Death's Bounty Read online

  “You did all right, Captain,” Forrest complimented. “Obliged,” Hedges replied sardonically. He slid the Colt back into its holster and held out his hands.

  Forrest tossed the Henry to him and he caught it. “Pretty risky, though.” He waved his hand to encompass the scene of carnage. “Could have been us as well as them.”

  Hedges shrugged and started back toward the hotel. “Sometimes you can’t cover all the angles.”

  The Pinkerton man, the lieutenant, and the hotel clerk looked at the troopers with amazement showing through their horror, unable to understand the casual acceptance of such bloody and wholesale death.

  “I reckon,” Forrest agreed, falling in beside the captain. “Just the one that put you in a nice, safe place when the crap hit the fan.”

  “You griping?” Hedges snapped.

  Forrest grinned. “Do I ever? Let’s eat.”

  The other whites moved off toward the hotel. “Captain!” the Pinkerton man called. “You considered what we said earlier?”

  “I been busy,” Hedges answered flatly. “I think better on a full stomach.”

  “You’re all invited, too,” the lieutenant told the exslaves, who stood with heads bowed among the mutilated corpses.

  “First we bury our dead,” a man replied, his voice heavy with grief.

  Seward sniggered and shot a glance toward Rhett. “Maybe we ought to send Bob to the funeral,” he muttered. “Ain’t much, but a pansy’s all we got.”

  Raucous laughter greeted the comment as the New Englander scowled and the Negroes showed hate in their eyes. Hedges was about to bawl out the men, but then he felt his attention drawn toward the top half of Manfred’s body. In the flickering light of the fire the black man’s eyes were no longer cold. The reflected flames seemed to be feeding on the fuel of the dead man’s enraged hate. Not for the first time in the war, Hedges was conscious of the fact that a mixture of self-pity and sympathy for others offered an easy outlet for his emotions. But at the same time he knew this was a luxury he could not afford—for the easy way was the'way of weakness. And at the first sign of weakness, his tenuous authority over the men would be wiped out. He elected to drive back his true feelings with a wedge of cynicism.

  “He looks more like a shrinking violet,” he muttered, his harsh eyes causing the wretched Rhett to flinch. “We got nothing we can send.” He nodded toward the burning mill, with the flames lessening in intensity under the assault of the rain. “That’s where all the flour’s gone.”

  Edge had a second floor front room in the St. David’s Hotel. It was as neat and clean as everything else about the town of Jerusalem, furnished with a single bed, a clothes closet, and a bureau. There was a Bible on the bureau, bearing an inscription which marked it as a donation from the ubiquitous Sam Lynch.

  Edge took his much-needed rest lying on top of the bed covers, fully dressed except for his hat, boots, and gun-belt. The Colt was clutched in his right hand. The Winchester was on the floor, the lever action and trigger less than an inch from where his left hand trailed over the side of the bed. He slept in the manner of a man accustomed to expect danger at any moment, his posture suggesting that he would be able to snap upright and level both guns in a split second, should' a threat present itself. There even seemed to be a sliver of blue and white visible beneath each shuttered eyelid.

  But in this shallow level of sleep, his highly developed sixth sense was able to differentiate between the innocent sounds and those which might signal danger. Thus, while he would undoubtedly have whipped to full awareness had the door handle squeaked or the window been eased open, the din of preparation for Sam Lynch’s birthday celebration failed to rouse him from his refreshing, dream-free sleep.

  When he did awake, it was automatically, after his body and mind had taken sufficient rest. It just so happened that the church bells were tolling at the same time, ringing out over the sunlit town and the verdant country all around, warning the citizens that the midday service was imminent. He pulled on his boots and buckled his gunbelt into place before moving to the window. His eyes, narrowed against the bright sunlight, expressed no surprise at what they saw.

  The single street of Jerusalem was decked out with streamers and flags, balloons and colorful mobiles. The bunting Was draped across the fronts of buildings and strung from ropes spanning the street. And from every building and each rope , there hung a portrait of a dour-faced man in a stovepipe hat and high-winged collar. Edge guessed the pictures were of Sam Lynch.

  Beneath the decorations, which fluttered fitfully in a slight breeze, the citizens moved toward the church. The men wore their Sunday-best suits, the women tried to outdo each other in flouncy finery, and the children looked as if they would rather be in patched Levi’s than the go-to-meeting clothes.

  On the way to church the faithful passed under the start-finish sign of the Sam Lynch Horse Race, moved across the front of the Sam Lynch Bandstand, went around one side on a staked-out ring for the Sam Lynch Prize fight, and weaving among various stalls and booths housing games and amusements for young and old.

  Edge watched the scene for a few moments, spotting Sheriff Pitman with his arm in a sling, escorting his sourfaced wife, Harvey the bartender, the two customers who had been in the saloon, and the barber. Then Edge put on his hat, picked up the Winchester, and left the room. As he moved along the landing and started down the stairway, he sensed the emptiness of the hotel. The lobby was deserted to the extent that there was no clerk behind the desk. After banging the call bell without getting any response, Edge peeled two dollars off his bankroll and laid them on the register. He wrote “Paid” beside his name.

  Outside, the street was less crowded than before. Just the latecomers, hurrying toward the church as the final note of the bell rolled away across the catde-dotted pasture into the distant hills. When the big, nail-studded door closed behind them, the sense of desolation clamped down over the whole town. Edge’s footfalls had a hollow ring on die sidewalk as he headed for the restaurant door. Then an organ burst into melodious life, and massed voices were raised in a hymn.

  The restaurant was as empty as the hotel. A large banner was strung across one wall: Eat Hearty on Sam Lynch. The free food was arrayed on a long trestle table. Edge selected stew with dumplings, followed by apple pie and cream. The coffee was as good as the food. He ate the meal to the accompaniment of hymns interspersed with prayers and a sermon. The service showed no sign of finishing as he left the restaurant and moved slowly down the street toward the stable. He checked to be sure that his horse had been taken care of and that the saddle and bedroll had not been tampered with. Then he went farther down the street and tried the door of the barber’s shop. It was unlocked. Inside there was just one chair, positioned before a sink with a mirror above. He sat down and waited.

  The church service ended with a prolonged period of personal meditation in absolute silence. Then life returned to Jerusalem. Adult laughter and the yells of children broke through the peace as the congregation flowed out onto the street. A couple of pistol shots cracked, and the church bells began to ring with a more joyful note than before. Hoofbeats bounced between the building facades. Barkers shouted the attractions of the various sideshows.

  Edge looked in the mirror and saw the surprised look on the old barber’s face as the man entered.

  “Hey, nobody works on Sam Lynch’s birthday, mister,” the man complained. But then he found himself trapped by the hooded-eyed stare reflected in the mirror. “But I guess whiskers still grow, uh?”

  Edge rasped a hand over his thickly stubbled chin, and the old man moved forward and started his preparations for a shave. He kept glancing down at the Winchester resting across the arms of the chair. Edge made no attempt to move the rifle when the barber draped a cover over him.

  “Who’s Sam Lynch?”

  The barber poured boiling water into a mug and started to whip up a lather. He shot several glances toward the door, open to admit the sounds of celebration
. ‘Town’s founder, mister. A real rich Englishman. Seems the English got this kinda hymn about building Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land. Trouble was, old Sam had to leave England. Seems he got rich by unfair means. Come to this country, and the religion bug bit him.” .

  The barber began to lather Edge’s face, taking great care not to get soap in the narrowed eyes.

  “Built this town and the farms out there on the range. Used near all his ill-gotten gains on doin’ it. Kinda makin’ restitution for his sins, I guess. When it was all built, he give it away to whoever happened along. Trouble was, a couple of his countrymen showed up gunning for him. Seems they was the business partners he run out on. Blasted him—both at the same time with double-barreled shotguns. Weren’t enough of old Sam left to make any last wishes. So Mr. Rawlings the banker, Sheriff Pitman, and the pastor from the church, they got together and figured out the idea of the birthday celebration every year. Rest of the time, folks act real peaceful and attend to their chores. But on old Sam’s birthday, they let their hair down.”

  The barber shaved Edge as he told the story.

  “What happened to the two fellers who killed him?” Edge asked as the remaining lather was gently mopped from his face.

  The old man’s watery eyes filled with sadness. “Folks don’t talk about that. They didn’t die easy, mister. If you happen to ride through a certain clearing in the pine forest south of here, you’ll probably find their bones still hanging from the tree they was hung from—upside down.” He carefully took the covering from his customer. “It’s like for three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, the folks have to work to forget what they did to those fellers. Only on old Sam Lynch’s birthday do they cut loose.”

  Edge leaned toward the mirror and ran a hand over his freshly shaven features. Although the removal of the stubble should have made him look younger, it didn’t. For now the deep lines of hardship showed up clearly in the copper-colored flesh, and there was not a trace of youth to be seen. “How much?” he asked, getting to his feet.

  The old man shook his head. “I get a free meal today, so I can afford to give a free shave.”

  “Obliged,” Edge said and headed for the door.

  The old man scuttled out after him without waiting to clear up and hurried down the street, turning into the saloon. Edge sat in the rocking chair on the stoop in front of the shop and rolled a cigarette. There were a lot more people milling among the amusements than could possibly live in the town or on the farmsteads surrounding it. He guessed that the poster at the old line cabin and possibly others spread around the country had attracted the strangers. There were a great many notable for their work clothes and unscrubbed faces and hands.

  For an hour Edge rested easy in the rocker, watching the start and finish of the horse race, then listening with disinterest to the ten-man band falter through a limited repertoire. The prize fight was being staged at the far end of the street, and initially it attracted little attention. But as the afternoon wore on, the crowd around the ring began to expand, drawing on the well-fed and well-oiled floaters who had taken their fill of the other entertainments.

  By the time Edge decided to check out the cause of the cheering and shouting at the far end of town, he was the only person showing any apparent interest in the band. He sensed the eyes of the musicians following him as he rose from the chair and ambled down the center of the empty street. The middle-aged conductor half turned to send a pleading glance toward the tall half-breed.

  “Keep practicing, fellers,” Edge called. “It’s just gotta get better.”

  The conductor gave him a withering look and continued to brandish his baton. As Edge drew closer to the noisy crowd, the discordant music was swamped. He stepped up on to the sidewalk in front of the bank, and his height enabled him to see across the heads of the excited audience. Both fighters were stripped to the waist and were dressed only in pants. One was the well-built youngster who had been in the saloon the day before. The other was an inch taller but was leaner. Judging by the number of bruises on his suntanned body and the blood-spilling cuts on his face, his reach advantage was outweighed by the other man’s speed. Despite the squashed nose, purple eye, and ugly contusion on the taller man’s face, Edge found something familiar about him.

  “Like to make a bet, mister?”

  Edge swung around and saw a familiar face. It belonged to the painfully thin man who had been with the smaller fighter in the saloon. He carried a small notebook in one hand and a heavy-looking leather bag in the other.

  “Maybe,” Edge said and returned his attention to the fight as a raucous cheer was raised by the crowd.

  The fighter getting the worst of the contest had just been pitched full length to the ground by a powerful jab in the stomach. The crowd was chanting for the beefy man to move in and end it.

  “The boy on the deck is McNally,” the thin man explained. “Right now I’m offering ten-to-one on him. The other fighter is Jefferson. Should be evens, but two-to-one to make it interesting.”

  Edge seemed to ignore the speaker as he watched Mo-Nally haul himself to his feet before the dancing Jefferson. Jefferson weaved in and telegraphed a left hook. McNally countered it instinctively, much to the disappointment of the crowd. He threw a weak right that had no chance of connecting. Jefferson swung a roundhouse that crunched into McNally’s cheek. McNally went down to a roar of approval. He seemed to use a lot of energy to get to his feet again—too much, like the first time.

  “Two grand on McNally,” Edge said softly, swinging to face the man making book and curling back his lips in a grin as he saw the surprise inscribed on the lean features.

  “That much on an outsider?” The man blinked and swallowed hard.

  Edge extracted his bankroll and peeled off the required number of bills. The roll had been a great deal fatter a few months before. But buying a spread and getting married had cost money.

  “Write the slip before my-boy Comes in from the outside,” Edge ordered softly.

  The thin man did so with a shaking hand and gave the slip to Edge. He stuffed the money into the bag already fat with bills and made to move away.

  “Hold it, feller,” Edge warned. The Colt was in his holster and the rifle was sloped casually across his shoulder. But the cold blue eyes glinted through their slits in a threat as potent as any gun muzzle. He moderated his tone. “Be obliged if you stayed where I can see you.” The thin man blinked and tried to sound irate. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “Man has to earn trust,” Edge replied, turning his head to watch the fight. “But I ain’t paying those kind of wages unless I’m sure you’re a hard worker, feller.”

  There was a roar as McNally went down again, clutching at his groin. Edge watched impassively as the youngster writhed in apparent agony. But on the periphery of his vision he could see the shadow of the thin man. The thin man knew this, so he made no move. McNally started to rise slowly, his battered face a mask of anguish. Jefferson ignored the screams and yells of. the crowd. He was going through the motions of weaving and crouching, preparing for the kill, but his heart wasn’t in it. His eyes swung from side to side, searching for somebody in the crowd. As he glanced toward the bank, Edge sidestepped in front of the thin man.

  McNally leaped to his feet with a power and litheness which bore no relation to the marks of the beating he showed. He feinted to the left, blocked a roundhouse, and sent a pile-driving jab into Jefferson’s exposed stomach. Jefferson began to fold forward. McNally started an uppercut from way down and connected with every ounce of his strength. Something clicked in Jefferson’s jaw. The man was lifted inches from the ground, his body ramrod stiff for a second. Then in front of the crowd struck dumb by the shock he thudded his bare feet against the ground. His legs gave way, and he crumpled. He became inert. McNally forced open his split lips in a grin of triumph. The crowd found its collective voice and screamed at the senseless fighter to get up.

  Edge swung around and trapped t
he trembling thin man with an ice-cold stare. “Two by ten makes twenty, feller,” he said against the incensed roar of the crowd. “Plus my stake.” The grin reached his mouth but no higher. “Guess that puts the fixer in a fix, uh?”

  A shotgun blasted the crowd into abrupt silence. All eyes except those of Edge swung to the roof of the law office. A series of gasps hissed through the crowd. A shocked voice cut across the breathy sound: “It’s Mrs. Pitman.”

  Now the tall half-breed looked up at the roof. The sheriff’s wife had ceased to struggle against the grasp of a masked man, who used his free hand to hold a revolver against her temple. A second masked man held a shotgun pointed skyward with smoke still whisping from one of the two barrels. He lowered it to cover the upturned faces of the people on the street.

  “We figure we got us a winning bet,” the redhead with the shotgun called into the silence.

  The man holding Mrs. Pitman cocked his revolver, and the dry click sounded louder than the shouted words. The sheriff tore his gaze away from his wife’s plight and swung around to survey the many faces now turned to stare at him. His features were twisted by anguish, the skin as white as the fabric of the sling around his arm. His eyes

  searched for and found the thin man standing nervously beside Edge on the bank’s stoop.

  “Toss the money up to them!” the lawman croaked.

  The thin man shot a frightened glance at Edge. “Do I give ’em the money?” he asked, his voice trembling as much as his hands.

  The half-breed shrugged. “You make a lousy book,” he muttered. “But they’ve got a good cover. Kinda puts you in a bind, don’t it?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Blast Jefferson Davis?” Forrest exclaimed. “In the middle of Richmond, for Christ sake!”

  The white troopers were in the hotel restaurant, washing down their first hot meal in many days with coffee and brandy chasers. The survivors of the liberated slaves were still out in the slackening rain, attending to the burial of their dead. The lieutenant, the Pinkerton man, and the hotel clerk had watched with varying degrees of distaste as the travel- and battle-weary troopers had attacked the food. Not until the men had eaten their fill and achieved a state of easy relaxation had the detective shot a glance to Hedges and received a nod of approval.