EDGE: The Biggest Bounty (Edge series Book 12) Read online

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  For J.O’L who invited me to Stratford - the one out west, naturally

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The greater part of this book is devoted to the story of Edge (then Captain Josiah C. Hedges) during the War Between The States. Although complete in itself, enjoyment may be enhanced by first reading Killer’s Breed, The Blue, The Grey And The Red, Seven Out of Hell, and Vengeance is Black.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The stream ran fast and clear through the grassy foothills east of the Big Horn Mountains in the far north of Wyoming Territory. To a man with a romantic view of the world, the stream’s frenetic progress might have indicated a natural anxiety to seek out a broader water course towards the Missouri and thus gain eventual freedom in the vast, unbanked void of the ocean. The bright mid-morning sunlight which dropped from a cloudless sky, causing the surface of the stream to shimmer and the rock-tossed spume to sparkle, might have encouraged such an impression of something vitally alive and flexing its strength in an attempt to shake loose of restraining fetters.

  The tall man riding the grey gelding saw the stream as a means to refresh himself and his mount on his long journey beneath the energy-draining harshness of the sun. For he was the man called Edge and it had been many years since he had taken a romantic view of anything.

  He checked his horse to a reluctant walk as he rode down the long slope of a meadow towards the stream. Then, at the low bank, he dismounted and allowed the animal to drink first. As the horse sucked greedily from the strong flow, the man made a careful surveillance of the terrain to the south, west and north. He knew the east to be empty. And he doubted if there was any imminent threat from the other directions. But he had learned the hard way that vigilance was the first essential for survival in a world where romance was for the very young or the very old and the harsh reality of death struck at everyone eventually. And he had seen many men - and women - who had failed to abide by this prerequisite, spilling their life blood as they learned the lesson too late.

  Some might feel that such people were life’s winners if one of the options of alertness was the risk of becoming like Edge.

  He was a tall man, standing three inches over six feet and deceptively lean: for he weighed close to two hundred pounds. Not an ounce of this was excess fat and where his tight-fitting black denim shirt and dark blue levis contoured his torso, arms and thighs the outline was of knotted muscles rather than smooth, padded flesh. His face warned that he had not developed such a powerful strength for the simple pleasure of mere achievement.

  It was a thin face, stained a dark brown by his heritage and deeply lined by the vagaries of weather and the harshness of the kind of life fate had mapped out for him. From the dark ground of his face, his narrow eyes looked upon the world as if they were chips of ice, bright blue and chillingly cold. His cheekbones were high, flanking a hawk like nose. His mouth was thin, cruelly so at times, above a firm jaw line which seemed to offer a constant challenge. The whole was framed by thick, jet-black hair which dropped from beneath the wide brim of a low-crowned hat to brush his shoulders. Some of his features had been inherited from a Scandinavian mother. Most had been drawn from his Mexican father. Grief and hatred, deprivation and violence had molded the basic structure into a form which was at once attractive and ugly, dependent upon the mood of the man or the eye of the beholder.

  As the slitted eyes surveyed the rolling grassland of the low valley and the rocky ridges of the mountains beyond, Edge looked his meanest. His cheeks and jaw were heavily stubbled and the lids enclosing the penetrating blueness of his eyes were red from almost continuous searching and lack of sleep. And the Mexican hawkishness of his features was emphasized by a thinning down of the flesh caused by many days of fast. As he stretched out full-length on the lush bank and saw his reflection in the broken surface of the stream, he thought he had not looked so emaciated as this since he was a Union prisoner in the Confederate hellhole of Andersonville.* (* See: Edge: The Blue,The Grey And The Red.)

  That had been many years ago, during the War Between the States which had taught him so many lessons about survival. In the interval, there had been few prolonged periods when he had not found it necessary to recall those evil teachings,

  He drank his fill and as he straightened he felt the dullness of the water inside him do a little to combat the fatigue which had been threatening to overtake him all morning and throughout most of the preceding night. But he knew he would have to rest soon, and he thought that he would now be able to do so without waking after a few minutes to escape the nightmare. He didn’t know how many days he had ridden, halting only to rest the gelding, or how many miles he had covered. But the Dakotas were far behind him, perhaps still suffering the turmoil of Sioux on the warpath or perhaps not. It didn’t matter for Indians were of no concern to him, except that their proximity made it more essential than ever to stay alert. In Wyoming it wasn’t the Sioux, of course. But the Arapaho, Shoshone, Crow and Cheyenne tribes might be stirred up. Alternatively, a hunting party of any tribe might see a lone white rider as an easy kill.

  Edge filled his canteen and swung into the saddle, his eyes raking the stream in both directions and spotting a point where it looked easiest to ford. The gelding was army-trained and courageous. Edge was an expert rider and had quickly developed an understanding with his unfamiliar mount. The horse appreciated this and had soon learned to trust the man. Thus, when Edge heeled him forward into the rushing, ice-cold water, the gelding did not hesitate. Sure-footed on the water-smoothed rocks of the stream bed, the animal picked his way carefully across and, clear on the far side, responded readily to the demand for a canter up the western slope of the valley.

  At the top there was a trail, running south-east to north-west. It looked to be quite well used, rutted by wagon wheels and marked by shod hooves. For no other reason than it kept the sun at his back instead of glaring into his eyes, Edge heeled his mount in the north-westerly direction. The deserted line shack crouched at the centre of a cottonwood grove a mile or so up the trail. Its windows were hung with cobwebs instead of glass and the roof of the stoop had collapsed. The corral fence had rotted. A wooden sign canted drunkenly on leaning posts, the lettering faded and barely legible; WYOMING-MONTANA-COLORADO LINE. Painted across this, more recently and less expertly, was the legend: This line might be finished, but we ain’t (signed) Messrs. Wells & Fargo.

  Edge sidled his horse in closer to the broken sign, to read the message scrawled on a square of card nailed to one of the supporting posts: Sam Lynch’s Birthday Celebration. This Sunday after church. Come one, come all. Warm welcome to friends and strangers. Jerusalem. Three miles thataway.

  The arrow pointed the way Edge had been heading and he pondered the implications of the sign for a full minute. It wasn’t the fact of the celebration which concerned him: he didn’t know what day it was or whether the Sunday mentioned had gone or was yet to come. It was the prospect of riding into a town, and seeing people, which gave him pause for thought. He had stopped off in only one town on his long ride west, this visit occasioned by the need to buy fresh clothes, a handgun, shells for the Winchester resting in the saddle-boot, tobacco and food supplies. He had wasted little time in making the purchases and ridden out fast, veering away from the trail to ensure that he continued to suffer the bitter
pangs of grief in isolation.

  For this was the purpose of his long, geographically aimless ride - to put time and distance between himself and the mound of earth which marked the source of his torment, in the hope that the passage of the days and the passing of the miles would act as a salve to the deep hurt mixed with anger which Elizabeth’s death had generated within him.* (* See: Edge: Sioux Uprising.)

  His self-imposed exile from his fellow-citizens served a dual purpose: by nature he was a loner and had no wish to put his grief on display, and also it was to protect others from a possible chain-reaction in violence if he found himself unable to conquer the sorrow.

  This was a very real danger, for just as he had discovered a natural bent for being alone in a world where the herd instinct was strong, so too had he been faced with the inevitable truth that his instinctive reflex to being hurt was to retaliate with a harsher punishment: this in a world which, for the most part, frowned upon such rough, personal justice. That these characteristics had been born during a bloody war and nurtured in its even bloodier aftermath was no defense. And Edge made no attempt to defend himself - even to himself. He was the way he was and had learned to accept it. Others either accepted it, or paid the price of taking exception to it.

  So Edge was protecting others, rather than himself, by staying clear of civilization as he tried to lose the memory of his wife and the way she had died - in the shrouds of time and space. Twice before, people Edge had loved had died violently. But on those occasions there had been a clear-cut way to alleviate his grief. He had searched for, found and killed their murderers. First the men who had tortured and shot his brother Jamie.* (* See: Edge : The Loner.)

  Then the man who had burned to death Jeannie Fisher, the first woman after his mother he had loved. But there was no such easy solution in the matter of Elizabeth’s death for, without being aware of it at the time, Edge himself had caused her lingering agony. And with no specific target to lash out against, he was concerned that he might vent his frustration by killing the first innocent bystander who spoke out of turn or did the wrong thing. And although he had killed often, in a hundred different ways, and sunk to the level of a wild animal more times than he could count, he had always retained one final vestige of humanity. He had never caused suffering or death without good reason. And in the waking nightmare, crystallized in the bad dreams that kept sleep at bay, he was forced to face the fact that he alone bore the responsibility for his wife’s death.* (* See: Edge; Seven Out Of Hell)

  Should he, then, kill himself?

  He gazed at the scrawled sign through narrowed eyes, but he was no longer seeing it. Abruptly, his lips curled back to show his very white, perfectly even teeth in a cold grin. The waking nightmare was over: and in the way of things, he knew sleep at last held out the promise of easy, refreshing rest. By his own code, he allowed every man one mistake. He had made his. This was the answer for which he had been searching over the days and the miles. And having found it, he unloaded his burden of guilt. The mistake and the death, along with the fantasies of what might have been, were placed firmly in the past where they belonged.

  The future? He knew he needed sleep and his eyes swung to the sagging line shack behind the sign board. But he shook his head, for he was also certain that he could again mix among people without running the risk of blasting a hole in the first man to step on his toe. So he jerked on the reins to turn the gelding towards town, and the prospect of a featherbed, clean sheets and maybe even a tub of hot water.

  The man who had measured the distance from line shack to town had had big ideas about the length of a mile. Edge, able to think logically again, judged he had ridden at least four miles when he met the girl - and there was not a trace of a settlement within sight. The trail had run parallel with the stream for a long way, then swung towards the west, passing through heavily wooded country. The terrain was undulating and the trail veered constantly to left and right, following the line of least resistance in terms of gradients. The woods were networked with many fast-running streams and the cool sound of the rushing water augmented the shade of the foliage overhead and made the discomfort of the morning ride a dim memory.

  The girl with the gun was an ugly intrusion upon such a scene of pastoral peace. The girl without the gun would have been perfect. She was young, probably not yet twenty and her face was very beautiful. She had big, dark brown eyes which looked out nervously from a delicately sculptured face which showed no blemishes or paint and powder. It was framed by long, golden-colored hair which tumbled from under her wide-brimmed bonnet in a cascade of waves to a point several inches lower than her shoulders. The bonnet was white, trimmed with blue. Her frothy dress picked up these colors and added dots of red in the form of buttons which began at the throat-high neckline and plunged between the thrusting swells of her breasts to finish at the nipped in waist. She was not riding her grey mare side-saddle and the skirt of the dress was puffed out on both sides of the horse, showing the hems of at least a dozen pink petticoats beneath.

  The gun was a Henry repeating rifle which she held correctly, but uneasily. Edge guessed she knew about guns, but didn’t like them.

  Edge touched the brim of his hat. “Afternoon, miss,” he greeted, reining his horse to a halt. “You going to shoot me?”

  They had met at a point where the trail made an almost right-angled turn around the obstacle of a bluff. The babbling of the streams had prevented them hearing each other’s approach and they saw each other simultaneously, over a distance of some twenty feet. Edge’s Colt was in the tied-down holster at his right thigh, the Winchester was in the boot at the front and right of his saddle and the cut-throat razor nestled in the pouch at the back of his neck. The girl was riding with the Henry in her hand. It was only necessary to stop her horse and snap up the rifle to get the drop on Edge.

  She struggled to drive the fear from her eyes. It was not successful, but her tone was strong and she jutted her delicate jaw to try to give an impression of hard determination. “Only if you make me. Please move out of the way.”

  Edge pursed his lips and surveyed her face and the generous curves and angles of her upper body - so blatantly displayed by the close-fit of the dress - with unconcealed admiration. Inwardly, he fought against making a comparison with Elizabeth. She too had pulled a gun on him within moments of their first meeting.* (* See: Edge: Bloody Summer.)

  He drove the memories back into his deep subconscious.

  “The please makes it hard to refuse, lady,” he said, digging into his shirt pocket for the makings. He hooked a knee over the saddle horn as he rolled the cigarette and ran his tongue along the gummed strip. His half smile and casual attitude heightened the girl’s nervousness. “But I’ve got used to people stepping out of my way.”

  She sucked in a deep breath, but saw from his eyes what it did to her breasts and she expelled it in a rush. The rifle wavered, but not too far. “A gentleman would make way,” she chided as he struck a match on the Winchester’s stock and fired the cigarette.

  The whiteness of the paper cylinder angling from the corner of his thin mouth seemed to emphasize the dark of many days’ stubble and trail dirt covering his face. “Guess gentlemen went out when ladies started to tote guns,” he replied easily.

  Anger rose color to her pale cheeks. “Do you expect me to ride through open country unarmed?” she demanded.

  Edge blew smoke towards her but it disintegrated before it reached her. He dropped his leg, foot sliding into the stirrup. His lips parted in a full smile, but the meager warmth that had been in his eyes was abruptly gone. “I expect you to point that rifle someplace else and to ride on by me, lady,” he told her softly, his voice as cold as his eyes. “Trail’s wide enough.”

  She swallowed hard, aware that the man’s meanness was more than skin deep. She didn’t dare release her grip on the rifle, even though she wanted to brush beads of perspiration from her forehead. “All right,” she said suddenly. “I’ll go to my left and you g
o to yours.”

  Edge nodded and sidled his horse from the centre of the trail. She did the same.

  “But I’m keeping you covered the whole time, mister,” she warned. “You bear that in mind.”

  Edge took the cigarette from between his teeth. His gaze was fixed upon the vibrant rise and fall of her young breasts. “I’m baring something else in mind right now,” he muttered.

  She made a throaty sound of disgust and clucked her horse forward. Edge held his gelding motionless at the foot of the rocky bluff.

  “Watch out for the gopher hole,” he snapped.

  Alarm expanded her eyes as she dropped her gaze to the ground. Edge kicked free of his left stirrup and used the right as a purchase to power his leap across the width of the trail. He grasped the rifle barrel with both hands and dragged it to the side. The girl screamed and squeezed the trigger. The bullet burrowed into the hard-packed earth of the trail. Her horse reared at the explosion and she slid from the saddle, releasing the gun. Edge landed in a sure-footed crouch and caught her in his arms as he let the rifle drop.

  “Please!” she gasped, staring up into his impassive face as she struggled to escape from his grip.

  “Never say that to a man unless you first tell him what you’re pleading for, lady,” he advised, hooking his heel over the Henry’s barrel before he set her down on her feet.

  She was at once angry and terrified as she stood before the man, towering almost a foot taller than her. The mare snorted and scratched at the ground with a fore hoof.

  “What... what did you... you do that for?” she stammered, scared that she already knew the answer. Her wide eyes raked from his face, down to the rifle trapped beneath his foot, then up to the butt of the Colt sticking from his holster.

  The cold grin cracked Edge’s impassiveness. “Forget both ideas, lady,” he told her softly. “The gun you wouldn’t make. The other you might. And enjoyment ain’t no punishment.”