EDGE: A Ride In The Sun (Edge series Book 34)

by George G. Gilman

  "So what are we going to do about it, Pedro," a new voice asked.

  Edge placed him as the one holding the live horse. And the half-breed waited calmly for the response, lips pursed and eyes open and gazing up into the sweaty darkness of the underside of his hat.

  "We are five and he, if he is around here, is but one," the leader answered after a pause for several sec­onds. "I think this is a good place to wait for the Federale bastards. From where the boy is the whole north end of the valley can be seen. And from Ramon's posi­tion our rear can be guarded. When the Federales come—or should any gringo ride through from the bor­der—this is the perfect place for the ambush, I think."

  Edge curled back his lips so that the sinking sun glinted on his teeth. It would not be necessary, at least in the immediate future, to take a long chance on blast­ing difficult downward shots with a low velocity re­volver in the faint hope of killing the five rifle-toting Mexicans.

  But all he had been allowed was time. Now he had to await events which might or might not present the op­portunity to launch a less risky plan.

  "There is something I do not like, Pedro."

  "What is that, Juan?"

  "That we are down here and the man who rode this horse might be up there."

  The grin froze on Edge's half-concealed features.

  "How much do you not like this, Juan?"

  "Pardon, Pedro?"

  "We have come far today. I have been riding. You and the others were on foot. If you wish for more exer­cise, you may climb to the high ground. But it would be easier, I think, if you lay down on your back." His faintly taunting tone became suddenly harsh. "And keep your eyes open, Juan! Like Ramon and the boy, you will be on guard!"

  Other orders were issued and there were the sounds of them being obeyed, as the scrawny living horse was hobbled and, like the dead one, had the saddle and bedroll removed. Then there was almost complete si­lence, broken only by the occasional sigh, spit, cough and the scrape of boot leather against the ground.

  Edge pushed the Stetson onto the top of his head and rolled over onto his belly. In a higher position than the guards posted at each end of the cutting, he had a bet­ter and longer view of the terrain over which the ex­pected Federales or a chance rider from Paraiso would approach. Both stretches of country were equally de­serted and even the buzzards had gone from the south­ern sky now. He shortened the focus of his slitted eyes and began to ponder the germ of an idea. He rolled over onto his back again and eased up into a sitting position, shoulders resting against the sun-warmed sur­face of one of the larger rocks. Seated thus, not moving a muscle, he was able to keep watch over both lengths of trail and would look, to anyone far to the north or south, like just a part of the rock. And he could hear any sound louder than a snore which came from the Mexicans down in the cutting.

  For the first hour the vigil became progressively more uncomfortable for he was exposed to the full glare of the sun. Even though he did not move, sweat oozed and trickled. He began to itch in several places. Desert flies settled from time to time on his flesh and crawled over it His bladder felt filled to bursting point. Time seemed to slow down. He sensed that he could feel the bristles growing on his face.

  Then the leading arc of the sun touched the rugged western horizon and shaded from brilliant yellow to­ward a restful red. And the air cooled as the shadows reached the full extent of their length, none of them moving.

  Down in the cutting two men slept while three watched.

  The sun went to its daily red death and the twilight was only short-lived before full night clamped down over the Sierra Madre. The pale moon brightened and the star pattern appeared.

  "Hey, Jesus, I think you should let me sleep for a while," Juan growled, after Jesus had grunted and cursed, apparently on being shaken awake by Juan.

  In the moonlit darkness, the sounds of movement and voices seemed to have a sharper note.

  "Pedro said nothing of this," Jesus complained.

  "I say something now," the leader of the group put in levelly, with no sleepiness in his voice. "Jesus will take over from Ramon and I will relieve the boy. Those not on guard will sleep."

  "But the rider of the horse, Pedro?" Juan pointed out anxiously.

  "If he was here and able to move against us, he would have done so. Maybe he was here, I do not know. Already I have said, one man against five. With just a pistol, if anything. For we have his rifle. If you were he in such a position and saw us, Juan?"

  "All right, Pedro," Juan allowed doubtfully after a pause.

  The leader and Jesus moved away in opposite direc­tions. Edge was able to hear the sounds of voices, but not the words spoken, by the former sentries and the new ones. When Ramon and the boy joined Juan at the base of the cliff face below where the half-breed sat, the worried Mexican tried to interest them in his doubts. He received no response from the boy.

  Ramon growled, "You want to watch for him, you watch, my friend. I sleep. To be fresh and ready when the bastard Federales come."

  He spat and sighed.

  "I will watch," Juan said softly but forcefully.

  "Without talking, uh?" Ramon muttered, and sighed again.

  Edge checked the moonlit trail to north and south again, then moved carefully, aware that the crack of a joint, brought into use after a long period of rest, would sound like a gunshot to the ears of the tense Juan.

  He began to stack rocks.

  It was a time-consuming, nerve-wracking, muscle straining chore, which he carried out on hands and knees. His normally impassive features were transformed by an expression of teeth-gritted tension each time he carefully lowered a fresh rock onto the growing pile.

  He selected the fragments carefully, choosing those with at least two flat sides and weighing between about three and five pounds, building them into a double-thickness dry stone wall, three feet high and two feet in front of the top of the cliff. About six feet long.

  The position of the wall was directly above where, from the sounds of their voices and now their snoring, he knew Ramon, the boy and Juan to be. At least twenty feet to the right of where the scrawny horse was hobbled.

  It didn't look to be much of a horse, but events had made it the only one available to him, so they had moti­vated his patient wait and the delicate building opera­tion which engaged him now, the exertion and tension opening his pores wider than the blazing sun ever had.

  He knew his plan fell far short of being foolproof. Just a few weeks previously a lone Apache brave had been killed by a single rock hurled down at him. But this was different.

  At best, the rocks when he toppled the completed wall would kill the three men immediately under them. And bring Pedro and Jesus running back into the cut­ting, assuming the fall was the result of some kind of earth tremor. This would give Edge the element of sur­prise to blast revolver shots at the surviving Mexicans.

  But there was a chance that one or more of the men below would evade the rockfall and arrive at the imme­diate conclusion that Juan's doubts were well founded.

  "Hey, the bastards are coming!"

  Edge froze in the act of lowering another piece of rock on the wall, which as yet was only two feet high and four feet long.

  He didn't know how long it had taken to reach this stage and now formed his lips into the shape of an un­broken curse, angry at himself that he had concentrated upon the chore to the exclusion of all else.

  As he heard the gleeful voice of Pedro and then the man's running footfalls, his ice-blue eyes flickered across their narrow sockets below the hooded lids. He saw the bunch of riders as a slow-moving dark patch against the moonlight-whitened terrain some three miles to the north.

  "Wake up, you lazy sonsofwhores!" Pedro snarled. "Jesus, come back here! We have some Federales to kill!"

  The shape of the snarling curse changed into the line of a brutal grin on the half-breed's lips. The sweating tension of stacking the rocks had been for nothing. But that was of no consequence. It ha
d never been a good plan, simply the only one available which gave him a slender chance of getting Pedro's horse. Much better to let the Federales slaughter their fellow countrymen with a little help from Edge which might go beyond warning the soldiers of the ambush.

  He set the stone down on the center of the half-finished wall.

  The ground trembled, sending a quiver up through his body from his angled knees and bent-over toes.

  "What was that?" Juan gasped against the sound of Jesus's running feet hitting the ground.

  "What was what, you crazy—?" Pedro started. But if he had time to complete what he was saying, the words were lost behind a sharp crack of splitting rock. Followed by a low rumbling sound which grew louder with each part of the second that passed.

  Edge threw himself up onto his haunches as the pre­viously solid and inert ground beneath him tremored and groaned. He had been kneeling on a hairline crack in the rock. Suddenly this opened into an inch-wide fis­sure. Then yawned wider still, the ground beyond tilt­ing.

  The shrillness of the Mexicans' voices sounded above the awesome creaks of rock masses moving under enor­mous pressures.

  In back of where the half-breed powered to his full height and whirled, other cracks opened up or widened.

  For countless millions of years, the rim of the cutting into the valley had been finely balanced, the cracks along its top not deep enough to cause a further col­lapse while the debris of the first fall remained undis­turbed.

  But Edge had altered the weight distribution. The fi­nal stone added to the carefully constructed wall tipped the delicate balance and placed him in as great a danger as the shrieking and screaming Mexicans he was trying to kill.

  As the heap of stones fell to the canting rim, then showered downwards with the breaking-up rim itself, he had to leap for his life. Launching himself off one area of trembling rock, across fissures gaping wider by the moment, onto another piece of ground as unstable as that he had left.

  The noise of the collapsing cliff was deafening and the billowing cloud of rock dust threatened to engulf and blind him as he leapt and turned, pausing for split seconds to choose the direction for his next move.

  Then the sharp sounds of rock splitting ended. And there was just the rumbling and slithering of shattered fragments of rock rolling and sliding down the no-longer-sheer side of the cutting.

  Edge lunged onto a downslope and pitched forward, jarred from head to foot by the impact of his fall. For long moments he thought the ground beneath him was still moving, but then realized it was his own body which was shaking.

  He did not attempt to move until his jarred nervous system quietened and the final falling rock came to a halt. In the utter stillness, a million dust motes settled onto his sprawled, face-down form.

  "Sonofabitch," he growled through teeth exposed in a grin as he rolled over onto his back, "They just have to be all stone dead."

  The words sounded clearly to his ears as the numb­ing effect of the rock fall was overcome.

  He could not yet hear the hoofbeats of the Federales’ mounts. As he got to his feet his bruised, painful flesh complained, and he groaned in response.

  The dust cloud was thinning enough for him to see that the rock had ceased to crumble less than three feet in back of where he fell. Beyond this point the sheer cliff had been transformed into a one-in-one slope, easy enough to climb down by using the again-inert rocks as uneven steps.

  More dust settled on his clothing and adhered to his sweat-tacky face as he picked his way to the bottom of the new slope and all of it was laid by the time he stepped off the rocks. During the descent, he kept a hand draped over the butt of the holstered Colt but did not draw it. The stillness, which had previously been disturbed only by his footfalls, was now invaded by the thud of hooves as the Federales rode within earshot, galloping their mounts.

  At first glance, the elderly and undernourished geld­ing of Pedro seemed to be the only living thing to have survived in the cutting. It had managed, although hob­bled, to move out from under the shower of rocks which half buried the decomposing carcass of the dead mare.

  Edge spoke softly and stroked the neck of the still-terrified animal as he raked his eyes over the cutting which was now three-quarters filled with shattered rocks. The gelding became calm and there were no signs or sounds of life from under the landslide.

  The Federales rode closer, the cadence of the hoof­beats slowing.

  Edge began to shift rock fragments from off an around the carcass of the mare which was already beginning to stink with the sickly sweet stench of rotting flesh. His gear and that of Pedro were still where they had been left when the horses were unsaddled. There had been no reason to move them. One of the canteens was crushed, its contents spilled. This was the only real damage done.

  The half-breed saddled Pedro's gelding and as he checked the cinch after lashing the bedroll in place, he| heard Mexican voices at the other end of the cutting, beyond the debris of the rockfall.

  It was safer to lead the horse by the reins along the base of the undamaged cliff face, over a strip of rock-littered trail.

  "Evening, gentlemen," he said to the group of ten uniformed men who continued to sit their saddles as they gazed at the heap of rubble.

  Hands moved to holsters or fisted around the frame-of booted carbines. But no guns were drawn as the Federales watched the tall, lean man lead the horse out onto open ground.

  "Señor," the man with captain's insignia on his tunic said. And said in English, "You have had a narrow escape, it seems?"

  "Sure did, feller."

  The officer, sergeant, corporal and five enlisted men, all weary-eyed and travelstained, were surprised to see him, and suspicious of him.

  "You have come far tonight?" the thin-faced captain asked as the half-breed swung up astride the unfamiliar horse.

  "I've been here since evening."

  "We are seeking five men. Mexicans. Bandits. They attempted to rob the bank at Fronteras six days ago. They failed, but they killed four innocent people. Have you seen five Mexicans, señor?"

  Edge jerked a hooked thumb a hooked thumb toward the rock pile as rolled a cigarette between the thumb and fingers of the other hand. "Pedro, Jesus, Juan, Ramon and one they called the boy."

  "That is them!" the captain exclaimed, as his men expressed excited interest. "Do you mean they are un­derneath all that?"

  "Yeah."

  The captain grinned and the others matched his ex­pression. The knowledge did not lessen their weariness, but it replaced tension with contentment.

  "They deserved it," a man growled, and spat.

  "The one called Ramon sure did," Edge answered. "He shot my horse."

  The captain swung down to the ground. "We will camp here tonight," he told his men in their native tongue. Then, in English to Edge, "I do not disbelieve you, señor. But unless we dig out the bodies and take them back to the post, my commandant will not be sat­isfied."

  "Suit yourself, feller," the half-breed answered. "I'm satisfied."

  The sergeant, who was in his late fifties and showed he had stiff joints by the way he dismounted, looked hard at Edge. "I think, señor," he said slowly, "that all this did not happen merely by chance."

  "I had more luck than I counted on," came the even-voiced reply, which drew every eye toward the only mounted man.

  "Señor?" the captain posed.

  "Like I said, one of them shot my horse. I've got a long way to ride and one of them had a horse. This one. Couldn't get restitution without killing all five of them."

  "Que restitution?" a young Federcde asked, speaking the syllables of the English word slowly.

  "Tapar la boca!" the sergeant snarled. Then, in a rasping tone to Edge, "For a horse, you did all this, señor?"

  The non-com spread his arms to encompass the mas­sive heap of debris.

  The half-breed struck a match on his boot and lit the cigarette. Then showed his teeth in a cold grin as he glanced over his shoulder. "L
ike I say, I had a little luck, feller. But it seems that when I want something bad enough, I can move mountains."

  The Battle

  In the Epilogue of The Final Shot, the last of the war flashback titles, there are a few lines which state that as a part of General Sheridan's victorious army . . . his (Captain Hedges) troop blazed the trail west along the route of the Southside Railroad—to Burkville, Farmville and then to Appomattox. Resistance was sporadic, but fierce when it occurred.' This is the story of one such encounter.

  IT was the evening of April 5 in the year 1865. The Battle of Five Forks was over and there was a strong rumor on every front that soon the war itself would be finished. But the seven men in Union cavalry uniform riding north west from Burkville, Virginia with the tracks of the Southside Railroad to their right had been soldiers for too long to set much store by rumors.

  At the head of the short column was the twenty-nine-year-old Captain Josiah C. Hedges, a lean but solidly built man with jet black hair and piercing, cold blue eyes.

  Immediately behind him rode Sergeant Frank For­rest and Trooper Billy Seward, respectively the eldest and youngest member of the troop.

  The non-com was in his early thirties, as tall as the captain but not so broadly built. A one-time bounty hunter in the southwestern territories and Mexico, he had a mean-looking face which showed crooked and tobacco-stained teeth when he grinned or, more often, sneered.

  Seward was just out of his teens and had a decep­tively baby face. He giggled a lot, especially at other people's misfortunes, and he particularly enjoyed watching men or women die badly.

  In back of these two rode Troopers John Scott and Roger Bell and at the rear were Corporal Hal Douglas and Trooper Bob Rhett. All were in their mid-twenties and with the exception of Rhett shared a similar mid-Western background with Hedges and Seward—they came from immigrant farming stock. All, too, like the youngest trooper and the captain had learned fast from the lessons of war how to kill without compunction in order to survive.