“Maybe you’ll get a chance to shoot some seamen,” Bell whispered with a soft laugh. “Might even be able to raise a rear admiral!”
* * *
EDGE crouched in the shadow of the stable wall, listening to the sounds of Angel Francis shoeing the black stallion, and thinking about his dead wife.*
(*See—Edge: Sioux Uprising.)
An hour had passed since Patrick O’Rerry had paid the crushing price for doing more than merely look at the only nubile women in the town of Paradise. Now, the execution might never have taken place. The shattered body had been buried in an unmarked grave and every last drop of spilled blood and spewed gore had been cleaned from the punishment area. After a morning wasted dealing with the so-called sinners, the somberly dressed citizens of Paradise had hurried their Spartan midday meal and quickly dispersed to the fields, the pastureland, the barn and the construction site. In the town and on the valley floor they worked with a will beneath the bright, pleasantly warm sun.
Edge, the stranger in their midst, was the lone idler. Sitting and smoking and reflecting that since his tragically short marriage to Elizabeth, he had been as celibate as the hard-working men of Paradise. But, he concluded his thoughts sardonically, this strange town filled with religious maniacs was not the place to seek fulfillment of the renewed natural urges supplanted by the passage of time upon lessening grief.
“What do I owe you, feller?” he asked, rising as the man with the pock-marked face led the stallion out from the forge section of the stable.
“Whatever you can afford to pay will be placed in the cathedral fund,” Angel Francis replied.
“What you do with it is your business,” Edge said, reaching into his hip pocket and pulling out his bankroll. The stack of bills was a large one, the money earned dangerously. But the work had not been hard, for killing came easy to the half-breed. He was aware of the avaricious look cast at the better than a thousand dollars by Angel Francis. He counted off three singles.
“Figure four bits a shoe and a single for your trouble,” Edge said, handing the money into the man’s sweaty, sooted palm.
“The horse has been fed and watered.”
Edge shrugged and gave him another dollar. “For the feed. Water falls free from the sky. Horse did the work eating.”
“I will not quarrel with that.”
“Need supplies, feller.”
“Over at the barn. I will show you, sinner.”
He started across the street, boots raising puffs of dust, for the thirsty earth had quickly sucked up the morning’s rain. Edge pocketed the wad of bills and took the Winchester from against the stable wall before following him.
The barn was only that at one end, where the double doors of a loading bay gave entrance to an area half-filled with cut stone blocks, the other half crammed with animal feed, crates of canned food, bins of flour and bolts of black serge. An aisle ran down the centre and at the far end opened out into a temporary church with neatly aligned pews and an altar and pulpit at the front.
“We need a place in which to worship the Lord until the cathedral is erected,” Angel Francis explained when he saw the half-breed looking towards the church section. “Arch Angel Luke has consecrated the building.”
“He’s a guy with a lot of pull,” the half-breed muttered and swung towards where Sarah and Edith waited behind a short length of store counter.
One of the women returned his cool gaze with tight-lipped displeasure. The other one, with the thinner face, paler skin and deep green eyes, surveyed him with a strange kind of detached interest. Once he had been an undeniably handsome boy. But the horrors of war and the ravages of violence which had tracked him across the peacetime years into adulthood had left their marks on his face. Not altering the basic structure of the dual-heritage features, but changing their set in some subtle fashion to underlay them with a brooding cruelty. Many women found the latent evil repulsive; others discovered themselves inexorably attracted to the man, often without realizing the nature of the sexual magnet.
Now he sensed the vibrations emanating from the searching eyes of the woman and he showed her a cynical smile. “It ain’t ever worth dying for, angel,” he said. “All I want from you is some jerked beef, beans and coffee.”
The woman flushed and the color was further proof of how attractive she could be had she not chosen this way of life.
“He has money to pay, Angel Sarah,” the black-clad man at the half-breed’s side said. “I will leave you now.”
The man went out of the barn with undue haste which detracted from the dignity of his clothing.
“Payment is not demanded from sinners,” the stern-faced woman said frostily. “If tendered freely it helps to atone for their sins.”
“Pay the going rate for the supplies,” Edge told her with an easy grin. “Don’t reckon the Treasury’s got enough of what it takes to buy me into heaven.”
“The more you mock, the harder becomes the path to atonement,” the woman admonished as Angel Sarah began to gather together the half-breed’s order.
“Guess you don’t stock tobacco?”
“A tool of the Devil.”
Angel Sarah was stronger than she looked. She hefted cartons and crates on to the counter with smooth ease. Edge told her the number of each item he required and she had to take great effort to avoid meeting his appraising gaze as she took out the cans and sacks. The half-breed dug into his hip pocket again and drew out the bankroll.
“Figure ten dollars covers it,” he said.
“And the rest to pay your fine, sinner,” Arch Angel Luke boomed.
Edge whirled from the counter, sliding from a casual posture to a rigid, half crouched attitude. The Winchester was aimed from the hip, the metallic scraping of the lever action adding sound to his movement. Luke stood in the centre of the open doorway, flanked by Angel Francis on one side and Prophet Thomas on the other. Half a dozen other men were grouped behind the blank-faced trio. None of them was armed.
“Guess nothing is just as good as empty guns,” Edge said softly. The palm of his hand held the money hard against the rifle stock as his finger took first pressure on the trigger. The barrel swung from left to right and came to rest drawing a bead on Luke. “Be a pity if you get killed for nothing.”
“We had a meeting in the fields,” Luke said, ignoring the Winchester and the half-breed’s threatening words. “It was agreed not to harm you, sinner. Thus we fulfill our promise to allow you freedom. But you interfered with the Lord’s work and must pay for that. Pay in money in the form of a fine.”
Edge curled back his lips in a cold grin. “Mighty fast meeting after you heard about my bankroll.”
“It is the Lord’s will we should know of it,” Luke argued flatly. “I ask that you pay the fine peaceably in the knowledge the money will be put to good use.”
“No deal, feller. I got my own good uses for it.”
“So be it.”
It was Angel Angus who had entered the long building through the church entrance and climbed silently to the top of the stock of cut-stone blocks. Then inched along in the confined space beneath the roof, to squat in readiness immediately above where Edge stood. Angel Luke lifted a bony hand to his face and rubbed the side of his nose with a skinny finger. The Scotsman saw the signal and acted.
Crouched on the very edge of the uppermost layer of blocks, he simply tipped himself forward. As he fell, he stretched out his arms to their full length, curling his hands into talons. The men in the sunlit doorway stared intently at the half-breed, not betraying by the flicker of an eyelid what was happening. Thus, it was that sixth sense for danger—a necessity for the professional survivor—which warned Edge. And an instant later a stirring of displaced air told him the direction from which the threat came.
Ice-cold anger showed in his abruptly narrowed eyes as he took a long stride forward, pivoted on his leading foot and angled the rifle upwards. He saw the diving man but did not recognize him. What he saw was a man
seeking to disarm and perhaps destroy him. To Edge there was just one instinctive response. The moment the Winchester swung on to the target, the finger tightened on the trigger. The crack of the exploding bullet was very loud in the well-stocked barn. The shell drilled through the top of Angus’s head, seared a killing course through his brain, smashed through the roof of his mouth and exited beneath his chin. He became limp with death while still in mid-air and crumpled like a rag doll at the feet of his killer. His head was twisted to exhibit his face. There was a bubbling of welling blood in his gaping mouth. Then the crimson liquid exploded upwards as the impact of the fall squeezed the breath from his lungs into his throat.
“I warned you!” Prophet Thomas squeaked as Edge whirled again, raking rifle and eyes across the forms of the petrified women and then faced the shocked group in the doorway. “I prophesied this sinner would bring tragedy to Paradise. Did I not say he was experienced in spreading all manner of violent death?”
“Always ready to widen my range, little man,” the half-breed rasped “First time I ever shot an angel on the wing.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“HOW the friggin’ hell do they keep this barge afloat?” Forrest growled softly as the seven Union men and the two Rebels rested, waist-deep in water, under the bank at the corner of the wharf.
“Don’t reckon it does,” Bell muttered. “Restin’ on the mud. Just there to kid the city folk the South’s got a navy.”
The ironclad had certainly seen better days. She was a converted sternwheeler, her former superstructure stripped and replaced with a citadel of iron sheeting. The citadel was slitted at four points along each side and two in the forward section. The ugly snouts of 15-inch smoothbore cannon angled out through the ports. The armored pilothouse was at the stern, forward of the tall smokestack. Aligned in front of this was a line of four tub-shaped mortars calibrated for 13-inch shells—two angled to port and two to starboard. The entire ship—iron superstructure and wooden hull—was painted grey, but it was peeling in many places and patches of red rust showed elsewhere. A hole in the port bow just above the waterline had been roughly patched. Other signs of an old battle were deep dents and a few cracks in the citadel. The refit seemed to make her top heavy on the rising tide and her broad beam suggested she would be unable to make more than a few knots without danger of floundering.
Surveying the ship, which had the inappropriate name of Southern Glory lettered in faded white on the forward plating of the pilothouse, Captain Hedges had personal doubts about the viability of a river borne escape from Richmond. But it did have in its favor the element of the unexpected. Soon, the governor’s disappearance would be noticed and the time-lag until his body was found was unlikely to be long. Within moments the alarm would be given about the escaped prisoners and—in view of the importance attached to the capture of the Union troopers—no effort would be spared to find them. It was conceivable that all land exits from the city would be sealed before anybody thought about the James River as an escape route.
“Any of you men ever worked on a riverboat?” Hedges asked.
“My brother Henry gambled on the Mississippi steamers before the war,” Rhett muttered sourly, his groin beginning to ache again, worse than before now that the numbing effect of the chill water had gone.
“Don’t reckon the Rebs’ll ante up their tub in a poker game,” Hedges rasped. “Any man wants to do it the hard way, the sea’s in that direction.”
He crouched down and launched himself away from the bank, striking out with powerful crawl strokes.
“This is gonna be easy?” Forrest growled rhetorically, then pushed away from the bank in the wake of the Captain.
Floyd and Myron went next, prodded out into deep water by Bell and Scott.
“I don’t swim so good,” Rhett moaned.
“So drown,” Seward said with a scowl as he pushed away from the bank.
“But don’t start yellin’ ‘til you’re goin’ down for the third time, Bob,” Douglas told the nervous New Englander.
Rhett found his courage from the sight of the other men swimming silently away from him, leaving him alone at the bank. Then, with a boost provided by a backward glance towards the top of the gallows visible above the prison fence, he plunged out into deep water. He dog-paddled, not daring to open his mouth to take in air.
Hedges led the men around the bow of the ironclad and along the centre-river, port side, to the framework supporting the big stern wheel. A glance along the wharf showed it to be deserted. It was too early for the civilian working day to have started and a naval guard was apparently regarded as unnecessary in the Confederate capital.
All traces of night had varnished now and the white mist wisping up from the river to form a low cloud ceiling did not look strong enough to present much of a barrier against the soon-to-rise sun. On the far side of the river, the background hum of the city was already beginning to increase in volume as the citizens of Richmond awoke at the start of a new day
“We need guns and ammo,” Hedges said to the men clinging to the support around him. “We don’t need noisy trouble.”
“Maybe that part ain’t up to us,” Douglas pointed out, then added a belated: “Sir.”
Hedges ignored him to direct a hard, narrow-eyed stare at Myron and Floyd—the latter less foul-smelling after the swim. “You fellers understand what I say?” he rasped.
Myron nodded.
Floyd scowled. “I ain’t gonna kill none of my own people, Yankee.”
“Touching,” Hedges said softly, and reached up towards the higher support for the stern wheel. But he didn’t make contact. Instead, his arm crooked, hand darting under the dripping hair at the back of his head. The razor came free of the pouch. Bell kicked away from the stern of the ship and lunged to the side, going behind the terrified Myron. Treading water, he hauled the Rebel under the surface. Floyd tried to throw himself backwards, but he banged against the solid obstruction of the grinning Scott. Still holding on to the support with one hand, Hedges stabbed the razor sideways. Beating at the water to stay afloat, Floyd had no defense. The blade, powered by Hedges’ fist, skimmed across the water and sank to the hilt in Floyd’s throat. The windpipe was holed, cutting off the scream before it could start. Then the honed steel sliced through the jugular vein. Blood billowed like red smoke in the water.
It was over in the space of three seconds, with the razor nestling back in the neck pouch.
“Him down, him up!” Hedges rasped, pointing first at Scott, then at Bell.
Scott drew in a deep breath and plunged for the river bed, helped by the dead weight of Floyd. Bell moved back to the stern for a handhold and dragged the gasping Myron up to where he could breathe again. The rising tide swept Floyd’s diluted blood upstream.
“Your brother was an idealist, feller,” Hedges told Myron. “He wasn’t in the war long enough to live without all that honor crap.”
“He’s dead?” Myron croaked, snapping his head to left and right, searching for his brother.
“It’s the only thing to be when you can’t live,” Hedges told him. “Your decision. This tub ain’t no passenger ship, feller.”
“I got outta the war so I wouldn’t have to kill,” Myron groaned.
“Him, too, Captain?” Bell asked with an excited grin.
“Just watch him close, trooper,” Hedges replied. “It ain’t what you say, its, the way that you say it.”
Then, with another fast glance along the dock, Hedges climbed up on to the stern wheel supports and on to the narrow strip of decking surrounding the citadel. The others followed him, Scott breaking surface to be the last man aboard.
“You fixed him so he won’t float up?” Forrest rasped.
Scott grinned evilly as he squeezed water from his sodden clothes. “He won’t be comin’ up for awhile, Frank.”
The entrance hatch to the citadel was aft, between the rear of the pilothouse and the smokestack. It was latched, but not locked. Hedges eased it open a cra
ck and peered inside while the others cast steady or nervous glances along the dock.
“You know somethin’, Captain?” Seward said.
But Hedges whirled on him and drove him into silence with a piercing look from his ice-blue eyes. Then he eased the hatchway open further and invited the men to look through. He had been wrong in thinking the ironclad had been left unguarded. The citadel was long and narrow, with barred grilles in the low overhead bulkhead to admit light and air. Running down the centre was a continuous line of store bins filled with shells and primers for the cannon and mortars. Four Rebel seaman were seated on the decking, their backs resting against the bins. All of them were soundly asleep. An empty bottle was held upright between the thighs of one of the men.
“What’s the penalty for sleeping on the job in a war situation, Captain?” Forrest whispered.
“First one for you, sergeant,” Hedges hissed. “Bell, take the second. Seward, the third. The others come inside and cream Myron if he even breathes too loud.”
He went through the hatchway first and the others slid in after him, Forrest, Bell and Seward moving into a single file to line themselves up for the kill. Rhett closed the hatchway silently while Douglas and Scott made a human sandwich of the terrified Myron.
Hedges led the way along the deck on the opposite side from the sleeping seamen, moving soundlessly on the balls of his feet. Their victims slept in a short line, only a few inches between them. Their holstered revolvers had been visible from the hatchway, but it was not until the Union men were immediately behind the sailors, leaning over the bins, that they saw the rifles lying on the decking.
Sweat beads erupted from tension-opened pores to mix with the droplets of river water held amongst the stubble on the troopers’ faces. Hedges sensed the three pairs of impatient eyes directed at him. He knew each man was itching for the kill and burning with desire to feel the cold metal of a gun in his hands again. It was just a few short hours since they had last possessed fire-power and experienced the evil excitation of seeing men die at their hands. But to the troopers, who could not recall any other kind of existence, bringing death to others was all they lived for. Each minute of enforced idleness with empty hands had been stretched into an hour. Hedges knew how they felt, for he was as one with them.
EDGE: Blood Run (Edge series Book 14) Page 6