Apache Death (16 page)

"Thanks!" the soldier said, drawing in a large breath. It was his last. The arrow came up from the compound and entered the back of his neck, the point emerging through his mouth like a metal tongue speckled with blood. Then the blood gushed, like crimson vomit, in a powerful arc that reached across the roof to spray on to Edges face and chest.

"Just thanks would have been enough," Edge muttered with distaste as he wiped the warm stickiness from his lips and started to turn to survey the main battle arena.

He saw perhaps fifty braves advancing upon two men, and a boy who had emerged from the cookhouse doorway, the men holding their hands high above their heads, the boy pathetically waving a stick with a once-white, blood-stained handkerchief tied to it. He heard Cochise' bark an order. He raised his Winchester and fixed the chief in the sight. Then another figure staggered into his line of fire and he recognized Lorna Fawcett. She was naked and carrying something in her hands: something which dripped blood into dust already spattered with red. It was her own right breast, still linked to her body by a flap of skin. An arrow thudded into the gaping wound and she fell, giving Edge a clear line of fire at Cochise.

But the shot he heard was not his own and the Apache chief continued his advance as Edge felt a rearing pain at the back of his neck. "Christ, I've bought it," he said as he pitched forward and the sun went out.

DEATH and smoke were an acrid stench that was sucked down his throat and into his lungs, causing his stomach to rebel with a dry retching that thrust him back into consciousness. The sun was high, beating down upon him unmercifully and he was sure if had burned a hole in the back of his head. But when he cracked open his eyes and saw the sprawled bodies of the troopers and Apaches spread around the Gatling Gun he recalled the shot and the pain. His fingertips delved beneath the long black hair at his neck and felt the rough texture of encrusted blood tracing the course of a three-inch long furrow.

Then he stopped the exploration and remained utterly immobile as he heard a sound, distant and unidentifiable at first. But as it became louder he realized that a wagon was approaching, slowly with its springs creaking and its shaft horses tiring under a heavy load. He raised his head then, gritting against the pain, and looked across the compound within the fort. It was littered with more than a hundred bodies, troopers, civilians and Apaches alike, which had long ago ceased to gush blood; interspersed with the already bloating carcasses of Indian ponies. All had died violently, many agonizingly, but none more than the two men and small boy who had been suspended by their thumbs beneath the wall staging and had fires lit beneath them. It was the odor from their blackened bodies which had wafted across the death-strewn compound to wake the man called Edge. He grimaced at the sight and looked out through the incinerated gates of the fort and down the main street of Rainbow, over the bodies of many scores of Apaches to where the wagon was approaching. It was a flatbed, with just one man sitting on the box and behind him was a cargo concealed by a canvas sheet. Not a big cargo in terms of bulk, but vast in value, Edge realized, as the wagon rolled in through the fort entrance and he recognized Wyatt Drucker.

The face of the big rancher was set in an expression of stark horror, the lines of which seemed to deepen as each new facet of the violent, battle was revealed to him. He steered the team of four horses with the reins held in one hand while the other was curled around the breech of the Englishman's Winchester.

Edge grunted and felt around for his own rifle as Drucker halted the wagon in the center of the compound. But there was no gun, on the roof—not even his Colt, which had been taken from its holster. He glanced across at the roof of the arsenal, then quickly down into the compound. He grunted again. Chief Cochise had got his Winchesters and every other weapon in Fort Rainbow. Edge felt for his neck again, but not for the wound, and discovered he still had the razor. But Drucker was too far away for this to be of any use. Then he looked again at the arsenal roof and his lean face broke into a cold grin, narrowing the eyes to slits of blue and curling back the thin lips to show an even row of teeth. There was still one gun left at the fort.

He pulled himself up on to all fours and fastening his eyes on Drucker, began to move slowly toward the side of the roof. Once there he relaxed his vigilance of the rancher to survey the six foot gap separating the bunkhouse from the arsenal. He went up into a crouch, backed off two yards and then broke into a short, ambling run. The sound of his feet thudding on to the opposite roof snapped up Drucker's eyes. The rancher dropped the reins, threw up the Winchester and loosed off a shot. The bullet gouged a furrow across the stomach of one of the dead braves. The wound was red but there was no blood: the Apache had been dead for too long.

"Hell, I thought you was Injun!" Drucker shouted as he saw Edge in a crouch a few feet from the Gatling. "Didn't hit you, did I?"

"You found it?" Edge asked.

"Anyone else left alive?"

"Just you and me." 

Drucker had started to lower the Winchester, but now he raised it again, a suspicious frown on his leathery features. "Who are you?" he demanded.

Edge inched closer to the gun and shot a side-long glance into the hopper. It was more than half full. "Guy you stole from," he answered. "You want to get down off that wagon and go home to your ranch?"

"The Englishman's buddy!" Drucker exclaimed.

"I ain't got no buddies," Edge told him.

"And I ain't got no ranch," came the reply. "Apaches burned it and run off my stock."

"Tough," Edge answered. "Means you ain't got nothing to live for anymore."

"I got a million reasons to live," Drucker shouted and squeezed the trigger of his rifle.

Edge went sideways, reaching out a hand for the crank of the Gatling. Lead spat from the six barrels, kicking up a wide arc of dust puffs as Edge raked the gun around toward the wagon. Drucker got off one more shot with the Winchester, standing for a better angle but still firing high. Then the deadly spray from the Gatling's revolving barrels tattooed a pattern of holes on his broad chest. He tossed the Winchester high into the air as he screamed and his knees bent, bringing his head down into the trajectory of the flying bullets. They tore the flesh to shreds, and Drucker's cheekbones shone white in the sunlight as his body pitched forward into the dust and Edge stopped cranking the handle. The horses reared once and then became quiet.

Edge Stood up, moved to the side of the roof and lowered himself gently to the ground, careful not to jerk his neck and so activate fresh waves of pain from the wound. He walked slowly across to Drucker's body and looked down at the bloody pulp which had once been on a set of features.

"Looks like I win," he muttered. "You just can't face up to things anymore."

He found the handkerchief with which the small boy had tried to surrender and used it to wipe Drucker's blood from the box' seat of the wagon. He had just finished and was stooping to pick up the dead man's Winchester when he froze, hearing a distant sound. He straightened slowly and looked out through the gateway, across the dead Apaches and ponies, past the gruesome, hanging head of the Englishman, toward a swirling cloud of dust which was moving relentlessly along the valley floor on the far side of the river. The sound rang out again: a frenetic bugle call. And as the dust cloud drew near he saw the Stars and Stripes and the company pennant streaming in the slipstream. He sighed, rested the rifle against the wagon and took the makings of a cigarette from his shirt pocket.   

"Guess everything's got to start someplace," he muttered. "It's the goddamn Seventh Cavalry. They just ain't got no sense' of timing."

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