Edge: Arapaho Revenge Read online

  Table of Contents

  Brittle Edge

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  BRITTLE EDGE

  Edge rides into an Arapaho campsite to find scores of woman and children dead, massacred while the warriors of the tribe were away hunting. Only one wounded young Indian woman survived the attack. Nalin is proud, beautiful – and consumed with hatred for the white murderers of her people.

  Edge rides from the scene of the slaughter with the wounded Nalin. The trail ahead will be treacherous, because the Arapaho are on the warpath – and white blood must be spilled.

  For

  V.P.

  a right minded lady.

  Chapter One

  THE MAN called Edge finished the cigarette he had been making with slow deliberation and angled it from a side of his mouth. Then picked up the reins from where they were draped over the horn of his saddle and brought the slow walking bay gelding to a halt. He took a match from the same shirt pocket in which he carried his tobacco poke and struck it on the butt of the Frontier Colt that jutted from the holster tied down to his right thigh. Lit the cigarette, blew out the match and dropped it to the arid ground, rasped the back of a brown skinned hand over the black mixed with grey bristles on his jaw and said to his horse:

  "You figure the fire under that smoke up ahead means there's a warm welcome waiting for us?"

  The gelding pricked his ears to the sound of the man's voice, listening for a familiar word of command, but when none came he abandoned the alert attitude and waited again in patient silence and docile passiveness for some future word or signal he could comprehend. And went through the same ear pricking and folding ac­tions a second time when the man astride him drawled, in the same even tone as before:

  "You're right. Such a crazy idea isn't worth discussing. Let's get on, and hope things have cooled down before we reach there."

  He touched his heels lightly to the flanks of the gelding and the animal responded immed­iately, and began to move at the same easy pace as before along the trail that curved in a south western arc across the Indian Country panhandle toward the boundary line with New Mexico Territory. While Edge ceased to direct his attention exclusively toward the distant pall of black smoke—an ugly dark stain on the otherwise unmarked blueness of the mid-morn­ing sky—and resumed his apparently casual surveillance over the terrain on every side of him.

  He was riding through the foothills of the Rockies close to the southern end of the range. There were no mountains of spectacular height in this part of the country but it was nonethe­less a rugged and inhospitable land over which the trail snaked, dipped and climbed. He was taking a tortuous route to avoid the steeper grades for the sake of those users who did not travel so light as the man called Edge.

  But the lone rider was in no more hurry to­day than at any other time during the several weeks he had taken to trek from Elgin County in Wyoming to this place in Indian Country, and so did not deviate off the relatively easy path laid out by the trail to take short cuts. Swung around rearing outcrops of rock on longer detours than were sometimes necessary, ignored possible ways through strands of tim­ber and climbed up and over ridges by the eas­iest rather than the shortest way.

  He rode with, at the back of his mind, a firm conviction that the pall of smoke—which was neutralized into extinction some ten minutes after he first saw it—was not erupted by a fire lit for an innocent purpose. Just why he was so sure of this was not something he elected to question. And neither did he chose to speculate beyond the point of concluding that such a large cloud of smoke was not sent skywards by a single chimney or camp fire. For sometime in the near future he would come upon the scene of the blaze because, despite the circuitous route it followed, the trail he rode led toward it.

  Edge smoked his cigarette down to the small­est of butts, then made certain he had pinched out every glowing ember of tobacco before he tossed it away. For he was riding across a brush-covered hillside, the young pinyon and juniper, the mesquite and greasewood, the poison ivy and the squawbush, the tomatillo and snakeweed tinder dry in this rainless fall after a long, hot summer. And he had no wish to destroy this arid wilderness—not without good reason, anyway.

  This lone rider on a parched landscape under a sky the solid blueness of which was now marred only be the dazzlingly yellow sun did not look the kind of man to care one way or the other about the preservation of his environ­ment. In fact he did not seem to be the kind of man who cared much about anything—includ­ing himself, if outward appearance was taken as a yardstick.

  He was forty and looked every day of it, hav­ing never deliberately set out to beat the ravag­ing effects of time. Lean in his build—he weigh­ed in the region of two hundred pounds which were evenly distributed about his more than six feet two inches tall frame—he was also thin of face to the point of almost being gaunt featured. His facial struction and skin color­ation were the result of the mixing of the bloods of two races in his veins—for his father had been a Mexican and his mother came from northern Europe. And he was dark skinned with eyes of the lightest blue, a hawk-like nose and a wide mouth with thin lips above a firm jaw. His hair was no more solidly jet black for here and there a gray strand could be seen. He wore it long enough to brush his shoulders and veil the nape of his neck. The dark tone of his complexion, determined by his paternal heri­tage, had been shaded even more by exposure to the elements at both extremes. The lines which were inscribed deeply into his brow, at the sides of his eyes and over much of the sparsely fleshed skin stretched taut between the high cheekbones and the jaw were cut both by the passing of the years and the harshness of much that had been experienced during the later of these years.

  To some women his face was almost repul­sively ugly while many others regarded the man called Edge as sensually attractive—their opinions dependent upon how each viewed the unmistakable stamp of latent cruelty that was seen in the hooded narrowness of the ice cold glinting eyes and the set of the long, thin lips. A look which the man did not seek to empha­size by his single affectation—the way he wore the merest suggestion of a mustache that arched down at either side of his mouth. A Mexican-style mustache which, as far as he was concerned, only accidentally emphasized the Latin side of his parentage.

  His mode of attire was exclusively Western American and totally lacking in frills. A black Stetson with a low crown, plain band and wide brim, a gray shirt, blue denim pants, black rid­ing boots without spurs and a brown leather gunbelt.

  The Frontier Colt in the gunbelt's holster was a standard model revolver. And there was nothing special about the Winchester rifle that nestled in the boot hung forward and on the right side of the saddle. A Western style saddle with two canteens and two bags and, tied on behind, a bedroll with a sheepskin coat lashed to the top.

  Everything—the man, his mount, his cloth­ing and his weapons and gear—more than a little the worse for wear and stained by the dust of the countless miles of travel, stretching back far beyond Elgin County, Wyoming.

  Thus was Edge basically but adequately equipped for traveling long trails through tough and sometimes dangerous country—whether the dangers be of a natural kind or created by his fellow man. And, if the latter should prove to be the case, he carried a third weapon that on occasion was more effective than a firearm. This, a straight razor that nestled in a concealed pouch at the nape of his neck.
Hidden by his hair and his shirt and held in place by a leather thong, strung with dis­colored beads, that encircled his throat. Most days he used the blade to clean the bristles from his face and for no other purpose. But there were certain times . . .

  He was still sure that the smoke he had seen earlier was a danger signal, to the extent that it signified trouble at its source. The day, moving toward noon now, was brightly sunlit, serenely peaceful and within the scope of his vision, devoid of any other living thing outside of him­self and his horse. A day like almost all the others that had slipped quietly into his past as he rode south from the slaughter in Elgin County. During a period when his infrequent contacts with his fellow man had always had a mundane reason and created no bad feeling be­yond nervousness and mistrust. The settlers on their isolated places or the townspeople in their small communities frightened by or sus­picious of the glinting-eyed stranger who spoke so few words when purchasing fresh supplies or merely nodded and touched the brim of his hat in passing. Seldom smiling and, if he did, never allowing the expression to inject warmth into his hooded eyes. Mostly tacitly impassive, looking to be cold as high mountain ice in mid­winter and hard as the rock under the glacial ice. A drifting loner who was a misfit in civil­ized society—be it composed of a farmer and his wife or an entire townful of people. But come totally to terms with what he was so that he was comfortable and composed in the com­pany of others who he knew were disconcerted by his presence among them. Like he consider­ed himself to be the only one in step. But by no means swaggeringly proud of being this. Quiet­ly confident, though, that he was capable of asserting his rights to such individuality if anyone should call them into question.

  Nobody had provoked the half-breed called Edge into a mood of aggression since that bloody sunrise back in Wyoming. Which was close to a month ago—a long time for violence to be absent from the sphere of this man who knew better than to be tempted into believing he had found peace.

  The glaring but not uncomfortable hot sun had slid beyond its midday zenith when the slightly flared nostrils of the lone rider picked up the taint of old burning in the otherwise clean smelling air. He was halfway to the crest of a long and gentle rise then, his shadow and that of the gelding falling starkly black on the gray dust of the trail that was hardly disting­uishable from the eroded surface of rock and rock-hard dirt to either side. Casting dark and truncated shadows, too, on the barren slope, were the tops of several ponderosa pines which were rooted on the opposite grade beyond the ridge. But only the shade thrown by the foliage of the pines was dark. The greenery of the tree tops had not been charred by flames.

  The gelding whinnied softly as the acrid smell became stronger, but then calmed—trusting the rider to take good care of him in a time of more trouble. This intention signaled by the gentle stroke of a hand on the neck of the bay. Then the ugly smell of a past fire was gone—had been wafted by a stray air current curving over the ridge. For, halted on the crest of the long rise, man and mount were able only to smell the fragrance of the growing and un­damaged pines. Which were widely scattered over the steeper, south facing slope. The trail snaked again now, more than doubling the dis­tance from the top of the foot of the tree-clad hill on this side.

  Just as he had done in similar situations, Edge started his horse downward on the trail. Ignored the cut offs that would have shortened considerably the time taken to get to the bot­tom. In no hurry to reach the scene of the hours-old fire that was often in sight through the widely spaced trees and thickets of brush as he rode the curving zig-zag down the hill.

  Close to the bottom land of the east to west valley, the bay gelding whinnied his nervous­ness again, and was calmed by the touch of the rider's hand. The horse perhaps once more dis­concerted by the smell of the old fire that was now mingling with the pine fragrance in the cooler air of the timber stand. Or maybe it was the subtler and yet uglier smell of recent death that disturbed him. Whichever, the animal remained tense but quiet for the rest of the way to the base of the hill where what had once been a quite large Indian encampment was now little more than an area of scorched meadow heaped with the blackened mounds of burned-out lodges and the inert forms of the dead. The bullet-riddled bodies ranging from the young­est of papooses through boy and girl children and women of many ages to the oldest of men. More than two dozen in all. Shot in the head, the body, the limbs. Most with many more than a single blood-encrusted and fly infested wound. Patently noticeable by their absence were all the males of an age to be warriors.

  The carnage-ravaged encampment was off the trail to the right, between the fringe of the timber and a spring that was the source of a creek which ran to the west along the valley. Edge had halted his mount on the trail where it emerged from the stand of pines and he stayed in the saddle as he surveyed the fire-blackened and death-littered area upon which nothing moved save the gorging flies. The glinting slits of his eyes and the compressed line of his thin lips revealed nothing of his emotional reaction to the scene of slaughter and destruction. And his tone of voice was equally as dispassionate when he drawled:

  "I've got no reason to hurt you, girl. But if you hold your breath much longer you could suffocate yourself."

  One of the most beautiful women of any race he had ever seen snapped open her big eyes and stared at Edge with an expression of hatred so powerful it seemed to have a palpable force. The sound of her pent up breath rushing out through her clenched teeth carried strongly over the forty or so feet from where she lay prone among the death and destruction to the half-breed astride his horse. Less loud was the stream of sibilant words she rasped at him, sounding like a series of obscenities in her native tongue from her tone of voice that was a match for her expression of deep seated loath­ing.

  She was in full flood when he raised a hand m a checking gesture and it took her several mo­ments to realize the reason he did what he did. She broke off the diatribe with abruptness, but kept her expression firmly in place.

  "You want to run that by me in my language, girl?" he asked as he lowered his hand back to drape the other one on the saddlehorn.

  It required several more highly charged moments to pass before she had composed her­self sufficiently to reply in attractively accent­ed English:

  "I said that to die is something I would rather do than to breathe from the same air as the cowardly white eyes. And that if you have a single grain of mercy within you, you will ride away from this place. So that I may die among my own Arapaho people. In a place where the evil sight and sound and smell of a white eyes does not follow me to—"

  "You're a liar, girl," the half-breed cut in on her as he heeled the gelding forward. "You called me worse than a cowardly white eyes, way it sounded."

  She was first angered by the interruption, then came close to being happy that Edge seemed to be starting to do what she asked. But next the anger returned, mixed in with the hatred, when he reined the gelding to a halt where the trail passed closest to her and swung wearily down from the saddle.

  "You are going to finish me off?" she asked as he unhooked a canteen from his saddle. Merely hating him again.

  "No," he answered and started toward her, stepping over or around the dead but uncaring that he walked through the black ashes of two burned-out lodges and their contents.

  She was suddenly afraid as he halted close by her, so that his shadow fell across her craned-around head. And she blurted: "If you attempt to have pleasure with me you will catch the disease that the white eyes before you spread among we innocent—"

  "Rape isn't my way, girl," he told her as he took the stopper from the canteen and dropped to his haunches. "Drink of water?"

  "I want nothing from you, white eyes pig!" she snarled, and tried to spit at him. But she did not have the strength to force the globule of saliva far enough to reach his impassive face.

  Edge went on, as if there had been no inter­ruption: "See, I like my women to be the agreeable kind."

  Chapter Two

  T
HERE WAS certainly nothing agreeable about her face while she held in place the snarl­ing expression with which she had spit at him. But she was unable to remain at this high point of emotion for long, and as she came suddenly down from it, he thought she had fainted. Be­cause for several seconds after her head flop­ped to the grass and her eyes closed, her face in profile was serene in respose and her body and limbs were limp. While the gentle sounds and slight movements of her breathing were like those of somebody alseep.

  In this time, Edge raked his narrowed eyes over the ground to either side of her. Saw no blood stains on the grass and looked again at the girl. Ever since he got close enough to see that she was probably no older than seventeen or eighteen he had thought of her as a girl. But from where he squatted now he found it diffi­cult not to consider her a fully fledged woman.

  And his opinion that she was among the most beautiful women he had ever seen was not al­tered by being at such close proximity to her.

  Her eyes which she continued to keep shut for a second or so more were large and dark and round, encircled by exceptionally long lashes. And the rest of her features were in perfect proportion with these eyes and the basic struc­ture of her oval-shaped face. Her olive brown skin was almost flawless, a tiny livid scar on her left jawline acting to enhance the girl's at­tractiveness by making her beauty less than perfect and therefore not awesome. Her hair was as black as her eyes, long enough to be plaited into two braids that reached to a midway point down her back.

  She was about five and a half feet tall, long limbed and with a slender frame—her torso, her arms and her legs as well proportioned as were her facial features. At least, as far as Edge was able to tell, since she was fully dressed. Wore a plain rawhide shirt and skirt that encased her from throat to moccasined feet. Also unadorn­ed by beadwork was the headband and the rib­bons that controlled her hair and the bracelets at each of her wrists. She did not wear feathers nor any touch of paint.