‘Got a taste of their own medicine, uh?’ Larsen asked rhetorically, but there was a strained quality about his apparent satisfaction with the fate of the Apache murderers.
When Edge glanced at Poco Oso he saw that the Indian had also detected this.
‘First they sliced off their manhoods. A little at a time. Then forced them to watch as the pieces of flesh were tossed to hungry dogs. Next their toes and fingers were removed. Their ears and their noses. They were staked out in the manner of the woman they killed and the men relieved themselves on to their faces. Lastly, fires were lit on their bellies.
‘They suffered their agonies from the setting of one sun until the rising of the next.’
There was a long pause after the brave had finished his story. Then Larsen said:
‘Some whites have learned some real mean tricks from you Apaches.’
‘There was not whiskey and women of low morals to tempt the weakest of Apache braves before the white eyes came,’ Poco Oso responded.
‘Yeah, all you redskins were angels without any damn wings, I don’t bet. Appears to me those Mimbrenos got poetic justice, wouldn’t you say so, Edge?’
‘Some Thunderhead people sure seem to be well versed in how to hand it out,’ the half breed answered sardonically. He steered the wagon around a curve in the trail and saw ahead the end of the spur.
‘Damnit!’ Larsen snarled. ‘It ain’t no kiddin’ matter. and I’m not speakin’ what’s in my mind. Them Thunderhead lawmen were a damn disgrace to the badges they wore. They should’ve made a stand and died if necessary, Don’t matter what their prisoners were.’
Edge’s estimation of the marshal from Santa Fe, which had been high at first meeting then gone into decline, rose again.
He hauled on the reins to halt the team, dropped his cigarette to the trail and jumped down, crushing out its fire beneath a boot heel.
‘Hey, why the stop?’ Larsen wanted to know, while the Apache eyed the half breed quizzically.
‘We’re just a mile away from where we’re headed,’ Edge answered. ‘Much closer and even if the wagon ain’t seen or heard, it’ll likely be smelled.’
Larsen pushed open the rear doors and emerged. Paused to give the bond hampered von Scheel a hand to get out of the wagon, then scowled and brushed at his clothing as he complained: ‘Damnit, I stink to high heaven from just ridin’ in back with the stuff.’
Poco Oso climbed down from the seat and said coldly: ‘It will save expense of flowers for your grave, white eyes. Should you try to trick Chief Ahone.’
‘There vill be no trick, Apache,’ the German said miserably as the lawman glowered his anger at the Indian. But there was contempt in his flesh crowded green eyes as they switched their attention from Edge to Larsen and back again. ‘If this had been vhat vas intended, you vould still be in the prison cell. Or dead.’
Larsen whirled as if to snarl an angry denial at von Scheel. But the move was a feint, giving him the opportunity to pump the action of the Winchester as he took a double handed grip on it with the German the apparent target of his temper. A second later his actual intention was clear as, in a shoulders hunched, sideways-on stance, he aimed the rifle from the hip at the Apache. Along half the length of the wagon.
‘I’ll kill you if I have to, Indian!’ the lawman rasped.
The brave was taken by surprise. But he recovered quickly and turned his head slowly to look away from Larsen and direct another of his quizzical gazes at the half breed.
Asked: ‘You knew of this?’
‘No, feller.’
‘You do something about it?’
‘Damnit, get his gun and knife, mister!’ Larsen ordered. ‘If you don’t, I’ll kill him for sure. Ain’t we got enough hostiles to deal with at Santa Luiz without takin’ in another one who’s likely to jump us any second?’
Edge was standing close to the brave. Now he moved closer, but behind him. To reach for his weapons belt and take from it the old Colt and the knife.
Larsen grunted with satisfaction and von Scheel sighed with relief. Poco Oso hissed a single Apache word in the tone of a curse.
Edge tossed the weapons far out into a patch of brush and said to the brave: ‘If it hadn’t been him, it’d been me.’
‘I thought you had trust in me, white eyes.’
The half breed shook his head. ‘Make it a point never to trust anybody.’
‘Let’s go,’ Larsen growled, gesturing with the rifle which was still leveled toward the Indian. ‘Before it’s too late to help the folks at Santa Luiz.’
Poco Oso turned around to begin walking away from the wagon in the direction of the former mission. And said: ‘If the white eyes from the town have been seen by my father’s sentries, it is already too late. Chief Ahone will think I have failed and the man Edge commanded the attack.’
Larsen signaled with a nod of his head for von Scheel to walk in front of him. But the German was careful not to get between the muzzle of the rifle and the broad back of the Indian. Edge fell in beside the lawman and lit a freshly rolled cigarette.
‘I’ll give you another ‘if,’ Indian,’ the tall, thin, black-clad marshal countered. ‘If there’d been a fight between that many whites and that many Apaches, we’d have, heard the gunfire. Ain’t that so, Edge?’
‘Figure those Thunderhead fellers realized they left town in too much of a hurry,’ the half breed answered. ‘Be kicking their heels now. Waiting for nightfall before making their move.’
‘Damn right,’ Larsen agreed as the quartet of men entered the late afternoon shade of the ravine a few yards beyond the two armed signpost.
‘Night is another world from day,’ Poco Oso said levelly, his brand of confidence in a much lower key to that of the lawman. ‘My people are at home in both. Few white eyes are so.’
Larsen laughed harshly. ‘Quit tryin’ to scare us, Indian. Or I might get nervous enough to blast you into another world.’
The brave glanced scornfully over his shoulder.
Larsen’s mirth faded and he glowered his anger at Poco Oso. Then snapped his head around to direct it at Edge when the half breed reached out a hand and placed it under the barrel of the rifle. To tilt it skywards.
‘One shot is likely to fire off a whole lot more, feller. If it’s like we figure. And the Apaches still have mission control.’
CHAPTER TEN
THEY WERE a little over halfway into the two hundred yard long ravine as the Apache scowled his dissatisfaction that Larsen had taken the half breed’s point. For now the chance was gone to goad the lawman into exploding a gunshot that would warn Ahone and his braves of men approaching Santa Luiz from the east.
Edge read this in the expression of Poco Oso just before the Apache swung his head to face forward again, perhaps contemplating a sudden and suicidal attempt to turn the tables on the white men. Hopeful Larsen would blast at him instinctively. When he would die content in the knowledge that the sacrifice was of use to his people.
The half breed abruptly lengthened his stride, to come up close behind the German.
‘What’s the idea?’ Larsen rasped.
But before the demand was completed, it was already partially answered. For Edge had drawn the Colt from his holster and pressed it into the nape of von Scheel’s neck. A strangled cry squeezed from the German’s constricted throat as he came to a sudden halt.
The Apache and the lawman also pulled up short, equally shocked and confused by the half breed’s action.
Edge nodded toward the end of the ravine, where the sloping trail seemed to be curtailed by the reddening sky of approaching evening between the rock faces.
‘If Ahone ain’t got sentries up on the rims who’ve seen us already, there’ll be Apaches positioned to spot us soon as we crest that rise.’
‘Don’t tell anyone what you’re gonna do before you do it, will you?’ Larsen growled.
‘Vhy you hold gun on me?’ von Scheel whined. *You made me promise.’
Po
co Oso nodded his understanding of another part of the half breed’s plan while the marshal continued to scowl his confusion.
‘He is man of his word … to white eyes,’ the brave rasped. ‘My people want you to suffer much, Apache killer. So it is not me but you, threatened with quick death, who will gain our captors safe passage across the ground held by my people.’
‘Hey, that’s smart,’ larsen allowed.
Von Scheel had to swallow hard to shift the constricting fear from his throat to ask: ‘But vhat vill ve do vhen ve are at Santa Luiz? Have you thought about that, Herr Edge?’
‘That ain’t my problem, feller. My job is just to bring you there. You want to start moving again?’
He applied a little pressure to the gun against the sweating neck and the German did as requested.
‘You as well, Indian,’ Larsen growled, and again leveled his Winchester at the back of Poco Oso. Added: ‘Double insurance.’
And this was how they emerged on to the highest point of the trail at the end of the ravine - two abreast with the guns of those behind threatening instant death to the pair in front.
The sun was starting to set now, its leading arc already below the ridges to the south west, the crimson light of its dying ferocity casting long shadows across the large basin at the bottom of which were clustered the adobe buildings of Santa Luiz.
None of these shadows were cast by human forms; either on the encircling slopes or down in the oasis-like settlement. But to the four men who emerged from the ravine and started out on the trail’s down grade, the silence that felt like it had a tangible presence in the cooling air of the mountain evening had an eerie quality, that seemed to be transmitting a tacit message of lurking danger.
With the heat of the day almost gone, tension started to squeeze beads of salt moisture from their every pore, pasting their clothing to their flesh and trickling irritatingly across their brows and over their cheeks. Their eyes flicked back and forth across sockets, raking over every pocket of cover on the slopes, along the jagged line of every sandstone ridge and searching the blank walls and unmoving vegetation of Santa Luiz. Seeking a puff of dust, a glint of sunlight on gun metal or a hurried snatching back of a hand, foot or head. But neither Apaches nor whites revealed their presence as the four men drew closer to the community, walking at the funereal pace dictated by the two prisoners.
‘Where the hell is everybody?’ Larsen rasped in a tense whisper.
‘When my people are ready to be seen, you will see them,’ Poco Oso answered. He was gripped by the same degree of anxiety as the lawman. It showed in his rigid gait and was heard in the thickness of his voice.
‘Perhaps there is nobody left alive,’ von Scheel suggested huskily. ‘Perhaps the men from Thunderhead vere seen. And the old people vere slaughtered. The Apache Indians are gone.’
‘I’ll put my money on the Indian telling it the way it is,’ Edge said evenly.
‘So why ain’t any of the old folks showin’ themselves?’ Larsen wanted to know.
‘Maybe they’re even more spooked than you are,’ the half breed offered with an icy grin that parted his lips a fraction but did not touch the glinting slits of his eyes. ‘Scared stiff.’
‘Stiff from being dead, I think,’ von Scheel disagreed. ‘And the Apache Indians are hiding in Santa Luiz. Waiting until ve valk into their trap.’
‘For four fellers who could have no future, we’re spending a lot of time trying to look into it.’
‘What else you wanna do, Edge? Play a spellin’ bee or somethin’?’
‘All I want is to get this job done.’
‘And you think my people will allow you to leave after you have cheated them, white eyes?’ Again the Apache had contempt in his tone as the quartet reached the foot of the slope and started along the level stretch of trail toward Santa Luiz. ‘If they are denied the right to punish the Apache killer, you will be made to suffer in his place.’
‘Just said my piece about trying to look into the future.’
They were close enough to the buildings and the greenery now to hear the almost musical sound of the running spring water in the old mission church. But then the surrounding stillness was shattered by a less pleasant sound: the sharp crack of a rifle shot. Then the metal on rock crash of the bullet as it ricocheted, followed by three progressively fainter echoes as the firing of the gun and its effect resounded among the ridges from where the initial crack and crash had come.
Von Scheel gasped his terror and all four men came to a halt a few yards short of the aspen grove at the centre of the plaza. He was held rigid from head to toe by the fear of death. But Edge, Larsen and Poco Oso turned and tilted their heads to look up at the jagged south western ridge, where three mounted Apaches were silhouetted on the skyline against the trailing arc of the sun.
Chief Ahone’s distinctive style of city-suited and stetson-hatted attire marked him out plainly as the one in the centre of the trio. But it was the brave to the right who cupped his hands to his mouth to yell a question in the Apache tongue, the words resounding among the peaks in the same manner as the rifle shot.
‘Tell him to speak American, or this feller gets it in the neck. Here and now.’
While Edge rasped the order against the echoing voice of the brave, he pressed the muzzle of the Colt more firmly against the flesh of the hapless von Scheel, forcing the man’s head forward.
‘You tell him, white eyes!’ Poco Oso snarled softly.
‘Bye, feller,’ Edge murmured. This way has to beat torture and hanging both.’
‘I tell him!’ the son of Chief Ahone blurted. ‘And answer him.’
‘Mein Gott, I am dying a thousand times,’ the German gasped.
‘I know how you feel,’ Larsen muttered as, like Edge, he quickly glanced around. In groups of three, more Apaches heeled their ponies forward from behind the ridges. Eleven such trios were now spaced equidistant around the rim of the basin.
‘It is ordered you speak in the tongue of the white eyes!’ Poco Oso was shouting through the horn of his cupped hands as the braves showed themselves, but halted their ponies only feet away from the cover which had previously concealed them. ‘Or Apache killer will die quickly from bullet! This is answer to what you ask!’
All the braves had their rifles drawn, stocks rested on their thighs and barrels aimed skywards. But as soon as Edge’s threat was related to them, many of the Indians threw their weapons to their shoulders.
‘Damnit to hell!’ Larsen growled.
‘Hold it!’ Edge snapped, his words in unison with an order shrieked in Apache by Ahone’s spokesman.
The rifles were ported again. And the tense silence returned to the basin, while the chief could be seen leaning to the side of his pony, talking to the brave on his right.
The brave put his hands to his mouth again. ‘Your father, Chief Ahone, asks what is meaning of what he sees, Poco Oso?’
‘Tell him we want in to the mission,’ Edge responded to the captive Indian’s bleakly expectant gaze. ‘After that, a truce talk.’
The message was conveyed followed by a longer pause than before. The city-suited Apache chief sat astride his pony in a contemplative attitude, then spoke curtly to the brave on his right.
‘Your father, Chief Ahone, agrees to this, Poco Oso! He warns we will take lives of all if Apache killer dies quickly!’
There was no shouted order on this occasion. When Ahone and his flanking braves withdrew into cover behind the ridges, the rest of the encircling Apaches did likewise.
‘Holy cow!’ Larsen rasped after blowing out pent up breath through his teeth. ‘I made it thirty-three Indians up in them hills.’
‘Check, feller,’ Edge agreed, applying gentle pressure to the back of von ScheePs neck, which was enough to set him moving toward the cover of the former mission church. ‘Which means he didn’t send back to the Rancheria for reinforcements.’
Poco Oso snorted his scorn as he also started for the closed doorway und
er the bell tower on the far side of the plaza. ‘There are more than enough, white eyes. And I have not overlooked the haters of Apache nation who come from Thunderhead. Your truce talk will serve no purpose. You will all be killed. And this because of one man who will die-anyway. By hand of my people or your own.’
The door of the mission church was eased open a few inches. Then all the way. The six member council of old timers who represented the citizens of Santa Luiz peered despairingly through the fast gathering dusk at the group of four who halted on the other side of the threshold.
‘Welcome back to you, Mr. Edge,’ the tall, thin, one-eyed Phil Frazier greeted dully. ‘You done like you promised and you don’t deserve to die for that. But I reckon this Apache is right. We’re all gonna die.’ His one good eye glared at von Scheel and Poco Oso. Then he nodded to Larsen.
The lame legged Lloyd DeHart asked: ‘What was that he said about folks from Thunderhead?’
‘He said not to count on them, feller,’ Edge growled. ‘And maybe he’s right.’
‘How’s that?’ Larsen asked, fast and anxious.
‘Why should they help people who ain’t hospitable?’
The line of old timers were all perplexed.
‘Invite them folks in, you dunderheads!’ Amelia Randall chided from within the mission church.
‘Obliged, ma’am,’ the half breed answered as the line of old timers fell back and he urged von Scheel with the Colt to go through the doorway. ‘Outside in the mountains on a night like this, a man could catch his death.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT HAD got to be full night now. The newcomers entered the church and, as the door was closed at their backs, candles were lit. In the flickering light it could be seen how the building had been transformed from its former religious purpose to meet the needs of the sick and the old, who chose to place their faith in the healing powers of God’s water rather than the guiding light of His spirit. All the pews had been removed from their original positions and many of them remodeled into high-sided beds which were aligned along the south wall in the manner of a hospital ward. Others had been totally dismantled to become lumber from which partitions were made to sub-divide a section of the north wall into cubicles with fabric curtains strung between. Here and there a curtain was not closed and metal bathtubs could be seen.
EDGE: Massacre Mission Page 10