EDGE: The Prisoners Read online

  ‘You’re a friggin’ madman!’ Straw accused, wide eyes fixed upon his captor as Edge came back to the half circle of rocks again and released the mule from his hobbles. But made no move to drive the animal from the camp. ‘There could have been somethin’ worth havin’ in them packs.’

  ‘I got everything I need, feller,’ Edge told him as he squatted down at Straw’s feet, using the rope which had hobbled the mule to tie the man’s ankles together.

  ‘I ain’t never seen a more cold blooded killin’! And for friggin’ nothin’!’

  ‘For the same reason as McBride, feller. Warned both of them not to aim a gun at me. Both of them tried it.’

  ‘Wasn’t shootin’ them enough for you, man? Why’d you have to toss their bodies over the friggin’ cliff?’

  ‘Didn’t smell too sweet when they were alive. Down there, their rotting carcasses won’t bother me.’

  After binding Straw’s ankles together, there was enough spare rope to thread through the handles of the Scotsmen’s tin cups and tie them so that they would rattle at any slight movement the man made.

  ‘Shit, I thought I was a friggin’ hard case, man,’ the half breed Comanche rasped. ‘But I ain’t even through the first grade of the school you’re at.’

  Edge had left him, to toss on to the dying fire a pile of brush that the ill fated prospectors had gathered. This after taking the cooking and coffee pots off the embers.

  ‘You want anything to eat, Joe?’ he asked.

  Straw made a face. ‘I’d sick it right up again, man. And not on account of my arm hurtin’ like hell. Just thinkin’ about you makes my damn stomach churn.’

  ‘Your decision,’ Edge said flatly, and dragged the two saddles and his bedroll further away from the flames which were fiercely consuming the fresh fuel, and broadening the gap, too, between himself and Straw. He unfurled his blankets and got between them with the Winchester for company, resting his head on a saddle and this time tilting his hat far enough forward to cover his eyes.

  ‘You ain’t a man to take no chances, are you?’ Straw growled when the roar of the flames had subsided. ‘School’s out, feller. Sleeping time.’

  ‘How am I supposed to get to sleep, man? With my arm feelin’ like it’s bumin’ hotter than the friggin’ fire?’

  Edge raised a hand to lift his hat brim so that he could meet the angry gaze of Straw. ‘I ain’t no doctor, feller,’ he said coldly. ‘But I’m willing to give you the same kind of treatment that put you out twice before.’

  The half breed Comanche scowled. ‘Thanks but no thanks, man. I’d rather suffer.’

  The hat brim dropped back to cover most of Edge’s face. ‘Obliged if you’d do it in silence.’

  ‘Tell you what’d help, man.’

  ‘I don’t know any lullabies.’

  ‘If you had some liquor, I could keep that down and it would maybe help with the pain.’

  ‘Never carry it, Joe.’

  ‘There might’ve been some in them packs you tossed away, damnit!’

  Beneath the brim of the Stetson, Edge’s mouthline formed into the semblance of a sardonic smile. ‘Obliged, feller,’ he murmured. ‘You’ve given me a beautiful thought to sleep on.’

  ‘What’s that, crazy man?’

  The tip of Edge’s tongue emerged to run between his lips. ‘Couple of Scotch on the rocks. Water on the side.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE rattle of the tin cups brought Edge to instant awareness just once during the night. And with one hand fisting tighter around the frame of the Winchester, he raised his hat with the other to peer across at Joe Straw. But the half breed Comanche was in a deep sleep of mental and physical exhaustion and it was just an involuntary movement of his legs that caused the noise.

  The half breed Mexican drifted easily back into his own sleep, untroubled by doubts about what had happened in the past or worries concerned with the future. Was not disturbed again until the cold dawn had broken and the first shaft of warm sunlight lanced in from the east.

  When he rose, he stirred the grey ashes to find some glowing embers and tossed brush on them to set the fire going again. Filled his own and the dead men’s coffee pots but put grounds in just one of them. Had washed up, shaved by feel, and drunk two cups of coffee before Joe Straw groaned into the waking world, crying out from the sharp pain when he moved his wounded arm in an attempt to flex the numbness out of it.

  It took perhaps five seconds for his green eyes to focus on the brightly sunlit scene and for his mind to be triggered into recalling the events which led to him being there.

  ‘Morning, Joe.’

  Edge filled John Hackman’s cup and reached out to hand it to Straw. Who accepted it with a scowl after he eased himself gingerly up into a sitting posture.

  Then, grudgingly growled: ‘Thanks,’ after taking several sips at the coffee.

  ‘No sweat. You figure you can face breakfast without throwing up?’

  ‘All I’ve ate in two friggin’ days was that stuff you allowed me outta Hackman’s saddlebags, man. I gotta have somethin’ decent inside me to get through this one.’

  Edge nodded and tossed some dried ingredients from his own supplies into his own cooking pot and set it on the fire.

  ‘I gotta keep this hobble on my legs, man?’

  ‘Until we’re ready to leave, feller.’

  ‘No friggin’ chances at all!’

  ‘Appears you left it a little late in learning your lessons.’

  Edge sprinkled some chilli powder in the pot and began to stir the food, while Straw seemed to give all his embittered attention to the coffee he was drinking. This as the sun rose clear of the ragged horizon to the east and the. last of the night’s chill was driven from the air in this part of the mountains.

  ‘I suppose I oughta thank you, man,’ the half breed Comanche said at length.

  ‘You already did for the coffee. And half the breakfast is for me.’

  ‘I mean for handlin’ them two murderin’ sonsofbitches last night. If they’d blasted you to hell, I wouldn’t’ve been far behind, I figure.’

  ‘It wasn’t any trouble, Joe.’

  ‘I friggin’ saw that, man. But I had no call to sound off at you the way I did. They deserved what you gave them and no mistake.’

  Edge made, lit and smoked his first cigarette of the day while Straw took regular sips of his coffee. The sun’s warmth increased, the fire crackled and the food bubbled.

  The cooking chilli began to smell good.

  ‘I gotta thank you for takin’ care of my arm, as well,’ the half breed Comanche said at length. ‘I sure wasn’t ready to do that when you started in with the hot water. But if you hadn’t cleaned up where I was hit, it’d feel a whole lot worse this mornin’, I figure.’

  He set down his empty cup and gently massaged the blanket binding covering the wound.

  Edge ladled out breakfast on his own and John Hackman’s plate and gave one to his prisoner.

  ‘Thanks, man.’

  Edge tossed the cigarette butt on the fire and growled with a grimace: ‘You planning to make me throw up, feller?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You hate my guts, so you figure to give me a pain in them with all this gratitude you’re spreading around?’

  ‘Shit, man! I mean it! Shape I’m in I gotta rely on you for every friggin’ thing! Just want you to know you could’ve done a whole lot worse at it so far.’

  Straw’s sour voiced response seemed to be born out of genuine pique at Edge’s coldly skeptical reception of his attempt to express gratitude. There was even a strong suggestion of hurt in his green eyes.

  ‘I’m taking you up to Colorado to be hanged for murder, feller. You got nothing to thank me for.’

  ‘You don’t think so, man? I’m the bastard son of a Comanche squaw who was raped by a drunk Irishman! That don’t make for no easy life, I can tell you! But life’s mighty friggin’ sweet, whatever kind you got! There’s a whole lot of miles betw
een here and Crater, man! And a whole lot of things can happen from here to there! So I sure as hell am grateful not to be dead from you gettin’ taken in by those two sonsofbitches you tossed over the cliff! And I’m happy I ain’t gonna die of gangrene!’

  ‘Eat your breakfast, feller.’

  Straw allowed the anger to drain out of him, and then showed a bright grin. ‘And that’s another thing, man. With you around, I ain’t gonna starve to death.’

  ‘While you wait for a chance to bite the hand that feeds you, uh?’

  The grin was held on the dark skinned, good looking face that - for the first time - Edge realized did not sprout bristles. ‘You wouldn’t expect me to promise you nothin’, man? My old lady - the squaw I told you about? - one time down in Sonora, I needed some fast money to pay off a guy who was gonna kill me. I sold her to a bunch of real mean Mexicans. A man who’ll sell his mother into slavery, man? You wouldn’t expect him to tell you he ain’t gonna kill you first chance he gets - to keep from being hung?’

  Edge continued to eat, showing not a flicker of emotion in reaction to Straw’s revelation. Finished his breakfast and took the other man’s still heaped plate from him.

  ‘Hey, I ain’t - ’

  ‘Big talker, small eater, feller. We’re going to leave now.’

  He scraped the remains of the food on to the fire and cleaned all the utensils. Then furled the bedrolls, packed away the gear and saddled the mare and the gelding.

  ‘Man, you’re so mean, I’m surprised you don’t poison yourself when you swallow your spit!’ Straw snarled.

  Now Edge grinned as he dropped to bis haunches and untied the man’s ankles, tossing the tin cups away.

  ‘That’s better, Joe,’ he drawled. ‘Best we keep on the way we started. Then there won’t be any hard feelings when I hand you over to the people at Crater.’

  He held out a hand to help Straw to his feet but the injured man sneered at the offer and tried to rise unaided. But he couldn’t make it and, with hatred spread over his sweat beaded face, was forced to accept assistance.

  ‘I gotta take a leak, man.’

  ‘Fire needs dousing, feller.’

  Edge waited near the horses and the mule while Straw struggled one handed to unbutton and then refasten the front of his pants, his left arm hanging limply at his side. When the half breed Comanche was done, he used a foot to scrape dirt on the embers that continued to glow.

  He did not try to shun Edge’s help in getting astride the gelding. Then his captor mounted the mare and they set off down the sloping trail. The mule followed them.

  At the base of the hill, where the stream emptied into the pool, Edge called a halt. Straw eyed him with resentful expectation.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Bath time, feller.’

  ‘You’re kiddin’, man?’ He said it with a grin of anticipated pleasure.

  Edge swung out of his saddle. ‘We both stink, feller. Least I can get rid of what ails us on the outside.’

  He started to take off his clothes and Straw was able to dismount without help and follow the other man’s example.

  The two horses and the mule drank eagerly from the side of the pool, then cropped at the grass that fringed it.

  With less to take off, Straw was the first to strip naked and wade out into the water. Far enough away from the bank so that he was able to sit down with just his head above the surface.

  Edge still had the beaded thong with the razor pouch encircling his neck when he entered the pool which had already been warmed by the sun. He did not go in so deeply as Straw, and lowered himself with relish into the water at a point between the Comanche half breed and the bank. Even though the prisoner’s beam of pure enjoyment revealed the man’s thoughts were far removed from any idea of trying to get to the Colt in the discarded gunbelt or the Winchester jutting from the boot on the feeding mare.

  ‘That bastard Hackman didn’t even let me wash up, let alone take a friggin’ bath,’ Straw said after ducking his head under the surface and beginning to scrub with his good hand in his red, curly hair. ‘Kept my hands tied the whole damn time and spoon fed me when he felt like it. Said I was a dangerous wild animal and he was gonna treat me like one. Four friggin’ days he had me. Ridin’ twenty hours and sleepin’ four. And with the sonofabitch so close behind me when I got away from him, I didn’t have no chance to let up. And nothin’ to eat, either.’

  Edge doused himself all over then stood up to rub at ingrained dirt in his skin with a kerchief.

  ‘Man, this is real luxury.’

  Edge did not relax his survey of the apparently deserted mountainscape that surrounded them while he took the bath.

  ‘You know, I’m pretty evenly divided between that Irish rapist and the squaw he took, Edge. And I don’t mean just in the way I look. She was okay. Come to hate the Comanches for makin’ her an outcast just because she allowed herself to get raped by a white. Allowed herself, shit. But she had self-respect, you know what I mean? Like in keepin’ herself clean best she was able. Stuff like that. All Indians do that, you know. Take care of things like that a whole lot better than a whole lot of whites.

  ‘The rapist, he was a real no-good sonofabitch, way the squaw told me. And I gotta believe I went bad on account of his blood that’s in my veins. Got to know the squaw pretty good and never knowed her to do harm to any livin’ thing. Just spoke a lot of evil about the Comanches that kicked her out through no fault of her own.’

  He ducked under the water again and when he surfaced, Edge was out of the pool and starting to towel himself dry with his shirt.

  ‘And me being half-and-half the way I am, I can see her point of view. Double, man. I’m on the outside of the Indians and the whites both.’

  Now he rose and began to wade out of the pool. Asked:

  ‘You listenin’ to what I’m saying, Edge?’

  ‘Sure, Joe. And you ain’t like that old prospector last night. Fishing to find out if I had the money you took off the stage. You’ve got plenty of time to get to the point.’

  Straw nodded and began to dress without drying the beads of water from his muscular flesh. ‘I sure ain’t fishin’ for sympathy, man. If anyone needs it, I figure you do. But you ain’t the kind open to it and I sure ain’t the kind to give it. So I ain’t gettin’ to no point you care about. Guess what I’m sayin’ is that, apart from havin’ a hangin’ rope waitin’ for me at the end of the line, I’d rather be me than you. Whatever I am.’

  Edge buttoned his shirt and tucked it into the waistband of his pants.

  ‘Least I make the best outta friggin’ life, man. The ups and the downs. Why, you’re so stone faced I can’t see you ever havin’ any fun.. Don’t you ever friggin’ unbend and have a good belly laugh at anythin’? No, course you don’t! You’re hardly human, you know that?’

  ‘Death ain’t a laughing matter, feller. You want a hand up on to your horse?’

  ‘I can do it now, man. You’ve had a whole night’s sleep since you killed them two.’

  At the third cursing attempt he managed to haul himself astride the gelding. Then looked with a scornful grin at Edge who was carrying his canteens toward the mare after filling them from the stream above the pool.

  ‘It’s your death I’m talking about, Joe.’

  ‘Mine or yours, man.’

  Edge hung the canteens from the saddlehorn and climbed astride his mount. Nodded and answered: ‘Yeah, I figure it’ll be a matter of who laughs last laughing longest.’

  Straw spat into the pool. ‘Be my pleasure to put you outta your misery.’

  Edge heeled his horse forward and gestured for the half breed Comanche to restart the trip. ‘And if it turns out to be he other way around, feller, I’ll do my laughing. All the way to the bank.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  EDGE had known from the time he first started to follow the trail - a few hours before he saw Joe Straw riding it - that it still had some purpose. Its surface showed little signs of use, yet
it was not disused.

  Like so many other trails that criss-crossed the south western territories, it had probably been originated by the Indians as they moved in great numbers to the dictates of the passing seasons. Then a few migrant whites, seeking a hospitable piece of terrain on which to settle, had further compacted the dirt. Next the army, in greater numbers and with more heavily laden wagons had made use of the route that offered the easiest way to journey through the mountains from north to south or vice versa.

  But there were just a handful of army posts in the area now: a token military presence to protect the few settlers who had staked claims to scattered pieces of poor land against the small number of Indians who survived the brutal occupation and refused to retreat to even less hospitable regions of the territories.

  There were relatively recent wheel tracks and hoofprints on the trail, though. And Edge guessed these marked the to and fro passages of a stage between widely spaced communities. Or maybe the wagons of a freight line company. Whichever, there had to be way-stations of some sort to cater for the needs of weary horses, drivers and maybe passengers.

  And at mid-morning he and Joe Straw caught their first glimpse of such a place in the far distance. A single storey building with smoke rising from a chimney on the outside of an end wall. Blurred by heat shimmer for several minutes, then coming into sharp focus as they rode closer. Sited to the right of the trail from their viewpoint, at a point where their way ran out of the northern ridges of the Santa Rosa Mountains and stretched across a parched area of semi desert toward another group of rises in the north east.

  ‘More smoke - that could mean we’ll be playin’ with fire, man,’ Joe Straw growled, to break the silence that had held between them since they left the stream fed pool.

  ‘Take it easy, Joe,’ Edge answered easily. ‘And remember I know where you hurt the most.’