No mention was made of Indian trouble, for the threatened uprising had never materialized in the wake of the isolated attacks of winter and spring. And stories of more recent atrocities originated from distant sources and there was no evidence to prove their veracity. Nor did the men discuss what had happened after the wedding, for a tacit understanding had been reached among those concerned that the tragedy should never be mentioned.
A new preacher had been appointed to the church at the end of Spearville’s main street. Mrs. Cain had moved back east to be with her parents in Georgia after selling the farm to another young couple. The Johnston spread was still up for sale and the orphaned children were staying temporarily with the Rosses. The healing process of time was gradually alleviating the pain of grief and it was acknowledged that words would serve only to hinder this action of the passing days.
“Another?” Hayhurst asked, finishing his drink and watching as Edge sucked his own glass dry.
“Reckon not,” the half-breed answered, smacking his lips in appreciation, then grimacing as he pushed himself away from the bar and glimpsed the over-heated women near the piano. “Too much heat with too much beer and they might start to sprout wings.”
“Aw, the boys are leaving!” Martha called derisively as Edge and Hayhurst headed for the batswing doors. “Goin’ home to their mothers.”
“Cut it out!” Jake snarled as he saw Edge’s back stiffen.
“I might just as well, all the good it’s doing me,” the whore growled, running the sleeve of her dress across her sheened forehead.
The poker players laughed. “If you do, I’ll have it, sweetheart, one of them called. “Make me a nice warm hat come winter.”
“You sound like you already tried it for size,” a second player drawled, leering.
“Jake!” Martha shrieked.
“Pack it in!” the bartender roared, knowing he was safe in venting his anger on the quartet of prospectors at the card table.
“Don’t reckon there’d be any need,” the leering man muttered, his voice not carrying beyond those seated at the table. “Figure there’d be room to spare.”
Guffaws followed Edge and Hayhurst out on to the sidewalk. There was nobody else on the dusty street, the smell of wood smoke laced with hot grease indicating that the citizens of Spearville were preparing for their midday meal.
“If you can wait awhile, I’ll ride out to the lake with you,” Hayhurst suggested. “My horse is down at the blacksmith’s to be shod. Ought to be ready by now.”
Edge nodded and took out the makings, watching Hayhurst’s tall figure crossing the street and entering the stable beside the blacksmith’s. He rolled the cigarette, lit it and allowed his eyes to rove absently over the facades of the sleepy buildings of Spearville, his mind idly recalling the many similar towns he had been in. On the surface, all had been much as this one, but beneath the surface there had always been one big difference - trouble. Either hiding there in wait for him, or following him in off the trail like an invisible shadow.
He was glad when Hayhurst re-emerged from the stable, leading a strong-looking mare, ready-saddled. For it cut across his reflections of a past he had chosen to forget. Hayhurst continued to lead his newly-shod horse across the street, but halted abruptly a few feet away from where Edge stood. His stern features formed into a frown and he cocked his head to one side, listening. Then he shaded his eyes with a hand and stared out along the trail leading away from town to the east.
Edge had been so deeply engaged in his thoughts that he had failed to notice the sound. But now he heard it – the distant thunder of galloping hooves combined with the rumble of fast-turning wheels. It seemed to set the warm air trembling.
“Somebody’s in one hell of a rush,” Hayhurst commented as Edge gazed down the trail and saw the moving dust cloud drawing closer.
“Stage?”
Hayhurst shook his head. “Only Wednesday. Ain’t due ’til Friday.”
“Supposed to stop here anyway,” Edge commented as the four horse team hauled their burden around the final bend and galloped along the town street without slackening speed.
Other people had heard the sounds of the hell-for-leather progress. Heads appeared at windows and doors banged open as Spearville’s citizens sought to discover what was disturbing their midday peace and quiet.
It was now possible to see that the four horses, with bulging eyes and lathered backs, were dragging a covered wagon, flames licking at its frame, canvas flapping in the slipstream and wheel rims juddering over bumps and ruts.
“Ain’t nobody driving it!” the fat Jake yelled.
“That’s Ephraim Ross’s rig!” Hayhurst roared.
Edge waited until the wagon had thundered in front of the saloon, then launched himself from the sidewalk into the saddle of Hayhurst’s horse. Before the startled farmer realized what was happening, Edge had jerked the reins from his hands and turned the animal in a rearing wheel. Then the half-breed thudded his heels into the flanks of the snorting mare to send her galloping in pursuit of the runaway team and wagon.
The mare was fresh, with only the burden of a man on her back. She thrust forward her head and pumped her legs in a racing gallop that showed she was more than merely strong looking. She had been painfully spurred from a standing start with a gap of more than two hundred feet between her and the hurtling, smoking wagon. But the distance was reduced by half before the panicked team broke into open country at the far end of town.
The mare wanted to swerve to the side, so that she would not have to breathe in the choking dust through her flaring nostrils. But Edge, sloping his long body low alongside the neck of his mount, held her on a course directly behind the bucking rear of the wagon. He kept his mouth clamped tight against the dust and smoke, and cracked his eyes to slivers of blueness. The rush of air roared in his ears, drowning out the noise of the runaway and the drumming hooves of the horse under him. Then he was in the near vacuum immediately in the wake of the wagon and the clatter and crash of wheel rims and hooves sounded like an avalanche of crumbling rocks.
He urged the mare close enough so that he could have reached forward, and hooked his fingers over the top of the tailgate. Then he jerked on the reins, veering the animal to the side. Dust stung his face and clogged his nostrils. He flung his feet wide, kicking one free of the stirrup and crashed his heels into the flesh of the mare. She snorted in pain and lunged into what was almost a leap, carrying her half the length of the swaying wagon.
“Move it, you bitch!” Edge yelled in her flattened ear, stretching an arm forward.
The wagon team seemed to gain several feet as the straining horses swung into the right hand curve. But then the trail veered in the opposite direction. Through the billowing dust, Edge saw he was level with the charred high seat of the wagon. With the foot still in the stirrup and one hand on the saddlehorn, he thrust himself into a half crouch across the mare’s back. As the tautness went out of the reins, the horse saw an opportunity to escape the agony of the blinding, throat-searing dust. She veered sharply away from the wagon’s side.
Edge thrust himself aloft, kicking free of the second stirrup; bringing his other hand level with that curled to grip the rail at the side of the seat. His palms slapped the metal painfully and he clenched his fists. He brought up his knees and they crashed into the side of the wagon, ripping a groan of agony from his mouth. The ground raced beneath him in a blur. The offside front wheel spun within an inch of his right foot, threatening a crushing death if he should fall.
But he found a toe hold on the running board with his left foot, sucked in a deep, dust-heavy breath, and pushed himself up to the seat. His spine seemed to vibrate under the impact as he flung himself down. He spat vehemently into the slipstream and breathed in the clean air that rushed at him hotly across the backs of the straining team.
Then, abruptly, he saw the reason for the horses’ panicked dash and he was ice cold in the intense heat. Tied to the rump of each horse was a m
uslin sack, the material woven loosely enough so that the angry hornets inside could not escape but could be seen and could torture the crazed horses with their stings.
The reins were hitched loosely around the brake lever and Edge snatched them up and hauled on them. For stretched seconds, the pain-ravaged horses did not respond as every fiber in their bodies strained to escape the agonizing anger of the trapped hornets. But then, under the drag of the reins, the grab of the braked wheels and their own exhaustion, they slowed their hurtling pace.
They dropped from a gallop to a canter, then an ungainly trot. Edge prepared to launch himself forward, on to the back of the nearest horse. But, even as he streaked his hand towards the back of his neck, he remembered there was no razor pouch there. It was the last vestige of the old life he had shed. Two weeks ago, he had simply not bothered to loop the leather thong over his head before he dressed in the morning. And he had not missed the weapon - until now.
But, when the team finally came to a halt, they showed themselves totally drained of the will to escape their torment. Their hooves seemed rooted to the ground and the only movement was the heaving of their stomachs as they sucked in air to struggling lungs. As the dust settled, Edge jumped down from the seat and went to each horse in turn. He used brute strength to rip the buzzing sack of agony from the rear quarters of each horse, and tossed them to the ground in a pile. His heels stomped the demented hornets into silent extinction. The horses tried vainly to reach their punctured flesh with their teeth.
Edge had no preconceived notion of what he might find in the rear of the shouldering wagon. Hoof beats sounded on the trail from town and a group of more than a score of horsemen galloped towards him as he unfastened the ties on the canvas flaps. He looked into the semi-darkness of the wagon and his lack of emotion at what he saw was a revelation of the lie he had been living over the past months. He had only seemed to become Josiah C. Hedges. Really, he was still the man called Edge - able to regard wanton violence and agonizing death with cold impassiveness.
The wagon’s unwilling but now uncaring passengers were young Mildred Johnston and the dusky Mrs. Ross. They had been stripped naked and then pinned to the wagon bed with an arrow through the flesh of their inner upper arms. They had been scalped and their eyes had been gouged out. And that was not all.
The riders from town skidded their mounts to a dust-raising halt and stared into the wagon.
“And I made a joke about it,” one of the poker players gasped, leaning to the side and emptying his stomach on to the ground.
Flies zoomed in to feed.
The hirsute triangles of the women’s lower stomachs had been carved out of the flesh and hung atop two arrows which supported a strip of wood across the front section of the wagon. The women had spilled ample blood for the threat to be scrawled in red: stretching from one end of the board to the other –
WHITES ALL BIG ONES - SIOUX ARROWS SHAFT EM GOOD.
“Educate savages and all you get is dirty minds,” fat Jake growled in disgust, spitting at the flies gorging on the heap of vomit.
The others in the group remained silent, staring at the blood-soaked bodies of the women, unable to speak through their horror.
“I need a horse,” Edge said softly, turning to face the men.
“I need a drink,” fat Jake responded, starting to back his horse out from the centre of the group.
The horseman nearest to Edge had a rifle in his saddle boot. The half-breed slid out the weapon in a fast, smooth action. The man’s gasp of surprise was lost in the metallic scraping as Edge pumped a shell into the breech. He aimed the gun at fat Jake, causing the big man to freeze.
“My need’s greater than yours, feller,” he said softly.
Fat Jake licked his lips nervously, recognizing the killer glint in Edge’s eyes for the second time that day. “Men get hung for horse-stealing around here,” he rasped.
“Around me, men get shot for not doing what I tell them,” Edge replied. “Get down off the horse.”
The obese bartender looked desperately around at his fellow citizens. “You goin’ to let him get away with this?”
“Sioux are acting up again,” Spearville’s blacksmith pointed out mournfully. “This guy’s wife is out here alone in the hills.”
Fat Jake was not moved by the implication of this news.
But the steadily pointing Winchester and the inaction of the men hurried him into climbing down from his horse.
“If that’s acting, I’d hate to see what they do for real,” he muttered.
“Obliged,” Edge said, swinging up into the saddle of the bartender’s horse. He looked towards the man whose gun he was holding. “I’m loaning the rifle, feller,” he stated.
“You’re welcome,” the man replied.
The obese bartender ignored his knowledge of the kind of man Edge was. He had been forced to back down at the saloon, and now for a second time, Edge had walked all over him. But he took out insurance by curling a hand around his holstered gun.
“Wouldn’t like to loan one of my girls, would you?” he asked, a grin spreading across his fleshy face. “In case the Sioux creamed that farmer’s wife of yours.”
Fat Jake got the Colt clear of the holster, but there was not time to bring it up to the aim. Edge’s expression altered only by the tightening of his mouth line. The Winchester had been resting easily across his knee. But suddenly, in the time it took the watchers to blink, he had angled up the barrel and squeezed the trigger.
The bartender screamed and dropped the revolver. His eyes were wide with horror as he watched the blood gush from his shattered wrist and cascade down his thick fingers.
“Not funny, Jake,” Edge muttered, turning his horse towards town. “But for trying, you got a bloody big hand.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Jake’s horse was old and ill-used. But he made Spearville at a good gallop and responded well to Edge’s insistence that he keep going instead of slowing for his usual stop outside the saloon. Jed Hayhurst, standing in front of a group of curious townspeople, shouted an inquiry to Edge, but the half-breed did not even try to hear what his neighbor demanded.
But the worried farmer realized Edge’s haste meant the wagon had brought news of dire trouble. Edge had taken his horse and, angered by the half-breed’s attitude, Hayhurst headed across the street to the parked buckboard with the cows tied on behind. Then, as he prepared to climb aboard, the first of the returning horsemen clattered into town.
“Indians killed two women!” the blacksmith yelled.
“The Sioux sent us a warning,” another man roared. “Looks like the uprising’s getting started.”
A tremor of terror ran through the waiting crowd and fear-filled eyes swept the street and strained to peer through the hills around the town. One moment the terrain was sleepily peaceful in the sunlight shafting through the haze. The next it was an alien world, brooding and menacing, filled with moving shadows behind which lurked a thousand kinds of vile painted death.
The dour Hayhurst was not susceptible to wild imaginings. He knew only that Edge’s haste was explained: that the half-breed feared for the safety of his wife. And Hayhurst found himself in the same position. The buckboard was not fast enough, but he was spared the necessity to take a horse by force.
“It was Mrs. Ross and the eldest Johnston girl,” the blacksmith said as he slid from the saddle. “Take this nag, Jed. I’d come with you, but...”
The blacksmith was a widower with no children. He had nothing to protect except his own life but he could not bring himself to voice the conviction that he had a greater chance of survival in Spearville than out in open country. Hayhurst nodded to him curtly and mounted. He glanced around at the other men, astride their horses and standing in the street. All made a point of not meeting his gaze. A globule of saliva ejecting from his lips and spattering into the dust was a more vocal expression of his feelings for the men than any words he could have spoken. Then he heeled the horse forward, to
race across the dust settled in the wake of Edge.
Far ahead on the trail, the half-breed knew the horse beneath him was tiring rapidly. But he demanded the limit from the animal, unmoved by the pain he was causing by stretching the straining piebald to the extent of endurance. Each foot covered on the trail curving between the hills formed a yard: and every yard mounted into a mile. And each mile that separated him from town was that much closer to Elizabeth. It was the logic of a fool, and Edge acknowledged this but offered the horse no respite. For he was equally aware that, when the animal finally dropped in its tracks, he was prepared to drive himself to the limit of his own stamina to reach his objective.
He heard the Indians before he saw them. Their war cries carried shrilly across the lake, filled with sadistic joy.
“Come on, you bastard!” Edge roared at the horse, crashing his heels into the sweating flanks.
The animal struggled valiantly up the final rise, staggered over the crest and started to veer back and forth on the downgrade. Edge glimpsed the shimmering, dazzling expanse of lake water. Beyond, the cabin and new barn were still intact on the shore with the fields of ripening crops spread around. But the yard was filled with unsaddled Indian ponies, those which were unburdened by riders standing patiently still while those with braves on their backs reared and wheeled to the dictates of excited Sioux warriors.
In the instant before Edge’s horse pulled up short and started to topple, he saw a group of war-painted and feathered braves burst from the cabin. And as he threw himself out of the saddle he received a blurred image of green and red at the centre of the group. The dress he had bought for Elizabeth! He hit the ground with tremendous force and heard the much greater weight of the horse crash down beside him.
The Sioux had captured Elizabeth! The fact was seared into his mind with the burning intensity of a red hot branding iron. And then his torment was compounded by the knowledge that he could do nothing to help her. As when he had urged the horse towards exhaustion, he realized that his new act was futile. But the mixture of anger and anguish broiling in his brain nudged him to the brink of insanity. Every bone in his body seemed to be still vibrating from his fall as he snatched the Winchester from the saddle boot on the struggling horse. But the sight of the highly-colored dress among the joyful Indians excluded all else from his physical and mental awareness. He rolled over into a prone position and drew a bead on the dress. The braves were all mounted now, their cries of triumph reaching a crescendo as they turned their horses away from the cabin.
Sioux Uprising (Edge series Book 11) Page 4