EDGE: Massacre Mission

by George G. Gilman

  The bullets smacked into the facade of the saloon and chips exploded from the points of impact. But the spurts of muzzle smoke from the two Colts and the reports of the shells leaving the muzzles caused Smithson to take the time to duck into cover.

  But a moment later the rifle sent another shot through the window. And Poco Oso went hard to the ground.

  ‘Larsen, you bastard!’ the half breed said. But the words were rasped through clenched teeth and were heard by his ears alone.

  Then he saw that the Apache was getting to his feet He skidded to a halt, turning to face the shattered window, half crouched and feet splayed. He thrust the Frontier Colt forward in his right hand, index finger to the trigger and began to fan the hammer.

  He was less than twenty feet from the front of the saloon and, against the fast series of reports as bullets were blasted in through the smashed window, he heard the sounds of the repeater action again. Heard also the less frenetic cracks of a handgun being fired between the thumbing back of the hammer.

  Then the Apache was up on his feet again and running. Veering away from the front of the laundry to make for the batwings behind the hitching rail.

  The Frontier Colt rattled empty.

  Larsen continued to fire methodically from the doorway of the law office, his shots pocking the areas below, above and to the sides of the window.

  Through the dust raised by running feet and drifting gunsmoke, Edge saw the face of Earl Smithson. Deeply inscribed with pain and hatred, anger and triumph, as he rested his cheek against the stock of a Winchester rifle and took careful aim at the half breed with an empty gun in his hand.

  ‘Apache’s gone and now it’s your turn, Apache lover!’

  But Poco Oso had either been faking a gunshot wound or had taken the dive to get under another bullet. For he showed no sign of being hurt as he ducked under the rail and lunged into another dive, to smash open the batwings with his shoulder and crash into the saloon on his belly.

  ‘Sonofafrigginbitch!’ Smithson shrieked, and swung the Winchester away from Edge to try to draw a bead on the Apache who was sliding across the sawdust scattered floor. He squeezed the trigger. The hammer of Larsen’s Remington clicked forward and the firing pin hit only an empty shell case.

  Edge powered forward, thrusting the Colt in the holster. Raised his leading leg to put his booted foot on the ledge of the smashed window. Launched himself into a flying tackle.

  Smithson was seated on a chair to one side of the window and four feet back from it. He was twisted from the waist, his face showing only terror now as he stared at Poco Oso and fumbled an attempt to pump the Winchester’s action again.

  His panicked shot at a man he thought was dead had missed its target. And the Apache had completed his slide and was knocking aside chairs as he struggled to get his feet. The old Colt was back in his weapons belt and he had drawn the knife.

  But the blade of Edge’s razor was the first to find the yielding flesh of the man trapped by his injuries to the chair.

  The half breed drew the razor from the neck pouch while he was in mid-air. And he made a sideways slashing move with it a moment before Smithson was aware of the danger from a source other than the Indian. Thus, an instant before he died, the big miner saw the instrument of his death, for he snapped his head around. Saw the blade of the razor extended from the fist of the man diving at him. Then felt it bite into the flesh of his throat. He began a scream of horror, but this was drowned in blood from his severed jugular vein. Perhaps he felt the warmth of running blood on his skin or maybe there was not time. Because before he and his chair tipped backwards under the impact of Edge’s shoulder into his chest, his neck was gashed from ear to ear. And he was in the grip of the terror of dying that swamped all other feeling in the final second of his life.

  He was a corpse before he thudded to the floor and rolled out of the overturned chair. His wide eyes glazed and showed no reaction as the weight of his killer fell on to him.

  Silence again enveloped the town of Thunderhead. Lasted for no more than a couple of seconds. Until Larsen yelled from across the street:

  ‘You men all right?’

  ‘You hear us complaining?’ Edge shouted as he got to his feet, and saw the anger that contorted the face and held rigid the body of Poco Oso. Lowered his voice to murmur: ‘Though it appears this feller ain’t the only one cut up over what happened.’

  ‘I did not need your help, white eyes,’ the Apache hissed, looking from the blade of his knife, to the dead Earl Smithson and then at the half breed. ‘A man with so much hate for the Apaches, he deserved to die by hand of Apache.’

  ‘Keep on being mad at me, feller,’ Edge said evenly.

  The handsome brave maintained his rage at a high level for stretched seconds. Then the tension drained out of him and he put the knife back in its sheath. Began to hand brush the sawdust off his buckskin clothes.

  ‘You want we no longer be friends, white eyes? That okay with me. After you give word to the Apache killer.’

  Edge stooped to wipe the blood off the razor on the pants of the dead man. Then slid it back in the neck pouch and nodded. That’s fine,’ he said. ‘After what this feller called me.’

  ‘Call you?’ the brave sneered.

  ‘Apache lover. I ain’t never had any fruitful friendships.’

  ‘I do not understand you,’ Poco Oso said, disinterested, as Larsen pushed von Scheel through the batwings ahead of him.

  ‘And I ain’t going to help you, feller,’ the half breed answered as he reloaded his Colt. ‘I don’t bend over backwards - or forwards - for any man.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘You MEN in the saloon!’

  Edge, Poco Oso and Larsen all whirled with guns tracking ahead of their eyes. Through the broken window they saw that a number of men were out on the street now. Gathering into a group at the centre directly in front of The Mother Lode. The half breed recognized four of them as the men who had been playing cards in the saloon before the prospect of trouble sent them scuttling outside.

  Like the majority of the score or so men who had converged on to the street from all directions, they were still nervous. But there was the strength of resolution in the way all of them took up their stances and peered at the gun-fight scarred facade of the saloon. Men in an age group from thirty to sixty, most of them with the soft hands, fresh complexions and relatively clean clothing of those who did not have to do heavy manual labor to earn a living. Storekeepers, clerks and businessmen. With just here and there a tougher looking, less tidily attired man. A leather-aproned blacksmith, a stockily built man with paint on his hands and pants and bare torso and, the biggest and broadest of all, the town butcher with animal blood staining his coveralls.

  If any of them were armed with guns, the weapons were hidden. But the butcher, who was spokesman for the group, carried a meat cleaver at his side.

  Larsen began hurriedly to reload his Remington while the Apache instinctively drew his knife.

  ‘Earl Smithson was party to an attempt to divert due process of law!’ the marshal yelled over the tops of the batwings.

  ‘We don’t give a shit about Smithson!’ the butcher countered.

  ‘Remember the ladies, Mr. Bayless,’ lisped a meek looking little man.

  Bayless nodded and directed a contrite glance up and down the street before returning his glaring attention to the men in the saloon.

  ‘What him and the rest of the men off the claims get up to is their own concern. Us town folk just supply their needs.’

  There were nods and grunts of agreement. And Bayless expressed mild satisfaction, obviously pleased with his appointment as spokesman and the way he was handling the chore.

  ‘Feller,’ Edge drawled, moving closer to the window. ‘You got something to say, just say it. We don’t have the time to listen to speeches.’

  Bayless glowered.

  One of the former card players urged: ‘Yeah, George, Get it said.’

  ‘All
right, gunslinger! Want you to know you ain’t welcome here in Thunderhead. The same goes for the Apache. And you. Marshal. We already had a bellyful of trouble on account of Indians and men that figure Indians gotta be treated like they was whites. So we just wanna say get outta our town and don’t come back,’

  ‘No sweat,’ Edge responded.

  ‘It’s only you men that are holdin’ us up from leavin’,’ Larsen augmented.

  ‘That’s just fine and dandy. But just don’t try to take anythin’ that don’t belong to you. On account of we have to make a livin’ outa Ray Hoy and the rest of the men that rode for Santa Luiz.’

  This said, the group broke up.

  ‘What does he mean?’ Poco Oso asked.

  ‘Figure they took the marshal’s horse as well as our mounts, feller,’ Edge answered, while he watched the crowd disperse. ‘Maybe even the drummer’s team. Only overlooked our handguns. It’s a long walk to the mission.’ He spat on the sawdust covered floor. ‘And we could get there with sore feet and short of arms.’

  ‘Hey, the gunsmith’s got my Winchester!’ Larsen remembered. And made to push out through the batwings. But pulled up short.

  ‘It’s on the seat of the foreigner’s wagon, Marshal,’ a man passing the saloon doorway supplied. ‘Fitted the new trigger spring and unbent the hammer like you wanted. And right now Charlie Hill is hitchin’ the team to the wagon out back of his livery. Luck to you white men. Apaches ain’t to our likin’ and we got nothin’ against them old folks over at Santa Luiz.’

  ‘But you ain’t prepared to lift a finger to help them,’ Larsen growled with sour scorn.

  ‘It ain’t our trouble,’ the Thunderhead gunsmith answered dully. ‘And them old folks only ever sell to us. Never do buy.’

  ‘People like you make me friggin’ sick!’ the lawman snarled.

  ‘So let’s head for the mission,’ the half breed said as he swung a leg over the ledge of the smashed window. ‘Lots of other sick people there, one way or another.’

  After the gunsmith had turned into his store, the single curved street was deserted once again. But as the four unwelcome visitors to town made their way to the livery stable, the half breed, the lawman and the Indian were aware of being watched. The German was insensitive to everything except his own depression.

  The piano player in the dancehall began to float the melancholy music out into the hot afternoon air again, as if in sympathy with von Scheel’s misery.

  At the rear of Charlie’s Livery Stable it was as the gunsmith had promised. The fed and rested two horse team was in the traces of the cloyingly sweet-smelling town wagon. The repaired, cleaned and oiled Winchester was on the seat.

  ‘You and the Apache take the seat,’ Larsen said after claiming his rifle. ‘Me and my prisoner will ride in the back.’

  And this was how they rode as Edge took the reins to drive the wagon along the alley beside the livery and turned to head down the slope of the empty street, then out on to the open trail that five miles away intersected the other trail toward Santa Luiz.

  ‘I think the white eyes with badge does not trust me,’ the brave said softly as the wagon rolled past the town marker at an easy pace, the hooves of the two horses and the turning wheels raising dust lethargically. ‘He is afraid, maybe, that I will take it upon myself to deal with Apache killer.’

  ‘I can hear what you’re sayin’,’ Larsen growled. ‘And what you’re sayin’ has crossed my mind, Indian. But I figure you’d like best of all to waste me and Edge some way and be a regular hero to your people by takin’ them my prisoner alive and kickin’.’

  Von Scheel groaned his reaction to this terrifying prospect.

  The marshal, who had become increasingly short tempered since his easy capture of the killer had turned sour, and snarled at the German to shut up.

  Edge, who had been deep in thought as he drove the wagon out of town, sensed the Apache watching him and he responded to the faintly quizzical gaze of the black eyes with an ice cold glance.

  ‘Figure you could have handled the feller in the saloon back there,’ he said evenly as he resumed his apparently casual survey of the surrounding terrain. ‘So I still owe you for the snake. But what I said then still goes. You aim a gun at me again, kill me or you’re dead. Same with the knife.’

  ‘I need only to be told something once, white eyes. I do not forget.’

  ‘Just like elephants, feller. And they get to live to a great age.’

  Edge forgot only what he chose to for most of the time. But occasionally what was left of his conscience pushed to the forefront of his mind certain memories of the distant past that invariably were rooted in pain and anguish. Like the incident in his childhood which had led to an aversion to having a gun aimed at him - which went beyond the natural fear of such a situation. When he and Jamie were fooling with a rifle that should not have been loaded. And the bullet that exploded from the muzzle shattered the younger brother’s leg and left him a cripple for the rest of his tragically short life.

  But as he rode the wagon now, with three other men who for awhile were wrapped up in their own thoughts, the mind of the impassive faced half breed began to taunt him with many other memories, triggered by the dull voiced words of the gunsmith back in Thunderhead: It ain’t our trouble.

  The man had spoken the truth and in detaching themselves from the potential death and destruction at Santa Luiz, he and the other men were acting according to the basic tenet by which Edge lived his own life. Basing his loner’s philosophy on hard learned lessons which had been violently implanted in his memory.

  So why was he going back to Santa Luiz?

  Chief Ahone had charged him with finding and bringing back Fritz von Scheel. Albeit showing the Apache’s inbred distrust of whites by having Poco Oso trail him and watch that he did as ordered. And the wanted man was on his way to his appointment with fate. Escorted by Marshal Larsen who considered it his sworn duty to do everything possible to protect both his prisoner and the old timers at the former mission. Accompanied by the son of Ahone who as an Apache brave had perhaps a more powerful reason to see that the doomed mass killer kept the appointment.

  In such circumstances, made even more volatile by the presence of the Apache hating men from Thunderhead, the reactions of the chief and their effect upon the diseased and crippled old timers of Santa Luiz were hardly likely to be influenced one way or the other by the presence or absence of Edge.

  So why the hell was he electing to ignore the lessons of the harsh past - to head directly toward another rendezvous with violence? Where, it was certain, he would have to put his life on the line in taking a hand in trouble that was not of his making.

  ‘You know what that Bayless character meant, Edge?’ Larsen asked suddenly from the strong smelling rear of the wagon.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Thunderhead folks havin’ had a bellyful of Indian trouble.’

  ‘I’m a stranger around here,’ the half breed answered as he took the makings from a shirt pocket. Knowing, as he had from the start, exactly why he was along for this ride: because he had promised the German drummer to kill him rather than allow the Apaches to take him alive and because, also, he owed the massively built Ray Hoy for locking him in a cell. The opportunity at Santa Luiz for more wanton killing - in the manner he had robbed Poco Oso to be first to put a blade in the flesh of Earl Smithson...?

  The Indian began to speak and thus gave him a chance to curtail morbid reflection on this aspect.

  ‘It happened a short while ago,’ the brave said. ‘There were two men with badges in the town of Thunderhead then. Good and fair men. It was not so bad for the Apache. Many worked there. Doing such things as they have done at the Mission of Santa Luiz. But then one of the women of low morals from the dancehall was killed. She was found in one of the old tunnels in the hills. Naked and staked to the earth. Her tongue was cut out, her breasts were cut off and that part of a woman that gives a man most pleasure - it was filled with th
e ashes of burned wood.’

  Edge struck a match on the butt of his holstered Colt and lit his cigarette.

  ‘You Apaches sure know how to make a person suffer,’ Larsen growled.

  And von Scheel made a retching sound.

  ‘It was Apaches who did this thing,’ Poco Oso allowed without emotion. ‘Two Mimbrenos, outcasts from their tribe. But they were provoked to hatred of the woman. For she made them drunk with liquor, aroused their lust with her nakedness, then laughed when she denied them.’

  ‘No white man would have done what they did to get back at her,’ Larsen put in defensively.

  ‘You asked question and I am giving you answer,’ the Apache countered. ‘I am not speaking on behalf of these braves.’

  ‘You’re an Apache!’

  ‘And you’re a lousy listener, feller,’ Edge put in.:

  The lawman grunted a soured response.

  The Indian continued: ‘The men with badges locked the Mimbrenos in place where we were prisoners. To protect them from white eyes who are also drunk and want to beat them for lusting after woman who is not a squaw. Then braves are set free and told to leave. But they do not. Instead, lay in wait for woman who caused trouble. And do to her what I have told.

  ‘They are captured by braves of my father’s Tonto tribe who believe Chief Ahone is right to try to live in peace with the white eyes. Who give them back to men with badges in the town of Thunderhead. On vow that the Mimbrenos will have justice same as if they are not Apaches.

  ‘But men who rob the earth of gold in the hills do not agree with promise made by men with badges. There is shooting and burning at the place where prisoners are held. And men with badges lay down their arms. They do not lack courage. They do this because they have no wish to kill their white eyes brothers. To protect Apaches they know are murderers and will die soon. So men with badges get on their horses and ride away, never to return. But they would need to travel many miles until they could no longer hear the screams of the Mimbrenos.’