Vengeance Is Black Page 2

  More rifle shots sounded and bullets thudded into the rear of the racing stage. The preacher prodded the Colt out of the window and sent two shots across the gully before a heavy caliber bullet drilled a hole through his hand and he let go of the revolver with a high pitched scream of pain.

  Edge poked his head through the window and drew back quickly as a volley of shots hissed by within inches of his flying hair. But it was long enough for him to spot two dark-skinned riders gaining rapidly on the stage. He looked across the interior of the stage, in time to see Abner’s body dislodged by an overhanging rock as the driver steered his team into a wheel-sliding curve. The dancehall girl was paralyzed by fear, her eyes gleaming like precious stones against the stark whiteness of her skin as she stared at the drummer. He had his eyes screwed tight shut in his obese face as he fastened his lips around the neck of a sample bottle, sucking greedily. Elizabeth and the boy were pressed flat against the bucking floor of the stage.

  Edge snarled and swung the Winchester, working the lever action and squeezing the trigger. The fat man screamed in terror as the bottle shattered, pouring whiskey down his suit. He snapped open his eyes and threw away the bottle neck as if it were hot.

  “Good for a lot of ailments, but it don’t do a thing to get rid of bushwhackers,” Edge hissed. “Try a gun.”

  “I ain’t got one,” the drummer whined.

  Edge pointed the Winchester at the miner’s Whitney resting on the dead man’s lap.

  “It’s covered in blood!” the drummer yelled above a renewed burst of rifle fire.

  “It tones well with that yellow stuff you’re covered in,” Edge snarled, swinging back to the window, jerking the Winchester outside and firing blindly back down the trail.

  “Bastards have blocked it off,” the driver shouted from atop the stage and Edge chanced a look ahead.

  Before a hail of bullets drove him back into cover, he saw the felled pine tree stretched across the trail to form an impassable barrier.

  “Gonna have to stop!” the driver shouted, fighting the reins to halt the horses in their panicked, headlong dash towards destruction. The brake locked the wheels and the metal rims showered sparks against rock. The dancehall girl came out of her shock-induced trance and began to wail.

  “I’m frightened,” the boy said, the words forced out through an emotional dam erected to keep back his tears.

  “Form a club with the guy from Kentucky,” Edge suggested evenly as the driver won his fight for control of the team and the wagon’s speed dropped suddenly.

  The drummer reached out for the bloodied revolver, then drew back his hand and swallowed the nausea which rose in his throat. “You’re such an iron man, you protect us!” he flung at Edge.

  “Whoooaaa!” the driver yelled at his team and the stage jerked to a halt.

  “You got nothing but what hangs between your fat legs,” the dancehall girl screamed, stemming her wail and snatching up the Whitney.

  Hoof beats sounded outside the stage and the girl leaned across the body of the dead woman and thrust the gun through the window. She squeezed the trigger and the bullet grazed the head of one of the hold-up men’s horses. The animal reared and crashed against the girl’s arm around the window frame. It snapped with a clean crack just below the elbow joint and a gleaming point of bone pierced the skin. More blood gushed to stain the inside of the stage as the girl fell back into her seat.

  “We got the stage and we’re rich agin’. Get outa there by the time I count ten.”

  The man who chanted the order was a handsome young Negro dressed in clothes as blade as his skin. He sat amid the branches of the felled tree, pointing a double-barreled shotgun at the driver, who had thrust his arms as high as they would go.

  “He counts real fast, folks.”

  “And quiet like.”

  The two men who had blasted at the stage from the mountain side and then given chase were also black. They were in the same mid-twenties age group as the man on the tree and smiled as beguilingly as he did.

  “I’m coming!” the drummer yelled, clawing between the bodies of the miner and the woman and pushing open the door. He tumbled down the steps and scrambled to his feet between the two mounted men. He was covered by Winchesters.

  “Toss down the baggage, driver,” the man on the tree demanded.

  As Fred fumbled to comply, the preacher hurried out of the stage, stepping on Elizabeth and the boy. He clutched his prayer book in his good hand, his lips moving in a plea for deliverance. Elizabeth looked up at Edge with imploring eyes and the tall half-breed nodded. The girl got to her feet on rubbery legs and led the boy across the blood-slippery floor and down the steps.

  “A female!” one of the mounted men yelled in delight.

  “And another!” the second reported shrilly.

  Trunks, valises and freight crates were thudding to the ground as the driver worked with a will under the threat of the shotgun. Edge crouched in the corner seat, the Winchester aimed across the stage, waiting for the men to stoop down and peer inside.

  The final piece of luggage smacked on to the trail and the driver sat down with a sigh, his face sheened with the sweat of exertion and fear.

  “Guess you must be Clay,” he said to the still smiling Negro.

  “On the nose, dad,” the man replied, “I’ve done it again and I’m not even scratched. Ain’t I the greatest!”

  “Greatest crud in the terr –”

  The smile was wiped from the face of Clay and His thick lips curled back further, into a vicious sneer that was backed up by a glitter in his eyes, He leaped from the branch and fired both barrels while he was in mid-air. The front of the driver’s head was torn to shreds by the double load of buckshot, blood and flesh scattering over the horrified passengers and their guards.

  The lead horses of the team felt the rush of air from the load and reared in panic. The forelegs of the offside animal came down on the lips of the trail and slipped over. It struggled to regain a footing, driving the other three horses into renewed panic.

  The offside animal was pushed completely over the edge and its writhing weight dragged the other lunging horses behind it. Elizabeth Day shrieked and flung the boy aside as she launched herself forward, gripping a wheel of the stage. A Winchester barrel cracked down on her knuckles, forcing her to let go. She collapsed to her knees and sucked on her injured hand as she watched the stage tip over the lip of the trail. It teetered for a long moment, then crashed out of sight to the terrifying accompaniment of animal snorts.

  Clay, the broad grin back on his features, reached the edge of the trail in two strides and peered down. He was in time to see the stage smash, sideways on, into a brush-covered ledge about thirty feet below the trail. The shafts snapped like matchwood and the four horse team plummeted downwards, still linked together by traces.

  Night had already come to the depths of the ravine, but there was enough refracted sunlight from the peaks for Clay to see the horses thud to their deaths a hundred-and-fifty feet below: their hides splitting under the impact to explode splashes of blood and torn flesh.

  High above the ugly blotch on the ravine’s floor, the stage see-sawed gently on the brush at the lip of the ledge, a front wheel still spinning.

  Clay turned away from the precipice and broadened his grin as he surveyed the bunch of terrified prisoners. He fed new cartridges into his shotgun. “Guess we’ve got to a real cliff-hanging stage, folks,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CAPTAIN Josiah C. Hedges came awake to a world filled with ugly sound. There was the raucous laughter of men filled with evil joy; the shuddering and creaking of a wagon being driven to the limit of a team’s stamina; and the thundering hoof beats of many horses spurred at full gallop.

  He was about to snap open his eyes, hopeful of jerking free from a gruesome nightmare, when the pain knifed into his consciousness. Memories flooded across the forefront of his mind and he knew he had already found reality.

  Cap
tain’s awake, Frank,” Billy Seward yelled.

  Hedges opened his eyes now, and looked up into the faces of four of his cavalry troopers: Frank Forrest, the mean-faced sergeant; Bob Rhett, the cowardly fag; Billy Seward, the youngster who killed with such enjoyment; and Roger Bell, who was trailing Seward in the art of legalized murder, but learning fast.

  “Two short?” Hedges croaked, reaching down to grip his leg, which was the source of his pain, aggravated by each swaying motion of the speeding wagon.

  “Douglas and Scott are keeping us headed north, Captain,” Forrest answered.

  Hall Douglas was the most irresponsible corporal in the Union army: John Scott another youngster who had learned to enjoy the art of killing as taught by the experience of the War between the States.

  Hedges hauled himself up into a sitting position on the litter, getting support for his back against the side of the wagon. He looked around him and saw the Galling gun surrounded by the gleaming cases of expended cartridges. Through the flapping canvas at the rear of the wagon he caught glimpses of a small army of mounted men, some riding two up on their galloping horses. There was enough moonlight, supplementing an orange glow far to the south, to show him that all the riders were Negroes.

  He looked back at the four men squatting around him, recalling the events that led to each wearing the uniform of the Confederacy while he was dressed in a hospital gown.

  “Fill me in, sergeant,” Hedges ordered, and Forrest did so, his grin broadening as he reported the details of the raid on the Rebel supply depot and the freeing of the slaves who were now racing behind the wagon as it rolled through enemy-held Georgia.* (*See—Edge: Seven Out of Hell.)

  Hedges nodded as the report was completed, his sunken eyes still able to generate a steady, menacing glare which captured and held the sergeant’s gaze. “You did all right, Forrest,” he allowed. “But you still figure you need me, uh?”

  Hedges’ rank of Captain was not sufficient reason for the six troopers to respect him and follow his orders. They had joined him as a group, their allegiance vested in Forrest, an ex-bounty hunter who was the top man of the sextet simply because he was the hardest and the meanest. And Hedges could stay in control only as long as he continued to show himself as hard and mean as Forrest — and prove that he was smarter than the sergeant.

  “We were lucky,” Forrest admitted, grinning to take the self-criticism out of the comment. “We hit ’em hard and fast and surprised the shit outa ’em. Right now we’re on the run like bats outa hell with Christ knows how many relations of Uncle Tom along for the ride. I figure it takes a big-brained officer to decide the next move.” He continued to be held by the narrow-eyed stare of Hedges, and added a belated: “Sir!”

  “I’m touched by your faith in me, sergeant,” the pale-faced captain answered. “Did you bring my uniform along?”

  Forrest looked, around at the three troopers and each shrugged. “It was kinda hectic back there, Captain,” the sergeant excused. “Guess we forgot”

  Hedges nodded and his gaunt eyes, still slightly glazed by the morphine he had been given at the supply depot hospital, roved over the men. They came to rest on Rhett and the rangy New Englander sighed and grimaced. He matched Hedges in height but under normal conditions was a good deal thinner than the Captain. But a period of incarceration in the hell-hole of Andersonville Prison Camp had evened down the proportions of the two men.* (*See –Edge; The Blue, The Gray and the Red.)

  “I’m elected, uh?” Rhett whined, beginning to unfasten the tunic buttons.

  “Obliged you should volunteer,” Hedges told him.

  “Bob’s always ready to strip off if he can find a guy that’s interested,” Seward said with a giggle.

  As Rhett took off his uniform, casting spiteful glances at the grinning Seward, Hedges unfurled the dressing on his thigh and examined the wound in the near darkness of the rumbling wagon. The Rebel doctor had done a good job of cleaning up the threat of gangrene that had set in following Forrest’s inexpert removal of the bullet. But the jolting of the unconscious Captain, first on a litter and then aboard the wagon, had re-opened the hole and it was seeping new blood.

  Hedges reapplied the dressing and donned Rhett’s uniform as the chagrined New Englander wrapped himself in the hospital gown.

  “Maybe you could embroider a daisy-chain around the neckline,” Bell taunted as Hedges hauled himself to his feet and tried to balance weight on his injured leg.

  He decided he was unfit for a route march but that he would be able to stand, and perhaps walk, unaided, on firm ground. He moved to the front of the wagon and poked his head out through the flaps. Scott and Douglas looked down at him in surprise.

  “Georgia by night tour, sir,” the pallid-faced Douglas shouted above the clatter of hoof beats. “One way only, I hope.”

  Hedges ignored the comment, narrowing his eyes against the rushing air as he stared ahead and to the sides. They were on a well-used turnpike cutting through low hill country. A scattering of small farmsteads featured on the rolling terrain but there were no lights to be seen and those fields which showed signs of cultivation had a neglected, deserted look. Flanking the speeding wagon were several black riders, some armed with rifles and revolvers, others with sabers and knives. They were all riding bare-backed and were naked to the waist, their only covering comprising ragged Levis. Their horses, like the four making up the wagon team, had white foam on their flanks, and their eyes bulged with the effort of the headlong dash.

  “How far have we come?” Hedges snapped at Douglas.

  “Five miles I reckon, Captain,” the corporal in a Rebel trooper’s uniform answered.

  “No sign we’re being followed?”

  Scott shook his head and waved a Sharps repeater towards the escorts, “’Cepting by more of them niggers, sir.”

  “So find us a place to rest up the horses,” Hedges ordered. “They look about ready to drop in their tracks.”

  “Animals are like everything else about the South,” Douglas taunted, spitting over the side of the seat. “Give up as soon as they start.”

  Hedges withdrew into the rear of the wagon and as the four troopers rolled and lit cigarettes, examined the weapons that had been stolen during the destruction of the supply depot In addition to the Colt revolvers which each man had in an unbuttoned cavalry holster — Rhett held a new one in his hand since surrendering his uniform — there were perhaps a dozen spare sidearm’s, as many Spencer repeating rifles, five sabers and the Gatling gun.

  Hedges stooped to examine the rapid-fire gun set up on its tripod and his right hand moved to the back of his neck. He was reassured to feel the tell-tale ridge of the pouched razor in its accustomed place.

  “Heard the Union army turned down Dick Gatling’s offer to supply us with some of ’em,” Forrest commented “Can’t really blame the crud for selling out to the Rebels.”

  “Is it any good?” Hedges asked, straightening up as the wagon slowed and bumped off the trail to the right, starting to climb.

  “Ain’t got no range, but if the Johnnie Rebs are bunched close enough, it sure cuts the bastards down better than a rifle.”

  “You get any more shells?” Hedges asked.

  Forrest shrugged. “Just what’s left in the hopper.”

  Hedges looked inside and grimaced, then nodded to the heap of revolvers and rifles. “How about for those?”

  “Just what’s in ’em, Captain. Things —”

  “Were kind of hectic back there,” Hedges finished wryly as the wagon rolled to a halt.

  Douglas poked his head in through the canvas flap. “Anyone didn’t have the crap scared out of them by my driving got the chance to act civilized now.”

  As the Union troopers climbed down from the wagon, a straggling line of Negro horsemen moved up and slid from the backs of the sweating animals.

  Douglas had chosen a good place for the halt: a grassy slope with adequate eating for the horses and liberally covered with heavily clot
hed pine trees to block the view in every direction.

  Hedges ran a narrow-eyed gaze over the exhausted Negroes, sprawling or squatting on the dew-damp grass and estimated they numbered about fifty. “Jesus,” he muttered.

  Forrest came from around a tree trunk, buckling his pants belt. “Could have left ’em locked in the stockade, Captain,” he supplied.

  “We did our part, mister,” a massive Negro with a completely baldhead and a deep scar on his right cheek defended, getting to his feet.

  “He’s head boy,” Forrest explained, eyeing the Negro with scant confidence. Then he shrugged. “Guess he’s right. Reckon there was at least twice this many got set free.”

  “What’s your plan?” Hedges asked, leaning against a wagon wheel, the rim still warm.

  “You going north, mister?”

  “There ain’t one thing we like about the South, feller,” Seward answered.

  “We go north, too,” the Negro said simply.

  “Not with us, you don’t,” Hedges warned.

  The big Negro had a knife thrust into the waistband of his Levis on one side and a Colt on the other. His left hand moved to grip the knife handle and froze. Seward’s Spencer jabbed painfully into the small of the black man’s back.

  “Leave it be, boy,” the youngster hissed to a man twice his age.

  The Negro dropped his hand to his side. Silently, the men who had been on the grass rose to their feet, weapons at the ready.

  “I wish to know your reason, mister,” the head man asked softly, holding Hedges’ steady stare without blinking.

  “You want me to blast him, Cap?” Seward asked, eyes alight with the excitement of the moment, concerned only with the power he held over the helpless man.

  Hedges broke the stare and glanced around at the surrounding circle of blank-faced Negroes. “He’ll be the last guy you’ll ever blast,” the Captain replied softly, and returned his attention to the big man. “We’ve got small enough chance of crossing to the Union lines,” he explained. “With you lot in tow our future will be as black as your ass.”