Fear pushed pain from the enlarged eyes. “If they find me alive, they’ll...” A fresh wave of pain curtailed the sentence.
“Bring you some bad medicine,” Edge suggested, wheeling his horse away from the writhing form.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Edge rode south from the campsite, going back the way he had come. But he did not travel far through the almost pitch darkness of the forest: only to a point where the groans of pain and whimpers of fear from Rubin became a distant irritant against the stillness of the night. There, he dismounted, tethered his horse to a low branch and sat down to wait.
Just as every other facet of his life as a loner had returned to prepare him for the aim he had set himself, so did the capability of being able to sink into a shallow but nonetheless restful sleep. It was a sleep from which the slightest sound - even an intangible sense - of threatened danger would rouse him.
But when his eyes did snap open and every muscle in his body was galvanized into taut readiness, the signal was an ear-piercing scream. The sound quivered in the night and seemed to drive an icy blast through the summer warmth of the air.
The half-breed’s expression was colder. He rose silently to his feet and gently caressed the neck of his horse, not unhitching him until the animal’s nostrils had ceased to flare and the bulge had gone from his eyes. By that time even the memory of the agonized scream had faded into the distance behind the actual sound.
Edge led the animal by the bridle, retracing the path he had taken from the campsite. As he drew near, the silence of the forest retreated, backed away by the sounds the eight Sioux braves made in gathering up the scattered rifles and ammunition and loading them on their ponies. From his position, standing among the trees to one side of the clearing, Edge had a wide-angle view of the Indians’ activity, for the moon splashed a gentle, silvered light across the open space.
The braves worked quickly and efficiently, and the expressions on their daubed faces told the reason for their haste. They were terrified! And the way in which their eyes raked across the surrounding black curtain of timber revealed the object of their fear - the crazy man, or the evil spirit which had been released if he were one of the dead.
They were halfway through their task when Edge first caught sight of them, and it took less than ten minutes for them to complete it. They left immediately, setting off at a fast trot as they led the heavily burdened ponies by the rope bridles.
Edge swung up into the saddle and urged his mount out into the open at the top of the slope. Rubin had got his wish that his agony should be ended. He must have drifted into unconsciousness for a while and come to his senses as the braves moved in around him, bows ready and aimed. They had recognized him as the man who had set up the deal, then double-crossed them. His eyes behind the spectacle lenses had been pulled wide by terror and his mouth had gaped to vent the awful scream. Three bow strings had been released. Two arrows had shattered the lenses and sliced into his eyes. The third had thudded through the flesh at the back of his throat. His mouth was brimful of blood and two trails of red ran out of his eye sockets, with slivers of glass imbedded in them as the ghastly liquid congealed. The arrow which had entered his mouth had gone deeper than the others, penetrating through the back of his head and driving into the ground.
“When the Sioux make a point, they sure pin a man down,” Edge said softly, and heeled his horse forward, heading him towards the gap in the trees through which the Indians had left the clearing.
The braves were making good time, confident that they had nothing to fear from white men or evil spirits once they were out of the clearing. So they sacrificed caution for speed and Edge was able to track them by sound instead of having to search the dark ground for sign. But this method placed him in danger of being heard by the Indians, and for this reason, he dismounted and tethered the horse lightly to a clump of brush as soon as he moved within earshot of his quarry.
As he loped away on foot, the animal watched him out of sight and then spent more than two minutes chomping at a patch of lush grass before pulling free of the brush. He wandered off in the opposite direction from Edge and the Indians.
The Sioux braves allowed themselves no respite on the northwards trek and maintained the grueling pace. A hundred yards at their rear, Edge was forced to adopt the same tactic to stay in touch with them. Despite his height and weight, he could be extremely light on his feet when the situation demanded it, and the deadly game of tracking Indians from such short range made stealth of paramount importance.
Occasionally, a time-dried twig would snap beneath his boot or a low-hanging leafy bough would slap his face. But for the most part the sounds of his progress consisted only of the regular soft thudding of his running feet and the measured rise and fall of his unlabored breathing. And such sounds were masked by the greater volume of noise created by the heavily-loaded ponies ahead.
Dawn came to the forest as a green tinted grayness, the light giving a false impression of coolness. But, as Edge slackened his pace, catching sight of the hind-quarters of the last pony in the column, his face and bared chest through the torn shirt gave the lie to this notion. During the long night hours, the flow of air around his running body had kept his flesh cool. But now, as the new day underwent its birth pangs and the first rays of yellow sunlight penetrated the overhead screen of leaves, beads of sweat broke from his pores. The density of the trees grew less as the Indians and their pursuer neared the northern fringe of the forest. Edge had to breathe in more deeply to extract vaporized energy from the suddenly hot air: his shirt adhered to his back and salt sweat crystallized in his stubble and stung his eyes. It was not until full daylight struck him, swooping down upon the seemingly endless tract of waste land spread to the north of the forest, that he realized the extent of his weariness.
Ahead of him, away from the cover of the trees, the Sioux braves continued at their relentless pace, raising a cloud of dust from the eroded ground. But the nature of the life they led ensured that they were always prepared for such a grueling trial of strength. And, even as he halted, squatted and then stretched out full length in the shade of a tree, Edge had to admit to himself that he could not compete with the endurance of the Sioux.
Several months ago, before he began to share his life with Elizabeth, he could, perhaps, have stayed the course. But he had grown soft - was still harder than most other white men, but like warm butter compared with the flint like quality of what he once had been. And the memory of old pains recalled the violent result of the leap from the hurling buckboard which had handicapped him from the start.
But his mind, ice cold with the determination to reap a terrible vengeance upon the savages who had stolen Elizabeth, refused to acknowledge physical exhaustion. He remained, spread-eagled on the ground, sucking in great gulps of dust-laden, over-heated air, for only half a minute. Then he folded into a sitting position and slitted his eyes to stare towards the northern horizon.
He saw that he was on the southern side of the desolate plain he had seen last afternoon. The terrain had more rises and depressions than it had appeared to have from the distant high ground, and the outcrops were larger and more grotesque from this angle. The column of Sioux braves and their ponies had gone from sight, but as he raked his eyes across the barren landscape, he saw them suddenly. They emerged on the side of a low rise, trotting up out of a dip. Neither man nor beast faltered or veered from the line set by the leaders and the pace was precisely what it had been at the start of the long run.
Edge lengthened the focus of his hooded eyes, tracing an arrow straight course directly ahead of the jogging Indians and ponies. What he saw made his lips curl back to show the twin rows of his even teeth in a grin. Yesterday, he had seen smoke rising from behind a low butte. From his new viewpoint, the butte was higher, and oddly shaped by a million years of wind and rain - curved in the middle with the rock sloping upwards to form a peak at each end, like a covered wagon with the canvas sagging between the forward and rear
frame. More smoke trailed lazily against the azure blueness of the cloudless sky above.
“The Peaks!” Rubin had answered in response to Edge’s question about the location of the Sioux war council.
“Thirty miles north.”
As the Indians went from sight again, this time the column curling around the foot of a pile of boulders, Edge rested his head back on the ground and closed his eyes. He estimated he had covered at least eight miles on the night run through the forest and judged the twin-peaked butte to be a little over twenty miles distant. It was a lot of ground to cover and one part of his mind urged him to get to his feet and continue with his pursuit of the Indians. But reason ruled impulse.
Despite the dim flicker of hope that Elizabeth might still be alive, the realist in Edge - and without Elizabeth he was entirely this - was convinced she was not. The Sioux were preparing for war and in the initial stages of this process they would allow themselves an occasional diversion. But war to an Indian was closely bound up with religion and things spiritual. When the war council met and the chiefs made their inevitable decision there would be no distractions - and the pleasures of a white woman was in this category. And even if his wife still lived, Edge reasoned, he would be little use to her with the last ounce of strength drained from him - or a prisoner of the Sioux.
So he allowed himself to slip over the rim of awareness and into the refreshing softness of shallow sleep. It would build up his strength and allow the column of trotting Indians time to draw far in front of him, ruling out the possibility that they would see him when he set off in their wake. Now that he knew where they were going, they had served their purpose.
It was mid-morning when he awoke and, as always, was instantly aware of his present circumstances and his intention. The new day was as blazingly hot as the last. Nothing moved out on the uneven plain, except the shimmering mirages of sun-baked air. Even the smoke from the Sioux cooking fires seemed to be held like solid objects suspended above the heat-hazed shrouded butte.
Edge licked his lips and spat out the salt of crusted sweat. He felt dehydrated, but his stomach made no protest about its long lack of food. He jerked the brim of his low-crowned hat down over his forehead and levered himself to his feet with the Winchester. A bone in his leg creaked and every muscle in his body felt stiff and reluctant. But after he had strode out for five minutes, striking a direct line towards the stark landmark of the butte, he loosened up.
Fresh sweat began to pump from his pores the moment he moved into the full heat of the sun, reactivating the old. The musky odor of his own body rose to his nostrils. He attempted to combat the rancid discomfort by fixing in his mind an impression of the bitingly cold day of his wedding. Across this mental image there fell a vivid impression of the blood and entrails seeping from the ripped open belly of the Indian he had killed. The urge to see every Sioux brave emptying out his insides in such a manner set his feet on a quicker pace. But reason prevailed again and he forced his mind to become a blank, aware of the foolishness of over-exerting himself in the harsh heat of midday.
From time to time, he saw signs of the Indians’ passage.
And when the tracks suddenly veered to one side, he knew the change of direction would not have been made on a whim. He followed the impressions of moccasined feet and unshod hooves, and suddenly broke into a run. A water hole shimmered like a patch of liquid silver. The Sioux and their ponies had almost emptied it, but there was an inch or so of water covering the bottom. The mud had settled from where the previous users had stirred it up and the water was crystal clear. It was warm and brackish as Edge stretched out full length and submerged his lips, sucking gently.
He stayed like that for a full two minutes, careful not to deluge his empty stomach with a sudden intake of the foul-tasting but life-sustaining water.
“We gonna die you, white woman.”
Edge became as unmoving as a block of carved stone. He had almost emptied the hole of water. But as he ceased sucking, the ripples settled and there was just a deep enough covering of the mud to form a mirror. Two Sioux braves stood on the far side of the hole, about six feet away. They were naked except for heavily stained gold-striped cavalrymen’s pants. Each held an ancient Spencer rifle and when Edge slowly raised his head a muzzle was directly in line with each of his eyes.
“Your English ain’t good, but it’s better than my Sioux,” the half-breed said softly.
They were both young - sixteen or seventeen - and wore no paint and just a single feather at the back of their heads. Edge’s hooded eyes looked beyond them, seeking out their ponies. But the animals were concealed, possibly in amongst a strange rock formation that looked like a clump of petrified trees with the branches lopped off. He guessed the youngsters had been out hunting for food, interrupting the work to take a drink.
The second brave erupted a burst of rapid chatter in his native tongue. His companion craned forward to peer into the water hole. Edge’s left hand curled around the brass frame of the Winchester which lay at his side.
“My sister happy you eat all water,” the one who thought he knew English spat angrily.
Edge moved the Winchester forward an inch, so that his fingers could curl through the lever grip. He showed the Indians his cold grin.
“Lot left if she’s wet,” he said, matching the crazy, opposite idiom of the spokesman.
He guessed the kids had not yet killed a man. Had they been fully-fledged braves, they would have undoubtedly blasted him on sight. But even now, as the half-breed tightened his grip on the rifle and tensed his body to prepare for a roll, they exchanged more of the guttural sounds which were intelligible to each other. Edge guessed they were discussing whether they would earn greater honor by simply killing him, or making him a captive and taking him back to camp. The apprehensive glances they shot in Edge’s direction suggested that neither alternative was wholly appealing.
Finally, the spokesman nodded his head in emphatic agreement and tried to appear tough as he regarded the white man. “You gotta be died, white woman,” he rasped His eyes gave a good impression of hardness, but his lips took on a tremor he could not control. “I first born so my sister die you.”
He meant his brother was the oldest, so he was to get the honor of shooting Edge. He turned towards his brother and gave a nod. Edge rolled. He went to the right, flinging himself hard on to his back. His right hand came free of his moving body and steadied the Winchester as his left pumped the action and squeezed the trigger.
The Spencer roared a half second after the crack of Edge’s rifle. But the bullet whined across the barren terrain on a decaying trajectory. For when he squeezed the trigger, the young Indian was already falling, the rifle pointing skywards. The bullet from the Winchester had punctured a bloody hole in his right cheek and burrowed through his brain to exit from his shattered skull.
Edge had fired the shot from an upside-down position.
Now he continued the roll, coming to rest with his body prone as he aimed at the second Indian. But this kid was no threat. He had dropped the Spencer and fallen to his knees beside the still form of his brother. He stooped low and embraced the dead head with its gruesome outpourings of blood and sticky gore.
The half-breed got to his feet, maintaining his aim at the grieving Sioux. The boy turned a tear-run face towards him. “You died her!” he accused.
“Still looks like a red Indian to me,” Edge said softly. “You’re the blue one - and that ain’t natural.”
The Winchester spat death a second time. It was another head shot, entering the forehead. The hole made by the bullet was neat. The blood it spewed was messy. Red Indians were never that color until blood ran across their brown skins. This one had a surfeit of it and spared some to spray over his brother as he toppled sideways into the dust.
Edge dug two fresh shells from his pants pocket and pushed them through the Winchester’s gate as he moved around the water hole. Then he used the stock of the rifle to push the heads of the yo
ungsters up close, one to the other. Blood seeping from the forehead wound met that coating the cheek. It was even too hot for flies to be on the wing and the blood congealed without hindrance, linking the two dead Indians.
“Brothers ought to stick together,” Edge said vehemently, and spat on the rapidly drying bond. Then he went to look for the boys’ ponies.
CHAPTER NINE
The Indian youngsters had been no better at killing animals than a man. They had shot a jack rabbit and a young deer which was a poor hunt over so many miles. The raw meat had no appeal even to Edge’s empty stomach and he did not want to take the time to make a fire, prepare one of the animals and cook it. But he did not untie the rabbit from around the neck of the pony he chose to ride, deciding that as the second day without food progressed, he might be forced to waste time with eating.
The Sioux pony was small but strong. It was a sorrel stallion and he bore the heavy weight of his new rider without complaint. Getting to understand and carry out the commands of Edge was a greater strain on the pony, but eventually the magic rapport that an experienced horse rider can generate between himself and his mount came about.
After allowing the pony to suck up what was left of the water in the hole, the half-breed started out towards the twin-peaked butte. The sky stayed big, blue and clear throughout the afternoon: its only blemishes being the wispy wood smoke of Sioux fires. The sun burned down and no relief was offered against its fierce heat until the shadow of the lone rider was a very long splash of darkness pointing to the east.
He did not push the animal hard through the furnace of the day, but when evening beckoned with a softer light and cooler air, he urged the sorrel into an easy canter. His objective was much closer now, and much bigger in perspective. He could pick out detail and color. The peaks at each end towered to about six hundred feet and dropped almost sheer on their outer faces. But the ridge which linked them sloped much more gently, curving down to a low point of some three hundred feet above the level of the surrounding terrain. The entire uneven block of black, grey and white rock streaked with red was silhouetted against the northern skyline for more than two miles.
Sioux Uprising (Edge series Book 11) Page 8