EDGE: Massacre Mission

by George G. Gilman

  ‘I like it but I can do without, Edge,’ Poco Oso said. Tense but not afraid. ‘We waste time anyway. Apache killer is not here.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Injun!’ Jesse snarled. ‘We all done our share of wastin’ savages like you!’

  ‘Not me,’ the old man at the far end of the bar said. And his contribution surprised everybody, drawing most eyes toward him. He continued to gaze into his beer. Though it ain’t my fault I ain’t had that pleasure. Just never got to be in the right place at the right time. Had cause, God knows. Personally, I don’t reckon a ’Pache is worth the waste of water to spit on.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be,’ George said with a shake of his head. ‘Don’t reckon I ever heard old Tom say that many words all at once before.’

  ‘Give him a drink out of my dollar,’ Edge instructed, and drew all attention back to him again, ‘Seems I owe him, too.’

  ‘Aw, shit!’ a miner rasped.

  This upon seeing that the half breed had taken advantage of the distraction to slide the Colt out of his holster again. And was resting the butt on the bar, barrel aimed at Jordan’s midsection.

  ‘Frig it, he won’t kill you!’ Earl snarled. He snapped his head from side to side to look with blazing eyes at Jesse and the other three miners. ‘Go get him and beat the shit outta him!’

  Edge, eyes narrowed to threads of glinting ice blue and lips pulled back to display just the dark line between his upper and lower teeth, thumbed back the hammer of the Frontier Colt. He could see the fear of the two bartenders in the flesh. And the reflection of the miners’ indecision in a mirror. He could hear the Apache breathing fast behind him.

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on that, Earl!’ Jordan said huskily, and snatched a bottle off the shelf. ‘I got this guy’s measure.’

  He slid the bottle along the counter top. Edge stopped it with his free hand, raised it and pulled the cork with his teeth. He spat out the cork and set down the bottle.

  ‘That was smart, Jordan,’ he said evenly, his lips curled back further now to display a cold grin. ‘To figure out I’m a feller who’ll go to any lengths to get what I want. With Earl just a couple of bad feet. You just kept yourself away from a graveyard.’ He eased the bottle along the bartop. ‘Take a drink.’

  The Colt had never wavered in its aim. And the anger and hatred on the faces of the men had a frozen quality. Then some of them made strangled sounds of frustration deep in their throats as Poco Oso raised the bottle and sucked down a slug.

  ‘Is enough, Edge. You have made another point. We go look for Apache killer now.’

  The half breed took the bottle and slid it back along the bar. Jordan and George both let it pass. Old Tom caught it.

  ‘You ain’t gonna drink that?’ Earl snarled. ‘After an Apache sucked on it?’

  ‘Ain’t nothin’ better than rye whisky to kill all kinda germs,’ the old man answered, pouring liquor in with his stale beer.

  ‘Figure if any of you fellers saw a drummer called von Scheel come to town, you wouldn’t be ready to tell me?’ Edge asked as he began to back toward the batwings, Colt leveled at no one in particular now.

  The Apache moved beside him, but watching the doorway and sun bright street beyond.

  Of the Thunderhead men, only Jordan moved: along the bar to pick up the dollar bill Edge had left. He tore it in two, placed the halves together and tore them again. Then allowed the shreds to float to the floor.

  ‘Means I still ain’t sold no liquor for a stinkin’ Apache to drink,’ he snarled as a bead of sweat dripped off the wart on his jaw.

  ‘I best get Doc Riordan to fix up your feet, Earl,’ Jesse said hoarsely.

  ‘Frig it, I don’t want any help from any of you yellow sonsofbitches!’ the wounded man snapped. He tried to haul himself out of the chair but yelled in pain and fell hard to the sawdust covered floor.

  Poco Oso stepped out through the batwings and held them open for Edge to leave The Mother Lode, sliding the revolver back into its holster.

  A tall, thin, gaunt faced man who was leaning a hip against the hitching rail and smoking a long cheroot said:

  ‘Them guys in there weren’t packin’ guns, mister.’

  His arms were hanging loosely at his sides and he did not move them. Just inclined his head a little to direct a glance down at the pearl handled Remington .44 in the holster that was tied at the toe to his left thigh,

  Edge turned slowly to look at the man who was dressed entirely in black, which served to emphasize the glint of metal - the bullets slotted in the loops of his gunbelt and the star in a circle of the Territorial Marshal’s badge pinned to his left shirt pocket.

  ‘I see it, feller. Should it bother me?’

  ‘Only if your business with von Scheel conflicts with my interest in him.’

  The Apache whistled softly through pursed lips.

  ‘What do you have in mind for him, feller?’

  Take him back to Los Alamos so the folks there can see him hang.’ He was able to spit without taking the cheroot from the corner of his mouth. ‘And ain’t nothin’ anybody can do that’ll make a jot of difference to what I have in mind, mister.’

  Edge nodded. ‘Then, marshal, it seems we could have an explosive situation.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Now Poco Oso grunted and there was anger in the sound.

  ‘What’s with the Indian?’ the marshal asked.

  While he’s making noises at you, he ain’t trying to kill you.’

  The lawman smiled and there was both humor and eagerness in the expression. ‘He can try.’

  The scar-faced Jesse pushed out through one of the batwing doors, so as not to bang Edge in the back. And shared a scowl between the Apache, the half breed and the marshal.

  ‘Lot of friggin’ use havin’ the law in Thunderhead again! When a fast draw gunslinger can walk into a peaceable saloon and shoot up an innocent citizen. Then stand out on the street chewin’ the damn fat with the guy with the badge!’

  ‘Look of the law office, it figures this town got no use for a man with a badge,’ the marshal answered.

  Jesse spat and the dusty, sun baked surface of the street absorbed his saliva as thirstily as that of the lawman. Then he strode angrily away from the front of the saloon, angling toward a small frame building at the centre of a block comprised of the law office, a clothing store, kerosene suppliers and pawnbrokers.

  ‘We talk to him, Edge,’ the Apache said.

  ‘You willing to listen?’ the half breed asked the lawman.

  ‘I got a coffee pot on the stove. Name’s Larsen. Known in the Santa Fe area for my hospitality. And my stubborn streak.’

  He swung away from the rail and started across the street, heading for the bullet and fire ravaged law office. Edge and the Apache trailed him. As they went through the entrance with the drunkenly hanging door, a man emerged from the building into which Jesse had gone. A red faced, fat man of middle years with the crumbs of what he was eating for lunch lodged in his grey moustache and a napkin still tucked in his shirt collar. He carried a black doctoring bag.

  ‘Herr Edge, you come to help me, bitte?’

  The half breed was ahead of Poco Oso entering the law office and there was something akin to hope in von Scheel’s voice. But then despair when he added: ‘Mein Gott, an Apache Indian.’

  There was a desk and a stove in the office. All the other furnishings had been removed. There was no furniture at all in the two cells which took up a quarter of the building’s area on the right, formed by a row of bars fitted with two doors and another row of bars at right angles in the centre.

  Upon seeing the brave, the drummer backed away from the bars to press himself against the angle of two walls. His clothing was rumpled and dirt streaked now, his face sprouting with black and grey bristles. His small green eyes were red rimmed from lack of sleep and deep anxiety.

  ‘No, feller. Come to decide whether you hang or die Apache style.’

  ‘Help yourself,’ Larsen invited a
s he rested his rump on the side of the desk. ‘But only to coffee.’

  The lawman was a match for the half breed’s six feet three inches height but his build was a lot slighter. And he was a couple of years older. His eyes were coal black, set in deep sockets above prominent cheekbones. His neatly cut hair and the thin moustache along his top lip were as black as his Stetson, kerchief, shirt, gunbelt, pants and boots. His teeth were yellow. His saddle and bedroll, which were piled in the angle of the rear wall, and the bars of the empty cell were black.

  ‘You want to come on in?’ he asked of Poco Oso as Edge took the coffee pot off the stove and brought it to the desk. He emptied on the floor the dregs from one of the two tin cups and refilled it.

  ‘I okay here,’ the brave said from the doorway, without shifting his unblinking gaze from the man behind the bars.

  ‘It wasn’t just a suggestion,’ Larsen rasped, drawing his left hand over his gun butt. ‘Like for you two to be close so neither can jump me.’

  ‘Inside and have some coffee,’ Edge drawled, holding up the pot.

  Poco Oso came off the threshold but shook his head as he went to lean against a wall directly opposite the frightened prisoner in the cell. ‘I have all I need.’

  Larsen eyed Edge balefully. ‘Your buddy hasn’t got my message yet. He’s mine.’

  The lawman never took the cheroot from his mouth.

  Von Scheel nodded vigorously. ‘That is right, Herr Larsen. I am your prisoner. You have responsibility for me.’

  ‘Shut your damn mouth,’ the marshal instructed evenly without shifting his attention away from Edge who had replaced the coffee pot on the stove and now went to sit down on the floor, leaning his back against the wall a few feet from where the Apache stood. ‘How’d he get your buddy so hot under the collar for his hide?’

  ‘You want to tell about that?’ the half breed asked of the brave, and took grateful sips at the strong coffee while, in a monotone, Poco Oso spoke of how the Mescalero men, women and child had died as a result of drinking whiskey sold to them by the German drummer.

  ‘I sell in good faith!’ Von Scheel blurted as soon as the Apache was finished. ‘There vas no means for me to tell the visky vas bad. Vhen I hear vhat has happened, I throw avay all I have left! I svear this!’

  Larsen merely turned his head to gaze coldly through the bars at von Scheel, bringing the prisoner’s plea to an end.

  ‘Somethin’ you and your buddy should know, Edge.’ His cheroot was now a stub and he took a fresh one from a case in a shirt pocket and lit it from the old. 1 got no love for the Apaches. But long as they don’t step out of line, I got no feelin’s against them. Like them fellers you had a run-in with across at the saloon.’

  ‘Poco Oso has just told you the half of it, Marshal.’ Edge said.

  Larsen held up a hand. ‘Hear me out, mister. This animal I got behind the bars here ain’t no average, run-of-the-mill job to me. See, Los Alamos is my home town. And I know the family he killed. Everyone knows everyone else in Los Alamos.’

  It was very hot in the law office, with the heat of the day and the stove. And quiet. The piano player had stopped his music after the two shots were fired in the saloon but now he started again. The only sound that drifted in from outside, the music as melancholy as it had been at the start. A match for Larsen’s tone of voice and the expression on his gaunt face.

  ‘A month ago it happened. I work out of Santa Fe, so I wasn’t there. But I heard about it. This guy rolls into town with his wagonload of sweet smellin’ junk for the ladies. And makes his pitch to Mr. and Mrs. Hart who run the Los Alamos Drugstore. They were gonna buy some of the stuff but there wasn’t enough in the cash drawer. So Clayton Hart, he went out back to the parlor to get the money from his hidey-hole. The drummer saw him and pulled a gun. He wanted it all. But it was the Harts’ life savin’s and they were just a few weeks away from retirin’.’

  Larsen did his trick of spitting from one side of his mouth with the cheroot still held in the other. ‘Clayton had an old Dragoon Colt in with the money and he tried to turn the tables on the drummer. I checked the gun. Mechanism locked solid with rust. That was when I got there a couple of days after the killin’s, of course. The animal behind the bars here, he shot Clayton in the head. Then Clayton’s old lady in the heart. Miss Emily Jane, their spinster daughter who happened to be passin’ at the time, she got a bullet in the belly and lived long enough to tell how it was. Tell, too, how her folks had eight hundred and fifty-six dollars and thirty-five cents saved.’

  The lawman raised his rump off the desk, emptied the spare cup of dregs and took it to the stove to fill with fresh coffee.

  ‘Oh, somethin’ else,’ he went on with a brief, contemptuous glance at von Scheel who was still pressed into a corner of his cell. ‘The old folks was both blind.’

  Now he looked at Edge and the Apache for a reaction to the punch line of his account. Poco Oso continued to stare levelly across the office and into the cell. Edge said:

  ‘Can understand why their neighbors are so anxious to have you bring him in, Marshal.’

  ‘Damn right, mister!’ He snapped, a hint of anger in his voice. ‘I never did get on his trail. I just took off and asked every place I came to if a foreign guy of his description had been around. Never did get a line on him. Just got lucky here in Thunderhead. Was bedded down in this place and heard a wagon rollin’ up the street Looked out and there he was. Large as life. Put the arm

  on him and locked him in the cell. Just waitin’ now for the blacksmith to put new shoes on my horse. Then startin’ back with him.’

  There was a look of challenge in his eyes and set of his jaw as he again waited for a response from the half breed and the Apache.

  ‘You got time to listen to the half of our side the Indian didn’t tell you?’ Edge asked as he rose to his feet, took off his hat, ran a shirt sleeve over his sweat sticky brow and replaced the hat.

  ‘You listened real well to me, mister.’

  ‘There’s an old mission three or four miles north of here. Taken over by a bunch of sick old timers who figure the mountain air and the spring water in the church is good for what ails them.’

  ‘Santa Luiz,’ Larsen said with a nod. I’ve heard of it Some of the folks there passed through Santa Fe on their way.’

  ‘But you never got to know them like the folks who live in Los Alamos, uh?’

  ‘Just tell it, Edge.’

  ‘It isn’t so healthy in Santa Luiz right now. On account of the thirty or so Apaches who are in the hills encircling the place. Scaring the hell out of the old folks. Because the Indians told them that if I don’t deliver von Scheel to Santa Luiz before noon tomorrow, they’re going to kill them.’

  The cheroot bobbed up and down at the side of Larsen’s mouth. And he closed his eyes for a second. Mouthed a curse.

  ‘It is bad what the Apache killer did to the people in your town,’ Poco Oso said - this the first indication that he had heard and taken note of what was happening while he stared fixedly at the prisoner. ‘You and your people, it is right to want vengeance. But you give this man to Edge and me. And my father Chief Ahone will make him suffer greater punishment than white eyes justice.’

  ‘You cannot do that!’ Von Scheel shrieked, launching himself across the tiny cell and fisting his hands around the bars, the flesh of his face pale and trembling. ‘You cannot hand me over to the Apache Indians.’

  ‘God, what a situation,’ Larsen growled.

  ‘I vould rather you shot me down here in the cell in cold blood!’ the German wailed.

  The gaunt faced marshal was obviously a man not used to suffering from indecision. And he unburdened himself of doubt very quickly on this occasion. His expression toughened up again and his tone became the usual even drawl.

  ‘Shut your damn mouth,’ he told von Scheel. Then to Edge: I’ll go check on my horse, mister. We’ll leave soon as he’s shod.’

  ‘For Santa Luiz?’ the Apache asked.


  The German began to speak in his own language, in the cadence of a prayer.

  ‘I’m a lawman. If innocent people are in danger, it’s my sworn duty to try to protect them.’

  ‘You’re an asshole is what you are! For even thinkin’ for a lousy second about handin’ over a white to the stinkin’ Apaches!’

  The four men in the law office snapped their heads around to look at a fifth one, who had folded off the front wall of the building to stand splayed legged in the doorway. Aiming from the hip a double barrel shotgun.

  Both Edge and Larsen reached instinctively for their holstered revolvers.

  ‘Pull them and everybody’ll be just some sticky red stuff on the walls!’

  This spoken by one of the two men who came up from crouches outside the glassless window. It was Jordan, one of the bartenders from The Mother Lode and he also aimed a shotgun. From the shoulder. The look-alike George had a revolver in each hand and he rested the barrels on the window sill.

  ‘Best get your hands up high,’ he said. ‘Injun, on your feet.’

  The half breed, the marshal and the Apache complied with the instructions.

  Von Scheel said excitedly: ‘You are going to free me?’

  The man on the threshold, who Edge had not seen before, growled: ‘The stinkin’ Apaches ain’t the only ones know how to make a man die hard, you murderin’ sonofabitch. And if you don’t do like the marshal’s been tellin’ you and bide quiet, I’ll prove it to you. Which would be a shame for the folks waitin’ to see you swing.’

  The German sank to his knees, still gripping the bars. Tears of despair squeezed out of his flesh crowded eyes and his head fell forward, knocking off his hat. His body was wracked by soundless sobs.

  ‘Don’t want to kill anyone here,’ the man in the doorway went on. ‘But able and willin’ to if you men and the Indian don’t ease out your guns real slow and toss them to me.’

  He was big. Taller by a couple of inches than Edge and Larsen, and solidly built from shoulders to hips. Dressed in sweat and dirt stained work clothes that closely contoured his bulging muscles. About fifty years old with a square jawed, thickly moustached, small eyed face. His hair was grey and clipped short as bristles.