THE BLUE, THE GREY AND THE RED. (Edge Series Book 6) Page 4

  "Forward on your belly," Hedges murmured to Forrest and started to move, levering himself along on his elbows, wincing as the sharp, broken stalks prodded his arms. Forrest whispered the order to the next man and the message trickled down the line. They fired as they went and only stopped when they reached the pile of bodies, Union mixed with rebel. The firing died down on this section of the battleline as both sides took time to reload and to free jammed weapons. Far off, gunfire clattered and men cried out. The mist made it sound as if the din came from another world.

  "Jesus!" Scott yelled as he rested his forehead on the ground, expecting its feverishness to be cooled by the frost that had laid a sparkling cloak over the field. Instead he felt the sticky warmth of blood which had spilled from three holes in the stomach of a rebel.

  "Yes, my son!" a voice thundered from the rebel line.

  "I knew he was on our side!" a young voice yelled and a burst of laughter shattered into the stillness.

  Hedges had loaded ten rounds into the Henry. He snapped home the magazine and began to squeeze the trigger and pump the action, waving the rifle to left and right. Screams of pain and cries of alarm greeted each new shot.

  Other troopers followed the captain's lead, then buried their heads under their arms as answering fire cracked and bullets whistled towards them. Three troopers died and two more collapsed with non-fatal wounds. Another stared fixedly at a dead comrade for long seconds, then pulled himself erect, turned and ran. Hedges rolled over on to his back and sighted the rifle along his body. ''Hold it, trooper!" he roared.

  The man didn't hear him. Hedges squeezed the trigger and saw blood spurt from the center of the blue back.

  "Unarmed and in the back!" a voice said bitterly from down the line.

  "Man runs, under fire, he gets it any way we can give it!" Forrest retorted.

  "If I figure an explanations needed, I'll give it," Hedges snapped.

  Forrest' grinned and executed a mocking salute in the prone position. "Beg the Captain's pardon."

  Hedges caught a movement ahead and snapped off a shot. A wounded rebel had been playing dead and thought he saw an opportunity to scuttle away to safety. The bullet took him high in the cheek and sprayed blood from the top of his head. The rebels retaliated with a burst of concentrated fire that pinned the troopers flat to the ground. When it ceased abruptly, no man made a move to back away.

  "One of us had an effect on them," Forrest muttered.

  Hedges spat onto the solid ground. "An illustration is worth a thousand words, Sergeant," he answered. There was a rustling sound ahead and the troopers tensed themselves to combat a charge, raising and leveling their guns across the slumped forms of the dead. But instead of increasing, the sound diminished and was soon lost amid the far-off crackling of small arms fire on another section of the front.

  "Hey, the rebs are pulling back," Bell whispered.

  "Yeah," Seward agreed. "Let's go chase them all the way to Richmond."

  "What about it, Captain?" Forrest asked.

  Hedges shook his head. "How many shells you got left, Sergeant?"

  Forrest checked his ammunition pouch, and the other troopers realized the importance of the query and did likewise.

  "That's what makes you officer material," Forrest allowed. "Ten shots plus what's in my iron and then I'm cleaned out."

  Groans from along the line told of a similar limit on the fire power of the troop.

  "You called it right again, sir," Scott said.

  "Richmond will keep," Seward put in.

  "Let's make it slow and easy," Hedges said, easing to his feet, continuing to stare into the mist.

  The troopers did the same, trigger fingers curled. But the rebel withdrawal had not been a ruse. As the survivors of the troop pulled back, carrying their wounded, there was no surprise onslaught. They walked backwards all the way across the frozen ground from the piles of dead at the scene of the skirmish to where the broken bodies and smashed cannon of the gun emplacements were.

  "The crud ran out on us!" a trooper exclaimed angrily as he surveyed the deserted positions.

  "So you've learned a lesson about this lousy war," Forrest said sourly. "We might look like one big army when we're lined up for a battle. But when the shooting starts, there's just you and the guys you can see. Every other bastard's taking care of himself."

  It took Hedges and his troop two hours to find their own line and the body-littered hillside was tragic evidence of many skirmishes such as the one that had engaged them. The entire right flank of Rosecrans' army had been forced back at a sharp angle to the center and left, which was still clashing with the enemy on the mist-shrouded plain below.

  "Hey," a trooper called wearily as the men spotted campfires ahead. "I think it's after midnight."

  "You' got no glass slipper to lose," Forrest told him acidly. "And that was no ball we were just at."

  "But it's New Year's," the man insisted.

  Forrest turned to look at Hedges and the two men locked their, mean eyes into a single stare. Then the older, bigger man grinned and for the first time ever, Hedges saw genuine humor through the coldness.

  "Hope you ain't going to kiss me, Captain," he said.

  Hedges allowed the corners of his lips to turn up. "Hope's about all we've got going for us in this war! And for a guy like you, I reckon it springs eternal Hopeful New Year."

  They clasped hands and then Hedges moved among the men to express the same wish to all of them. Even the man who had scorned Hedges for shooting the coward seemed to draw the warmth of fellow feeling from the gesture. And on a night as cold as that, any vestige of warmth was welcome.

  *****

  A warm San Francisco day was pushing ahead into mid-morning when Edge came fully awake from his unconsciousness and sat on the side of the rough mattress to allow the pain in his head to subside. He could hear a man snoring in the next cell, but when he looked through the bars the grizzled face of the sleeping drunk meant nothing to him. He looked in another direction and saw Vic Paxton regarding him from behind the marshal's desk.

  "Headache?" the young deputy inquired. The question seemed to arise more from a desire to be polite than out of concern.

  "I've been hurt worse," Edge answered. "The marshal doesn't like to take any chances, does he?"

  Paxton grimaced. "He's mean and he's a coward. Mix the two and you come up with something that isn't really human."

  The sunlight through the barred window in the outside wall was strong and yellow and seemed to be feeding the pain under Edge's skull. He stood up and turned his back to it. The cell seemed to cant, first to the left, then the right. Edge reached for the bars of the door and leaned against them. After a few moments the world came back onto an even keel.

  "Where is he?"

  Paxton rubbed his eyes, which were red-rimmed from lack of sleep. "Still out at the Garden of Eden, I guess."

  "The what?"

  "Lydia Eden's spread at the side of the ocean north of here. Don't you recall what happened last night?"

  Edge sighed. "Yeah, I recall. Will they hang me with a serpent from an apple tree?"

  Paxton didn't crack a smile. "You'll have a proper trial and if you're found guilty, sentence will be carried out under due process of law."

  Edge's expression was impassive. "Should I be grateful for that?"

  "Do you want me to fix up a lawyer for you?"

  Edge reached around behind himself and felt the flatness of his hip pocket. "I can't afford one. Somebody heisted better than two and a half thousand bucks off me."

  Paxton showed his surprise with arched eyebrows. "You won that much playing poker with Shelby and Heffner?"

  "I earned it for bringing a woman over the Sierras," Edge answered.* (*See: Edge #5, Blood on Silver.) "Maybe it was another woman who took it. Or maybe it was Railston."

  "Red gets well paid by Mrs. Eden," Paxton said.

  "So go find the woman and have her hire me a lawyer," Edge suggested.


  Paxton nodded. "I was waiting for you to wake up. Know anything about her?"

  Edge sat down on the bed again and massaged the side of his head. "Her name was Emmeline Greer and she looked like a whore. Eden brought her along. For luck, he said. It was bad."

  Paxton rose from the desk and approached the cell. He halted beyond reach and took out the token. He held it up and it shone in the sunlight. The light bounced into the face of the drunk and he rolled over and came noisily awake. "Eden had ten of these on him," the deputy said.

  Edge squinted at the token and leaned forward to read the legend inscribed upon it. "Ambitious, wasn't he? They say it all started in the Garden of Eden. I knew what she was. Now I know she was the five-dollar kind."

  "You don't know any house in the city that uses these?" Paxton asked earnestly.

  Edge shrugged and felt a reassuring weight at the back of his neck. He raised a hand to prod with his fingers beneath the collar of his shirt and felt the smooth handle of the razor protruding from its pouch. He dropped his hand before Paxton could become suspicious. "I'm a stranger in town," he answered. "And I never pay for it anyway."

  "Hey, let me look at that, there." Both Edge and Paxton turned towards the drunk, who had hauled himself into a sitting position on the bed and was staring with rheumy eyes at the reflective token. He was an old man, painfully thin in his tattered Eastern suit, with a face that was deathly white under the streaks of dirt and several days growth of stubble. He, wiped a dewdrop from the tip of his, hawkish nose and sucked at his toothless gums with flaking lips.

  "It won't buy you any wine," Paxton told him.

  "I know that," the drunk replied in an insulted tone. "It's a pussy pass, ain't it?"

  Paxton grinned wearily. "How would you know that? You'd rather have a snort than a screw any, day."

  "Don't you make fun of me, young Paxton," the drunk chided. "I been around this town ever since the war. And 1pushed a broom in more places than the Market Street saloons."

  "Places like cathouses?" Edge demanded.

  "They get dirty, just like saloons," the drunk pointed out.

  "Show it to him," Edge snapped at Paxton. The deputy moved to the next cell and was not hesitant in approaching the door of this one. The drunk peered at the token, then nodded emphatically. "Yeah. They charge high, so they pay good. Only trouble, I was falsely accused of doing something to one of the girls. I can't work there no more."

  "Work where?" Edge said sharply.

  "Real sharp place," the drunk said reflectively. "Plush, you know? Up on Nob Hill where the big money' changes hands. Skyline Hotel."

  Edge forgot about the drunk and narrowed his eyes as he stared at Paxton. The young deputy held the steady gaze, but was glad to have the iron bars in between.

  "Railston could make it tough for me," he said.

  "You want to stay a deputy all your life?" Edge came back.

  Paxton's expression darkened. "You're in no position to force any issues."

  Edge shrugged and gave an impression of relaxing, leaning back against the wall. "Okay, I'm used to working out my own problems."

  "Don't you ride Deputy Paxton;" the drunk muttered aggressively. "This country's built on good, honest men of his kind."

  "Sure," Edge snarled. "Because the other kind make the play and bury his kind. And his kind have heads thick enough to make good foundations."

  "Don't you pay no heed to him, Mr. Paxton," the drunk urged, glaring at Edge. Then he grinned at the deputy. ''You'd be better employed letting me have a snort of Red Railston's whiskey. Just to settle my indigestion, like."

  "Shut up, Mint Julep!" Paxton yelled.

  ''Yeah, shut up," Edge concurred as he stretched out full length on the rancid mattress. Just as the face of the drunk had triggered a memory from the deep past in Edge's unconscious mind, so the name Paxton called him searched for a place in a mind that was awake but numbed by pain.

  "What'd you say her name was?" Paxton asked.

  "Emmeline Greer," Edge replied, not opening his eyes. "Big boobs and a strong arm."

  ''You didn't ought to talk about things like that in jail," Mint Julep whined. "Gives a man ideas that ain't no use to him."

  "You been in jail a lot?" Edge asked softly, staring into the darkness behind his eyelids.

  "More than enough," the drunk said with a sigh. "I'm a regular."

  Edge's voice was a snarl. "Then you ought to have the pull to take care of your ideas."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The mangled remains of Rosecrans' army moved wearily into the town of Murfreesboro to recover from the effects of the battle and await replacements for its dead and wounded. It had been an odd and an inconclusive clash that to the men in the field appeared as nothing less than wholesale slaughter for nominal gain. It did not finish until late on the night of the second day in the New Year and Braxton Bragg's rebel Army of Tennessee should have dealt the Union a crushing defeat. But, as had happened so often in the tragedy of the Civil War, decisions were taken in the heat of the moment which were totally inexplicable. The rebels successfully pushed the Union's right flank into a staggered line that trailed behind the left and then for an entire day failed to press home the advantage. Sporadic firing was exchanged along the picket lines and then the Union artillery began to bombard the Rebel right as Rosecrans sought to grasp the initiative. Suddenly, under cover of darkness on that second day of a cold January, the Army of Tennessee withdrew and struck south in full retreat.

  But the views of the men in the field were not invited, and neither were the opinions of mere captains. And in truth, once they were settled into the comparative comfort and warmth of what amounted to a rest camp in Murfreesboro, such men as Hedges and his troopers readily accepted their lot of knowing little: and quickly came to care less. Once more, they had survived when so many had been killed or maimed and nothing which had resulted in the over-all context of the war could be of more importance than this.

  Spring came early that year and many of the men complained that the bone-deep cold they had experienced during the battle was not relieved until the middle of May, after a solid month of day-long sunshine had radiated onto the vast bivouac area on the edge of town.

  Replacements flowed in steadily from the north and a supply route was opened to bring in the essentials and some luxuries of army life. It was in the late afternoon of a balmy day towards the end of May when Hedges stood at the mouth of his tent to watch the arrival of another wagon train with the inevitable column of reinforcements straggling along at the rear. Other officers and men off duty, and many of those actively engaged in the routine chores of camp life, watched with varying degrees of interest. Some were thinking of mail from home, others of relatives who could be among the newcomers. Some men wanted nothing more than a fresh supply of tobacco. The vast majority had no other motive for their interest than a desire to see if there were any new whores for the Murfreesboro cathouse.

  "You see what I see, sir?" Forrest said, moving up to stand alongside Hedges.

  The officer looked at the sergeant and then beyond him, to where the remainder of the troop were grouped, eyes roving hungrily along the wagon train. He was pleased with what he saw, for they were probably the best turned-out soldiers in the camp area. Smartly dressed in brand-new uniforms, with hair cut to a regulation length and with no facial stubble beyond the permitted moustache and sideburns of those who chose to wear them. And they stood proud and erect, even in their mood of relaxation, evidencing the success of the harsh daily drill program Hedges had implemented.

  "They'll all have the clap," Hedges answered, looking with faint amusement at a wagon near the end from which a cluster of some fifteen women and girls were waving, and laughing at the ribald comments of the watching soldiers.

  "I wasn't meaning them, Captain," Forrest said. ''If it affects the eyes, I think I maybe already caught a dose."

  Hedges glanced at him, then away, in the direction the sergeant was looking.

  '
'It's just got to be him, hasn't it?" Forrest continued. "Nobody else would have the gall to roll back to his troop like that. But if it's him, what's he doing with a dame?"

  Bringing up the rear of the wagons, behind the three-file column of replacements, was a flatbed with a cavalry trooper on the box; and beside him was the slim figure of a girl. Loaded on behind them were several crates which could contain nothing else but whiskey.

  Hedges reached into the mouth of the tent and brought out a pair of field-glasses. He raised them and scanned the length of the train, then focused in on the back-marking flatbed. The man sitting on the box was tall and slim, young and handsome. He looked well-fed and content with his lot like some of the men in the column who were new recruits, yet to see their dreams of adventure shattered by the reality of war. But the man on the wagon wasn't a new recruit.

  Hedges used the binoculars to stare close into the eyes and he saw they were, glazed and guessed the reason.

  "It's Rhett," Hedges confirmed sourly.

  Forrest turned to grin at the men. "Hey, there's a fruit wagon coming in," he yelled. "Bob Rhett's aboard the flatbed at the end."

  The comment drew a negative response from the more recent members of the troop, but those who could recall the Shenandoah Valley campaign burst into raucous laughter.

  "We all better keep our backs to the wall from now on, men!" Seward yelled in explanation and took several mincing steps to emphasize his meaning to the others,

  "He's got some pussy with him," Forrest put in.

  "Christ, she won't know which way to turn," Douglas exclaimed to a renewed burst of merriment, louder now that all the men could share the joke. "What's she like, Captain?"

  Hedges raised the glasses again, as the wagon train halted in the camp compound: all except the final wagon which pulled out of the line and around the column to head towards the cavalry troopers' quarters. He saw Rhett's face again, grinning now as the man recognized a group of familiar figures, then panned the glasses over to the girl and caught his breath. He tightened his hands around the binoculars to keep them from trembling.