his and this time he could not bring himself to face her. He could only stare out across the homestead land that had never been truly his. Now, the wife who had promised to be his alone was to be forced to accept other men. Forced because of his failure to protect her.
‘Danny, it is my fault,’ his wife said softly as the boards of the stoop creaked under Royd’s weight. The gunman stepped down onto the dirt. ‘I made you promise not to defend our place. Don’t blame yourself, mi bien.’
Both of them sensed danger at the same time but only the woman started to turn. Danny had his eyes tight closed to try to hide the tears from the leering Doyle.
‘No!’ Maria screamed.
‘Keep sayin’ it, sweetheart,’ Royd encouraged as he swung his Colt. The underside of the barrel and the trigger guard crashed into the side of Danny’s head, just above his right ear. ‘Broke in, but spirited. That’s the way I like my fillies,’
The blow did not quite drive Danny Oakley into unconsciousness. But the force of it sent him staggering forward on weakened legs, tearing his hand free of his wife’s grip. The horses shied away from the tottering man and Maria screamed again as Danny dropped to his knees. Maria tried to run towards him, but Royd leaned forward and shot out a curled arm. It encircled her waist and the hand cupped tight over a sparse breast.
‘He didn’t ought to see this, John!’ Royd urged.
‘Reckon not, Jamie,’ Doyle agreed, stepping forward and throwing out a leg. The folded knee crashed into Danny’s face and the young homesteader was pitched over backwards, stretched out flat with his legs splayed. Blood gushed from his pulped nose and his eyes snapped shut as he plunged into unconsciousness.
That hurt, you hardnosed punk!’ Doyle rasped, massaging his knee as he stepped into the inverted vee of the senseless man’s spread legs. The gunman’s other leg swung, and the toe of his riding boot crashed into Danny’s crotch.
Maria gave out a moan as if she had herself felt the pain. It was almost masked by a harsh laugh from Doyle, who sucked from the bottle before turning to shout down the sloping meadow.
‘It’s okay, you guys! Survey’s done! This punk’s got a couple of achers!’
Royd, breathing heavily and with his arousal seeming to emanate light from his dark eyes, swung Maria around to face him and dropped his Colt. The empty hand clawed over the neckline of the worn dress and dragged downwards.
‘Let’s see what you got two of, sweetheart!’ he rasped.
The dress ripped to the stitched waistline and the attacker spun the screaming woman around again. Now his hand hooked over the top of the back and yanked down.
‘Danny!’ she shrieked. ‘Please. Please don’t. Por favor...’
Her struggles tore her out of Royd’s grip on her body. But he continued to hold the tattered bodice of the pink dress. As she plunged away from him, the stitching at the waist parted. Her arms were wrenched back and came out of the sleeves. Her torso, firm-fleshed and darkly hued, was revealed in complete nakedness as she took the first step towards escape.
Royd vented a roar of anger that suddenly became a gust of obscene laughter. The skirt section of the dress slid down over Maria’s slender hips and gathered into a hobble around her ankles. With a shriek of alarm and despair, she pitched to the dirt and rolled onto the grass. Her shoes were kicked clear as she flailed her legs to get rid of the dress. But, before she could even start to rise, Royd hurled himself down on top of her.
He straddled her, sitting on her bare stomach and pinning her wrists to the ground with his hands. He ignored her crimson face stained by tears and dirt, and stared down at the light brown swells of her breasts with their large, darker colored crests.
‘Man, ain’t she worth a dozen of any two dollar whore we’ve ever had, John?’
he rasped, his voice heavy with passion.
‘You know I ain’t a boob man, Jamie,’ Doyle answered, his voice deeper than ever. ‘I got a lower opinion of females.’
‘So check her out, partner. But I’ll take a drink while you’re at it.’
As Doyle approached, Royd released one of Maria’s wrists. Her screams had ended now and low moaning sounds were issuing from her quivering lips. But then she roared a Spanish obscenity as she lashed at Royd’s face with her freed hand.
‘Ill-tempered bitch, ain’t she?’ Royd said as he swung his head out of the line of the blow. Then he delivered one of his own, smashing her back-handed across the cheek and drawing blood from the corner of her mouth.
Tears of pain flowed more strongly than those of terror. Royd took the open bottle thrust at him by Doyle and tilted it to his lips. The blow had flung Maria’s head to the side and seemingly had knocked all the strength and will out of her. She lay sobbing and submissive, as the straddled man drank and his partner drew her only item of underwear down over her lithe thighs. Her eyes were closed until she felt wetness splashing down onto her exposed breasts. Then she looked up into the sweat-run face of Royd as the man tipped whisky over her upper body.
‘Sometimes like to mix my liquor with a little somethin’ sweetheart,’ he growled at her. ‘In this case, two little somethin’s.’ He glanced over his shoulder as he dropped the empty bottle and refastened the hand over Maria’s wrist. ‘What d’you see back there, John?’
The woman felt the bitterness of nausea rise into her throat as Doyle’s fingers caressed and probed the intimate centre of her body.
‘Dunno why they call Mexes greasers, Jamie,’ came the gravel-voiced response. ‘This dame’s as dry as Death Valley.’
‘Already whetted my appetite, partner,’ Royd countered, pushing himself backwards to cover the woman’s body.
His mouth, spilling the saliva of lust, opened wide. Beneath him, Maria watched in horrified fascination. But then, just as his lips fastened over one of her nipples and sucked in a painful mouthful of whisky-soaked flesh, she caught a glimpse of the unconscious Danny. She screamed - in revulsion rather than agony - and screwed her eyes tight shut. Her lips moved, forming silent words in her own language; praying for the same release into merciful unconsciousness. But the prayer went unanswered. Every act of violation upon her defenseless and naked body was too vividly experienced to be a nightmare.
Edge was watching from the bedroom and thinking coldly that the woman’s suffering could be no worse than the agony he was feeling in every part of his body. He had heard every word spoken since Royd had crashed the shot from the rear window to the window at the front. Then, the moment the woman closed the door on him, he had tried to move. But bruised flesh, cracked bones and stiffened muscles refused him for a long time. And he did not succeed in sitting up and swinging his feet to the floor until the whisky pouring started. Even then, the pain blurred his vision with involuntary tears and Royd was assaulting Maria’s breasts with his viciously hungry mouth when the half-breed was able to look across the room and through the lace curtains and glass to the scene of the rape.
He stood up and the groan which emerged from his throat was as involuntary as the tears. The view from the window no longer held anything for him. Royd had satisfied his mouth and was snarling in frustration as he tore at the front of his pants to free himself for the completion of the assault. Doyle was standing over the couple, face dark with impatient lust. The horses had backed away, as if in distaste at what was happening. Finbar and Standish had closed in. Both surveyors expressed excitement at what they were witnessing. Danny Oakley was still sprawled where he had fallen, inert except for the shallow motion of his chest as he breathed.
Edge caught sight of himself in a mirror standing on a bureau and leaning against the wall. He saw the taping around his rib cage, the crusting of dried salve on several areas of his chest, and the mass of bruises and cuts on his face.
‘If you were a horse, they’d have shot you,’ he told himself.
There was a shrill scream from outside, as Royd finally penetrated deep and hard into the bride of three weeks.
‘First time I’ve had to bore my own well!’ the rapist yelled gleefully.
The noise did not draw Edge’s hooded eyes in their bruised surrounds away from his reflection. The pain had stopped hitting him in waves and become a constant force. It tried to urge him back onto the luxury of the waiting bed. Instead, he took a slow, tentative step towards the door, easing his eyes open wider to clear them of the haze which was part of pain’s attack. He thought about the vague recollections he had of the couple he had seen, upside-down beneath the belly of the horse. And about the degree of pain he had been suffering then. A lot worse than it was now: and it was the Mexican woman and the freckle-faced feller who had made it easier. Had patched him up and put him into bed.
He recalled, too, thinking how he had wanted no favors. But circumstances had insisted he accept them. He reached the door and opened it. The yells of the gunmen were louder now, coming in through the open door at the front of the house and the smashed window.
Sunlight sparkled on glass from the window and the shattered lamp. It dazzled Edge and then made the room dark as an after-effect. He screwed his eyes shut and the skin around them smarted.
The woman had come into the bedroom when trouble started and asked for help. Edge could give it now and be out of debt to the couple. He found he could not raise his arm high enough to reach for the razor. The flesh at the nape of his neck refused to acknowledge, even, that the razor was in its accustomed place. He opened his eyes, not looking at the glass, and sought his gear. It wasn’t in the room. The Winchester Danny Oakley had surrendered was still were he dropped it.
Edge moved to where it lay, glass crunching under his feet. They had not taken off his boots and he wondered fleetingly if the couple had expected him to die. He stooped, snatched at the rifle and straightened. The whole world spun crazily and the room darkened again. A dry retch emerged from his throat. The lace curtains seemed like an impenetrable barrier across the smashed window. He moved to the door.
‘Me and John share everything, sweetheart!’ Royd yelled. ‘Ain’t that right, John?’
‘On the whole!’ Doyle rasped. A loud sigh of relief signaled his entry into the woman. She made no sound.
‘Okay, John?’
‘Terrific, Jamie!’
Edge had been in the middle of a rambling dream about his long dead brother when the calling of the familiar name catapulted him back to awareness. Now he stepped into the doorway and saw clearly the man whose name it was and the man who had called to him.
Doyle, his pants down around his kneels to expose his quivering rump, was on top of the broken Maria and thrusting into her. Royd was watching eagerly as he refastened the front of his pants. The two surveyors were still where Edge had first seen them. Finbar had a hand down the front of his pants and was breathing heavily in a pleasure that was only partly vicarious. Standish looked on the point of throwing up. He was gazing everywhere except at the new rapist and his victim. And his revolted gaze at last fastened on the tall apparition-like form of Edge as the half-breed emerged from the house onto the stoop.
‘Oh!’ he gasped, and the monosyllable triggered his nausea, A stream of multi-colored vomit gushed from his mouth and he dropped to his knees and hung his head
He was totally ignored by the sexually aroused Doyle and Finbar and the sex-satiated Royd.
‘I sure greased her for you, John!’ Royd yelled.
‘Looks to me like the lady don’t want servicing,’ Edge growled. To his own ears his voice sounded the way it did when it first broke in his youth. But it had the power and volume to cut across the retching of Standish and grunts and heavy breathing of the rapist and his audience.
The Winchester was aimed at Doyle as all eyes except those of the unconscious Oakley and his violated wife swung to stare at Edge. It was a difficult shot bec
ause of the man’s intimate closeness to Maria. But it had to be the first one, because Doyle was still wearing his six-gun and he reached down his body for it. And Doyle realized his advantage. As he drew the Colt from the holster, he rolled off the naked woman in an effort to put himself behind her. His exposed genitals provided an obscene and appropriate target. But the half-breed had already elected to go for a head shot and he moved the Winchester only a fraction of an inch to take account of Doyle’s roll. The gunman had his hand fisted around the butt of the Colt when he died. The rifle shell smashed into the side of his head, angled up through the brain and exploded clear in a welter of bone splinters and blood at the crown of his skull.
Maria continued to lay inert and silent as gore from the entry wound splashed onto her terror-stricken face.
‘I did nothing!’ Finbar shrieked as Edge leaned back against the door jamb and swung the Winchester.
The recoil of the rifle shot had produced a fresh attack of intense agony as its jarring effect was transmitted to every part of Edge’s punished body. But survival was still the name of the game and he used every ounce of his will power to fight back the wave of crimson that threatened to blind him. His eyes and the Winchester muzzle whipped past the man in the city suit and located the gunman without a gun. Royd was trying to regain the Colt he had discarded earlier. He hit the ground at the end of a dive and his fingertips curled over the butt of the gun.
Edge’s vision was blurred, but the crimson had receded. He was looking through stinging beads of sweat which had run down his forehead and dripped from his eyebrows. He squeezed the trigger. The shot was short, burrowing into the grass as Royd got a firm grip on his gun, rolled, sat up and took aim. Two gunshots sounded, almost as one. The sharper crack was fractionally ahead and the Winchester’s recoil was too much for the half-breed this time. It turned his body, twisting him in through the doorway and knocking him to the floor. Royd’s bullet chipped wood splinters from the door frame where, an instant before, Edge’s chest had been in line. Royd had no time for a second shot. His life had run out, leaving his body on the initial blood rush from the gaping holes at each side of his neck. ‘Please!’ Finbar shrieked, staring at the open doorway through which Edge had been thrown. ‘Standish and I did nothing.’
Edge: Vengeance Valley (Edge series Book 17) Page 7