EDGE: The Blind Side Page 6

  "While he was saying these things to me—using the Anglo-Saxon expressions, of course—he was forcing me to walk with him toward the camp. With a hand in my hair at the back of my neck. My mind remained absolutely clear, but I felt powerless to resist him. It was as if, too, I had lost the capability to speak.

  "One of the men had stirred the fire and added fresh wood. I can remember welcoming the warmth. And remember, too, the filthiness of the skin on the faces of the men and the stench of their flesh and their clothing.

  "The man continued to hold my hair, here. While with his other hand he ripped my night­gown where it was tied at the throat. He hurt me, just as his hand pulling at my hair hurt me. I knew it would get worse. I knew, too, that my situation was hopeless. After he had torn my nightgown off me and thrown it on the fire, I had decided what I had to do. I would coop­erate with them. I would be what they wanted me to be. Do everything that was asked of me. By so doing, I considered, my suffering would not be quite so bad. Perhaps they might even treat me with some degree of kindness. I dared hope, too, they might take me with them."

  The four duster-coated rapists had taken the trail that went to the southeast of the crag. Heading for a community called Fallon. The other fork of the trail led to Tucson. Just arrowhead marks and the names of the towns had been chipped in the rockface many years ago: the distances in miles were not given.

  Of much more recent origin was the sign left by the men who had reached this place along the Tucson trail, camped for the night, taken their totally unexpected pleasure with the woman, abandoned her and then ridden off down the Fallon trail. And now Edge re­mounted the gelding and heeled him forward, over the tracks left by the four horses of the rapists. Leaving behind him, as the earlier riders on the trail had left behind them, the ashes of a fire, the area of grass trampled by hobbled mounts, the elongated impressions in the grass nearby where four men had bedded down, the litter of cans, cigarette butts, wax-paper and a charred fragment of white fabric and the piles of horse and human droppings which marked the spot where Helen Rochford suffered her agony and her anguish.

  But the half-breed did not need the visual stimulation of the campsite to trigger vivid recollections of the woman as, in her precise English accented voice, she related the events that took place under the granite rock—her face as ex­pressionless as was the face of the crag while her body remained rigid and she moved quickly only her hands to signal in mime what she could not bring herself to speak.

  "I misjudged them. What they required of me was resistance. To intensify their pleasure with me. I could not understand this at the start. When the first one took me the first time. In the normal way. I acted as I thought he would wish. But his pleasure was not complete until he heard me scream in pain when he clawed me—here and here. Then the Negro de­manded I turn over. To be taken here. I did so, but he wished for me to kneel so that he could have me as a dog takes a female of the species. I had not understood this and I am sure he in­tended this to be so. In order that he could wrench at my hair. To force me on to all fours and hold my hair still, in both hands, as he would hold the reins of a horse he was riding.

  The third one had me remain on my knees, but upright. So that he could thrust his stinking self into me here. While his hands were like the talons of a bird on my shoulders. And the final man, he was the most brutal of all. The youngest of them, who had been unable to contain himself while he watched the others have me. But he was determined to be proved a man. I was forced to try in so many ways to make him ready to have me, and as each failed, so he hurt me more.

  "Eventually, the boy was able to copulate with me. But only in the fullness of time. The last of them to empty his lust into me after the other three had taken me so brutally again. Here and here and here.

  "I was totally exhausted by then. Drained of the will to struggle and certainly unable to feign resistance in the way that was demanded. And the boy, denied the pleasure by his own inexperience on the first occasion, felt that I was denying him again. I think perhaps he would have killed me had not the others prevented him. He punched me and he kicked me and I think he was attempting to choke me to death when the others intervened.

  "Then that part of it was over and I think I fell into a faint—even a coma—where they left me. I could not see, not even the fire. Could not bring myself to open my eyes, perhaps. But I could hear the men moving. And talking to one another. Hear the horses. There was talk of a man named Fallon they were going to see. In Tucson. Or perhaps they had come from Tucson. There were some animals they were in­terested in. With a special brand. Worth a great deal of money. That part is very jumbled in my mind. I think perhaps I kept entering and emerging from the faint, the coma, the ex­hausted sleep or whatever it was. Certainly I never actually heard them leave. It seemed suddenly as if they had silently vanished. I saw a light. It was the fire. I was naked and shiv­ering with cold, but the embers of the fire went out even as I looked at them.

  "I lay there, hoping I would die. Thinking sometimes that I already was dead and I was in hell. But then it began to become light and I was able to see where I was and recognized all of it. Which was when I got up off the ground. It was very difficult. I was in so much pain. And I started back the way I had come. Wanting to die again. Perhaps even hoping that if this country did not kill me—naked as I was—then I would meet up with Mr. Edge and he would do it."

  While he rode through the timber and out into the open country of a grassy valley several miles wide, Edge twice went over in his mind the story of the Englishwoman as she had told it to him and to her husband. Did his best to recall it word for word in order for the mental exercise to achieve its purpose. Which was not to decide if Helen Rochford had been raped by four men. Nor even to provide the basis for making an educated guess about whether she had enjoyed even a little some of what had happened to her. Rather, he attempted to either allay or confirm his suspicion—aroused while the woman was telling her tale—that she derived a brand of pleasure from recounting the details of the repeated rapes. To the captive audience of an impotent husband and a man who had refused her advances.

  The cause of this suspicion was the way in which she claimed to be confused about her retreat from the wagon and how she made her way back toward it: and yet was able to recall in clear detail every assault upon her body. Or, if she was not able to remember so precisely, she certainly had a vivid imagination and no inhibition about giving it free rein.

  But, as he rode down into the northwest to southeast valley, heading for a small town far in the distance, he abandoned his own thoughts of the past. Did so because he realized he could be purposely looking for fuel to fire his dislike of Helen Rochford in a situation where she deserved pity—or in his case, at least indiffer­ence. And was searching for it while he ignored the obvious reasonable explanation of why the woman told her story in the way that she did to the two men. Which was to emphasize her de­termination that the rapists were going to die for the horror, terror, agony, disgust and humiliation they had forced her to endure. And hoped that if she painted a vivid enough word-picture her husband would understand and condone her resolve to kill them herself. And Edge would have no scruples about selling the men to their killer at a thousand dollars a head.

  He tossed away the half-smoked cigarette that had gone out at the side of his mouth and followed it to the trail with a globule of saliva. Not expressing his feelings toward the Englishwoman but instead the self-disgust that he should have to consider so long and so hard how he felt about her. For she should just not have been worth the effort. The four thou­sand dollars that her husband was going to pay him should be all that mattered to him—until he was close enough to the three white men and the Negro to have to think how to make them his prisoners. Or not so much the money itself. Rather, the length of time such an amount would enable him to live in total freedom. On his own in a country where the noose of conven­tion had not been pulled so tight that a deter­mined man was unable to find a patch
of it where his peace—and his peace of mind—was protected by distance from the unwelcome in­trusions of his fellowman. Provided he had the wherewithal to purchase such luxury.

  But, he decided after reflecting on this pros­pect for just a few seconds, he was shooting for the moon and did not have a chance in ten million of scoring. With four thousand or four hundred thousand. For if perfection in human life was obtainable in this world, it was surely a condition that had to be ordained by the Creator of the world. And Edge had broken too many of His commandments too many times to even hope for an occasional nod of acknowl­edgement from Him.

  "Hey, you know, that could be my trouble lately, horse," he said evenly. "It could be I haven't been getting my share of adultery."

  The gelding, more used to being in the traces of the wagon than having a rider on his back, was not overly responsive to the sound of a voice. Now continued to plod on down the snaking trail toward the settled area of the wide valley, head drooping and ears turned away from the half-breed. But he did vent a soft snort that could have been of appreciation when his rider ran a gentle hand down the side of his neck.

  "No sweat, feller. Reason I like most animals better than most humans is that they can't help being the way they are. And don't try to be any different. Or make apology for being like they are. I thought I was like that. Sure used to be, but—"

  The gelding snorted again. A little louder and with a raise and toss of his head.

  "You want me to be quiet? I'm bothering you?"

  The gelding made no sound outside of the regular clop of his hooves on the trail as he resumed his servile and disconsolate attitude.

  "Yeah, know the feeling," Edge murmured. "The quiet life's best. Women just don't think that way though. And there are times when a man has sore need of a woman."

  The coincidence of the animal snorting or even moving his head as if in response to what the half-breed had said did not occur again. But the sullen wretchedness of his mount served as an opening for the coldly smiling rider to growl: "Sorry, feller. Real mean of me. Forgot you're a gelding."

  Chapter Eight

  Several times during the morning ride toward the small community in the southeast that he had not seen since he dropped down into the valley, rain squalls lashed at the increasingly lush range country spread out around him. Just once he was hit by a heavy but short-lived downpour which soaked his clothing and left I him uncomfortably damp for more than an hour before a wind that had been threatening under the grey sky since dawn began to curl in from the north to dry off all that had been soddened by the rain.

  The floor of the valley was undulating and at times rugged. Mostly comprised of vast expanses of grassland scattered with stands of mixed timber from grove to forest proportions, interspersed with areas of red rock hills cut with ravines and inscribed with fans of scree. The trail rose and dipped, took wide and sweep­ing curves, and occasionally turned what came close to being a right-angle corner: such a trail across such a piece of country offering a new and different vista almost every few hundred yards.

  But the slow-riding Edge paid no more atten­tion than usual to his ever-changing surroundings. Merely maintained his seemingly casual watch for the first sign that all was not well in the immediate vicinity—while he took note of those details that might well portend trouble at a later time in a different place.

  Thus he was aware that he was still in the wake of the four rapists who had left horse droppings, cigarette and cigar butts, an empty match box and several areas of hoofprints on the trail to tell unwittingly of their passing to the interested party behind them. He knew, also, that he was on range that was regularly grazed upon by a great many head of cows. And that the ranch house was a long way off, witnessed by the line shack he passed—too far to the north of the trail to be worth a stop, even though he would have avoided the soaking from the squall had he done so.

  But despite the damp and cold, then just cold after the wind had dried him and continued to buffet at him from the side, he nonetheless felt good. Had been long enough out of the discon­certing company of the Rochfords to be free of the self-doubts they had triggered within him. And felt confident of his ability to handle what­ever dangerous situation might explode at any turn or beyond any hill crest along the trail— and to adapt to whatever were his circum­stances in the wake of fresh violence.

  Out of sight, out of mind . . . that was t only way to be with people who for some inexplicable reason acted to cramp a feller's style. Then, just as he fastened on this thought—and was about to get angry at himself because, paradoxically, it meant he had not ridded his mind of the Englishwoman—he reached a place where the four men he was tracking had veered off the trail. To angle due south toward an ex­tensive area of rearing red rock and timber—increasing the pace of their mounts from an easy walk to a gallop. But whether they had spurted to catch up with something or to get somewhere, or suddenly had become the quarry of somebody other than Edge, the half-breed was unable to tell. Until, on the fringe of the expanse of rugged terrain, the sign of the four horses was seen to be overprinted on other recently made tracks—left by the cloven hooves of a bunch of cows set off in a small-scale stampede.

  Now, as he rode in among the rocks and the timber and the brush, Edge did intensify the degree of watchfulness he maintained around him. And, too, actively listened for sounds that were alien to those made by himself and mount. But all the time remained conscious of the sign he was following—so knew at once when he reached the point where the tracks in front of him were not left only by a quartet of horsemen in pursuit of maybe a half-dozen cows. Here, where the rugged area was again accessible from the pastureland by means of a gap like a canyon mouth between two bluffs, several other horses had joined the chase. Their route, and the one which Edge now followed on foot —leading the gelding by the bridle—across a slope and into a ravine that curved and drop­ped away sharply. Narrowing to perhaps thirty feet before it suddenly opened up again on to a rock-walled ledge that was part of the rim of a basin that was densely wooded around the rest of its perhaps three-mile circumference.

  From where he waited, watching and listen­ing for a danger signal, a few paces beyond the point where the ravine began to widen toward its end, Edge was unable to see the bottom of the basin. Was just able to glimpse the top of the column of smoke from a fire down there, before the wind that blew from behind him and out across the basin took hold of it and disinte­grated it.

  Elsewhere around the rim of the depression that he was able to see from where he stood the ground fell away in a sheer cliff of earth and rock. With, here and there, a jagged indenta­tion littered with debris of loose earth and rock and tree trunks where there had been a land­slip. Not so beyond the area of flat rock he now crossed, after hitching the dejected gelding to a clump of brush and sliding the Winchester from the boot—clicking back the hammer with a thumb the moment he detected the disinte­grated smoke for what it was.

  Long ago—hundreds, thousands or maybe even millions of years—a massive landslip had occurred. Or perhaps it had been an earth tremor that created the basin. Whichever, there had been a great falling away of loose ground that was halted only when the immov­able mass of rock stemmed the collapse. And it was from the slightly upturned extreme of this rock that the half-breed was able to watch his prospect of earning four thousand dollars dis­appear in much the same way as the smoke at the top of the column was gusted out of existence by the wind.

  The land that had slid downwards from this side of the basin so long ago had settled in the form of an uneven slope, steep in parts but gentle in others. And in the intervening years had been seeded by nature with grass and brush and trees. Thus was the basin a kind of enormous natural amphitheater with a verdant audience section looking down upon the deeply sited stage with a backdrop of towering cliffs.

  Which placed the half-breed in the balcony, able to see both the action at the foot of the cliffs and the response this was drawing from the restless witness
es on the slope.

  The seven Longhorns that had caught the attention of the duster-coated quartet had been finally chased to exhaustion, or into a trap, at the bottom of the basin. Where they were now penned by a corral of lariat ropes. Close by the men's mounts which were hobbled but not unsaddled. While the men themselves—three of them white and one Negro, just as the English­woman had said—were in a half circle around one side of the fire. Two of them sprawled out on their backs, hats over their faces, while the other two finished scraping food off their plates. Obviously totally unaware that they would soon be in a trap as secure as the one in which the steers were held.

  Ten men were in process of springing the trap. At least, that was the number of horses hitched to each other and to the low branch of a tree in a grove some hundred yards to the left and half that distance below where the half-breed stood. The good and strong-looking, well-tended animals left in a place where they were out of sight of the duster-coated men beside the fire. While their riders spread out across the slope and then started down it, cautiously mak­ing use of best patches of cover.

  At first, Edge could see only six of the men advancing down the slope, for in some cases the brush or trees or small hollows provided total cover from all directions. But eventually he had every man spotted, even if never all at the same time. Each of them at match for the condition of the waiting horses near the grove of trees. Big and strong and in fine shape for hard work. Chaps-wearing cowpunchers with spurs on their heels and sixguns in their hol­sters. The youngest not yet twenty and the oldest close to sixty, as near as Edge could judge over a distance that widened all the while—the men closing on their objective which was about three quarters of a mile from where he stood. Now crouched, as the Negro finished his meal, set aside his plate and unfolded out on his back—had a view up the broad fan of the broken slope to the rim of the basin where the half-breed was positioned, but obviously said nothing to arouse his suspicion before he tipped his hat over his face.