Edge ran a bare forearm across his eyes to wipe away the beads of sweat that blurred his vision. And saw clearly the response to a one word order which the arms akimbo Chief Acoti spoke.
Two squaws stepped forward, carrying short-handled shovels. And then three more Apache women shuffled out of the crowd - one of them with a blood-stained knife. A squaw stooped to grasp Butler’s ankles and another dropped onto her haunches and gripped him under the armpits. The two with shovels prepared to toss in the first dirt as soon as the tortured man was dropped up to his neck in the hole. The fifth woman leaned down to reach with her free hand and the knife for Butler’s crotch.
Edge took aim at this one and squeezed the rifle trigger. Just as a squaw in the crowd shrieked an Apache blasphemy.
The .50 calibre bullet burrowed into flesh under the armpit of the woman just as she was about to emasculate Calvin Butler. The range was about three hundred yards and the impact of the lead sent the victim sprawling over the senseless form of the white man and into a heap at the feet of Acoti.
The half-breed pumped the action of the repeater, shifted his aim to the chief and stayed his finger on the trigger. As, in the part of a second before the Apaches vented their shock, he heard the beat of shod hooves. From somewhere in back of him.
Then the chief yelled an order, as he flung his arms to the side. Before whirling to lunge into his wickiup.
Another rifle shot cracked. And dust and rock chippings spattered through the squawbush.
The Apaches broke from the crowd and scattered among the wickiups.
Edge tilted his head and then swept the Spencer towards a fresh target. An Apache skylined, dark against bright blue, on the top of the bluff. He squeezed the trigger and the highly placed sentry staggered back out of sight.
A fusillade of shots pocked into the hill crest close to where the half-breed lay. He saw the tiny splashes of muzzle smoke among the wickiups. Saw also that there were now just two figures on the area at the centre of the encampment. Little Fawn and Calvin Butler. The woman struggling frantically to drag her husband towards the cover of the hole. Then, just as Edge withdrew behind the solid ground of the hill crest, the unconscious and naked youngster dropped down. He didn’t see if the half-Apache girl went in after Butler.
For there was a new, much better sight to hold his attention. As, under cover of a constant barrage of repeater rifle fire, thirty or more men reined their sweat-lathered horses to a halt and leapt from the saddles to race up the hill towards the half-breed.
Lee Temple was in the lead. At the head of the group that dispersed to throw themselves down and belly in a line up to points where they could see the Apache encampment spread below.
Most of the men were San Lucas miners. But Mel Rubinger was on the hill, too. And his effeminate partner in the stage line office. The bespectacled Robert Sweeney. All of them with Colt revolvers. Under half with rifles - mostly Winchesters.
‘We got the bastards!’ Rubinger yelled in high excitement, and was the first of the group to explode a shot down into the depression.
His shot signaled a fusillade of others and the Apaches were surprised into brief panic. On the chief’s order they had begun to advance up the slope, convinced there was just a lone white attacking them. Now, as at least a half-dozen of their number fell dead or wounded, they were shocked and confused.
The gaunt-faced, beanpole-thin lawman from San Lucas bellied up beside Edge, saw the Apaches turn and run in compliance with Acoti’s order and growled:
‘You looking for a place in the history books, mister - starting a war against the hostiles single-handed?’
He triggered a shot from his Winchester towards the fleeing Indians.
‘For a guy who claims to mind his own business, you sure do manage to get mixed up in the thick of other folk’s.’’
‘Not from choice, feller.’
They lay, side by side, looking through the squawbush foliage as the men from San Lucas poured a hail of bullets down into the depression. At Apaches who seldom returned the gunfire now - all of them running for the corraled horses. Some kicking at the ashes of cooking fires as they weaved among the wickiups. To send glowing embers spraying across the blankets inside. So that flames leapt and sparks flew, to ignite the tinder-dry matting. And thicker clouds of smoke billowed across the campsite and rose to thicken the layer above.
‘Way I read the sign,’ Temple answered, holding his fire, ‘You should have been dead back where the hostiles hit those poor guys from Catlow.’
‘How come a feller who just happened to get elected sheriff of a place like San Lucas can read a sign that well?’ Edge asked.
‘I was army in the war. Posted to Fort Whipple, north of Prescott, Territory of Arizona. Learned a lot that’s stood me in good stead ever since.’
The burning wickiups provided a screen of constantly moving black smoke through which the whites blasted bullets at unseen Apaches mounting their ponies.
‘Stage came into town this morning,’ Temple went on, weary and bitter. ‘With the bodies of Costello and his men aboard. Raised this posse and went out there. Saw that a man on a shod horse rode with the hostiles towards the ambush. That two rode away. And that you were bedded down close to where the army was hit.’
‘And figured the worst, uh?’
Temple shrugged his narrow shoulders. ‘Looks to me like you’d made some kind of deal to save your skin, mister. Until somebody set up that brave for an easy shot back at the canyon and then we come across another hostile, with his head caved in, in a gorge.’
‘Hey, the sonsofbitches are gettin’ away, Lee!’ Rubinger yelled.
‘Go fetch the horses!’ the lawman countered as he and Edge continued to gaze down into the depression. And saw the mounted Apaches racing up the southern slope, firing wildly for effect as they crouched low to the backs of their ponies.
Half the San Lucas men lunged to do as Temple ordered while the others maintained the barrage of gunfire.
‘It was Cal Butler did the deal for me, feller,’ the half-breed supplied.
A nod and a sigh. ‘Figured he was on that other shod horse. What then?’
‘Life in a wickiup didn’t agree with me. Knew they’d give Butler a bad time for letting me get away. But I wasn’t far enough away when they started in on him.’
Temple spat forcefully into the bush. ‘They kill him?’
‘You care, feller?’
‘He’s one of them. Worse, I guess. Traitor to his own kind. Like for him to be alive with a lot of years of suffering ahead of him.’
‘Hey, we gonna go after them, ain’t we, Lee?’ Mel Rubinger yelled as he and the other men rose. Grabbing the reins of their horses and gazing towards the dust cloud that marked the breakneck progress of the retreating Apaches.
‘Sure are,’ Temple assured as Sweeney led the lawman’s mount across the slope. ‘Let’s go get them!’
No man from San Lucas had been injured in the exchange of fire with the Indians. And they grinned, laughed and yelled their high excitement as they swung into the saddles. All except for Lee Temple, who held back when he was astride his horse.
‘Leave you to see after Butler, mister? If he’s not past helping?’
A nod. ‘I got him into a hole. Have to try to get him out.’
Temple scowled, then said: ‘Forget what I told you after you stuck your gun in my neck. If you hadn’t made it so that brave back at the canyon showed himself I guess it would have been us on the run. If we weren’t as dead as Costello and the others.’
‘That’s nice,’ Edge muttered as the sheriff jerked on his reins to turn the horse towards the cloud of dust raised by the mounts of the San Lucas men. ‘Be able to rest easy in my bedroll now.’
Temple’s sunken-eyed and hollow-cheeked face showed a harsher scowl as he looked back over his shoulder at the impassive half-breed. ‘You’re a hard guy to like, Edge!’ he growled.
One brown-skinned hand touched the brim of the Stetson a
s the other canted the Spencer to a shoulder. ‘Nothing worthwhile comes easy, feller.’
The lawman heeled his horse into a gallop and Edge turned and moved around the clump of squawbush to start down to the abandoned camp.
Most of the wickiups had burned fiercely and fast. Were now just heaps of smoldering grey and black ashes from which fragile wisps of smoke rose. More than a dozen and less than a score of blood-run corpses were scattered on the slope and among the destroyed lodges. Braves and squaws alike. There were only eight animals left in the corral, one of them the half-breed’s mare. The army horses and a few ponies had bolted from the gunfire and flames and smoke. Enough Apache mounts so that several of the fleeing Indians would be riding double.
As he ambled through the destroyed camp, Edge kept the Spencer hammer back. And he was ready to swing the rifle down from his shoulder and sweep it to aim if any of the sprawled figures proved to be playing possum. But only the half-breed, the horses and the smoke moved.
He saw the blackened remains of his saddle and other gear at the side of a circular patch of ashes which had once been a wickiup. The shells in his Winchester and Remington had exploded with the heat, buckling and ripping apart the frame and cylinder.
When he came to a halt at the side of the hole, so that his shadow fell across it, a swarm of flies rose angrily into the fire and gun-smoke-smelling air. Only half gorged on the congealed blood of Cal Butler’s many wounds. The swarm scattered, to suck their fill at the fresher spillage from the more recent injuries of the slaughtered Apaches.
Up on the lip of Black Bear Bluff, a row of buzzards perched and squawked their impatience. The half-breed wondered idly if the ugly birds were the same ones who had earlier in the day been cheated of a feed on the flesh of Costello and Hillenbrand, Jaroff and Draper.
Cal Butler was curled in the fetal position at the bottom of the hole. He was still breathing, each exhalation stirring the dust in front of his parted lips. When the eye Edge could see opened, it was obvious the youngster had been conscious for several minutes.
‘Little Fawn ?’ he asked huskily. ‘Is she...?’
‘She’s not here, feller. Most of the Apaches got away. Temple and a bunch of men from San Lucas are riding after them.’
The eye closed. But not before a tear squeezed out. ‘She’s my woman. They didn’t have time to kill me. They’ll kill her. I oughta have let them blast you last night, you bastard!’
‘It was your decision,’ Edge replied and dropped to his haunches, set aside the rifle and reached a hand down into the hole. ‘Here.’
The tear-glazed eye opened and then the youngster showed the other one as he screwed his head around to look full face at the half-breed.
‘Go to hell!’ he snarled. ‘I’d rather die and rot down here than take a favor from crud like you!’
Edge nodded and straightened up. ‘Your decision again, feller. But there’s upwards of a dozen buzzards waiting on top of the bluff. Be down here soon as I leave, I figure. Or maybe the Apache will give the San Lucas men the slip and double back. Even a chance Temple and the others will give up the chase and come back this way. And they got no reason to help you.’
‘Why the frig should you care?’ Butler wanted to know bitterly.
Edge turned his head to the side and spat. ‘Can understand why I ain’t your favorite person. But the way things are right now, I’m all there is between you and some lousy ways to die.’
‘You set me up for the worst way, mister! They were going to cut off my balls, stuff them in my mouth and bury me up to my neck! Wait for whatever lives in the ground to smell my blood and come gnaw me to death!’
‘It never happened.’ Edge touched the brim of his hat as he stooped to retrieve the Spencer. ‘Luck to you, feller.’
‘Edge!’ Butler shrieked as the half-breed made to turn away.
‘Do something for you?’
‘I can’t move a friggin’ muscle!’
There were tears in his eyes again. And a deathly pallor to the skin of his face under the tan. His lips trembled. Terror became deeply etched into his flesh. The tears spilled from his eyes and coursed down the lines.
‘Please?’ he managed to force out just before the sobs filled his throat and caused his blade-tortured body to quiver as if in a high fever. Then, shrilly, ‘Help me!’
‘No sweat, Calvin,’ Edge answered tautly as he tossed aside the rifle and went out full length on the ground. To reach down with both hands and hook them under the youngster’s armpits. ‘I owe you.’
Butler screamed, louder than when the Apache squaws were using their knives on him, as the act of raising him stretched his skin and triggered new pain from every cut. Then the sound was curtailed as his body refused to accept more punishment and he plunged again into the merciful darkness of unconsciousness.
Edge eased him clear and lowered his head and shoulders gently to the ground. Fresh blood squeezed from most of the reopened cuts on his chest, belly, arms and legs.
‘Yeah, Calvin,’ the half-breed rasped through teeth revealed by lips curled back in a grimace. ‘I owe you. Reason you’re in the red.’
Chapter Ten
Edge brought water, rags, some blankets, rope and two sets of rope bridles and reins from an undamaged wickiup on the fringe of the encampment. And spent about ten minutes bathing the shallow knife cuts in Cal Butler’s flesh. Then he wrapped the youngster in the blankets and went to fetch his mare and Butler’s gelding.
The buzzards continued to watch, silent now, from the top of the bluff, as the half-breed fitted the Apache bridles to the horses.
‘No need for that,’ the newly awakened youngster said as Edge picked up the coil of rope. ‘I can stay up on my own. If you give me a boost to start.’
‘Anything you say,’ the half-breed allowed, and helped him to his feet.
The blankets slid off him. And he had to steel himself to ask for further assistance.
‘Maybe somethin’ to cover me, mister?’
Edge said nothing. He used the razor to cut two lengths of rope from the coil and put two slits in a blanket. Then he draped this blanket over Butler’s shoulders, with his arms through the slits, fixed another blanket over his head and held them loosely in place with ropes around the youngster’s neck and waist. After he had helped the groaning Butler astride the gelding, he was rewarded with a grudging:
‘Thanks.’
Then they rode slowly away from the camp and as soon as they were up out of the depression, the buzzards took flight and, after an initial violent beating of their wings, glided down to feed.
‘Where are we goin’, mister?’ Butler asked a few moments later, riding alongside the half-breed on the hoof-marked trail leading westward.
‘Home. Your place,’
The youngster nodded. ‘I guess I need somewhere to rest up and that’s the only place that’ll be safe for me around here. What with the Apaches and the whites both out to get me.’
‘What I figured, feller.’
‘But it’s out of your way. Now I’m on the horse, I’ll be fine. I see you got my gun in your belt. You give me that, you can take off wherever it is you’re headed for.’
‘I’ll stick with you, Calvin.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s a long way. You’ve lost a lot of blood. The sun’s hot. Maybe you wouldn’t make it on your own.’
They were riding into the sun which shafted down at them from its position in the afternoon sky. So that neither the half-breed’s brim nor the cowl-like blanket draped over Butler’s head shaded their faces. The youngster’s pallid features were contorted into a permanent grimace of pain.
‘I’ll make it, mister,’ he rasped. I have to make it. So that Ma can patch me up and I can go look for Little Fawn.’
The impassive-faced Edge made no reply. For a long time, they rode in silence. In the gully under the escarpment, the smashed-open head of the Apache brave was black with flies. Butler glanced at the corpse with the same lac
k of emotion as the half-breed. When the buzzing of the feeding flies was out of earshot, the youngster said:
‘If you gave me back my gun and took off, I wouldn’t try to take a shot at you.’
‘Forget it, Calvin.’
Another period of silence between the two as they rode through the low-sided canyon where, on the rim of the south side, a brave lay dead. Then, as they swung north, veering away from the dust-covered, well-trodden ground, Butler spoke again.
‘You done bad by me, mister. But I reckon I done worse by everyone.’
‘You paid, feller.’
‘I never was one of them. I bet if Little Fawn had been full-blood Apache, they wouldn’t have let me marry her. They used me, is all. Even before those two wagons blew and they figured I might have had somethin’ to do with it, they never trusted me. Lookin’ back, I can see that now. They just strung me along. Because they knew I hated the San Lucas folks the same as they did. They was just waitin’ for somethin’ like the gun deal to come along. When they would want a white man to fix things for them.’
Edge merely nodded, in acknowledgement that he was listening rather than as a gesture of agreement.
‘And, like you say, I’ve paid. Not just by bein’ given to the squaws, I don’t mean. The cuts’ll heal. But I’ve lost Little Fawn and my unborn child - maybe forever. It’s my fault that Ma’s a whore and a drunk. And I ain’t got a friend left - white or Apache,’
‘That’s right, Calvin.’
They were riding due north now, out of the Apache Hills and along the eastern fringe of the desert valley between the Cedar and the Hatchet Mountains. His admission made, but his mind not unburdened by sharing his thoughts with the unresponsive Edge, Calvin Butler gazed directly ahead, the lines of the grimace seeming to cut deeper into his flesh with every yard they covered. While the half-breed, holding the Spencer against his thighs and belly with his elbows, the reins loose in his hands, maintained his habitual surveillance on the arid terrain that spread in every direction.
EDGE: Red Fury (Edge series Book 33) Page 9