“Yeah, Frank?”
“All that noise Hal’s makin’ is gettin’ to be irksome. Give him a hand, uh?”
“How, Frank?”
“Across the friggin’ mouth!”
Seward lashed out, but Douglas rolled out of range.
“Okay, okay!” the corporal whined.
“Must have been patrolling around here when the boats blew,” Forrest said to Hedges. “Saw us heading north and this is the only cover in the area.”
“Past doesn’t matter,” Rhett moaned, clutching his Spencer tightly to keep his hands from trembling. “They aren’t going to just keep sticking out their heads to be shot off.”
The sergeant spat. “Real wise, trooper,” he said wryly. “That high price education of yours tell you what we ought to do now?”
“All I know is we should thank Corporal Douglas. We’d all have been shot if he didn’t show himself.”
“Friggin’ right,” Douglas rasped through gritted teeth.
“And the Rebs wouldn’t know where we were if he didn’t take his mornin’ stroll,” Scott countered grimly,
“Damn right,” Forrest said quickly, grasping at a way out of the verbal battle he looked like losing.
Hedges heard the exchanges without listening to them: his narrowed eyes raking the four hundred feet of sloping turf between where he lay and the rearing wall of the monastery. Sheep and cattle continued to roam the area, still skittish but no longer galloping in panic now that the firing had stopped. On the other side of the wall, the monastery appeared deserted, every monk having scuttled clear of the lawned quadrangle to seek cover. The splashes of blood on the grass formed a bright marker pointing to the position where the Rebel soldiers waited. If they were still there. The built-up tensions of the long wait had caused them to blunder, announcing their presence before all seven troopers were in sight. But there was no guarantee they would continue to play it wrong and stay in the same position. The wall angle diagonally across the quadrangle from where they had fired offered another area of solid cover within sight of the troopers. And, if there was a door other than the main one which faced up the slope, the Rebels could have infiltrated the monastery.
“I don’t reckon no charge down the hill, sir,” the sergeant said when he saw that Hedges had completed the new survey. “On the run we’d lose accuracy and the Rebs’d be able to pick us off like crippled jack rabbits.”
“And no good trying to flank the bastards,” Bell put in. “Open terrain no matter which way we hit.”
“And they gotta figure we might try it,” Scott said.
“They don’t seem in any hurry to start the shooting again.” This from Rhett, less tense now that several minutes had passed without gunfire shattering the tranquility of the verdant basin.
“Like they’re waitin’ for somethin’,” Douglas rasped.
“May have sent a man for reinforcements when they saw us come outta the river,” the sergeant suggested, and grinned. “Heard about our rep. Know it takes more than a handful of Rebs to handle this Union troop.”
“Oh, Christ!” Rhett gasped. “Let’s circle wide and take off.”
“Well, Captain?” Forrest wanted to know, meeting the blue slits of Hedges eyes with a level, challenging stare.
“Can’t make an omelet without cracking eggs, sergeant,” the Captain said softly. “Or mutton stew without killing the meat.”
Forrest was angrily puzzled for a moment, then a grin spread across his grizzled face. “Got a preference for beef myself, sir.”
Both men turned to look down the slope, drawing beads with their Spencers. The rifles cracked and animals were taken on the run and keeled over. The lever actions were worked, spinning the ejected cartridges into the brush. Spooked by the first shots, the sheep and cattle raced and turned, colliding with each other. The Spencers exploded more sound.
Giggling, Billy Seward joined in the slaughter.
“We ain’t that hungry,” Rhett muttered into a moment of silence between shots, gazing ruefully at the mounting number of animals carcasses littering the slope.
“Ain’t all for eatin’, you New England dude!” Bell yelled starting to fire as he realized the reason for the slaughter. “Them dead animals are our cover for making it down the slope.”
“Well I’ll be buggered!” Rhett exclaimed.
“Don’t he get the urge at the strangest times?” Bell yelled as he drilled a bullet into the brain of a panicked cow.
* * *
THE two Spokane Indians burst through the entrance to the church section of the barn. One of them leveled a Winchester while the other sprinted into the huddle of terrified Earthly Angels. A frail old man was dragged from the group.
“It is the will of the Lord!” Arch Angel Luke boomed after the retreating Indians and their struggling captive. “We shall pray for your soul, Angel Joseph.”
His hat pushed on to the back of his head, Edge shot a glance around the corner of the barn. He peered along the street for only a split-second, but it was enough. The black-garbed victim was being forced to run up the slope towards the punishment area. The waiting Indians watched in eager anticipation. But Gabb and Mackinlay had had their fill of spectator sport for awhile. They had risen from in front of the house and were dragging their naked women down the incline of the street. Lust and alcohol colored and contorted the faces of the trappers. For the first time, Edge noticed the ugly yellow fester covering the untreated bullet wound on the back of Gabb’s right hand. But he was apparently immune to pain as he raised the hand to tilt the bottle to his lips. Then he hurled the bottle away from him and turned abruptly to shove the terrified Edith through an open doorway. Mackinlay scooped up his woman and laughed hysterically as he carried her into the same house.
The half-breed could no longer see what was happening, but a roar of approval from the punishment area signaled that the angel named Joseph had reached his place of brutal execution. The double doors at the end of the barn were fastened with a length of timber slotted through two brackets.
“How’d you raise twenty-five thousand dollars?” he asked as he lifted the bar.
“Some of us were rich when we were sinners,” the white-faced Sarah answered. “Most of it was donated by myself and the other Earthly Angels. The balance we earned working in the fields.”
“And picking pockets,” Edge added as he opened the doors.
“Some sinners paid their fines without resort to such things,” the woman answered flatly. “According to the will—”
“Of the Lord ... I know,” Edge cut in and quickly raked his eyes over the shocked faces of the Earthly Angels who stared back at him from inside the barn. They had moved from the church section in response to the urgings of Prophet Thomas and were huddled in a tight-knit group. His narrowed eyes failed to spot Francis.
“All events are thus pre-ordained,” Sarah said dully as the captive at the top of the street shrilled his first scream. “It is why the Earthly Angels do not resist.”
“Lord helps them that helps themselves,” the half-breed rasped, turning away from the barn entrance. “I work for money. And I ain’t getting paid for carrying them out of there.”
He went to the corner of the barn and checked the street. It was empty. Every eye on the punishment area was directed towards the white man held prisoner in the stocks. His screams were coming faster and louder now, as two drunken Spokanes carved off his toes. Lustful laughter and agonized groans came from the house into which Gabb and Mackinlay had taken their women. He reached the wagon in three long strides and climbed up on to the seat. The smooth wood was spotted by bullet holes and stained with old blood from the time it had been stolen. As he softly coaxed the team into a turn, Sarah convinced the townspeople to leave the barn. He could hear her arguing that it was the Lord’s will she should escape the attack, find Edge and bring him back. She didn’t say anything about money.
“We beg forgiveness for regarding you unkindly, sinner,”
Arch Angel Luke proclaimed. “We ask that you—”
“Don’t ask anything else, feller,” Edge rasped as he jumped from the seat and began to back up the horses, reversing the wagon in through the gaping doorway. “You can’t afford it.”
Sarah, holding the tattered dress tightly around her body now, had joined the group of some fifty survivors who were clustered behind the barn. The white-haired man had taken a position at their head.
“The Lord has sent you, sinner,” he said in the same unwavering tone. “We place ourselves in your hands.”
“Just get out of my hair,” Edge told him. “Take them into the trees someplace.”
“So be it,” Luke replied, and turned away to lead his followers at an unhurried pace.
“Not you!” Edge snapped, reaching out to jerk Sarah from the group. “Stick around.”
She complied with cold resignation.
Edge watched the black-garbed group for a moment, then climbed up and over the wagon to check the street again. At the top end, Joseph’s tortured feet dripped blood in front of the stocks. But he was no longer screaming. An Indian was forcing whiskey down his throat, trying to revive him from merciful unconsciousness.
“Wake up and keep them happy for a while longer, feller,” the half-breed murmured, whirling to clamber over the wagon again.
“What am I to do?” Sarah wanted to know.
The half-breed watched the back markers of the escaping group go from sight among the trees. Then he reached out, hooked his long fingers and gripped the high neck of her dress. “Turn around and let go, ma’am.”
Again she did not resist. Her hands loosened their grip and she turned. The actions caused the tattered dress to slide from her slim body. Her green eyes held Edge’s gaze in a level stare and she made no attempt to cover the nakedness he had already seen and rejected.
“You have good reason to shame me again, sinner?” she asked.
“Twenty-five thousand of them,” he replied, balling up the dress and stuffing it between two cases of blasting powder on the wagon. “This is what you do.”
He told her only once, speaking softly, as he uncapped some bottles of whiskey and poured the liquor over the wagon. She nodded her understanding. Up at the top of the street, the prisoner returned to awareness with an agonized scream.
“If I do this, you will not kill Angel Francis?” she asked dully.
The half-breed grinned, guessing from her concern that she had seen the Earthly Angel with the pock-marked face among the survivors. “If you don’t do it, the redskins’ll kill the whole band of angels,” he rasped. ‘Time’s running out as fast as the blood of that guy up there.” He jerked his thumb.
“I will do as you ask and pray that you will show mercy.”
“Just pray that those Indians are boozed enough to fall for this,” he answered.
She ran around the front of the team, hesitated at the corner of the barn, then stepped out into the street. Edge climbed up on to the back of the wagon, tossed the Winchester on to the flat roof of the barn and then hauled himself aloft. In a crouch, he ran on a diagonal line, and stretched out flat above the doorway of the church section. He glanced up the street in time to see a knife slash downwards, severing one of Joseph’s ears. The man screamed. A gasp of horror snapped the half-breed’s attention to the street immediately below him. Sarah stood in front of the doorway, petrified by the ghastly sight of the torture victim.
“Just watching him ain’t helping him,” Edge encouraged softly coldly.
She glanced up at him and seemed on the brink of nausea again. He saw her release the catch on the door before he withdrew a few inches, into cover from the street.
“Please stop it!” she shrieked. “Please, if you stop this, I offer myself to you. Take me instead of…”
A dozen knives were sent spinning towards the screaming Joseph. The sound of Sarah’s voice had silenced the yells of the Spokane Indians as they whirled to look down the slope of the street. Perhaps for a moment they thought the rot-gut whiskey had driven them into delirium: caused their ears and eyes to play tricks on them. But then they recovered, shaking their heads and blinking at the reality of the nubile nakedness of the woman. The knives were loosed as the Indians launched into a powerful run. Joseph’s scream was curtailed and he folded forward over the stocks. A quivering cluster of knife handles seemed to be growing from his crimson-sheened back.
Fear constricted the women’s throat, choking off the words. Just as the Indians had been held immobile for a fragment of time, so Sarah felt herself rooted to the spot by the awesome sight of the sprinting men. Some were already as naked as she. Others hurled away the bottles and tore their breech cloths from their sweat-shined bodies as they ran. Then they began to shriek their crazed excitement. But, because the door to the church was just below him, Edge heard it as Sarah wrenched it open. Her bare feet slapped on the floorboards as she kicked off her shoes to race through the barn.
The Indians were too drunk on liquor and the prospect of rape to give a thought to the possibility of a trap. They shrieked more powerfully as they darted in through the open doorway. A lone Spokane saw the truth. He had tripped over his own discarded breech cloth. As he stumbled, fell, then picked himself up, he saw the tall figure of Edge rise erect on the roof.
“Chasing a white woman’s bad medicine,” the half-breed muttered.
The Winchester cracked and the Indian spun back to the ground, blood gouting from his punctured heart. But Edge hit the street before the dead man, powering into a leap. He maintained his balance and whirled, slamming the door closed and crashing home the latch. Then he spun around again, to race along the front of the bam. Gunfire exploded and splinters of wood were torn from the corner as he ducked into its cover.
“It’s the sonofabitch from the gorge!” Gabb yelled.
The naked Sarah was ten yards clear of the wagon-blocked entrance at the end of the bam. Her blonde hair streamed out behind her and sweat greased her exposed flesh. Two Indians squeezed out around the side of the wagon to lunge in pursuit.
Edge pulled up short, squeezed the rifle trigger, levered the action and squeezed again. The Indians screamed and sprawled to the ground, twitching into their death throes.
Edge grinned. “Hard way to go,” he muttered as the aroused men ejaculated as the final act of their lives.
Many of the Indians had been pulled up short by the crack of the Winchester and slam of the door as the first of their number died. Now others skidded to a halt at the sight of the bodies slumped beside the wagon. Gabb and Mackinlay poured lead at the corner around which Edge had raced. For a few moments, the half-breed was vulnerable. The Winchester was crooked under his arm and the Colt was still holstered as he took matches from his pocket, struck one, dropped the flaring stick into the box and hurled it towards the wagon.
He saw Sarah catch her foot in a hole and pitch forward. She yelled in alarm, fell and started to roll. She turned over and over through the prickly, blackened stubble of a burned wheat field.
Edge used the Colt to send a warning shot into the open doorway of the barn. Then he whirled, waited for a pause in the gunfire from the trappers, and lunged forward. He burst on to the open street in a crouching run. Then he dived into a forward roll. Yelling, Gabb and Mackinlay poured lead at him. Dust puffed and dirt spurted around him. He powered upright and plunged through the stable doorway. Horses and the ponies of the Spokane snorted and reared, spooked by his abrupt entry. Bullets thudded against the doorposts, erupting splinters.
The Indians realized the significance of the fire on the wagon and vented their fear as they raced back through the church section of the barn. Sweating, his chest rising and falling as he regained his breath, the half-breed was crouched well back from the open doorway of the stable. His hooded eyes looked through the shower of bullet-exploded wood, showing no expression in their clear blueness as he saw the fire take hold. Shoulders thudded against the latched doorway across the street. A bullet
whined through the stable doorway and drilled into the brain of a Spokane pony. The team hitched to the wagon smelled the smoke and reared to race away.
The powder exploded.
Edge’s eyes narrowed even more against the hot blast. For a moment his vision was blurred. When it cleared, he saw the ripped-apart carcasses of the six-horse team raining down across the charred fields of the valley. The barn was engulfed in a thick, swirling cloud of black smoke. The gigantic roar of the explosion had deafened him and he could not hear the terrified squealing of the panicked horses and ponies as he stepped into the stable doorway.
He looked first to his right, and saw the white form of Sarah pressed against the blackness of the wheat field. He didn’t know if she was alive or dead. Then he concentrated upon the scene of devastation across the street as the smoke was sucked away into the evening sky. The barn was unrecognizable for what it had been. Not a wall remained standing. And the stores it had once contained were almost completely destroyed. Even the great stones cut to build the cathedral had been blasted to smithereens and scattered. Blast and searing flame had killed the Indians. Flying, bullet-paced fragments of stone had ripped their blackened bodies to pieces.
“Oh, you lousy, rotten, stinking bloody bastard!”
The half-breed’s hearing returned to normal in time to discern the agonized tirade shouted at him by Gabb. Both trappers had been flung twenty yards by the blast. Something had ripped Mackinlay’s head from his shoulders. His body lay crumpled in the middle of the street. Gabb had been hurled against the front of a house. His back looked broken. There was a great, crimson-smeared hole where his right arm had once been attached to his body. The ripped off piece of him lay five yards away, the festered hand still fisted around the rifle barrel.
“Weren’t nothing personal, feller,” Edge said as he approached the terribly injured man. “You shouldn’t have got between me and the money I’m owed.”
Shuffling footsteps sounded as the Earthly Angels emerged from hiding and moved slowly into town, staring blankly at the blackened ruin of the barn and the mutilated corpses.
EDGE: Blood Run (Edge series Book 14) Page 12