The woman’s eyes poured scorn upon him, then she swung her gaze towards her brother and her expression became imploring. “John?” she demanded.
He seemed about to ignore her plea, but a deep-throated groan sounded from out of the rain.
“For God’s sake, just kill me!” the tortured man screamed.
John, still afraid, tried to conquer his fear by action. He jerked the Remington rifle from its boot and worked the bolt to feed a shell into the breech. “You stay here,” he commanded his sister. “I’ll see what can be done.”
“You’re going to let him go alone?” the woman demanded of Edge.
John held back, waiting for his response. His confidence in his decision, small at the outset, seemed to be chipped away by each beat on the drum.
Edge ran a hand across the prickly stubble on his jaw. “Lady,” he said with a sigh. “I’m not the kind of guy who has to go looking for trouble. My share just comes naturally of its own accord.”
The scorn in her green eyes expanded and she raised her shoulders and drew in a deep breath, as if to sigh. But then her lips parted and she emitted a piercing scream. The drumbeat was abruptly curtailed and in the sudden silence her brother stared at her in disbelief.
“Crazy lady,” Edge hissed as he slid from his horse. He hooked out an arm and lifted the woman clear of her saddle, thudding her to the ground.
John gave a grunt of surprise and swung the rifle around to cover Edge. But he stayed his finger on the point of squeezing the trigger. The half-breed had taken the reins of his own horse and that of Elizabeth and pressed them into her trembling hand. He fixed her with a glittering, ice-cold stare from between narrowed lids.
“Hold them,” he snarled. “And if anyone but me or the white knight here gets close, shoot yourself.” He glared up at the white-faced John. “Get off the charger, feller,” he ordered. “This ain’t cavalry weather.”
John did as he was told, and thrust the reins of his horse towards his sister. She tried to speak, but the awesome realization of what she had done took a constricting grip on her throat.
“Forget it,” Edge rasped at her, drawing his revolver. “Stay quiet or the next sound you make could be your last.”
“My goodness,” she managed to gasp as she pulled the pepperbox from her jacket pocket and crouched down between the nervous horses and the cliff face.
It had only been a few moments since the woman’s scream had silenced the drumbeat but now, as Edge raised a finger to his slightly parted lips and beckoned for Day to fall in beside him, it seemed as if an eternity had passed without the ominous thud of fist upon taut skin.
The two men moved along the foot of the sheer rock wall, shoulder-to-shoulder, eyes narrowed against the wind-driven rain as they raked the ground ahead. Rifle and revolver muzzles swung to left and right
Four braves, spread out in line abreast, materialized across the path of the white men. Surprise held them in check for a split second. They were Teton Dakotas, stocky, brown-faced braves dressed in quill ornamented buckskin pants and a variety of stolen jackets. A few sodden eagle feathers decorated their headbands which failed to keep the long, greased hair from blowing across their faces. They wore no paint. Each carried a Winchester rifle.
“Savages!” Day spat out and blasted a hole in the chest of the brave on one end of the line.
Edge dived to the ground as three Winchesters roared to echo the report of the Remington. Day went into a crouch as bullets whined off into the rain. With cool precision, Edge emptied the single-action revolver at the Indians as they fumbled with the levers. He took aim across a crooked forearm, sending a shell burrowing into the stomach of each brave. As the slick blood pumped from the wounds and the braves folded forward, clutching themselves and dropping their rifles, he swung the revolver back along the line. Three skulls cracked and ejected red-stained fragments of brain matter under the impact of the heavy caliber bullets.
Edge glanced at Day and saw he was struggling with the bolt of his jammed rifle. “Leave it,” he snapped, getting on to all fours and scampering across to the sprawled bodies. He snatched up two Winchesters and tossed one of them towards Day. “This is no time for brand loyalty.”
He hurled his revolver against the cliff and went full-length to the ground as a volley of rifle fire sounded and bullets tore into the cooling flesh of the dead Indians. Day discarded his own rifle for the Winchester and gave a gasp of horror as he felt the tacky wetness of Teton Sioux blood on the stock. But as a shower of rock splinters stung his face from another fusillade of shots the revulsion exploded into anger. He glared through the teeming, billowing curtain of rain towards the gun flashes and swung the rifle barrel to left and right, spraying the area with a deadly hail of fire.
He was rewarded with the sound of three screams. But four more braves came forward at a run, their faces contorted by blood lust as their mouths hung wide in deep-throated war cries. They saw Day and angled in towards him, two with rifles and two with revolvers. They were unaware of Edge, flat on the ground amongst their dead, until his first shot splatted through the throat of one of them and burst out through the top of the brave’s head.
They faltered, torn between two targets. A brave with a revolver took a bullet in the groin from Day’s rifle and fell sideways with a scream. Another brave tripped over him and pitched towards Edge. The half-breed, his face seemingly frozen into a smile of evil enjoyment, raised his rifle. The brave tried to avert his head but failed. The Winchester muzzle smashed into his snarling teeth and then belched a bullet. His entire head seemed to shatter into a million tiny fragments.
As one brave sheered to the side to become lost behind the rain, another fired at Day, the bullet jerking the man’s fur hat from his head. Day’s aim was lower and his bullet gouged into the Indian’s right eye. The brave injured in the groin writhed on the ground, his clothing dark with the watered-down blood of his brothers. Day took aim at him.
“Save it,” Edge muttered, getting to his feet and moving over to look at the man’s agony. The brave attempted to roll away from Edge, but the half-breed drew back his foot and swung it forward. The toe of his boot made contact with the Indian’s chin, forcing back his head and breaking his neck with a sharp crack.
Day let out his pent up breath in a long sigh. “You looked like you enjoyed doing that, Edge,” he accused.
Edge crouched down, glanced around him for a sign of a new attack, then began to empty the spare Winchesters of their loads. He nodded for Day to do the same and showed his teeth in a cold grin. “Maybe you like riding the plains,” he muttered.
“What?” Day asked as he pushed shells into his pockets.
“I get a kick out of Sioux,” Edge answered wryly, and sprang upright as gunfire sounded.
Six small caliber shots rang out in quick succession. The sound came from the general direction of where the woman had been told to wait.
“Liz!” Day shouted frantically and sprang forward into a run. Edge went after him, both men sending up splashes of water as their pounding feet plunged into muddied pools.
Elizabeth was standing out in the open, one hand clutching the reins of the horses. In the other was the still smoking pepperbox. The Indian who had run out on his fellow braves was slumped on the ground at her feet. His face was towards the low clouds and rain spattered into the gaping red hole where once he had had a nose. His mouth hung open as if in surprise.
“My goodness!” the woman exclaimed, and swallowed the nausea that rose in her throat “I think I killed him.”
“He sure won’t smell good anymore,” Edge muttered, and fired from the hip.
A young buck, stooped almost double as he crept up on the woman from the side, pitched forward with a bullet in his heart The water drum slung around his neck on twine burst beneath the weight of his body. Escaping water flushed his blood away from his unmoving body.
“Ten’s a nice round number,” Edge muttered and searched the face of the woman with his hoode
d eyes. “For you? Or do you want to try another scream, ma’am?”
Elizabeth tried to match the intensity of his gaze, but suddenly the slight color left in her cheeks drained away and her eyes swiveled up in their sockets. She made a small, gurgling sound and collapsed into a heap. Her brother tried to catch her and missed. Edge made a grab for the reins and caught two sets. His own horse reared and galloped off into the rain.
“If she’s died of fright it’ll save us tossing for who rides two up,” Edge muttered, starting to lead the horses along the foot of the cliff.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE Tetons’ ponies were tethered at the mouth of the canyon. They eyed Edge nervously as he approached, leading the Days’ mounts. He unfastened the tethers, sighted across the animals’ backs and fired a shot. The ponies bolted into the freedom of the storm-lashed Badlands, their unshod hooves quickly taking them out of earshot. Edge whirled at the approach of running footfalls but lowered the Winchester as Day lumbered into sight, the unconscious Elizabeth in his arms.
“Scattered their ponies,” Edge said, tethering the horses.
Relief flooded Day’s face, to be immediately wiped away as a low groan came from deeper within the canyon’s mouth. “I’d forgotten!” he said, aghast.
“Must have been all the excitement,” Edge said sourly, moving towards the source of the sound.
“Oh, dear God,” Day gasped and hurriedly lowered his sister to the ground, as if he feared his own strength would drain away and he might drop her.
The man who was no longer a man, was naked. They had cut off his genitals, but this only as the climax of their torture schedule. First he had been scalped. Then a score of cuts had been carved into his flesh so that his body was a mass of dangling flaps of sliced skin. The rain had not yet washed away all the white crystals of rock salt which had been poured into the open wounds. He was hanging upside down from a framework of lances lashed together by rope: held in place by twine which had cut through his ankles to the bone.
Day vomited and as his sister groaned and shook her head, he threw himself in front of her, hiding the horribly mutilated figure from her.
Incredibly, the victim of the Teton’s torture still clung to a tenuous thread of life. He sensed the newcomers and his eyes opened. But they were glazed by his agony and he could not see them. A moan bubbled in his throat and he tried to lift his free hanging arms to ward off fresh viciousness.
“Relax, feller,” Edge told him easily. “It’s over for you.”
“Kill him!” Day rasped, clasping his sister around her shoulders and hugging her to him.
Edge eyed the man’s suffering with an impassive expression. He had seen too much of broken bodies; witnessed more blood-letting than the human mind could take; been present on countless occasions when man’s inhumanity to man was taken to the extremes of agony. He could have been driven into the realms of insanity by his experiences: or he could become a heartless machine fashioned into the form of a man. Edge was not mad and therefore he was nothing more than an animal drained of every ounce of compassion. But not of memory. He looked at the pathetic struggles of the helpless victim and recalled another occasion when he saw the results of barbaric Indian torture. It had been a different tribe, using different techniques, but it all came out the same in the end - agonizing, lingering death.* (*See; Edge - Apache Death.)
“It’s his life,” Edge said coldly. “What there is left of it. He has to say.”
The man’s lips moved and Edge stooped down to put his ear close to his face. “I’ll tell ... you … something ... If you’ll end it.”
His breath smelled bad and something moist - perhaps blood - bubbled in his throat as he forced out each word.
“Go to... Summer,” the man rattled when Edge nodded. “Out to the rivers... the rivers.” The moisture flooded over his lips and ran into his nostrils. One of the knives had cut deep. It was blood. “Haven,” he managed with his dying breath.
“Kill him, for mercy’s sake!” Day screamed.
“Can’t kill a dead man,” Edge said, straightening up. With a casualness that belied his usual agility at drawing the weapon, the half-breed reached up behind his neck and slid an open razor from the leather pouch he wore under his shirt. He sliced through both lengths of twine with a single slashing motion. The bloodied body slumped heavily to the ground. He replaced the razor and turned to look out of the canyon.
Within its protective walls the rain fell almost lightly, lacking the power of the north wind. But now, almost as if it had spent its last reserves of forceful energy as a contribution to the violence of men, the storm was blowing itself out across the wasteland. Overhead, the blackness of the low clouds was giving way to a lighter coloration.
“Let’s move,” Edge told the Days as the woman got to her feet, saw the dead man and spun away.
“No!” she said sharply, as if steeling herself against a further reaction to sudden death. Then she continued: “This is the place. The canyon where John and I had to come.”
“You came, you saw and you conquered everything it had,” Edge told her. “But one band of Sioux gunning for whites could mean the whole damn nation is trying for the final solution.” He prodded the corpse with the rifle barrel. “There has to be a better way to die than that”
“It won’t take long,” John Day insisted, crossing to where the horses were tethered and delving a hand into the centre of the bedroll strapped to his animal.
He brought out something wrapped in sacking, forming a package about the size of a shoebox. As he moved away, heading further into the canyon, Elizabeth fell in behind him. They angled towards the side and halted before a natural alcove worn into the sheer rock.
“You’re certain this is the one?” John asked.
Elizabeth nodded. “I know, John. I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life before.”
“Is this a good place, do you think?” he asked her, pointing into the alcove.
“I think so, John.”
He untied the string holding the sacking in place and carefully removed the protective material. Edge moved to one side so that he could look between the brother and sister and see what was happening. John was holding a plain cross which in the dull light of the slackening storm had the dull sheen of gold. The upright member of the ornament was set into a flat base so that the cross stood solidly when John set it on the flat rock which formed the floor of the alcove. The couple stood with heads bent for several moments, in attitudes of private prayer. John finished first, then Elizabeth, and they turned away from the shrine.
Edge was in the process of mounting the woman’s horse but neither of them took exception to the act.
“It has an inscription,” Elizabeth told him. ““In memory of Byron Day who died close by in the service of his country”,” she quoted.
“Nice gesture,” Edge said easily. “It’ll be appreciated by the first saddle tramp or Sioux brave who wanders by here. Ain’t much that melts down easier than gold.”
“That’s what I told her,” John said. “But she wanted to do it. She’s a rather headstrong woman.”
“I’ve noticed,” Edge muttered.
“There isn’t a grave,” Elizabeth said sadly. “Not for any of the soldiers who died here. By the time the Colonel reached Summer and they sent men out here, there were only the skeletons left. Coyotes and buzzards, the army told us.”
“It happened last August,” Day put in.
“It’s a wicked month,” Edge answered. “Now, do you want to sing hymns or burn incense - or can we move out to where the greenbacks grow?”
Day swung up into his saddle and held out a hand for his sister.
“What about him?” the woman asked, pointing towards the dead man without looking at him. “Shouldn’t we bury him?”
Edge spat through the rain, which had been reduced to a lazy drizzle. “Does he look as if he cares, one way or the other?”
“My goodness, that’s hardly the point,”
she flung at him, “A man who died so savagely deserves a decent burial.”
“Leave him where he is,” her brother urged. “This isn’t Philadelphia, Liz. Nature takes care of these things out here. As we have good reason to know.”
She seemed about to argue her case, then shrugged, took hold of her brother’s hand and hauled herself up behind him. Edge led the way out of the canyon and waited for John to point the way to Summer. He nodded his head towards the south.
The wind had died away completely now and the rain clouds were breaking up immediately overhead, where the noon sun was suffusing the sky with a faint tinge of yellow.
They had to steer their horses among the bodies of the ten Indians, sprawled along the foot of the bluff in attitudes of violent death.
“My goodness, did we kill all those?” Elizabeth exclaimed in awe.
John screwed his neck around to smile at her. “We did very well, Liz,” he said, reining in his horse to dismount and retrieve his fur hat, now with a hole drilled through it
“There’s a lot more where they came from,” Edge said as John climbed back into the saddle.
“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked, glancing anxiously across the vastness of the Badlands, unveiled again by the brightening weather of the afternoon.
“Indians,” Edge tossed over his shoulder. “Neither you nor your brother should get too high and mighty about blasting a few. All kinds, in all kinds of tribes. So you kill a few Sioux? It’s still a big tribe - one of the strongest ones in the country.”
“So what?” the woman demanded, anxious to preserve her post-shock pride in helping to kill the savages.
Edge shrugged. “I just figure it’ll take more than two Days to make that one weak,” he muttered.
CHAPTER FIVE
THEY passed the town marker for Summer - Warmest Hearted Town in Northlands - just after sundown. They had covered the more than fifty miles of barren country from the canyon in two grueling stages, separated by a short rest for coffee and beans which exhausted the Days’ supplies. The town was at the dead end of nowhere, built in a hollow formed by three hills with the south side bounded by the Old Creek tributary of the Cheyenne River. The marker was sited on the southern bank of the creek which was spanned by a trestle bridge.
Bloody Summer Page 4