The half-breed jerked a thumb in the direction from which the horsemen were approaching. ‘One of these fellers stands near seven feet tall. Too big to miss. I want you to miss him.’
‘And the others?’ Clayton asked, caressing the stock of his Henry as though it was a woman’s thigh - a woman other than his wife.
‘That’s your business,’ Edge said, and moved quickly away from the group, heading an a diagonal line back towards the trail.
Oakley made to follow him, but Clayton laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘What we gonna do?’ he wanted to know.
Oakley swallowed hard and Anson took advantage of the pause.
‘We gonna kill ’em?’
The younger man looked into the faces of the two older ones and saw the mixture of fear and horror in their expressions. ‘We do what we have to do!’ he rasped, dragged himself clear of Clayton’s grasp and moved directly back to the trail.
Edge was in a position to see the riders before they reached the top of the slope from the stream. He lay prone in the brush just beyond the trees. He had taken off his hat and peered over its brim - so that just his eyes and that part of his forehead beneath his dark hair provided tell-tale areas of lightness against the dark backdrop of his cover. But the men astride the horses were unsuspicious of their surroundings. They rode in attitudes of relaxed weariness, two men talking quietly together while a third was whistling tunelessly.
The big man - closer to six feet six than seven feet - rode at the centre of the group. This fact erupted a grimace across the half-breed’s hidden face. But that was all. If the farmers panicked and started to blast wildly, there was a good chance the giant would take a fatal bullet. Edge accepted the possibility and resigned himself to it. Then, when the back-marker of the group reached the top of the slope and rode into the trees, Edge put his hat back on his head and crept forward.
‘What the hell?’ a man demanded gruffly.
Horses were brought to a halt.
‘You’re Jack Clayton! Seen you in Greenville!’
‘Right enough!’ Clayton acknowledged, ‘Drop your guns, you men. And get down off your horses.’
From the side of the trail, Edge could see into the trees. He couldn’t see Clayton, but it was obvious where the farmer was: for all the mounted men were staring directly ahead. Clayton had simply stepped out on to the trail, and aimed the Henry to back up his demand for surrender.
‘You just gotta be kiddin’!’ somebody said in an incredulous tone. ‘Toss away that iron, grandpa - and we won’t say nothin’ of this to Mr. Ryan.’
‘What when we do like you say, old-timer?’ somebody else asked.
Edge was trying to recognize voices: endeavoring to match them with those he had heard before pain had distorted them. But he failed. Among this group, the only man who mattered to him was the giant.
‘You won’t come to no harm,’ Clayton promised. ‘Held prisoner until we done what we fix to do.’
‘We?’
‘Me,’ Dale Anson put in.
‘And me and some others,’ Danny Oakley added.
The mounted men craned their necks to look upwards. First into the foliage on the left of the trail, then the right.
‘High climbers, ain’t they?’ a Ryan man growled.
The half-breed grinned to himself. For amateurs, the farmers were doing fine. So far they had made only one mistake – they had called the Ryan men instead of blasting at them without warning. Then they got a warning.
‘Listen, you crazy sodbusters! The only guys we want are Oakley and that beat-up Edge drifter.’ The speaker was at the front of the group and he looked up into the trees on the right again. ‘That’s you up there, ain’t it, Oakley?’
‘Do like Jack Clayton told you!’ the young homesteader rasped.
‘Give yourself up, kid!’ the Ryan man countered. ‘Mr. Ryan wants to talk to you, is all. It’s the drifter he really has the grudge against. You give yourself up and neither you nor these two others gets hurt.’ His tone became more menacing. ‘Nor that wife of yours, neither. I hear she’s a real looker.’
Clayton made the mistake of glancing up into the dark foliage to try to spot Oakley. There were two professional gunmen among the riders and both of them saw the opening to lengthen the odds. They drew their handguns with smooth, silent speed. Both six-shooters exploded at once and Clayton staggered backwards, two fountains of blood springing from his twice-punctured heart
Men yelled and horses reared. The Winchesters of Oakley and Anson cracked, the muzzle flashes lighting up the trees for an instant. The top man in the group and one of the gunmen were pitched from their frightened mounts, both taking bullets in the backs of their necks. The second gunman brought up his Colt to snap a shot towards Oakley’s position. But the youngster was already dropping from his perch as the gun swung towards him. He landed in a crouch and squeezed the Winchester trigger. The surprised gunman took the heavy caliber bullet under his jaw and it burrowed completely through his head to crash out at the top of his skull. His toppling body crashed into the unbalanced man beside him and the living man was hurled to the ground by the impact of the dead one.
‘Not the big one!’ Oakley yelled to Anson as the fallen man screamed beneath the pumping, lashing hooves of the panicked horses.
One shod hoof crashed through his stomach while another caved in his head.
The three surviving riders continued to fire their handguns, unable to take aim as they tried to control their horses and wheel them for a run out of the trees. Oakley and Anson, their positions stable, had only to dodge the wildly fired bullets as they took aim. Both farmers elected a single target and a fourth Ryan man died. His right kneecap was smashed and he was crushed beneath the dead weight of his own horse, brought down by a bullet meant for the man but finding the animal.
Thus, it was only two horsemen who broke from the trees and made the open trail cutting down the brush-cloaked slope. It was a bad move, but one which frightened men could be expected to take. South lay the cover of trees, but with no guarantee there were not more armed homesteaders waiting in reserve. To the north, the country was open but there would be other Ryan men in that direction.
Edge remained crouched in the brush, but with the stock of the Winchester nestling against his shoulder. As the two horsemen galloped out of the timber, both were firmly in control of their mounts: and both were half-turned in their saddles to blast shots back towards their ambushers. The giant was a little behind the more slightly-built survivor. But he was on the same side of the trail as Edge. The half-breed tracked the target with the Winchester and squeezed the trigger when the range was reduced to little more than a dozen feet.
The giant gave a roar of rage and horror. Not pain, for he had not taken the bullet. It was his horse that tumbled, forelegs collapsing first as the lead, plunging into the wide eye, found the brain. Crimson flecked with fragments of lighter colors streamed out of the mutilated socket and splashed across the face of the giant as the man was pitched from his saddle. Because of the forward cant of the carcass, the rider was hurled across the neck and head of the animal. He crashed against the back legs of the other horse before thudding to the ground as his own mount rolled into an inert heap behind him.
The lone rider snapped his head around to stare at the tall figure of Edge straightening from the brush.
‘How many more!’ he yelled in panic, bringing his Colt around to cover a new target.
‘Just you, feller,’ Edge muttered as he squeezed the Winchester trigger.
Two other rifles cracked a moment later. The half-breed’s bullet smacked into the man’s back and stretched him high, to stand in his stirrups. The shots from Oakley and Anson hit the screaming man lower down - shattering his spine. The scream was curtailed and the dead man fell to the side. One of his booted feet was trapped in the stirrup and he was dragged, upside-down, along the trail like a large hank of limp fabric -red fabric, disintegrating to leave colored threads and larger remn
ants of the same hue on the bleached dirt. He was dragged a full hundred yards before his foot worked free. And his mount became just one more riderless horse to make for the peace and refreshment of the stream bank.
‘Jack Clayton’s dead!’ the shrill-voiced Anson yelled in horror.
‘Only one answer to that,’ the half-breed growled against the diminishing sound of hoof beats. He stepped out on to the trail and rested the still warm muzzle of his Winchester against the pulsing throat of the groaning giant
‘What’s that, Edge?’ Oakley asked.
‘Bury him,’ was the flat reply.
The giant, who probably weighed more than two hundred and fifty pounds, hardly had the strength to speak. The heavy fall had knocked the wind out of him and he had cracked the side of his head against the hard-packed dirt of the trail. His face, sheened by sweat and the blood of his horse, was contorted by a grimace of pain. His gun had been hurled from his hand as he was thrown from the dead horse. He carried no other weapons in sight.
‘What you gonna do, mister?’ he gasped as Edge dropped down into a crouch beside him, drawing the Colt and jabbing the muzzle into the man’s expansive belly.
‘Be obliged if you’d let me ask the questions, feller,’ the half-breed said softly, tossing the Winchester into the brush. As he withdrew his hand, it streaked to the back of his neck and he slid the razor from the pouch.
The giant vented a groan of terror as he saw the moonlight glint on the blade. And then he tried to press himself harder against the ground as the cold steel was laid across the sweat-tacky flesh of his right cheek. The end quarter inch of the blade was immediately in front of his eye.
That’s Clint Mulberry,’ Anson said as he and Oakley came to stand on either side of Edge and his prisoner, rifles canted across the front of their bodies.
‘He one of them who beat you up, Edge?’ Oakley asked.
The giant sucked in a deep breath and spoke fast. ‘Look, it was Mr. Ryan’s orders. I just do what I’m told.’
‘Ryan runs a tight ranch,’ Edge muttered. ‘I guess if you heard him say shit you’d squat and strain?’
‘Please, mister!’ the giant groaned. ‘Do what you gotta do.’
He had screwed closed the eye beneath the razor. The other one was swiveled to its fullest extent to stare at the half-breed’s fisted hand.
‘Who took my money, feller?’
The opened eye blinked and peered up at the impassive, bruised and cut face of his questioner. ‘Money?’
‘Had three grand in my saddlebag before you and your buddies started using me as a punching bag. Wasn’t there after.’
‘I don’t know nothin’ about no money, I swear it!’ Mulberry replied quickly.
Edge pressed the gun harder against the big belly and exerted pressure on the flat of the blade resting on the man’s cheek. ‘Who’s horse did I get, feller? Who put my saddle and gear on him?’
‘Lincoln!’ the man said quickly. ‘Mr. Ryan told George Lincoln to give you his gelding. Lincoln saddled him with your stuff and tied you on. I didn’t see him take no money and he didn’t say nothin’—’
‘But he could have, uh?’
‘What, mister?’
‘Took the money without you or anyone else seeing him?’
The man gulped. ‘Yeah, Yeah, I guess Lincoln could have done that. But he didn’t say nothin’ about– ’
‘Wouldn’t have, would he?’ Edge asked evenly, and lifted the flat of the blade off the man’s cheek. His grip around the handle remained firm as the giant let out his breath in a sigh of relief.
‘You gonna...’ Anson started to say.
The razor plunged downwards.
‘…let him go,’ the farmer finished lamely.
The blade bit in through the lid and sliced into the eyeball. Mulberry’s scream was incredibly high and thin to be vented by such a big man. But it was short-lived. And his hands never came near to reaching Edge’s fist around the razor handle. For the point of the blade went under the front of the skull and penetrated deep into the brain. The man became abruptly silent and twitched just once as his reaching hands fell back to the ground.
‘God, that was awful!’ Anson groaned as Edge wiped the bloody blade on the corpse’s vest before he straightened and slid the razor back into the pouch.
‘It was sure more than an eye for an eye,’ Oakley muttered.
‘I figured you were fixin’ to lam into him the way he did you,’ Anson said as the half-breed retrieved his Winchester from the brush.
‘You hear him complain?’ Edge asked.
‘He didn’t have no time for that,’ Oakley accused.
Edge nodded as he canted the rifle to his shoulder and moved up the final few yards to enter the timber at the top of the slope. ‘So Mulberry’s likely thanking me right now for making it quick,’ he answered. ‘I never was one for beating about the bush.’
Chapter Nine
EDGE rode out on the trail alone, but by the time his gelding had drank his fill at the clear stream, Oakley and Anson were mounted and heading down the slope.
‘No tools to do a proper job,’ Oakley said. ‘So we just covered him with fallen leaves.’
‘For the best, I reckon,’ Anson said. When it’s over, I guess Marilla’d prefer to have Jack buried proper in a cemetery or on their place.’
‘Be a lot of other widows burying their menfolk if you don’t learn by what happened up there,’ the half-breed put in as he urged the gelding to ford the stream and the two farmers trailed him.
‘There’s only us,’ Anson said.
‘Forget it, Mr. Anson,’ Oakley growled ‘Edge knows the plan.’ The youngster moved up on one side of the half-breed and Anson took the other flank when the three horses reached dry land again. ‘We should have done like you, uh?’
‘Hid until the odds were evened up?’ Anson said, and his shrillness had a tone of whining complaint now.
‘Feller, you really are figurin’ to wind up dead tonight, ain’t you?’ Edge asked.
He didn’t have to make a move towards drawing a weapon to terrify the moon-faced farmer. All he had to do was turn to look at the man and tip his hat on to the back of his head, removing moon shadow from the wreckage of his face. Even with unblemished features, Edge could petrify lesser men by a display of tacit, ice-cold anger. But now, the white teeth and glittering blue slits of his eyes were given a harsher aspect by the discolored bruises and crustings of congealed blood on the old cuts which distorted the taut skin stretched over the lean features. And a near thirty-six hour growth of bristles added to the ogre-like appearance of the face.
‘Gee!’ Anson gasped. ‘Okay. I was wrong. I admit it. I apology—’
‘Mr. Edge means we oughta to have fired first and asked questions after,’ Oakley cut in to rescue Anson from his discomfiture.
The half-breed faced front again and reset his hat squarely on his head. ‘If you’ve got a mind to ask any questions,’ he supplemented. ‘If you ain’t, it’s best you don’t leave anyone alive - to answer anybody else’s questions.’
‘We learned the lesson,’ Oakley growled. ‘Shame is Jack Clayton ain’t alive for it to do him some good.’
‘It was his idea,’ Anson said. To try to take them guys prisoner.’
‘Makes you kinda like doctors,’ Edge said evenly.
‘How’s that?’ Anson wanted to know.
The half-breed’s face showed wintry humor. ‘You just buried a mistake.’
He stepped up the pace to a rhythmic canter and his constant surveillance was less intent than before. The six Ryan men had obviously met up with the surveyors, or heard about the trouble at the Oakley homestead from somebody who had. So it was unlikely that more men would be sent to back up the six in taking care of such a minor incident. But alertness was nonetheless necessary: apart from the fact that it had become an unbreakable habit with the man called Edge.
He was a trespasser on land the rancher claimed as his own and there co
uld be other Ryan men out on patrol: not necessarily intent upon finding Edge, but eager to blast him out of the saddle if the opportunity presented itself.
The trio had covered some four miles from the gunfight at the hilltop wood when Edge called another halt. The trail had swung towards the centre of the broad valley and was running along the western bank of the main river. They were almost out of the primarily undeveloped section of the valley and ahead of them the country was less convoluted. The ground was mostly flat, with just a few slopes down towards the banks of the river. Timber grew here and there, in small clumps and large expanses of woodland. And, close to many of these stands, there were small farmhouses and outbuildings. Pasture meadows and fields of growing crops were spread around the homesteads. No light showed anywhere.
And there were no animal sounds except for the beat of hooves and snorts of the horses Edge, Oakley and Anson rode to a halt close to a house and barn.
‘Kinda eerie, ain’t it?’ Anson muttered, his shrillness muted as he looked along and across the river. ‘All these folks houses and not a sign one of them’s alive.’
‘Two folk ain’t,’ Edge said, swinging out of his saddle.
Anson and Oakley snapped their heads around to look at the half-breed. He was standing between two strips of fresh-dug earth, each about three feet wide by six feet long.
‘Make a wrong move and you men’ll join ’em!’ a voice rasped, larded with menace.
There was the metallic clatter of repeating rifle actions being pumped. The voice and the other sounds had come from the direction of the house and barn.
‘Hey, that you, Wynne?’ Anson called.
‘Who’s that?’
Both men revealed a note of relief in their voices.
‘Dale Anson and young Oakley. And a stranger in the valley name of Edge.’
There was a burst of confused talk from the homestead, then doors were flung open and two groups of men emerged. Fifteen in all, each of them carrying a rifle or revolver he was careful to keep averted from the newcomers as the group moved across the yard.
Edge: Vengeance Valley (Edge series Book 17) Page 10