Then he heard Larsen yell triumphantly after blasting at the other flank of the attackers. He was not in the church now. Instead, in a house on the opposite side of the plaza to the one which Edge left.
The half breed waited until the group of Indians swerved their mounts into the gap between the house and the church, slowing them from the gallop and poised to leap off their backs. He came out of the doorway and backed along the rear of the house, his Colt drawn and aimed from the hip. The Winchester held in the other hand and leveled from the other hip.
Then three braves who had flung themselves to the ground as soon as they rode into cover, came around the corner of the house. They had not expected Edge to be out in the open.
The rifle and the revolver cracked in unison and two of the Apaches died with their death masks expressions of surprise. The third one got off a shot with his carbine, but Edge threw himself backward, going under the bullet. He cocked the Colt hammer as he started the fall and squeezed the trigger before the thud of his back against the ground. And the third brave was sent spinning into death with another heart shot. Each of them had a blood encrusted scalp hanging from his weapons belt.
‘One hair-raising moment after another, ain’t it?’ Edge rasped through his grinning teeth as he rolled on to his belly, rose to all fours and scuttled into the gap between the two houses.
Out on the plaza, gunshots exploded in a constant din, the reports echoing off the facades of the buildings, and resounding distantly among the ridges of the encircling high ground.
The war cries of the Apaches had the ring of madness to them. Their inbred lust for killing, latent and trapped for the period they had lived on a white eyes controlled Rancheria, now burst to the surface and demanded to be satisfied.
Edge ignored the clamor on the plaza. He had enough experience of Indians in general and the Apaches in particular to be aware of the brand of mass hysteria which had Ahone and his braves in its grip. And had felt something of the kind himself during the early days of the War Between the States, in battles with the enemy during which the primitive urge to destroy - be it a human being or an inanimate object - had transcended all other considerations. Not least self-preservation.
He used a water butt to get on to the roof of the house which had been his cover. Both guns were cocked and he felt as cool and hard as the metal of the Colt and the Winchester as he bellied forward over the flat roof, going towards the front of the house.
From here he could see a half dozen braves, firing and yelling, closing in on the house where Larsen was holed up. It was a sure bet, he thought, that more Apaches were at the rear of the house. From beneath the roof on which he was sprawled he could hear other highly excited Indians. Another group, led by Ahone, was running toward the closed door of the church.
Up on the parapet of the bell tower, Fritz von Scheel stood like some effigy hewn out of rock.
Edge decided he had no more than a few seconds left to live. And he viewed his impending death with the same ice coldness as he relished the prospect of blasting a bunch of whooping and hollering Apaches into the same eternity that was poised to accept him.
Because what did it matter?
If there was life after death, could its purgatory be worse than so much he had endured in the past? And if the fire and brimstone of the preachers’ awesome sermons did not exist? He could use the rest.
He rose to his feet, legs splayed and arms bent at the elbows which rested against each hip. Winchester gripped in his left hand and Colt in his right Rifle angled toward the Apaches going to get von Scheel and pistol aimed at those intent upon killing Marshal Larsen.
He squeezed both triggers simultaneously and thought about his parents. About Jamie. Beth. Would he get to see them again? If he did, Frank Forrest would be around, too. And Billy Seward. Bob Rhett and a thousand other cold hearted killers. From the war and afterwards. For how could a man like Edge get to meet up with his loved ones unless heaven and hell were the same place?
More than two bullets were blasted at the shrieking, milling Apaches on the plaza to send more than half a dozen pitching and rolling to the ground, every agony triggered movement pulsing a fresh spurt of blood from their wounds.
Those who were not cut down by the fusillade were momentarily stunned. Skidded to a halt and whirled away from their initial objective. Shock widened eyes raking from the fallen braves to those others who had survived the vicious hail of bullets. Then they looked frantically at the blank facades of the buildings on three sides of the plaza, and saw the tall, lean, two-gunned Edge on the house roof, grinning as he cocked and fired the Colt again. One handed, he pumped the action of the Winchester with the stock held tight to his hip by his elbow, and triggered a fourth shot.
For a further part of a second the Apaches were as wildly confused as their ponies which were rearing and snorting in response to the acrid stink of drifting gun smoke.
Then, as the man on the roof hurled himself down and to the side, moving faster than the two braves who stumbled and fell under the deadly assaults of his bullets, they heard the thud of galloping hooves and the rattle of spinning wheels. And for two of them who snapped their heads around to stare out beyond the aspen grove to the east trail, the sight of von Scheel’s wagon speeding toward the Mission of Santa Luiz was the last they ever saw. Another fusillade of rifle shots exploded. Muzzle flashes stabbed through the darkness above the backs of the team, and two of the six bullets that cracked across the plaza blasted into vulnerable flesh.
Edge had decided to abandon his suicidal stand the moment the volley of shots caused him to flick his eyes toward the eastern slope of the basin. And he saw the city style wagon pitching and rolling down the trail at the head of an elongated cloud of billowing dust. He gave not a thought to the who and the how and the why of the wagon’s sudden appearance. Simply took advantage of the Apaches’ continued confusion to kill two more of them, then dropped flat to the roof. An instant before the no longer triumphant braves wrenched out of their shock and returned fire. Some exploding shots toward the racing wagon. Others directing a spray of potential death at the roof where Edge had been skylined.
Against the clatter of the now slowing wagon, the crackle of gunfire, the thudding of hooves, the snorting of panicked horses and the screams of frightened men, the half breed bellied toward the rear of the roof. Thumbing back the hammer of the Colt and working the lever action of the Winchester.
He could hear voices in the house beneath him, coming through the smashed window and open doorway of the kitchen. And he lay the rifle down beside him, leaned out over the rim of the roof, then folded downward.
Three braves were making to leave the kitchen and go through to the front of the house, fearfully eager to see what was causing the panic on the plaza.
Edge had four bullets left in the Colt and, hanging upside-down at the top of the doorway, he squeezed the trigger and fanned the hammer, expending the load as fast as the mechanism would allow.
He saw two braves fall, all three shrieking their terror. Then hauled himself out of the doorway as two bullets cracked through it And, with the grin of the pleasure of killing still pasted firmly to his lean, heavily bristled face, he holstered the empty gun, snatched up the rifle and powered into a roll across the roof. Hurriedly checked the area between this house and the next. And dropped to the ground.
A gun exploded close by and chips of adobe sprayed into the side of his face.
He whirled toward the gap between the rear corners of the houses and saw Poco Oso there. One of the brave’s hands was pressed to his belly, blood squeezing out through the cracks between his fingers. In the other was the old Navy Colt.
‘Where help come from?’ he asked. There was defeat in his face and his voice: the handsome young brave knew he would not have a second chance to kill Edge - that he could not cock and fire his revolver before the aimed Winchester spat death at him.
‘Your guess is as good as mine, feller,’ the half breed rasped as he
moved toward the wounded Indian.
The gunfire on the plaza was more sporadic now, and there was less shouting.
Poco Oso let his gun hand fall to his side and he sagged to lean a shoulder against the adobe wall.
‘You will kill me now?’ he asked dully.
‘You aimed and missed. I told you about that.’
The Apache closed his eyes.
Edge brought the rifle muzzle to within an inch of his chest. Left of centre. And squeezed the trigger. From such close range, the impact of the bullet sent the corpse backwards for at least four feet before it started to fall. The half breed stepped over it as if it were a heap of trash. He checked the kitchen of the house carefully from the window - to make sure the other two Apaches were dead - before he went inside. There he paused to reload his revolver and listened to the final sounds of battle out on the plaza.
The smile was gone now from his face, which was in the usual impassive set, the urge for killing fully satisfied.
‘Mr. Edge? Mr. Larsen? You folks all right?’
The half breed recognized the voice of the bald headed Jake Donabie.
‘You see any more Apaches that ain’t dead?’ This was Phil Frazier.
Edge paused again in the parlor of the house to take out the makings and began to roll a cigarette, thinking that maybe the acrid bite of tobacco smoke in his throat would negate the bitter taste on the back of his tongue. A physical sensation born of emotional disturbance, as he reflected upon those moments during which he had been ready to die. For what?
‘Help me, somebody! Damnit, somebody help me!’
In the stillness between the ringing voices, just the trickling of the spring water marred the total silence which otherwise would have been clamped over the Mission of Santa Luiz.
For the opportunity to make others die. That was for what.
Edge spat forcefully, ran his tongue along the gummed strip of paper and completed the cigarette. Stepped into the doorway and struck a match on the frame. He raked his eyes over the scene of the massacre and no sign of emotion showed in a single line of his face as it was illuminated in the flare of the match which he touched to the end of the cigarette.
The wagon had been raced across the width of the plaza and come to rest against the wall of the church at the end of a sliding turn. One of the team horses was dead in the traces and the other looked exhausted from the struggle to get free. Lloyd DeHart was sprawled in the total stillness of death across the seat. The gaunt faced John Newman was spread-eagled beside a rear wheel, his goatee beard stained red by the blood that had gushed from a throat wound. Elmer Randall had not died immediately from the bullet in his chest. There was time for him to haul himself into a sitting posture against the front wheel of the wagon. Before the life drained out of him and left his morose eyes wide open.
Chief Ahone’s city suit marked him out clearly among the more than twenty Apaches who were slumped lifelessly on the dusty plaza between the aspen grove and the front of the church.
Here and there, a horse carcass lay amid the human corpses. One such was from Thunderhead and still lashed to its back were the scalped bodies of Jordan and George Woodin and the massive Ray Hoy who no longer looked so big. These men, like the others from Thunderhead who were rigid from being a long time dead, had great patches of congealed blood surrounding deep wounds in their backs.
All the horses were motionless, heads hung low in the aftermath of panic. The only movement on the moonlit plaza as Edge made his glinting eyed survey through the curling smoke of his cigarette was in front of the house immediately opposite, where the black clad marshal sagged drunkenly in the doorway. Sideways on to Edge, so the half breed was able to see the knife that was sunk to the hilt in the centre of the lawman’s back.
Then the one-eyed Phil Frazier showed himself in the doorway of the church. Jake Donabie appeared beside him. Both of them held Winchester rifles as, like Edge, they surveyed the moon shadowed buildings for Apaches who had survived.
Two other old timers whom Edge recognized without knowing their names, stepped out from between houses. They also had rifles.
‘We done for them all, Phil,’ one of these men called.
Larsen groaned, slid down the doorframe and was then a still and silent heap on the threshold of the house. Edge started toward him, then veered away, to head for the aspen grove. The rifle was canted to his shoulder and he drew the razor from his neck pouch. A glance up at the bell tower showed that von Scheel was still standing on the parapet, seemingly petrified by the fear he had experienced while looking down upon the slaughter.
We felt so helpless, Mr. Edge,’ Frazier said in a melancholy tone as Donabie moved out of the church doorway to check that the men sprawled on and near the wagon were as dead as they looked. It was Lloyd DeHart reckoned we oughta see if maybe the drummer had a rifle aboard his wagon. Turned out that female stuff was just one line he carried. Two cases of brand new Winchesters and three crates of shells hid under all that fancy stuff.’
Edge used the razor to cut through the ropes which lashed three corpses to the back of a strong looking black gelding. The bodies fell heavily to the ground, not unbending from their folded over attitudes. There was blood crusted and blackened on the saddle, but the half breed ignored it as he swung astride the horse and slid the Winchester into the empty boot.
‘Had a lot of volunteers to come give you and the marshal a hand,’ Frazier went on. ‘Folks appreciated what you done for them. But couldn’t properly fit any more on the wagon.’
Edge nodded and looked up at the German drummer: ‘Seems you’re a man of many parts, feller!’ he called.
‘A lot of them private!’ Frazier growled. ‘Bet he figured to sell these rifles to the Apaches.’ He tossed the Winchester away.
‘You leavin’ already?’ Donabie asked miserably after discovering the Santa Luiz old timers were as dead as they looked.
‘Got some money waiting for me in Tucson.’
The gelding beneath him was eager to leave the plaza and its stink of stale gun smoke and spilled blood.
‘I’ll let the others know it’s okay to come back,’ Frazier growled as he swung into the church.
Larsen gave a low groan and raised his chin off his chest. The mark of death was written into every line of his darkly bristled face.
‘Edge,’ he croaked. ‘I ain’t gonna be able to take him back to Los Alamos.’ There was a plea in every word that struggled out of his slack mouth.
Then Frazier jerked on the bell rope. The German was hit in the back by the rim of the bell and plunged off the parapet. He did not scream as he tumbled into mid-air. But Frazier uttered a cry of alarm as the rope was wrenched from his hands by the plummeting weight of von Scheel. The end of the rope snapped out from between the man’s bound wrists a moment before he crashed into the top of his wagon and smashed through it.
Cartons were crushed and bottles were shattered under the impact that killed the man.
‘What was that?’ Larsen gasped, trying in vain to turn his head.
Edge twisted in the saddle to look up the east trail toward the ravine. Amelia Randall was at the head of a group of old timers trying to hurry on aged legs, desperately anxious to find out how many loved ones and friends had died in the battle of Santa Luiz. While the encircling ridges continued to echo distantly with the two note call of the bell.
Ding ... dong.
‘Like the lady might say it, feller,’ the half breed answered Larsen as the sweet smells from the smashed perfume containers in the wagon filled the plaza. ‘That was a Von falling.’
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EDGE: Massacre Mission Page 13