Killer's Breed Read online

  As if fearing that her mother might act hastily with the rifle, Grace hurried to be first outside and then ran again through the mud with a warning to take care ringing in her ears. Edge had not moved from the position in which he had fallen, prone with his head on one side. But the washing action of the rain had run the mud from his back .now and the two women could see his black shirt and pants and the gun belt with a holster tied down to the right thigh and a knife pouch at the back, both empty.

  "Big feller, ain't he?" Margaret Hope pronounced.

  "Please, mother," Grace pleaded. "Let's get him in the house. He's on fire with the fever."

  Her mother nodded. "You're right, gir1. He ain't likely to cause no trouble in his condition."

  She rested the Spencer against the trunk of the oak, then spotted Edge's muddy Winchester and placed it beside her own gun. "He carries a lot of weight as well," she opined as she rolled Edge over on to his back and lifted his shoulders while Grace took hold of his ankles. "And not an ounce of fat, either." They started to struggle through the mud with their burden. "Sickness hits a man like this harder than it does the runts. Ain't used to feeling puny, see."

  Grace didn't answer. The shock of the man's appearance from under the tree, the rush to and from the house and now the exertion of carrying the dead weight had drained her and she began to pant before the journey was half completed. Margaret, too, began to feel the strain and fell silent. It was a blessed relief when they had struggled through the doorway into the dry of the house and were able to set the man down on the rug in front of the hearth.

  "Shouldn't we put him in bed?" Grace asked breathlessly.

  "Not before he's cleaned up some and we get those wet clothes off him," her mother said, picking up two logs from an alcove and tossing them on to the embers in the fireplace. "Fill three kettles, girl."

  As Grace went to comply, her mother lit the two kerosene lamps which supplied light for the room. When Grace returned to set the kettles on the hob she saw that her mother had already removed the stranger's shirt and was beginning to unbuckle his gunbelt.

  She drew in her breath sharply. "It doesn't seem decent," she said.

  "When somebody's sick, it ain't a matter of decency," Margaret Hope snapped. "Seems they taught you to talk and act like a lady at that Eastern school you went to, but your education was lacking in other things. When a man's hurting he don't care much who looks at him, as long, as they're helping him." She smiled suddenly. "And you're twenty-three years old now, Grace. 'Bout time you learned a man ain't only different from a woman 'cause he shaves. Holy Mother of God, look at that?"

  Edge had groaned and rolled his head to one side, so that the light from one of the lamps shone directly on to the ugly, pus-filled swelling at the back of his neck. The girl's mouth fell open in horror.

  "What is it?" she shrieked.

  "He's been cut with a knife, or shot," her mother answered with a grimace. "He ain't just sick, girl. He's dying. He needs a doctor. A good one."

  "I'll go for Doctor Patterson," Grace, said, turning towards the door.

  "No!" her mother snapped, "You ain't riding no ten miles to town, in weather like this. Stranger landed himself on us and he'll have to take his chances with us. Maybe if there ain't no bullet in the wound, he might make it. Can't tell until we drain off the poison. Put some more logs on the fire, girl. We need hot water fast, and a lot of it."

  Edge heard voices and cracked open his eyes. He saw a woman bending over him, perhaps middle-aged but looking old because the hard life of frontier farming quickly sapped the juices of youth. But behind the lined, shell-like texture of her time and weather-worn features he could see traces of a former beauty. And there was, also, visible in steady gray eyes and set of the finely sculptured mouth, an intrinsic kindliness about the woman which would survive long after the mere physical beauty had been lost without trace. As he looked at her, the woman unaware of his study, she raised a hand, back of it to her forehead and brushed a strand of gray hair from her eyes. It was a gesture that flooded Edge's mind with memories, for this had been a frequent, unconscious action by his mother. But the hair which fell into her eyes was golden, the color of ripened wheat shining with morning dew. Then, as if by command of his imagination, his eyes fastened upon such hair, wet and plastered to the head of Grace Hope. He knew this was not his mother, for the face was too young and the eyes were brown. And the face was pretty rather than beautiful. But he had seen her somewhere before, her expression showing fear instead of the tender concern it now depicted. His mind, verging on delirium, struggled to recall the circumstances, but failed. It was too much effort to pin down one fragment of memory when a thousand others were crowding in on him, scrambling to be acknowledged and savored.

  Then, as he closed his eyes, blotting out the faces of two women without knowing whether or not they were real or figments of his tormented imagination; he saw the smile of Jeannie and he fastened upon this. Because Jeannie had been real and it seemed very important to cling to reality as the yawning cavern of darkness opened again. But this time he did not fall into it alone. Jeannie took his hand in hers and went with him, the smile becoming a laugh as they tumbled together, down into space and backwards through time.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LIEUTENANT JOE HEDGES was uncomfortable in his uniform as he endeavored to walk in a straight line down the main street of Parkersburg just across the Ohio Stateline in West Virginia. The weather in that June of eighteen sixty-one was warm, even though it was late at night, but it was not only the early summer heat that caused him to unfasten the top three buttons of the blue tunic of his Union cavalryman's uniform. He had lost count of the number of drinks he had taken and he could, not even remember how many saloons he had taken them in. He only knew, as he staggered towards the edge of town, that there had been too many saloons and too many drinks. For the hard liquor was swilling against the inner wall of his taut stomach and the alcohol was coursing through his bloodstream, making him sweat more with each step he took and attacking his brain to play havoc with his co-ordination.

  But, he thought, as he blinked and tried to focus his eyes upon a lamp which hung outside the dry goods store at the eastern end of town, it had been a good night. Reckless and stupid, but a man of twenty-five away from home for the first time in his life was entitled to kick over the traces provided he was willing to accept the consequences. Especially a man who had been among the first to volunteer after the rebel attack on Fort Sumter, expecting to see action immediately but instead only to experience long weeks of dull, routine camp duty. Relief from this daily round only came with marches eastwards, rendezvousing with other volunteers, making camp and then breaking it again to move on.

  Compounding Hedges' discontent with this new phase of his life, from which he had expected so much, was his low opinion of most of the men around him. There was just a nucleus of regular soldiers in his company, the majority of them inept and malingers while the bulk of the troopers and infantrymen were volunteers, like himself, with all the faults and virtues of enthusiastic amateurs. With training, he felt, the large proportion of them would make good soldiers. But a training program did not exist. Symptomatic of what was wrong with the Union army—at least that part of it which Hedges had experienced—was the method by which he had gained a commission. He was a crack-shot with his own .52 caliber Spencer repeater rifle and with the .44 caliber Colt revolver issued by the army and this ability immediately gained him sergeant's chevrons. Then, as soon as his group joined up with the main force of General McClellan and a staff officer discovered Hedges could read and write he was promoted to lieutenant. No account had been taken of whether he possessed the qualities of leadership.

  And, in truth, Hedges had his own very strong doubts upon this matter. He came from farming stock and had played his part in protecting the Iowa spread from the savagery of the Sioux and greed of the white land-grabbers. But in such affrays he had fought alongside his father, mother and younger brother,
all of them putting into effect the disciplined skills taught so patiently by Thomas Hedges. Thus, father and elder son had been able to meet each attack confident that as a gun was emptied at the enemy, there would be another ready, fully-loaded by a woman and a young boy who had learned to complete such a task at great speed. Then, when his father had been killed by a nester and his mother died of a broken heart, Joe Hedges had been able to hold the farm safe with Jamie at his side.

  But the obedience of a young boy who hung on every word from his elder brother was hardly a test for leadership and the more Joe Hedges saw of the uniformed rabble under McClellan's command the less he relished going into battle with them. And it was this feeling of foreboding—perhaps, he was willing to admit to himself, of fear—as much as the disenchantment with army life that had driven him into the saloons of Parkersburg.

  Hedges was one of the twenty thousand men whom McClellan had brought across the Ohio River and who were bivouacked outside of town, resting before the eastward march along the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and into the Shenandoah Valley. And, as Hedges reeled drunkenly back towards camp, it seemed to him that every soldier in McClellan's army had descended upon the town to let off steam. Certainly every saloon had been packed to bursting point with blue-uniformed figures, drinking whiskey with the haste of inexperience, trying to smart talk the whores and dancehall girls who had heard it all before and proving their readiness for war by picking fights among themselves on the slightest of provocations.

  He had done his drinking alone, from choice and, in fact, of necessity—for the enlisted men's distrust of officers extended beyond the boundaries of camp while regular troopers of similar rank had a strong dislike for commissioned volunteers. Thus, after drinking alone, Hedges headed back to camp on his own, eyes fastened upon the lamp to give him bearings. It was very late, after two o'clock, and the raucous sounds of merrymaking had diminished to a jangling piano and a dozen off-key voices singing drunkenly far down at the other end of the street. Parkersburg, a quiet railroad town, had entertained its unwanted guests as lavishly as possible and was now seeking sleep, hopeful that by sunup the army would have moved on. Hedges held out the same hope and knew that there was a strong possibility of realizing it. For intelligence reports indicated that there were contingents of Confederate infantry positioned east of Parkersburg and there were strong rumors that McClellan had already formulated a plan to deal with them.

  The lamp began to waver and Hedges halted and shook his head from side to side, then grinned. The lamp's movement was a trick of his befuddled mind.

  "Never again," he muttered and, the grin became a low laugh as he recalled his father's frequent use of the expression and his mother's skepticism.

  "Enjoying yourself, soldier?"

  Hedges turned to look across the shadowed sidewalk at the girl who stood there, smiling at him out of the darkness.

  "Just something I thought of," he answered and was aware that the words slurred into each other.

  "Deeds are better than thoughts if you really want to have fun," she answered.

  "I've had my fun."

  She laughed. "What ain't you got left—money or balls?"

  Hedges grimaced with disgust. "Ladies don't talk that way where I come from."

  The whore spat on to the sidewalk, "Christ, another backwoods virgin looking for glory."

  Hedges blinked, then felt the anger rise as he realized the truth of the woman's words and experienced a hot flush which he knew to be embarrassment. He had a strong urge to hurl insults at the woman who was belittling him, but suddenly turned away from her and continued his staggering progress down the street.

  "I hope some reb shoots it off!" the whore hurled after him.

  He quickened his pace, seeing that the kerosene lamp hung, steadily now and knowing that the incident with the woman had had a more sobering, effect upon him than a gallon of black coffee. There was an alley between the dry goods store and the stage depot next door and it was as he passed the mouth of it that he heard the voice of another woman.

  "No, please don't!"

  He almost went on without glancing down the alley, for he did not really hear the words; merely recognized they were spoken by a woman and for a moment he thought he was being propositioned again. But then the man's voice issued from the shadows and Hedges was pulled up short.

  "Come on, sister, you got what I need and I got what you'll enjoy. Two dollars, I'll pay. It's all I got left and you can have it all."

  "Please, I'm not a … I have to get to the doctor. My sister's sick. Please let me go. There are a lot of girls like that in Parkersburg."

  "You don't fool me!" The man had ceased pleading and his voice was a snarl. "You been getting more than a couple of bucks from all the others and you ain't prepared to put out for less. But you're gonna do it, sister. I'm goin' off to fight a war for you and least you can do is show a little appreciation."

  There was the harsh sound of material being tom apart and the woman screamed, the sound becoming a muffled sob.

  Hedges spun on his heels and went into the alley on the run, eyes trying to pierce the inky blackness. Then he saw them, their position marked by the milky whiteness of the woman's naked upper body from which the bodice of her dress had been ripped. The uniformed man was bending down before her, one hand over her mouth and pressing her head back against the wall of the stage depot while the other fumbled to rip free the remainder of the dress. As Hedges slackened his pace to creep up behind the attacker, the man lowered his head, mouth opening to engulf the woman's erect nipple.

  The rending of material sounded again and the tattered remains of the woman's dress fell to a crumpled heap around her feet and she shook her head free of the grip and screamed in pain as the man's teeth sank into her breast. Hedges fist traveled no more than twelve inches but behind it was every ounce of power he could summon and as the knuckles sank into the area of the man's kidneys his mouth came wide in a silent scream and every nerve in his body was numbed, releasing his grip on the woman. As she flattened herself against the wall, seeming to want to press herself through it, the man half turned, but never completed the movement as the same fist which had landed the first blow, smashed into his jaw at the end of a swinging uppercut. He was lifted two inches clear of the ground and came down unconscious so that his knees buckled, his pelvis swiveled and neck twisted, corkscrewing him into an untidy heap in front of the near-naked woman.

  Hedges glanced down at him and saw him as merely another faceless soldier with no badges of rank. Then he looked at the woman and saw that, in fact, she was no more than a girl, trembling and afraid and for several moments too deeply shocked to attempt to conceal her slim, almost fragile figure from his gaze. Then, when she did try, she found her hands and arms only adequate to hide the firm half spheres of her young breasts. She pressed her slender legs tightly together and began to quake again as she dug fingers into the soft flesh of her shoulders.

  "I've already had the offer and turned it down," Hedges said and tried to form his features into a gentle smile. Then he rolled the unconscious man over with his foot and stooped to pick up the tattered dress. "You'll catch cold," he said softly as he handed it to her.

  She seemed reluctant to take it, and when she did it was almost a snatching movement and she held it tightly to her, like a child with a favorite toy.

  "He made a mess of it, miss," Hedges said. "It won't cover you much better than you're hiding yourself." He looked down at the man. "Got an idea." He bent down and unbuttoned the tunic, then the belt on the pants. The man wasn't very tall, but he was fat and it was awkward trying to get the clothes off under his dead weight. But Hedges' well-honed muscles served him well and within a minute the unconscious man was down to his grubby underwear. Hedges grinned at the girl as he held out the uniform. "You won't exactly be the best dressed lady in Parkersburg, miss, but they'll keep out the cold and protect your modesty until you get home."

  Again she hesitated before reaching
out to him and once more she clasped the garments tightly against her body, making no move to put them on. Hedges sighed and turned his back towards her. There was silence for several moments, then there were some scuffling sounds and he smiled, knowing she was putting on the uniform.

  "It's all right now," she said at length and when he turned to look at her he had to suppress a guffaw. Two girls with her build could have got inside the tunic and the pants cuffs had been folded up twice to clear the ground. She had to have a hand under the tunic to hold the pants up. "I'm very grateful to you, Mr..."

  "Hedges," he answered, touching his cap. "Joe Hedges. Not mister anymore. Lieutenant."

  "My name's Jeannie Fisher," she said softly. "I'm sorry to have caused you trouble."

  "You didn't," he answered. "I ought to apologize for his behavior. He's in the same army I am."

  "I'm glad you're not all like him. Thank you again. I must get to the doctor now."

  "I'll take you," Hedges said quickly.

  She shook her head. "You've done enough. It's not far." She smiled now, the expression lighting her dark eyes and showing rows of white teeth between full lips. "I'm hardly likely to attract any more of that kind of attention, dressed like this."

  "Maybe not if you don't smile like that," Hedges said, then suddenly stooped and picked up the unconscious man's cap. He stepped forward and the girl did not draw back or protest as he gathered up her soft red hair and tucked it under the cap.

  "You're very thoughtful, lieutenant," she said. "Thank you again."

  She had to go on to her toes to gain enough height to brush her lips across Hedges' mouth. Then she turned suddenly and ran off down the alley to where the railroad tracks gleamed silver in the moonlight, the spare material of the uniform flapping about her. Hedges ran the tips of his fingers along his lips and felt a stirring in his loins as his mind conjured up the picture of her near-nakedness. Then the man at his feet groaned and he was reminded of the ugliness of the circumstances; experienced a strong desire to kill the girl's tormentor.