Killer's Breed Read online

  He continued to look around the half circle of faces, wanting to explain, but not, having discovered this new facet of his character, acknowledging the necessity. It was enough that he understood his own actions. That in killing Indians and land grabbers he had been protecting what was his, thereby justifying his violence. But in attacking the town he had been the aggressor and his gun barrels had stayed cold because, whatever the Rebels rights were to the town, there was nothing of his there. Now he knew there was—he was there and it was his life he had to protect. Mitchell had probably been aware of that fact in relation to his life—and all the other troopers who had been killed in the attack. But it had taken Hedges this long to reach the realization. It was not, he thought, how a soldier was supposed to think, but if he held any respect for patriotism of beliefs in abstract ideals of liberty and human rights, they had gone the way of his hopes for glory. He was fighting for his life and the surest way to win was to take the lives of the enemy.

  "That's the last crack I'll take from any of you men," he barked and each word was like a chip of rock splitting from his narrowed mouth. "We all came into this war as amateurs and some of us have paid the price of our own and Washington's stupidity. I got some gold braid that means I've got to accept some of the responsibility for those men getting killed." He spat into the agonized expression on the face of one of the dead Confederate soldiers. "I accept it. Also, I'll personally kill any man who smart-talks me or don't do exactly what I tell him when 1 tell him."

  The men shuffled their feet as their eyes retreated from the lieutenant's penetrating stare. Every one of them believed what Hedges had said.

  "Okay," he announced when he had completed his study. "Morgan, you and you,"—he pointed to two other men—"stay by these windows and keep blasting the rebs. The rest of you come with me. Let's see if there's any spare whiskey in the saloon."

  He received some puzzled looks, but no one questioned his comment.

  "You all right, sir?" a trooper asked as Hedges hobbled towards the rear of the office, the pain flooding back through his body.

  "Am I complaining?" he snapped.

  "No, sir."

  "When I fall down and don't get up; ask me again."

  As the men by the windows started to fire, he led the way through the storeroom and out of the open door by which Morgan and his men had entered. The saloon was the biggest building they had reached so far, twice as long as it was wide, stretching more than two hundred feet back from the street. The livery stable was on the other side and the Rebels were deployed at the front and side of the saloon, covering the street and alleyway to prevent Leaman's escape, So Hedges was able to lead his men to the back without interference as the sergeant, Leaman and Morgan and their men engaged the enemy. The same gunfire that distracted attention from their progress also covered the sound of the forced entry through the rear door.

  It gave on to a small bedroom, untidy and smelling. The source of the odor was a man in middle years who was squatting on the bed, his eyes wide with fear and a finger pressed to his lips.

  "I'll keep quiet," he whispered hoarsely.

  "Owner?" Hedges asked as he approached the bed, aiming the Spencer at the man. He shook his head.

  "I just clean up the place. Don't like those Johnnie Rebs no more than you do. You gonna kill them?"

  Hedges nodded.

  The man grinned. "I'll keep quiet."

  "I know," Hedges said and smashed the rifle barrel across his temple.

  The man toppled sideways with a gentle sigh. Another doorway gave on to a storeroom, stacked high with bottles, most of them filled with whiskey.

  "Man, will you look at all this redeye," one of the troopers muttered.

  "And not a drop to drink," Hedges hissed, pressing his ear against a door opposite the one by which they had entered. He could hear conversation interspersed with gunshots and guessed the barroom was on the other side of the panel. He turned to the men. "Take a crate each back into the stage office. If I find one of you has even smelled a cork I'll pour the whole bottle down your throat and set light to your tongue."

  The troopers began to haul out the crates, the sounds of the battle acting as a screen for the small noises they made. When the last man had gone Hedges uncorked a bottle and poured the contents around the room. He wasn't satisfied and emptied two more bottles in a like manner before striking a match and throwing it to the floor. Flames licked and then gripped, giving off a sour smell and as Hedges backed out of the door, wood began to crackle in the blaze, sending up plumes of dense black smoke. As Hedges re-entered the stage depot smoke and flames were belching from the open door at the rear of the saloon.

  The storeroom of the depot was cluttered with inflammable material, but Hedges chose a bale of hay, which he dragged through into the office, staying at the rear behind a long counter as bullets ricocheted around the room. All the troopers were positioned near the windows, firing out into the street. Hedges beckoned to the nearest man and instructed him to begin uncorking the bottles while he broke open the bale and stuffed hay into the necks.

  "We gonna hot things up, sir?" the man asked.

  "Fire!" a shout rang out as Hedges nodded, and it was not an instruction to the riflemen. "The saloon's on fire."

  "Roof," Hedges snapped, indicating that the man helping him should lift the crate of prepared fire bombs and follow him. "You men, take care of the rest of these and stay put till we come back."

  The depot was only one story and the stairway went up in an alcove between the office and the back room. A trap door at the top gave access to the flat roof and a wooden sign at the front provided cover as Hedges and the trooper moved forward. Hedges worked the action of the Spencer to feed a shell into the breech.

  "Whatever's left of the other group is in the house right across the street," he muttered. "Reckon you can reach the building next door?"

  The man rose into a crouch to peer over the top of the depot sign. He nodded. "The funeral parlor. Think I could get the bank next door to that as well, sir."

  "Don't be ambitious till the parlor's burning," Hedges said. "Get fire raising. I'll cover you."

  His hip transmitted waves of pain as he went down to one knee behind the sign and rested his cheek against the stock of the rifle, preparing to fire his first shot of the war. As the trooper set fire, to the first bottle and swung his arm in a powerful arc to hurl it across the street, smoke from the saloon billowed up on to the roof, The bottle hit the front wall of the funeral parlor and poured down with liquid fire.

  "Try for the windows," Hedges instructed.

  The second bottle bounced off the roof but the third smashed through the window with the gold leaf printing on it. A man cried out in alarm and Hedges curled back his lips in a cold grin as he saw the orange glow which told of success. "You just turned the funeral parlor into a crematorium," he said. "Let's see if the bank's got money to burn."

  A cheer rose from the troopers in the office below, and, seemed to encourage the fire bomb thrower into giving of his best. There was an iron grill behind the plate glass window of the bank, but it could not prevent the burning whiskey from spraying inside as the first bottle found its mark.

  "What’s your name, soldier?" Hedges asked.

  "Mantle, sir," the man replied, arcing another bottle across the street as billowing black smoke darkened the sun.

  "You're ahead of your time," Hedges said and squeezed the Spencer's trigger.

  Like the stage depot, the funeral parlor had a trap door on to the roof. A man escaping from the fire had only got his head and shoulders clear when Hedges' bullet drilled a hole in his temple.

  "Heads, you lose," Hedges muttered as the dead man slumped back down the stairway.

  The bank had no rear exit and the four Confederate soldiers had no alternative but to make a rush through the double doors at the front. The street was now heavily blanketed with smoke and Hedges got only one clear shot at the escapers. The gray uniformed figure clutched a
t his chest and pitched headlong into the street. A volley of rifle fire sounded from further along the street and in a fleeting moment when a ray of sunlight pierced the smoke, Hedges saw the three other men fall.

  Leaman or some of his men had survived the hail of bullets sent into the livery, and when soldiers began to run from the saloon, the sergeant's group also made their presence known.

  "I got one to spare, sir," Mantle reported.

  "Light it," Hedges told him, reaching out a hand. He took the bottle with its flaring fuse, leaned out over the depot sign and tossed it down among the still and writhing bodies in front of the saloon as a murderous barrage of gunfire continued to emit from the house across the street. The flames from burning gray uniforms rose high. The screams of the victims went higher, and then diminished as the frantic note of a bugle cut through the acrid, smoke laden air.

  "Think that's the general calling," Hedges said.

  "Lieutenant?" a voice called from below,

  "What is it?"

  "You all through burning things?"

  "I reckon," he answered as he watched the sergeant lead five men from the house across the street, then looked in the other direction to see Leaman emerge from the smoke with three men behind him. Edge had only seven men left. He didn't do the subtraction. Men had died and he knew a lot more would meet the same end before this war was over. It was not his job to tally. The smell of burning flesh stressed that, in terms of war, the men had not died in vain.

  The pain in his hip seemed to bum hotter than any of the fires raging around him.

  *****

  EDGE spent a restless night. Although he was unconscious his body reacted involuntarily to the pain of the neck wound and the burning heat of the raging fever. His muscles twitched and his limbs thrashed and sometimes his nostrils flared and his mouth came wide in a silent scream.

  Margaret Hope and Grace took two-hourly turns at watching over him, to ensure that the fire was maintained at a roaring pitch and each bedcover was replaced on his naked body after he had kicked or pulled it clear.

  Outside the warmth of the farmhouse the rain continued to lash from low cloud, sometimes smashing at the stout walls and shuttered windows like an attacking force as a gust of cold wind sprang across the prairie.

  Although the mother and daughter shared the night nursing duty, neither of them slept during the two hourly rest periods for in addition to their anxiety over the injured stranger, they were deeply concerned about the progress of Thomas and Allen Hope.

  "How's he been?" Margaret asked as she emerged from her daughter's bedroom, rubbing her reddened yes.

  "Restless," Grace answered. "Most of the time he thrashes about. I think he's dreaming."

  "Wish I could," her mother answered, going to the fire and pouring a cup of coffee from the pot kept warm by the flames. "Bad enough for men to have to look after themselves on a night like this. Fifty head of steer won't make it easier none."

  "I don't feel tired," Grace said, and her own tired eyes gave the lie to the statement. "You go back to bed and try to sleep."

  The elder woman smiled and sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at the pallor of the injured man's face. "Wouldn't be fair on me, daughter," she said. "In here the stranger helps to keep the mind off other things." She sipped at the hot coffee. "Not a bad looking feller when you see him from here."

  "I think he's handsome," Grace said quickly, then blushed.

  "In a mean sort of way, I guess," her mother answered thoughtfully, then smiled again as she looked at Grace. "Handsome as that young deputy in town?"

  The blush deepened in color. "They're different types. I wish you wouldn't keep talking about Billy West, mother."

  "You're a young woman now, Grace. Time you started to encourage somebody like Billy."

  "Please, mother," Grace pleaded as she got to her feet. "If you're going to go on like that, I'm going to bed."

  "It's your turn," her mother answered gently. "It'll be light soon. I'll make breakfast later and then we'll change the dressing and try to get some broth down his throat."

  Grace nodded and went through to her bedroom, feeling her face still suffused by a flush. For a long time, as she lay in the bed, her thoughts were distracted from worry about her father and brother as she compared the physical attractions of Billy West and the stranger. And the knowledge that it was the stranger who set her heart beating faster sent the warm glow from her cheeks to every part of her body.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THEY were crossing the Appalachians now and morale was high; Reports of the small victory at Philippi had reached Washington and had there been magnified by a jubilant press into a colossal triumph over the Confederacy. McClellan and a large proportion of his men were pleased to believe the wild stories and found it easy to forget the twisted and blood-spattered bodies of their comrades who fell during the battle as they pushed on eagerly towards the next confrontation with the rebels.

  Hedges felt neither, elated nor depressed as he allowed his horse free rein through the mountains, at the head of one column of men and in the wake of another. If he experienced any emotion it was one of low-keyed satisfaction that he had made mistakes at Philippi, but had learned from them. That men had died during the lesson was no fault of his, rather of the circumstances which allowed for no school of war except war itself. Neither did he concern himself with the rumor that McCellan was considering his promotion to captain as soon as a vacancy occurred. When the general had personally commended him, after hearing Leaman's report of the battle, Hedges had been taciturn in his response. He had done what was necessary in the best way he knew how and in his own mind this was what was expected of him and therefore merited no reward.

  "Understand you're in line for promotion, lieutenant?" Captain Oliver Jordan was a tall, thin man of forty with an arrogantly handsome face and the manner of an educated hog. Before the taking of Fort Sumter he had been second-in-command of a fort in the south western Territories. He was always willing to regale, and bore, his fellow officers in McClellan's army with tales of his exploits, the details of which were apt to be embroidered at each telling to the point where little credence could be placed in them. Of all the West Pointers Hedges had come across, Jordan had the greatest aversion to ninety-day officers. As he slowed his horse to match pace with Hedges, the captain's eyes displayed a sardonic light and his teeth shone in a supercilious smile.

  "So everyone keeps telling me," Hedges answered with merely a glance in the other's direction.

  There was a low murmuring of discontent from the men in Hedges' column. While fellow officers disliked the boastful Jordan, the enlisted men hated him for his overbearing attitude and unbending brand of discipline.

  "You're still a lieutenant," Jordan reminded.

  "Sir," Hedges supplied.

  Jordan nodded. "One skirmish doesn't make a soldier."

  Hedges continued to ride, eyes to the front, looking across the heads of the troopers towards the rising ground that was beginning to slow the pace. "No, sir," he said.

  "You don't say a lot, do you?" A note of irritation had crept into Jordan's voice.

  "I've only got one skirmish to talk about, sir," Hedges replied and spat into the lush green grass they were riding over. "Said all I want to about that."

  A cackle of laughter sounded from the men behind the officers and was abruptly silenced as Jordan turned in his saddle, his expression hardening. His eyes were still flat with an accusing glare as they returned to Hedges' profile.

  "You don't impress me as officer material," he said with soft reproach. "I've got the ear of the general and I'll be watching you, lieutenant."

  "I'll try to give you something to see, sir," Hedges came back evenly.

  Jordan grunted and heeled his horse into a wheel away from the column of cavalry to return to his position. Another cackle of laughter followed him and was not ended until the men had drained the situation dry of amusement.

  They crested one peak and then
another in the push towards the Shenandoah Valley before a halt was called and McClellan assembled his senior officers. Hedges made use of the pause to read again the letter from Jeannie Fisher and then scrawled a letter of his own to his brother Jamie. He folded five dollars into the envelope before sealing it and putting the envelope in his pocket to await an opportunity to place it aboard a west-bound stage. C Troop, the designation for the men under Leaman's command, were in a glade and Hedges did his reading and writing under the spreading bows of a gnarled oak which reminded him of the tree standing outside the house of his Iowa spread. Leaman found him there, reading yet again the short note from the girl in Parkersburg.

  "See there?" the Captain asked, pointing out of the glade and up the rise to where the side of a mountain could be seen between the trees.

  Hedges nodded as he put the letter away.

  Leaman lowered his voice to cheat the ears of the nearby troopers who strained to pick up information. "Rich Mountain. Indications are that there are between four and five thousand Confederates dug in up there. They've been waiting there a long time and have thrown up some good defenses.

  "Hedges grinned coldly.” You asking for volunteers?"

  Leaman attempted to form his boyish features into a cynical grin. "In this war you only volunteer once—to join. After that it's orders all the way. McClellan wants to push on north east with the main body. Jordan's Troop, C Troop and A Troop are going up Rich Mountain."

  "When?" Hedges asked.

  "Mount up!" a cry rang through the timber, to be followed by identical orders from all around.

  "One guess," Leaman replied.

  Hedges took off his cap, ran his hand through his lengthening black hair and replaced it. "Before the rebs have time to dig in any deeper."

  As Leaman nodded, Hedges signaled to the sallow-faced sergeant. He gave the order and the men stamped out their cigarettes or came up out of reclining positions to pull themselves into their saddles. Hedges mounted his own horse and waited impassively for the command to move forward. When it came, shouted down the line like an echo in a narrow canyon, the column of blue coated figures divided into two, one group sheering to the north into the mouth of a valley as the remainder headed up the rising ground of low foothills.