Edge: Apache Death

For

E.M.C.D.

who drew the pictures.

CHAPTER ONE

The man had been dead a long time and he smelled bad, the malodorous stink of his decomposing flesh tainting the hot, still air that was already fetid with the dry stench of stale wood-smoke. He was folded double, over the top strand of a wire fence that enclosed the yard of what had once been a small farmstead. Now it was merely a single-story adobe house with the blackened ruin of a barn on one side; a corral littered with slaughtered livestock on the other and a burnt-out wagon in front of it.

Edge had been smelling the woodsmoke for, a few miles, knowing it meant trouble. The big black stallion he rode was also familiar with the scent, its equine awareness causing it to falter from the steady pace which had been maintained ever since the border was crossed at noon. But Edge stroked the smoothness of his mount's neck and muttered gentle words of encouragement as he urged the animal forward again, toward the north.

Edge had stolen the horse many months before, from a Mexican Army captain who should not have shot the American's own horse. The single-action .44 Colt in a holster tied down to Edge's right thigh had also been stolen from the Mexican officer, as had the ornate non-regulation saddle and the seven-shot Spencer repeating rifle slung in the boot behind. The knife tucked into a sheath at the back of his gunbelt was Edge's own: so was the razor which sat snugly in a pouch hanging at the back of his neck beneath the black shirt. The Mexican had not complained as he watched Edge rob him, for his jugular vein had been opened by the American's razor and he had only enough strength remaining to ask for a priest. To Edge's mind, the trouble he had taken to get the man his priest was adequate barter for the horse and weapons.

It was a good horse; strong, willing and intelligent and it had learned to trust its new owner so that even when the ruined farmstead came into sight and the smell of violent death mingled with the after-scent of fire, the animal continued to advance, a low-keyed whinny supplying the only clue to its nervousness. Edge halted his mount a few feet from the dead man and dismounted, his right hand hovering above the wooden butt of the Colt. He led the horse to one of the uprights supporting the wire fence and looped the reins around the post, never taking his eyes away from the farmhouse. The Spencer slid smoothly from its boot and he worked a shell from the stock-housed magazine into the breech.

Over at the house nothing moved and in the area of the dead man there was just the constant stirring of the hungry flies. They buzzed away angrily at the intrusion of Edge, who relaxed his vigilance of the house to examine the body with dispassionate interest. The man had been scalped, cleanly and expertly, the crown of his head laid open in an almost perfect circle to allow a large tuft of his black hair to be claimed as a trophy. But he had been lucky, for he had died first Edge, wrinkling his flared nostrils; his narrowed eyes showing for a fleeting moment his distaste for the long-dead body, used the barrel of the rifle to flip the man off the fence. The man went over backwards and did not unbend from the attitude of death which the passing hours had forced it to adopt for eternity. Looking across the fence, Edge could see the barbed arrow embedded into the man's chest, left of center.

Edge walked back along the outside of the fence and unhitched his horse, then led the animal toward and through the open gateway into the yard of the farmstead. “I should have taken notice of you, feller,” he murmured softly. “Mexican trouble we know about and can handle. It's been a long time since I had a run-in with any Apaches.”

The horse heard only a reassuring, soft-spoken voice and allowed the man to lead it forward and hobble it to the iron rim of one of the wheels on the charred wagon. As Edge crossed the final few feet to the house he saw that the layer of dust on the sun-hardened ground had been disturbed by many unshod hoofs and he saw, too, several arrows, some of them broken, lying, beneath the shuttered windows and in front of the closed door.

The heel of his boot thudded against the door and it crashed away from him on well-oiled hinges, smashing into a piece of furniture. His pale blue eyes raked the darkened interior, looking over the top of the leveled Spencer. Death looked back at him. The smell was worse here, both because it had been trapped inside all day and because it emanated from two bodies. He took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway, moving quickly to the windows at each side and throwing open them and their shutters. The air which flowed in was hot enough to burn the throat, but refreshing compared to that which had been confined for so long.

The room was small and ill-furnished and could have been as filthy as a pig-sty or as neat as a palace before the braves entered. Now, as the tall, lean man with the life-scarred face looked about, he saw only havoc, the result of an orgy of death and destruction. The woman was sitting on a ladder-back-chair, her ankles tied to the legs and her arms to the sides. The girl was spread-eagled on her back on the floor, arms and legs held wide by ropes fixed to nails which had been driven into the boards. The woman was fully dressed and her chin rested on her slack breasts, showing the gaping wound where a tomahawk had split her skull. The girl was naked and had no breasts, for when the braves had spent themselves on her captive body they had used their knives to satisfy a different kind of lust.

Edge went quickly toward a doorway at the rear of the room, choosing to go around the girl rather than to step over her. The door gave on to one bedroom which had been formed into two with blankets thrown over a rope strung along the ceiling. He took down two of the blankets and carried them out to the living room where he draped them over the bodies. His boots crunched on broken crockery and he had to move around overturned and smashed furniture. Then he went back into the bedroom and confirmed his first impression—there was a double bed on one side of the dividing line and two singles on the other. The Apaches had not bothered to wreck this room and from the night attire neatly laid out beneath the covers it was obvious the farmer and his wife had occupied the double bed and two girls had shared the area on the other side of the blanket partition. Edge held up first one plain white nightgown, then another, shop-bought and made of a softer, pink material trimmed with lace. They were both about the same size.

He caught a subtle fragrance from the more feminine garment and held the material against his face for a few moments, welcoming the subtleness of the perfume after the evil odor of death. Then he suddenly flung the nightgown back on the bed and strode out of the room, his face hardening as if annoyed and, perhaps, embarrassed by his own emotions.

Outside he stood for a moment, breathing deeply, then walked quickly around the house, searching for a fourth body. But he found only a mule with its throat slashed and a dog with an arrow in its side. The dog's death had been as slow and agonizing as that of the girl in the house. He unhitched his horse and mounted; sliding the rifle back into its boot. Then, he made a wider circle of the house, noting an infrequent patch of dried blood which he guessed had been shed by Apaches hit by the white family before they had been over-run. A final circuit, outside the boundary fence, showed that only Indian ponies had left the farmstead, in a bunch and making their escape through the gateway and riding north along a just discernible trail toward a line of blue-grey hills on the horizon.

"Guess they took the other girl with them," Edge grunted as he halted in the gateway and peered across the desolate terrain of south-east Arizona Territory.

The horse whinnied, as if in agreement and waited placidly for the wish of its rider. Edge took the makings of a cigarette from the pocket of his shirt and rolled a neat cylinder. He lit it and sat smoking, with a look of quiet contemplation, for several long moments. He was a tall man who rode ramrod stiff in the saddle, deceptively lean, for his frame was clothed in a muscular hardness that gave him a strength many men had found surprising: some had died for the simple mistake of underrating his power. In repose, his face could be handsome, a mixture of Scandinavian blood from his mother and Mexican blood from his father combining to form features which were regular, with pale blue eyes surveying the world from a background of darkened skin-tone burnt to a deeper shade by countless hours of working and riding in the hard glare of the sun. But those who took more than a passing look at the man could see that his face was a mere mask: that beneath the rugged exterior burned a fire, kindled by pain and fed with hate, ready to flare up to dangerous proportions at the slightest breath of ill-wind.

Sitting astride his big horse, smoking the cigarette, his face in shadow from the wide brim of a low-crowned hat, Edge drew the back of a hand across the two-day growth of beard on his jaw and nodded to himself, the decision taken. It had been a hard year in Sonora, bounty-hunting the bandits in the hills and sometimes getting paid a fair price if he could find a Mexican army officer not totally corrupt. But it had served its purpose, giving the US wanted posters time to fade: the memories of lawmen north of the border to become clouded: the hurt of Jamie's death to diminish. Time, too, to realize that he could not expect to recover what was his and the life of a gunman, although it was not of his own choosing, was his destiny. (See Edge: The Loner and Edge: Ten Thousand Dollars American.)

He tossed the smoked butt away and spat after it, scoring a direct hit on the growing red end with a soft, sizzling sound. Then he dug his heels into the flanks of the horse and started off at an even walk, going north with the afternoon sun behind and to the left of him. He raised his left hand up to the back of his neck and ran his fingertips over the smooth handle of the cut-throat razor which protruded slightly from its pouch. The thick black hair, which hung long from. beneath his hat, brushed against the back of his hand and he grinned, his eyes, shining through slits of blue and white, his thin lips curling back to display even rows of white teeth. “Figure I need a haircut, feller,” he muttered as the horse pricked up its ears. “Hope the nearest town's got a better barber than the one that called back at the farm.” The horse got nothing explicit from its rider's words and continued at its measured pace, content now that the scent of violence was left behind. Night had fallen before there was further cause for alarm.

CHAPTER TWO

DESERT country had given way to low, bleak hills featured with mesas and smaller outcrops of rock so that sometimes, as Edge followed the little-used trail which had brought him all the way from the ravaged farmstead, it was as if he rode over the scarred bed of a canyon, with deep ravines cutting off at frequent intervals. As night fell, he rode with caution sitting on his shoulder, prodding upright the short hairs on the nape of his neck. For there was no longer any Indian sign on the trail. Once out of the flat desert territory the braves had split up from the bunch and scattered to left and right. It had always been a cold trail and the pace set by the lone rider had not been fast enough to make it any fresher. He had no wish to close in on the raiding party, for whatever had led to the uprising—whether an isolated incident or part of a territory-wide campaign by the Chiricahua Apaches—it was none of his business. At least, it wasn't until he found out the going rate, in dollars, for dead Apaches.

But he couldn't guarantee the Apaches felt the same way about any white man who happened along, and the country he was in might have been ordered and built for the purpose of ambush. So Edge was wary, his narrowed eyes constantly raking the ground ahead, one hand curled around the stock and trigger of the Spencer which was resting across his saddle-horn, beneath the blanket he had wrapped around his body to keep out the night cold.

The moon was low and in only its first quarter, its meager light throwing great areas of terrain into shadows of grey, blue, purple and dark, impenetrable black. The silence, whenever Edge halted his horse to peer ahead at a possible hiding place, was absolute. Then, just as the trail took on a steeper incline, starting to rise toward the ridge of a high bluff which cut across the northern horizon, Edge saw the flash. He felt the rush of icy air close to his ear and was falling toward the ground before he heard the crack of the rifle. He was rolling, the Spencer held high and away from his body as the echo of the shot was still diminishing into the distance down the funnel of the surrounding rock faces, the sound counterpointed by the thud of hoofs from the escaping horse.

Edge lay absolutely still, ignoring the pain of the bruises raised by the fall, slitting his eyes to stare ahead, searching for a landmark with which to pinpoint, the rifleman's position. But his viewpoint was different; perhaps ten feet lower than when he had seen the flash and the profile of the skyline had altered. He waited, knowing that shadow provided his only cover that the merest movement could give the marksman a target.

“You out there!”

The voice was distorted by echo and offered no clue to where the speaker was located. But it did tell Edge he wasn't involved in Indian trouble. He also got from the voice the fact that he was dealing with a man, probably quite old, certainly not afraid. Edge didn't answer.

“I know you ain't no redskin,” the man continued, slowly and evenly. “Not unless you stole a shod horse and a white man's hat. I know, too, I didn't plug you. I could have, but I didn't. I don't kill, not unless I have to.”

The words bounced between the sheer cliff faces and rebounded over Edge's head and back down the trail. Up ahead, on the left, Edge thought. Then changed his mind: the right. “You understand what I'm saying. Or you a Mex, maybe?” The man paused, then in bad Mexican Spanish: “You're not hit. This is my mountain. I don't allow no trespassing.”

Something was digging into Edge's stomach and he raised his body slightly and reached a hand underneath, his fingers closing over a weather-smoothed piece of rock. He pulled it out and with the slightest of wrist actions tossed it in a shallow arc some thirty feet across the other side of the trail. It clattered noisily and the rifle flashed, the sound of the shot cannoning like a minor thunderclap. Before it had been swallowed up by distance Edge was on his feet and pressed against the outward sloping wall of a high mesa that bordered the trail on this side. He let out his breath in a long, slow sigh of satisfaction. The rifleman had been as disorientated as he, but the telltale flash of the exploding rifle had, swung the advantage over to Edge. The man was two hundred feet ahead, in an area of black shadow on Edge's side of the trail—with no dangerous, open ground between them.

“I didn't hit you then, either,” the man shouted, and Edge used the sound of his voice as a cover for any noise he might make in moving forward. “Why don't you just back off and catch your horse, mister?” He was speaking English again and now, despite the distortion of echo, Edge could detect a change of tone: the man was beginning to get nervous. “You go back down the trail about half a mile. There's a gully goes off to the east. Another trail through there'll take you into Rainbow. Easier ride than this way—and you won't be trespassing none.”

Moving with cautious speed, Edge had closed the gap by almost half.

“Unless, of course, you've come to jump my claim, which is what I first figured.” He laughed and tried to inject confidence into the sound. But it was as hollow as the most distinct echo. “Some others have tried it, mister. But Silver Seam is mine. This whole damn mountain is mine, so you just get the hell out of here.” There was a smaller patch of darker shadow in the area of blackness and Edge realized it was the entrance of a mine tunnel sunk into the side of the sharply rising ground.

“Now you answer me, mister,” the jealous miner yelled on the edge of a scream, “If you don't say something I'll know what you've come for and I'll plug you good next time.”

The mesa wall had reversed its slope as it became part of the bluff proper, which the old miner maintained was his mountain. It was steep, but its surface was roughened by centuries of weathering and Edge was able to find more hand and footholds than he needed to climb up the face. But the Spencer was an encumbrance and he lodged it in a narrow cleft before beginning to work his way along the cliff face, aiming for a narrow ledge some four feet above the mine ad-it

“I didn't hit you, did I?” the miner said after a long pause, “I never mean to hit nobody unless they've come to rob me. If you're hit, mister, you yell and I’ll come out and fix you up.”

There was a tremor in his voice now, clearly audible from this distance and Edge allowed his lips to curl back in a grin. The old man repeated his instructions in Mexican and the trembling words provided enough cover for Edge to cross the final few feet and reach his objective. He had made the trip with his face toward the cliff, but the ledge was wide enough to allow him to turn around and for several moments he pressed his back against the rough surface, taking time to recover from the exertion of the climb as he peered down the long length of his body toward the area immediately in front of the mine entrance. The miner was not in sight, but when Edge held his own breath he could just discern the rapid, frightened panting of the man below him. Edge eased the Colt from its holster and waited for his adversary to start shouting again.

“Speak, you bastard!”

It was enough to cover the faint click as Edge eased back the hammer.

“'I couldn't have killed him,” the miner said softly, to himself, the words magnified by the confined space of the mine tunnel. “But maybe I got in a lucky shot. Jesus, I hope if I killed him, he was after me claim.”

Edge raised his arm and Hung the revolver high and wide. It clunked to the ground a hundred feet down the trail, bounced twice and exploded into sound when it hit a third time.

“Holy cow!” the miner yelled and stepped out of the mine, raising his rifle to shoulder level and going into a half crouch.

Edge jumped forward off the ledge, left hand streaking to the back of his neck. The man squeezed the trigger of the rifle and his high-pitched shriek of alarm was lost in the report as the dead weight of Edge hit him. Edge locked his legs around the man and with one hand jerked his head back as the other, fingers curled around the handle of the razor, snaked to the miner's throat. The man pitched forward under the weight and power of the lunge, the rifle clattering away. His knees hit first and his scream of pain was cut off as he went full-length, with the wind knocked out of him. The sharp edge of the razor merely nicked the grizzled, slack skin of his throat.

“'You didn't get in no lucky shot,” Edge whispered, close to his ear.

The man was gasping for breath, the effect of the fall and the continuing weight of Edge on his back demanding his entire strength to force air into his lungs. Edge let him suffer like that for perhaps half a minute before he eased his weight off. But he left the razor close against the throat. Then, with his free hand, he grasped the man's hair and yanked him to his feet, still not removing the razor. The man was a head shorter than Edge, and would have fallen to the ground again had not Edge held him erect by the hair. They stood like that for several more moments, the man's rasping breath the only sound. Then his breathing became less pained and his body began to tremble.

“You wouldn't kill an old man, mister?” His teeth were clattering.

Edge let go of his hair and the man stood unaided, forced upright by the threat of the razor under his jaw.

“They ain't no different from-young men,” Edge told him evenly. “Skin's a little tougher to carve through, but they bleed just as much. How old are you, feller?”

“Seventy-two,” the man said quickly, as if he regarded his age as a plea for leniency.

Edge showed his teeth in a grin the man could not see. "Three score, years and ten, the Good Book says," he whispered with mock reverence. “You’ve been living on borrowed time for the past two years, old timer. Could be I'm the debt collector.”

The old man drew in his breath sharply? “Please, mister. Take half in the Silver Seam. We split down the middle. Fifty-fifty.”

“How much you dug out so far?”

“Nothing, not yet,” came the fast reply. “But it's there. Richest seam in the whole territory. Famous legend about a mountain of silver in these parts and I know this is it. I've been a miner all me life. I can recognize the sign of a silver lode.”

“How long you been working this mine?” Edge asked.

“Ain't nothing to go by,” the miner said, the confidence oozing out of his voice. “Takes time.”

"How long?”

“Be twelve years come spring,” the man said and now his, tone was devoid of all hope.

“Hell, you're dead already,” Edge said, releasing him and returning the razor to its neck pouch.

The old man turned to face him and he saw the miner carried his age well. The leathery skin was lined and wrinkled beneath the gray stubble of several days’ growth of beard, but the blue eyes were bright and there was strength of character in the leanness of his features. His gray hair, with just a trace here and there of its former dark color, was long and thick. His spare frame also hinted at a latent strength and there was just a slight thickening of excess weight around the middle. Twelve years of tearing at the heart of a mountain had kept the old man fit and a determination to find what he sought had fed a hope which in turn had nurtured his spirit.

“So you ain't going to kill me?”

Hope had sprung up again. Edge walked across and picked up the miner's rifle, an early muzzle-loading Springfield as clean as the day it had left the factory.

“What's your name?” he demanded.

“Zeb Hanson.”

“Let's go for a walk.”

Hanson squinted. “A walk?”

Edge grinned, “I've got to find a few things that belong to me and I'd prefer to have you where I can see you while I'm looking for them.”

Hanson shrugged and fell in beside Edge. He found his Colt first and dusted it off and replaced the expended shell with a fresh round before putting it back in the holster. The old man waited docilely at the foot of the mesa wall while Edge climbed up and retrieved the Spencer.

“You're a damn cool customer,” Hanson said with a note of admiration when Edge rejoined him. “You got the drop on me, and good.”

Edge grimaced at him. "You were easy. I'm still missing a horse.”

This news and the tone with which it was delivered raised fear within the old man again. “Got a burro in back of the mine,” he offered. “She ain't very fast, but she's steady,”

“I like my horse.”

“Could have lit off clear to Mexico,” the old man whined.

Edge grinned. “You speak passable Mexican, Zeb. You find any peons, you ask them if they've seen a big black stallion with a Mexican army brand on him."

CHAPTER THREE

THEY crested the ridge at first light, as the grayness of the false dawn was pushing back the darkness from the east and night was preparing to retreat under the first threat of the onslaught of a new day. They were high, perhaps two thousand feet up on the first-step toward the Rockies and it was cold. Zeb Hanson was riding bare-back now, the horse blanket hung about his shoulders. Edge was draped in a blanket, too, and had been chain-smoking cigarettes, drawing hard against them in cupped hands to try to get warmth into his fingers.

“That there's Rainbow,” Hanson said, pointing as Edge rode up alongside him.

They were on one side of a wide valley and the ground fell away in a gentle, boulder-strewn slope. Then there was a broad expanse of open country with a river cutting a zig-zagged course across it, west to east. The far side .of the valley was a sheer cliff face, rising upwards of a thousand feet higher than the ridge where the two, men had halted. Where the river angled toward the cliff and then swung around in a wide arc was the town toward which Hanson’s shivering finger was pointing.

The fort was built against the cliff, the solid rock face forming its rear defense. On the other three sides it was defended by a high retaining wall, rock to first story level and wood above. Spread out in front of the fort, on a street which intersected it, were the buildings of the town of Rainbow.

"I can see how the fort was there first," Edge said, more to himself than to Hanson.

"Yeah," the old man said. "Ain't much defense' for the town, is it? But that ain't its purpose. Built as headquarters for the Thirteenth Cavalry. Lot of country for the soldier boys to cover. They didn't want no town there to add to their troubles. But, once it started, hard to stop." He sniffed. "Soldier boys and townspeople ain't none too friendly toward each other."

Edge continued his survey of the town and its surroundings. He decided it looked like a good, safe spot. The floor of the valley was mostly open country, offering little cover for attackers and once within four hundred feet of the edge of the town, there was the obstacle of the river to cross, a hundred feet wide and perhaps deep. Thus, to north and south, Rainbow had good natural defenses. To the west, too, it looked good, because the open, almost featureless ground continued from the river to the foot of the cliff. East was the weak spot, for in this direction there had been rock falls and the floor of the valley was at this point littered with enormous chunks of the former cliff face. The face itself grew gradually less sheer, providing an easy downward ride. The stage trail went in this direction, curving between the fallen rocks and then forking, one spur stretching off eastward into the distance, the other snaking into a gully for northbound travelers.

"Look good to you, mister?" Hanson asked when he was sure Edge had finished his surveillance,

The first ray of sunlight of the new day stabbed over the eastern horizon, lighting up the valley floor like a spotlight on a theatrical set. Edge grunted and didn't reply as he rolled two cigarettes, put one in his mouth and handed the other to Hanson. The old man smiled.

"Obliged to you, mister."

Edge struck a match and lit his own cigarette, then held out the match toward Hanson. The old man leaned forward, screamed and continued the movement, the cigarette still stuck to his bottom lip.

“I thought the third light was the unlucky one," Edge muttered as he glanced at the arrow which had caught Hanson squarely between the shoulder blades.

He ducked instinctively as he turned in the saddle and felt the draught of a speeding arrow rush over the top of his head. There were four of them, sitting astride ponies at the edge of a grotesquely shaped outcrop of rock just below the crest of the ridge, about two hundred feet from Edge. Apaches weren't red, of course. These four, like all in the six tribes which made up the Apache nation, were coppery brown. They were dressed and painted for war, in animal hide breechcloths and long-sleeved shirts open at the front to reveal the white daubing on their chests. Other white markings were splashed above their dark eyes, on their high cheekbones and outlined their receding chins. Their long, thick black hair hung unbraided around their faces; held out of their eyes by buckskin strips with just one dark feather at the back for decoration.

Even as Edge was drawing his Colt the two who had not yet joined the attack loosed off barbed arrows from their three foot long bows. Edge dug his heels into the flanks of the horse and the animal jerked forward. Both arrows twanged harmlessly into the ground as Edge fired and grunted in satisfaction at the sight of one of the braves pitching from his horse clutching at the bullet hole in his throat.

The other three began to howl in anger as they fitted more arrows into their bows, kicking their pones into a rushing advance toward Edge. Edge fired one shot for effect and dropped from his moving horse, sliding the Spencer from its boot. The three arrows were in mid-flight as Edge hit the ground and rolled over, coming to rest in a prone position, the rifle leveled and cocked, forefinger of his right hand curled around the trigger, barrel steady in the cupped palm of his left hand, left elbow firmly planted on the ground. The Apaches were, rearming their bows at the gallop and Edge took the center brave first, the bullet catching him in the heart.

The other two were close enough then for Edge to see the mixture of rage and fear on their painted faces: to see death glaze the eyes of the Indian on the right as a bullet' from the Spencer drilled a deep hole in his forehead.

The remaining Indian had time to get off an arrow and Edge had to jerk himself away in a fast roll to avoid it, only saw his attacker again as the Apache launched himself from his pony, snatching a tomahawk from his breechcloth. The Spencer exploded into sound once more and the brave's whoop of triumph became a blood-choked cry of agony as the bullet punctured his right lung. Edge jerked himself clear of the falling body and went up on one knee, snapping his head around to search the area for other Indians. But there were none. He stood up and looked at the brave, writhing in agony on the dusty ground, spitting blood and clawing at his wound.

Then the man sensed his death throes were the object of an impassive stare and he looked up at the tall white man who was regarding him with mute dispassion. He reached out a hand and grasped the muzzle of the loosely held rifle, tugged at it weakly until it was resting on his chest, left of center. The dark, deep-set eyes of the wounded man communicated a tacit plea for the ending of pain.

Edge showed his teeth in a grin of evil intent and shook his head as he jerked the rifle from the feeble grasp.

"You boys started this shindig. You already cost me more shells than four Indians ought to need and shells are expensive. See it out on your own."

Edge's horse was standing placidly near where Zeb Hanson's body was sprawled and the animal sidled across, stepping delicately clear of the dead Indians, when Edge clucked his tongue. He slid the rifle back in its boot, then drew his knife from the rear of his belt. He went to the most distant of the Apaches first and stepped over him, tearing off the buckskin strip and clutching at a tuft of hair on the crown of the man's head. The point of the knife penetrated the skin of the dead Indian's scalp and the edge sliced easily and quickly in a circle until the tuft came free. Edge's expression, as he performed this operation on the three dead braves was set in lines of calm passivity. It did not change as he approached the fourth man, who was still alive, and was watching him with uncritical acceptance. Edge crouched in front of him and let the three scalps swing before the injured man's face.

"This you understand, don't you? You figured to get Zeb's and mine. You lost, so the honor's mine. But it ain't an honor, feller. Don't reckon I'll get too much for these, but maybe enough to replace the shells I used up." The man struggled to understand this foreign tongue, to discover whether his tormentor intended to take his prize before life ran out. But he died before there was time to provide an alternative, the blood bubbling up in his throat and frothing out over his chin. Edge waited for the final spasm of death to complete its course and then cut free the scalp.

He moved quickly then, in the warm early rays of the sun, slinging Hanson's body over the back of the burro and tying the four scalps to his saddle horn. Then he reloaded the Spencer and the Colt, mounted and, leading the burro by the reins, started down the slope toward Rainbow. After a while the heat of the sun made the blanket unnecessary and he drew the burro up alongside the stallion and threw the cover over the body. The first of the inevitable flies buzzed angrily at this interruption of their feast.

He was on the flat floor of the valley before he halted again, squinting into the sun as a line of dust rose some three miles away, big enough to be created by a fairly large group of riders. Rainbow was still just a distant huddle of buildings, too far off to offer a chance to outrun the horsemen in the east. So Edge pulled his hat lower and continued to narrow his eyes toward the east as he rolled a cigarette, then smoked it, waiting for the riders to come close enough to be recognized. Finally, his lips curled back in a grin, he urged his horse forward: he had seen the Stars and Stripes flying from a pole amid the rising dust. Then the riders saw him, slowing their pace and as the dust cloud grew less Edge saw a troop of a dozen cavalrymen headed by a lieutenant. They wheeled toward him and halted some three hundred feet in front of him.

"Hurry up there, man!" the officer yelled. "This isn't the kind of country for casual, early morning rides." The lieutenant was young; a fresh-faced" blue-eyed blond, handsome enough to be featured on recruiting posters. His men were older, wearing the expressions of veteran enlisted men who resented military discipline but accepted it because aggravation was as much a part of army life as parades and guard duty. Thus, while the lieutenant eyed Edge with growing impatience, the men regarded him with indifference.

"I was waiting to see who you were," Edge said at length when he was close enough so that he didn't have to shout. "If you were wearing feathers and moccasins I didn't want to be caught in the open. Better chance on the hill."

"Is that a body on the mule?" the lieutenant demanded.

Edge drew hard against his cigarette and threw it away with a sigh. "He ain't just sleeping, lieutenant," he answered. "He was one didn't stand a chance even on the hill."

The officer's expression became grim as he looked beyond Edge, up toward the ridge. "Apaches get him?"

Edge nodded.

"Far away?"

Edge turned in his saddle to look back at the tracks of the horse and burro, marking his course down from the ridge.

"Reckon if the wind was behind you, you could spit to where it happened."

One of the men laughed at this, but his amusement was curtailed as the officer glowered at the troop.

"That close?" he said to Edge, who nodded. "You were involved?"

"Guess you could say that."

"How many of them?"

Edge reached down, unhooked the scalps and held them aloft. "That many."

The lieutenant gasped and there was a stir of conversation among the men.

"You can throw them away," the officer said in disgust "Unless you want them to decorate your mantelshelf, We're trying to make peace with the Indians. The Government isn't paying scalp bounty anymore."

Edge shrugged and tossed the hair tufts away from him. "I don't think anyone's told the Apaches about the peace making," he said softly.

"Let's go," the lieutenant instructed. "Colonel Murray will want to know about the Apaches being this close to Rainbow." He wheeled his horse, raised his arm and dropped it. "Forward!" he yelled and the troop of cavalrymen fell in behind him at a steady trot.

Edge matched their pace, but moved out to the left flank so that he would not be eating their dust. As they neared the river the lieutenant angled toward the west, as if he wasn't heading for town at all and Edge realized the rushing, swirling water was indeed a good defensive line for the town. It was fast flowing and deep, except for the fording point which the lieutenant found without hesitation and plunged in. His men went in behind him; single file and Edge brought up the rear, taking care to keep immediately behind the man ahead of him. The water was muddy and impenetrable and he spoke softly to his horse, urging the animal forward, looking ahead and noting the two landmarks that pointed out the diagonal course of the ford, between a wide crack in the cliff face behind the town and the wooden steeple of a church in Rainbow.

On the opposite bank the soldiers formed up two abreast again and angled across the final stretch of open country toward town, wet trousers and horseflesh already beginning to steam dry in the morning sun.

"Hey, feller," Edge called to the nearest cavalryman. “Where's the best place to stay in town?"

The man spat and drew the back of a hand across his mouth. "With Injuns this close, the fort."

Edge grinned. "I've served my time in uniform and I hear the pay hasn't improved any since then."

The man shrugged. "Try Miss Ritchie's place. Ain't none too safe if the Injuns hit town, but the beds are soft."

"And if the Apaches don't get me, the clap will, uh?”

The soldier grinned. "You heard about it? Miss Ritchie don't force the girls on you, not unless you want."

"Where is it?"

They were on the edge of town now, entering the long, early-morning deserted street which led right up to the gates of the fort. The man pointed over to the left.

"There. First and last building in Rainbow."

"Obliged," Edge said and halted his horse as the cavalry patrol continued on up the street.

It was a big, hulking, two-story building with a raised, covered sidewalk along the front. The door was closed and the windows shuttered and it looked deserted. There was a red and blue painted sign stretching the length of the first floor balcony. The largest letters read: MISS RITCHIE'S POT OF GOLD and there was smaller lettering at each end, one legend proclaiming: ROOMS FOR RENT, the other: DANCING, MUSIC AND GIRLS.

Edge grinned up at the sign, then dismounted and hitched his horse to the rail on the edge of the sidewalk. He sat down in one of the rocking chairs which flanked the main entrance and waited for the town to wake up for the new day. He continued to grin as the chair creaked evenly and regularly as he rocked.

"Last building in town," he muttered to himself. "A whorehouse madam with a sense of humor. Her own Pot of Gold at the end of the Rainbow. Jesus Christ!"

CHAPTER FOUR

AFTER sitting in the rocker for thirty minutes and hearing no sounds of stirring from within the hotel, Edge rose and unhitched his horse, then began to lead him down the center of the street. It was apparent that Rainbow, whether the army liked it or not, had developed as a town with most of the amenities of life in the west. Next door to the Pot of Gold was a dry goods store, then the office of the Rainbow News, a Chinese laundry, a grain and feed store and the sheriff’s office. Across the street was a grocery store, the undertakers, the stage depot, livery stable and lawyer's office with a doctor's surgery above. The church was on the northeast comer of the intersection. On the cross street were houses, getting larger and more ostentatious the further away from the center of town they were. The length of the street from the intersection to the fort was lined on both sides with saloons and dancehalls, restaurants and supply stores.

It was the closest Edge had been to civilization for a long time, but it did not, impress him. It merely represented a place to rest up in a comfortable bed, the chance of a bath in hot water, an opportunity to drink something more palatable than raw tequila and mescal and time to survey the prospects of getting a bankroll.

He walked only as far as the intersection, then started back and hitched his horse to the rail in front of the undertaker's parlor. He stepped up on to the sidewalk and rapped his knuckles on the glass panel of the parlor's door. He had to knock twice more, threatening to shatter the glass, before a man yelled for him to be quiet and appeared from a doorway in the back of the dim interior. He was a small man of middle years, sour looking with mean, avaricious eyes. He was still prodding his shirt into his trousers as he jerked open the door and glowered out at Edge.

"What is it?" he demanded. "You know what time it is?"

Edge nodded toward the burro and its burden. "Past time to bury him," he answered. "He didn't smell too good when he was alive. Dead, he's a health hazard,”

The undertaker merely glanced at the blanket covered body. "Got' a death certificate?" he demanded of Edge.

The tall man grinned coldly. "He's got an arrowhead buried in his back and he ain't been breathing for a long time. He's dead."

Fear leaped into the man's eyes. "Apaches?"

Edge didn't answer and the little man licked dry lips. "Who’s paying for the funeral?"

"Not me. The burro was his. Sell him. Keep it simple. His name was Zeb Hanson. Just put that and today's date on the marker. How far do you go out for the dead?"

"I'm the only Undertaker between here and the Mexican border," the man said with what could have been a hint of pride.

"That takes in the Fawcett farmstead, I guess," Edge told him. "There's three dead people down there."

The man's mouth fell open. "The Apaches killed Jim Fawcett and his family?"

"Wife and one daughter anyway. Seems there was another girl, but she wasn't there—dead or alive."

"I'm not going way down there if the Apaches are stirred up," the little man said aghast. "Why' didn't you I do the decent thing by them?"

Edge was tiring of the man's whining tone and accusative stare. With a fast, fluid motion Edge drew his revolver and pushed the muzzle hard against the undertaker's nostrils. The man's small eyes gaped wide and he tried to back away, but Edge clutched at his shirt front.

"Because I ain't decent," Edge said softly, coldly. "I got better things to do than waste time digging holes for people who had no right to be in this neck of the woods if they' didn't know how to defend themselves." He jerked his head sideways toward the burro. "Quit talking, undertaker, and undertake."

"Yes, sir!" the man said.

Edge nodded, holstered his Colt and released the shirt front. Then he turned on his heels, unhitched his horse and led the animal down to the livery stable. When he banged on this door there was no response except for the whinnying of horses inside. There was a big padlock on a central bolt. Edge looped one end of his lariat through the lock, looped the other end around his saddle horn and urged the big stallion forward. The bolt was tom clean off the door as the screws came free. As he climbed down from the horse, Edge heard a door open across the street, then spurs jingling as a man came toward him. But he ignored the newcomer as he began to loop in the lariat, untying it from the lock.

"That's called breaking in, mister," the man said sternly.

Edge hooked the lariat back on his saddle and turned to face the man. He was tall and broad, but not powerful because it was fat, not muscle, that coated his big frame. He had a round, florid face with bulbous cheeks, thick lips and wide nose. His eyes were bright and glittered from between swelled lids. He was dressed like a dude, in highly polished boots, sharp creased gray pants, a red shirt and a high-crowned hat the same color as his boots. He wore two pearl-handled six shooters slung low in ornate holsters on a belt ringed with shells. The shells shone almost as brightly as the five pointed star pinned above his heart.

"My horse needs feed and rest out of the sun," Edge said easily. "He's carried me a long way and I owe him that."

Emphasizing this opinion, Edge picked up the trailing reins and led the animal into the shaded interior of the livery stable.

"Fred Olson will be here to open up in an hour," the sheriff said, following Edge inside.

"So I saved him the trouble," Edge answered.

"Fred's liable to press charges for the damage you caused," the sheriff insisted as Edge began to unsaddle his horse.

"He can put it on my bill."

The sheriff shook his head. Might not be so easy as that. I could square it, though. Fred's a friend of mine. I could talk to him,"

Edge, his back to the man, grinned, swung the saddle free and hefted it on to a hook on the wall. He backed the horse into a stall, closed the door and broke open a bale of hay, tossing half of it to the animal. Then he turned to face the sheriff, showing the man his grin. "That how you buy those fancy" clothes?" he asked."With kickbacks for fixing things?"

The fat man glowered. "Rainbow's a nice town, stranger. I run it smooth. Ain't no room for awkward customers."

Edge made a move toward his saddle, but as he drew close to the sheriff he half pivoted and sent a short arm jab deep into the fat man's mid-section. Air rushed out of the man's mouth with a soft whooshing sound and he started to double. As he did so, Edge stepped behind him and pulled the two revolvers from their holsters. They were 1860 streamline Colts, .44 caliber with the original plain ivory grips replaced by carved pearl. Edge grimaced with distaste, figuring the modification had ruined the balance. "Listen, you barrel of lard," he said-softly, lips curled back in a snarl as the sheriff turned to face him, trying to pull upright. "I ain't no greenhorn fresh off the stage from New York City. I've had dealings with your kind before and I ain't never greased any palms." He spun the cylinder of each revolver in turn and emptied them of their loads, the bullets as shiny as the ones in the sheriff’s belt. "Don't threaten me, fat man, or I might just beat you over the head with these pretty guns and you might spill blood on your pretty clothes. Get it?"

The sheriff stared hate, but nodded his head as he still leaned forward slightly, clutching at his stomach. Edge grinned and slid the Spencer from his saddle-boot, then headed for the door. There was a pile of horse manure swept into a comer and with a sidelong glance at the sheriff he dropped the Colts on top, used a pitchfork to prod them deep down inside.

"Just a little something for trying to drop me in. it, sheriff," he said as he went out on to the street.

A bugler was sounding reveille at the fort and somewhere at the back of one of the buildings a woman was singing. Two Chinese were taking down the shutters from the laundry windows and a horse and buggy was parked outside the church. A woman stood beside a tombstone in the graveyard, holding a wreath of flowers. The burro and body of Zeb Hanson was no longer in front of the undertaker's parlor. An elderly but still attractive woman looked down at Edge from a first-floor window of the Pot of Gold. She was wearing a blue diaphanous nightgown that hinted at a body not yet past its prime.

"You open yet?" he called up, halting in the center of the street in front of the hotel.

She laughed and it was a tinkering sound, without harshness. "Depends what for:"

“Just a room with bed and bath."

"Sure, but it's a little early to get somebody to scrub your back." Again the laugh. She had black hair, probably too dark to be natural, framing a face that had once been beautiful, but showing too many lines and wrinkles in the unflattering sunlight.

"I've got long arms," he told her; "Just room and bath."

"Then I'd better open-the door for you, mister. I saw how you got into the livery. Bad advertising if a man has to break down the door to get in my place."

"You're Miss Ritchie?"

"The one and only. Be right down."

It took longer than that, of course, but Edge waited patiently, sitting in the rocker and smoking a cigarette as he watched and listened to further evidence of Rainbow coming to life. For most of the time his expression was impassive, but he did allow a grin to curl up the corners 'of his mouth as he saw the sheriff emerge from the livery stable and head for his office, carrying a cloth bundle which he was careful to keep away from him.

When the door was finally opened, it was by the Pot of Gold's owner, fully dressed in a low-cut, full-length gown of green trimmed with white. She had made up her face, too, hiding the aging lines. Edge hauled himself out of the chair.

"This town sure takes a long time getting itself up in the morning," he said as he followed the woman into an elaborately furnished and decorated saloon. There was a bar down the length of one wall and the rest of the floor area was taken up with tables and chairs. At the far end was a-raised platform with curtains drawn back to show a stage setting of a metropolitan street that looked foreign. The walls were wood-paneled, hung with studies of voluptuous nudes, and red velvet drapes. Two enormous crystal chandeliers swung from the ceiling on which was a highly colored mural of more nudes. Edge thought the place looked what it was, but that it also looked clean.

"That's because Rainbow takes a long time getting to bed," Miss Ritchie answered, swaying between the tables, leading him toward the foot of a staircase which went up at one side of the stage. Then she glanced back over her shoulder with a leering smile. "To bed to sleep, that is."

She led him up the stairs at the top of which was a desk with a landing beyond. She sat down in a chair behind the desk and opened the register, swinging it around. "Two and a half dollars a day without meals," she said as she delved into a drawer of the desk and came out with pen and ink. "No private arrangements with the girls. All business goes through me and I set the charge."

"Room and bath," Edge said, scrawling his one word name in the register.

Miss Ritchie shrugged. "Suit yourself. Sheriff Beale give you a bad time over at the livery?"

"He started to try," Edge replied, falling in behind her again as she took a key from the desk and began walking along the hallway. "But then he got an attack of stomach cramps."

She stopped in front of a doorway and turned to face him, her eyebrows arched in surprise. "You slugged Beale?"

"Should that bother me?"

"He ain't much, but he's rich. Keep out of dark alleys, Mr. Edge. Life is cheap in Rainbow and Beale gets enough graft to have a hundred men killed every week."

"Obliged," Edge said, turned the key and pushed open the door. The room was neat and clean, cheerful with sunlight from the window overlooking the street, which shone on a bed, polished board floor with two rugs on it, a bureau, tallboy and wardrobe. A door gave on to a tiny bathroom with a fixed tub and piped water. The water was hot. Edge wasted no time, pumping the tub three quarters full with steaming water, then stripping off his boots, socks, pants, shirt and grubby red underwear. He grunted as scalding water engulfed his powerfully lean, olive-brown body and he sat unmoving for more than a minute, simply enjoying the feel of the water. But he was tired; had not realized just how tired until the relaxing balm of the water threatened to lull him into sleep. So he soaped himself vigorously, then watched the water turn black with the dust and sweat of four days' riding. Then he shaved, using soap and the razor from his pouch and thirty minutes after getting into the tub, pulled himself out feeling more relaxed than he could ever remember. He dried himself and then padded, naked, into the bedroom. He looked at the bed and sighed in anticipation, but took time to return to the bathroom and get his gunbelt and the Spencer, recalling Miss Ritchie's warning about Sheriff Beale's hired gunmen. He placed the belt on the bureau top, Colt butt toward the bed and lay the Spencer on the floor. Then he checked that the door was locked, the window securely fastened, and finally stretched out full length on the bed, on top of the covers.

Sleep insinuated itself Into his body like a soothing balm on an ache and it seemed only a few moments later when its pleasure was snatched away by an insistent rapping of knuckles on the door. But when Edge snapped open his eyes it was to see the room lit with the blood red light of the sun almost at the end of its daytime arc. There was a lot of noise as a background to the knocking: a blend of piano playing and singing, laughter and talk, hoofbeats and wagon wheels rolling, glasses clinking and feet stamping which seemed to come from a long way off but which was all just outside the room's window. The noise of Rainbow heading into another night-time orgy that would lead toward, another morning of late waking.

"Who's there?" Edge demanded, snatching up the Spencer and-leveling it at the door.

"Nelson Mortimer, the undertaker, Mr. Edge," the recognizable whine, called through the door. "I've got a problem, sir."

Edge glanced at the foot of the door, saw a strip of light which told of lamps in the hallway outside. He eased himself off the bed and looked along the floor, saw that there were two pairs of boots in the hall. "Just a minute," he called back, going up into a crouch, then moving on tip-toe to the door. The key was still in the lock and he turned it a fraction of an inch at a time, prepared to leap away at the first sound it made. It made no sound. He backed away, still moving silently, until he stood in the doorway of the bathroom. "Okay, Nelson," he called. "It’s open. You can come in now."

The door was opened and showed just the undertaker standing there, looking smaller than ever in his fear.

"Mr. Edge!" he stuttered, taking a step into the room, his eyes searching desperately for an occupant. "It was just that I … Mr. Edge … I think …"

He suddenly shrieked in alarm and went over sideways, knocked out of the way by a hulking, barrel-chested gunman who rushed into the room, a revolver in each hand, covering every inch of space in front of him. Edge allowed the man three seconds to express his astonishment at the empty-room, then stepped out from the doorway.

"You got two," he said and shot the man in the left eye, knocking him around and spraying blood on the wall, "But my one's bigger," he completed as the dead man crumpled.

"Oh, my God," Nelson Mortimer gasped, pressing his trembling body against the wall, as if trying to force his way through.

Edge looked at the terrified man, swinging the rifle around to cover him. "You pose a problem, Nelson," he said softly.

The man swallowed hard as a girl with a startled expression appeared in the doorway. Edge, ignored his nakedness and her presence, "Why … what … what do you mean, Mr. Edge?"

A man appeared in the doorway now and surveyed the scene with cool interest. Edge ignored him, too.

"Who's going to make the arrangements for the undertaker?" Edge asked rhetorically.

Every trace of color left Nelson Mortimer's face and he suddenly clasped his hands in front of his chest and sank to his knees. "Please, Mr. Edge. Beale made me do it. He said he'd run me out of town if I didn't get that man into your room. I didn't know he wanted to kill you. Mr. Beale deputized him. They told me he was just going to arrest you. Honest to God; Mr. Edge. I'm innocent."

"My goodness me, a mortified mortician," the man in the doorway said, in a cultured English accent. "And a wanted man as a deputy. I really don't know what Rainbow is coming to."

Edge glanced at the Englishman now, seeing that he was smiling. He was tall and slim, about thirty-five with a fresh, clean-shaven face. His features were regular with a youthful innocence about them, open and honest. He was dressed in a gray, Eastern suit complete with matching vest which had a gold watch-chain slung across the front. He wore a white shirt and gray tie, and a gray Derby over his black hair neatly trimmed. His shoes were white and very shiny and there were white spats above.

"Wanted?" Edge snapped, and the tone did not disturb the open smile.

"Billy Kramer, no less," the Englishman answered. "There's two hundred and fifty dollars on his head. There was in Santa Fe anyway, old boy."

Edge nodded. "Obliged."

"Pleasure;" the Englishman answered, broadening his smile and raised a hand which was delicate and long-fingered, extremely clean and showing no signs of ever having been engaged in hard work. "Must toddle off now. There's a hot deck waiting for me down the street."

He turned and tipped his hat to the girl who was no longer startled. She was eyeing Edge's naked body with undisguised estimation.

"Please, Mr. Edge," Nelson Mortimer pleaded, still on his knees, hands clasped in an attitude of prayer.

The Englishman hesitated a moment longer. "Old boy?"

"Yeah?"Edge asked.

"Don't shoot the undertaker, he's doing his best." Then he was gone.

Edge curled back his lips in a cold grin and lowered the rifle. "You just, brought me two hundred and fifty bucks, Nelson," he said softly. "I'm not about to kill you for that. Stick around."

CHAPTER FIVE

THEY were the center of a great deal of interest as they walked down the sidewalk toward the sheriff's office. The evening had completely swallowed up the day now and kerosene lamps from windows and hanging on posts provided light for the citizens of Rainbow to find their pleasure. But they all had time to spare to look at Nelson Mortimer, back bowed under the weight of the dead Billy Kramer, as he staggered out of the Pot of Cold, Edge immediately at his heels, prodding him forward with the muzzle of the Spencer.

"Don't you usually put them in a box first, Nelson?" a woman called amid raucous laughter.

Kramer should have gone to hell a long time ago," a man rejoined.

"Sad night for Beale," another man said. "He's goin~ to have to shell out some money."

Violent death was not taken very seriously in Rainbow. Edge ignored the comments and merely glanced at the faces of the bystanders: not from curiosity but to make sure Kramer had no friends prepared to take a chance on avenging his death. Beale's door was open and the undertaker hesitated a moment, suddenly shot forward into the sheriff’s office with a pained yell as the rifle muzzle whipped up into his crotch. Beale was seated behind his desk, much of the color gone from his florid face; Edge knew he had been told the bad news already.

"Get him out of here,"· Beale snapped, venting his anger on the defenseless Mortimer. "I know who he is and how much he's worth."

"Can't I rest for awhile?" the little man pleaded breathlessly.

"You got a chapel of-rest across the street," Beale yelled.

Mortimer groaned, turned and panted out through the doorway as Beale attempted to hold Edge's steely stare. But he couldn't do it and looked away, his lower lip trembling. The Safe was in a comer of the office, but Beale had already been there. He pulled open a drawer of his desk and took out a stack of five dollar bills and a rolled up wanted poster. He unfurled the poster, and held it up, showing Edge a crude drawing of Kramer and, the big lettering offering a two hundred and fifty dollar reward for the man, dead or alive.

Edge didn't say anything.

"Bounty, hunters' ain't popular around here, stranger;" he said, injecting hardness into his tone. "There's a few others in town who ain't about to let you live and pick up their tabs."

Edge spat on the clean floor. Beale kept his office as neat as his attire and he grimaced at the gesture. Edge stepped up to the desk and Beale flinched away from him. Edge picked up the money and clucked his tongue. The sound startled Beale.

"You can't kill a lawman," Beale yelled, his tone pitched high.

"Not one with a safe stuffed with bounty money," Edge agreed softly. "Such a lawman is allowed one chance," He 'grinned. "Just one, sheriff. So you better put the word out. Any other gunslinger makes a try for me, I’ll be back. I'll come in here and hang you up by the thumbs and then I’ll shoot off bits of you with your own fancy guns. Get it?"

Beale swallowed hard, started to shake his head, changed it to a nod.

"Nice to do business with you, sheriff," Edge said, turned and strode out of the office.

Nobody paid any attention to him now as he sauntered down the street, tying to decide which of the many saloons offered the most attractions. For everybody else seemed to be engaged in the same activity, and doing it with a singleness of purpose that allowed for no distractions. They moved quickly, wearing intense expressions, talking too loudly, laughing too much and appearing altogether in Edges mind, on the verge of a kind of nervous hysteria. It was as if few of them were actually enjoying themselves, rather they were desperately trying to hide their true emotions with a false sheen of lightheadedness.

Edge saw a group of cavalry mounts hitched in front of a saloon called The Lucky Ace and halted outside, peering over the swing doors into the smoky, noisy interior. At, the far end a sweating pianist was thumping out a tune as half a dozen dancing girls performed high kicks for the delight of a large group of yelling men in front of them.

At several tables near the doors other men were hunched over spread hands of cards. The long bar was clear in the center, with one end crowded by hard-drinking civilians while at the other the cavalry lieutenant, an officer with major's insignia and four sergeants sipped at beer. Edge made one further, quick survey of the room, spotting the Englishman at one of the card tables, then pushed in through the doors and headed for the vacuum at the center of the bar. He sensed that the lieutenant had spotted him and was whispering to his superior, but did not look in their direction.

"Beer," he told, the bartender who was all protruding teeth and bright eyes with a welcoming smile.

"Yes, sir!'" the man said enthusiastically, drawing the drink. "First one’s always on the house at The Lucky Ace."

"So put a whisky in it," Edge said.

The man's face clouded and he did a double take to make sure the newcomer wasn't joking. When he saw his first impression had been correct he upended a whisky bottle over the beer glass and didn't stop pouring until there was a puddle on the bar.

"This section of the bar got the plague?" Edge asked, when he had taken a long draught at the drink

The bartender tried to replace his grin, but it was lopsided. "On account of the army," he answered. "Civilians don't like the army."

"Why?"

"There's been some Apache trouble round, here of late."

Edge narrowed his eyes, "Seems to me the town ought to be' happy to have the army around then,"

The bartender shook his head and no 'longer tried for the pretense of a smile. His face was suddenly long with gravity and his eyes became nervous. "Ain't as simple as that. Rumors got around that the army is being issued with a new kind of gun. Best repeating rifle that's ever been made. Apaches heard the rumor too. And, they figure them new guns is going to be used against them."

Edge sipped his beer and eyed the man over the rim of the glass. "I saw a few Apaches in action. I figure the guns must be more than just a rumor."

The bartender nodded. "Well, couple of weeks ago an army wagon train rolled into Fort Rainbow and those wagons were riding real low on their springs, mister. And ever since that train came in, Apache attacks have increased. And they're getting closer to Rainbow. Another rumor is that Chief Cochise and his brother have ordered the whole Apache nation into the territory for an attack on Rainbow."

Edge nodded and narrowed his eyes, creasing his brow in thought, He turned to lean his back against the bar and survey the saloon again, He saw something he hadn't noted before. Almost every man in the room was armed, not only with holstered handguns, but, like Edge himself, with a rifle. And he recalled that the people out on the street had also been carrying more arms than were strictly necessary for a stroll downtown. Edge sensed somebody standing at his side and, turned to see the colonel there, in the same attitude of reflective study.

“I think you're a man of some perception, sir," the officer said softly. "You can see these people are shit scared and trying to hide it by pretending they're having fun."

The colonel was as tall as Edge, but a good deal thinner. His age could have been anything from thirty-five to forty-five, because his clipped hair was gray far beyond his years and his sallow, spare features were marked by too many lines of hard experience and deep worry. He had a look of bone-hard fatigue which even the intelligent brightness of his eyes could not conceal. During his service in the Civil War, Edge had seen many such men, promoted before their time because they showed ability far beyond the mean, but not mature enough to handle the responsibilities of command.

"With good reason, I hear," Edge, answered.

"And you saw, Lieutenant Sawyer tells me," the colonel said. "He said you had a run-in with four braves up on the south ridge."

"Four more good Indians?"

"I don't hold with that sentiment," Colonel Murray came back quickly. "Washington wants peace with the, Chiricahua Apaches in this part of the territory. But Cochise doesn't trust Washington and I'm the buffer in between. If the Indians attack, it's my duty to defend the fort and for my sins, the people of this town."

Edge sipped his beer and spoke without looking at the army man. "You ain't talking for the pleasure of my company, colonel," he said.

Murray cleared his throat. "You met some Apaches on the south ridge this morning. I lost a patrol, except for one man, in the west this afternoon. This evening I got a telegraph report that a war party of fifty braves wiped out a settlement fifteen miles east of Rainbow."

Edge grinned coldly. "They're closing in on Rainbow, uh?"

"And fast," Murray said with a sigh. "I've got less than a hundred men at the fort,"

"Town's full of men," Edge pointed out.

Murray grimaced. "Scared and undisciplined. There's probably only one Indian fighter amongst them."

"I ain't an Indian fighter," Edge answered. "I kill anybody who tries to kill me—Indians, Americans or guys with green spots and horns growing out their heads."

Murray eyed Edge with distaste. "You take care of yourself and nobody else matters?" he said contemptuously.

Edge eyed him coldly. "To me, nobody else does, colonel."

The army man seemed about to hurl a rebuke at Edge, but caught the dangerous glint in the other's expression and spun on his heels to return to his men.

"Beer!" Edge called and the bartender moved quickly up to him with a bottle.

"You cheating bastard!"

The insult, high-pitched and angry, cut across the noise in the saloon like a whiplash, diminishing and then suddenly silencing it. A chair crashed over backwards and every eye in the room was drawn toward one of the card tables near the door. A young man, no more than eighteen, was standing between his fallen chair and the table, glaring in rage at the seated figure of the Englishman. The latter lounged nonchalantly in his seat, the innocent smile highlighting his good looks.

"Carl," one of the other card players said placating reaching out a hand, which was angrily shrugged away. "I been watching him. Those last two cards came off the bottom."

"Beer," Edge repeated and for a moment his voice drew the attention of the saloon. But as soon as the bartender began to refill his glass, all eyes turned back to the card table.

"Come now, old boy." The Englishman's cultured voice was in violent contrast to the angered tones of the other. "I only cheated a little."

"He admits it!" the accuser yelled, startled by the Englishman's reply. "He's got the gall to cheat and then admit it like a thousand bucks is a few nickels."

"But I only cheated a little," the Englishman insisted, still smiling, not moving from his comfortable position.

Watching with a detached interest, Edge decided the young man named Carl was signing his own death warrant with each word he spoke. For he was angry and would telegraph every move while the Englishman was just too placid: too nonchalant under the onslaught not to have something with which to back up his composure.

"Give me back my money," the youngster said, and reached out for the pile of crumpled bills in front of the Englishman.

"Leave it!" The smile had gone, replaced by steel hard earnestness and the Englishman was suddenly sitting upright in his chair, delicate fingers curled over the edge of the table. The two words were spat out like oaths. They froze the youngster to the spot. But only for a moment. He came erect slowly and stepped back three paces, his heels knocking away the overturned chair. The silence was so complete that everyone in the saloon heard the beer pour down Edge's throat.

"You better be heeled," Carl said.

"Try me." As the words were spoken, the youngster clawed for his holstered revolver, but had not even got a grip on the butt before the Englishman had jerked his right arm to release a tiny weapon into his palm. It made a sound like a silver dollar hitting the floor and the youngster screamed as a bloody crease was carved out of the back of his gun hand.

"Jesus!" the bartender exclaimed behind Edge.

"Fast," Edge allowed softly, as the Englishman pulled up his right sleeve and replaced the tiny gun in a spring loaded holster strapped to the inside of his forearm. "How can you' cheat a little?" he called across the shocked silence which still pervaded the saloon, interrupted only by the whimpering of the injured man.

The Englishman began to gather up the money, stacking it neatly before pushing it into an inside pocket of his suit jacket. The smile was back on his face so that he again looked incapable of committing a bad act in an evil world. ''When I cheat second, old boy," he called, getting to his feet and putting on his derby. "Friend Carl here has been palming cards all night. So I dealt a few off the bottom."

He turned to head for the door and a murmur of conversation started to spread throughout the saloon. The pianist attempted a few tentative notes but stopped when he realized it was too soon. Edge started to turn toward the bar, but caught sight of Carl moving to the side, reaching around the front of his body to drag out the revolver with his left hand.

"Low on your left as you face!" Edge barked and watched through narrowed eyelids as the Englishman spun in a crouch, jerking his right arm. The delicate little weapon spat once more and a look of pained surprise entered the youngster's eyes as the small caliber bullet entered his throat. Then he pitched forward, dead before he sprawled on the table, staining the green baize crimson with gushing blood from a severed jugular vein.

"Thanks, old boy," the Englishman called across the new silence of the saloon. "Most kind of you,"

"Know who you just helped to kill, mister?" the bartender said as the Englishman scrolled out and Edge leaned on the bar to finish his beer.

"Some punk kid named Carl," Edge said with disinterest as a group gathered around the body and, the pianist and dancing girls attempted to force normality back into the saloon.

"Carl Drucker," the bartender supplied. ''His father's Wyatt Drucker. Got the biggest ranch in the territory, north of here. Old man Drucker thought Carl was the best thing since they invented money,"

Edge aimed for a spittoon and missed. "Slow, like that, the kid was mortgaged. The Englishman just foreclosed." He moved away from the bar, toward the door.

"Thought your own life was all that mattered?" Colonel Murray called.

"It is," Edge answered; continuing toward the door, not looking at where the soldiers stood. "I knew the dude was fast and I wanted to see how fast."

"Faster than you?" the lieutenant called scornfully.

Edge pushed out the swing doors without answering, but knowing what he would have had to admit, if a reply were demanded. But as soon as he stepped down off the sidewalk, heading across the street toward a restaurant from which a delicious smell of frying bacon was issuing, the question no longer had any immediate importance.

The wagon came sliding in off the cross street, pulled by four terrified white horses with blazing rags tied to their tails, driven by a whooping Apache brave. A hail of arrows arced in over the top of the wagon as more Indian warcries cut through the darkness, piercing it with streaks of flame from blazing flights.

"Looks like the natives are restless tonight," Edge muttered as he ducked for cover, firing at the wagon driver.

CHAPTER SIX

THERE had been a moment of shocked inaction from the townspeople as the Apache attack was launched and it seemed to be as much a result of Edge's rifle shot as .the sight of the Indians which spurred Rainbow's citizenry into panicked retaliation. The bullet gouged a bloody furrow across the Apache's chest and he screamed in agony as he let go of, the reins and jerked erect, a moment before toppling sideways off the speeding wagon, crashing on top of an incredibly fat woman and bowling her into the path of the rear wheel. Her scream as the iron rim of the wheel crushed over her skull was lost in the fusillade of gunfire which suddenly erupted along the street, directed at the horde of galloping Apaches which had followed the wagon round the comer. They had exhausted their burning arrows now, but these had served their purpose as the wooden frontages of many buildings caught light, illuminating targets for a new wave of shafts, aimed to kill.

Two of the army sergeants rushed from the Lucky Ace, revolvers drawn but unfired as they pitched into the street, each with two arrows in his chest. Crouching tight against the saloon wall, with only shadow for cover, Edge snapped off two shots into the Indian pack and saw two bodies slide under the galloping hooves of following ponies. He dropped off the end of the sidewalk and ducked into an alley as an arrow embedded itself into the spot where he had been a moment before. Down at the fort the army bugler started to sound call but this and every other sound of the battle was suddenly swamped by a tremendous explosion that caused the ground to tremble and sent a waft of hot, stench-tainted air rushing along the street.

"Nice to start things with a bang, old boy."

Edge peered into the darkness and saw the Englishman rising from the ground, dusting off his suit. "The wagon?"

"I would think so. Trying to blow off the gates of the fort. Went up too early though, I'd say."

A woman screamed and Edge turned his attention to the street. The whore from the Pot of Gold who had found his nakedness so beguiling, had been snatched up from the sidewalk by a horrifically daubed brave who had slung her face down across his pony, and was preparing to plunge a knife into her back. Edge fired and the bullet shattered the braves jaw. He fell backward off the pony and the woman-screamed again as blood and bone fragments showered her. The pony veered toward the side of the street and the woman's head crashed with a sickening, cracking sound into a sidewalk support. She thudded to the ground, head at an awkward angle.

"Bad luck, old boy," the Englishman said. "It was a gallant try."

"Can't you do any damn thing but talk?" Edge snapped at him as he pumped more bullets out toward the galloping Apaches, bringing down one pony and two braves.

"My little under and over weapon is only suited to card school disagreements; old boy," the Englishman' said easily. "I seldom carry a rifle."

Edge glanced back at the street, which was suddenly empty of live Apaches, the group having rode past, toward the fort. But there were at least a dozen near-naked, coppery brown bodies strewn in the dust, interspersed with as many dead white men and three women.

"There's a whole damn arsenal out there," Edge said as he fed more bullets into the Spencer's magazine.

"But they have such a violent kick," the Englishman said with distaste, grinning as Edge spun to look at him.

"You ain't that fastidious."

The Englishman's expression showed admiration. "A gunslinger with four-dollar words in his vocabulary. Rainbow surprises' me more and more."

Edge finished loading the rifle. "England ain't the only country with schools." He glanced out at the street. "What about that rifle? They'll be back through here."

The Englishman sighed. "Needs must when the devil drives, I suppose," he said, rose into a crouch and darted out toward the nearest discarded weapon. An arrow whistled through the flame-lit air, the noise of its travel cutting across the crackle of burning buildings. With the skill of a man experienced in such things the Englishman hit the ground, rolled over twice, snatched up the rifle and was on his feet and running back in a fast, fluid motion. The arrow thudded into the stock of the rifle. "You almost got me killed," he said with mock petulance as he crouched back in cover and started to pull out the arrow.

"Keep back, you idiot," Colonel Murray's voice barked from the saloon doorway. "They aren't finished yet."

"Strange creatures, Indians," the Englishman muttered in a conversational tone as he skillfully checked the load and action of the newly-acquired rifle. "So unsubtle."

On the roof of the restaurant across the street a man eased erect and loosed off a rifle shot. Something whistled through the air and the next moment the rifleman screamed and pitched forward, falling into the street, frantically trying to yank out a tomahawk that was sunk into his chest.

"But they can be effective," Edge rejoined as the thud of body on to sun-hardened ground ended the man's scream.

"That's only a three-dollar one," the Englishman said.

"Colonel?" Edge called.

"What is it?" came the answer.

"Did they reach the fort?"

"Not even near it. Must know they didn't stand a chance when the explosive wagon blew too early."

"Then why don't the critters get the hell out?'' another voice caned from across the street.

"This isn't the main attack," the colonel replied. "Probably trying to pick off as many of us as they can to make it easier later. Now cut out the talk and watch out for them."

Silence settled again, broken only by the crackling of flames and whimpering of a woman. Edge looked away from the street down to the other end of the alley where a flatbed wagon was standing. An outside stairway canted up the wall of the side of the saloon and he rose and moved stealthily toward it

"Where are you going?" the Englishman whispered.

"Alleys have got two ends and I've only got one pair of eyes," Edge answered, starting up the stairway.

"Above and coming down!" the Englishman hissed.

Edge snapped his eyes up and saw the Indian leaping off the roof, tomahawk raised for the kill. Clearly silhouetted against the sky streaked with black smoke. Edge turned and fell full length on the stairs, whipping up the Spencer and squeezing the trigger. The force of the bullet smashing into the brave’s forehead twisted his falling body and it corkscrewed to thud headfirst into the alley. Edge pulled himself into a sitting position and glared down at the Englishman.

"All you had to do was pull the trigger."

The Englishman grinned. "You tested me in the saloon, old boy. You're rather fast yourself."

Edge grunted, got to his feet and went up the remainder of the steps, sensing rather than hearing the progress of the Englishman behind him. The gambler could move like a cat. At the top of the stairway there was an open landing with a rail at the side and by standing on the rail Edge could reach up and hook his hands over the roof, then haul himself aloft. There were no other Apaches up there, but Edge crouched low, careful not to silhouette himself against the skyline as the Englishman pulled, himself up on the roof.

They, squatted in silence for a moment, surveying the surrounding rooftops in the flickering light of the flames and hearing the occasional rifle and revolver shot. Then Edge moved forward on all "fours.

"Hey," he whispered.

"Yes?" The 'Englishman was right behind him.

"What are we competing for?"

The Englishman laughed, curtailed it and snapped off a shot across the street. A brave in the process of hauling himself on to the sidewalk canopy in front of a grocery store, screamed and dropped back, clutching at his groin. He died under a hail of bullets from the soldiers and civilians in The 'Lucky Ace below.

"Spoiled it," the Englishman said. ''I wanted the bastard to suffer."

They reached the other end of the saloon roof and stretched out full length alongside each other to look down at the destruction wrought by the exploded wagon. It had ripped the facades off several buildings on the east side of the street and it was difficult to see how many people it had killed.

"Oh dear," the 'Englishman, said, "I don't envy Mortimer if he has to fit all those bits of bodies together before he buries them."

"You didn't answer my question," Edge said.

The Englishman grunted, "You don't gamble, you slept on your own in a bordello and you collected that bounty almost by accident. So I asked myself why you came to Rainbow in the middle of an Apache uprising. I answered that it has to be for the same reason I did."

Edge turned to look at him and saw that the smile had gone, that his companion was wearing the same expression with which he had regarded Carl Drucker moments before he shot him.

"Which makes it a competition, old boy. Because I'm not sharing it."

They held each other's gaze for a moment, then returned their attention to the street as a bugle sounded at the fort. The gates were thrown open and a troop of cavalrymen charged out, firing for effect as they emerged.

"They're playing my tune," Edge muttered.

"What is it?" the Englishman asked as the Apaches were flushed from hiding, pouring into the street on their ponies.

"Never did know the name," Edge replied, starting to fire at the galloping Indians. "Only know it means kill anything that moves."

The Englishman began to fire now, as others among the town's defenders opened up, trapping the Indians in a vicious crossfire as the cavalry showered them with lead from behind.

"Like fish in a barrel," the Englishman shouted gleefully as the braves began to tumble from their ponies, screaming their agonies. A bullet from Edge's Spencer smashed into the chest of a brave a split-second after the Apache had released an arrow which entered the throat of a man shooting from a doorway.

"That was Red Hagan," the Englishman said. "Bounty of a hundred dollars if you want to try to collect." He loosed off a shot and brought down a pony which pitched its rider onto the front of a burning building. A moment later the screaming brave rushed out into the street with his long hair blazing.

"Damn hothead," Edge muttered and ended the man's agony with a bullet in his heart. Another pony went down but its rider leaped clear and landed on the run as he drew a knife. He slashed at something in shadow and collapsed with blood spurting from three bullet holes in his back. A fat man rushed from the shadow, the crimson mess of his partially removed scalp flapping down over his forehead like an opened trapdoor.

"Looks like Sheriff Beale," Edge said easily.

"I always maintained he had a hole in the head," the Englishman came back dryly as Beale's chest was suddenly bristling with a half dozen arrows and his dead body collapsed in the path of the onrushing ponies.

Then the surviving Apaches were past, fleeing down the center of the street with the cavalry troop behind them, the ponies widening the gap so that the rifle fire became sporadic as it diminished into the distance.

"Get some buckets and put out these fires," Colonel Murray shouted from below, then moving into sight at the center of the street.

Other men started to move then, seemingly with no purpose. But under Murray's direction a human chain was formed and sloshing buckets of water began to pass along the line. Edge and the Englishman got to their feet, the latter carefully dusting off the dirt from his suit. Edge eyed him reflectively for a moment, then began to reload his Spencer.

"Don't suppose," he said at length, "you'd believe me if I said I didn't know what you were talking about a while back."

The Englishman was wearing his easy smile again. "Then why did you come to Rainbow?"

"Clean sheets and a bath."

"Did you get them?"

"Yeah."

The Englishman started back along the rooftop. "So, now you can move on."

Edge's eyes narrowed to slits and glinted dangerously in the firelight. "Hey, English."

The Englishman turned around to face him and recognized the menace in the other's demeanor. He adjusted his own position, sideways on to Edge.

"Yes, old boy?"

"I don't like being told what to do."

Each was holding his rifle across his stomach, in both hands. The excited noises from the street seemed to fade off into the distance.

"Merely a suggestion."

"Stick your suggestion up where you sit down, English."

The silence between them was like a solid block of crystal clear ice. Across it, each could see every minute detail of the other's physical state of readiness. And, with the perception of skilled gunfighters, each was aware of the other's mental process. A demonic angel of death counted off the seconds. Then the Englishman made a sound with his tongue against his teeth and his handsome face was suddenly wreathed in the familiar smile as the tension flowed from his body.

"If we’re not competing, old boy, there isn't any sense in killing each other. Let me buy you a drink?"

"No, thanks," Edge responded as the Englishman went to the end of the roof and began to lower himself to the stairway. ''With you dressed up so fancy people might start to talk."

Only his head was visible over the angle of the roof now, still wearing the gentle smile. "My goodness, honey-child," he drawled in a high-pitched, Deep South accent. "People have called me odd, but never queer."

Edge spat as he went from sight. "You're sure curious," he muttered. "And' you've made me curious."

He began to move toward the stairway.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE Pot of Gold had the atmosphere of a deserted building and it seemed likely to Edge that he could trust his sixth sense. For down at the other end of the street, across the intersection, a vast crowd of people were still fighting the fires: perhaps the whole town was there. Certainly there was no one in the opulently furnished saloon, its overturned chairs and tables, spilled drinks and discarded personal effects bearing mute witness to the panic which had erupted from the Indian attack.

There was an opened, half-empty whisky bottle on the bar and Edge used the muzzle of the Spencer to reach across and hook a clean glass from a mirrored shelf at the back. He poured a stiff jolt and took it at a single swallow before crossing to the foot of the stairs and starting up. The hallway was empty, with some doors hanging open, others tightly closed. There was no sound. The register was on top of the desk at the head of the stairs and he leaned forward and ran his finger down the list of recent entries. The name above his own was Lord Hartley Fallowfield, which Edge guessed was about as English as anybody could get. The man had checked in three days previously and been given room number fifteen. Edge straightened and moved along the hallway, his boots making a lot of noise. The door of room fifteen was at the end, on the opposite side from his own and he used the muzzle of the rifle to rap on the panel. The silence he had interrupted continued when he finished.

He tried the handle, which rattled but refused to turn. His expression impassive, he leaned his back against the opposite wall, raised his long leg and sent the heel of his boot crashing against the outside of the lock. There is never much to protect in a whorehouse and this lock was a mere token. The door swung wide and thudded against the inner wall. Edge stepped across the threshold and glanced around a room which was identical to his own. Even when he had spent a few moments allowing his eyes to grow accustomed to the dimness, he could recognize nothing that made it different in any way. He closed the door behind him and stood, whistling in low key for perhaps a half minute before starting his search. It didn't take long because the Englishman traveled light: the tallboy, wardrobe and bureau were all empty. None of the floorboards or wooden panels on the wall showed signs of having been prized up to form a hiding place and thus there was only the double bed to merit close attention. With a casual lack of haste, Edge stripped it of coverlet, blanket and sheet, shaking each and tossing them into a comer. There was no slit in the pillow until he made one and shook out the filling. It contained nothing else. There was only the mattress under the bottom sheet and Edge emitted a grunt of satisfaction when he saw the knife scar on the side: a neat slit some six inches long.

He knelt down and drove a hand inside, had to probe with his long fingers for several moments before he found a square of thick paper. He withdrew his discovery and carried it across to the window. He bad to lean his rifle against the wall to open the paper from its two folds, turning it toward the light from a kerosene lamp which spluttered outside, illuminating the bordello's sign. His lips parted in a grin when he saw he had found a map, old and stained, faded in parts and ragged at the edges. It was crudely drawn and bore no lettering but was clearly a map of the valley in which Rainbow was situated, the position of the town marked by a childish drawing of the army fort. The course of the river was marked, and the lines of the two ridges to north and south which formed the valley. There was no stage trail, perhaps because one had not existed at the time the map was drawn. But there was a dotted line which led from just east of the fort, on a zig-zagged course up and over, or perhaps through, the northern ridge, ending at a heavily inscribed cross.

"X marks the spot, old boy."

Edge spun, his right hand streaking toward his holstered Colt and it was in his hand and cocked as he finished the turn, his narrowed eyes fastening on the .Englishman as a clearly outlined silhouette framed in the open doorway with the lighted hallway beyond. But the Englishman's hands hung loosely by his sides and Edge halted his finger' on the trigger, a sliver away from the kill.

"You ought to be dead," Edge said softly.

The Englishman shook his head, smiled and stepped into the room. "You're fast, Edge. A man who shoots as fast as you do has to have good reflexes in other directions." He glanced around at the pile of bedclothes and scattering of filling from the pillow, making a sound of distaste from deep within his throat. "But you aren't very tidy, are you? Not subtle at, all."

Edge waved the paper. "But like the Apaches, effective. What does it mark?"

The Englishman sat on the edge of the mattress, wearing the easy smile again. "You really don't know?"

Edge was still holding the gun. "No."

"Of course, it's obvious you don't. If you did I really would be dead, wouldn't I?" The smile was suddenly replaced by his expression of deadliness. "You must realize then, that I'm not going to tell you."

Edge grunted, folded the map and pushed it inside his shirt front. He stood for a moment of reflection as he studied the man on the bed. Then he tossed the Colt across the room so that it landed with a gentle thud on to the discarded bedclothes.

"It won't be easy," the Englishman said.

"Nothing I ever, got was ever any good," Edge answered as the Englishman released his small double barrel under-and-over and tossed it in the same direction as the Colt.

"Not Queensbury rules, I suppose?" the Englishman asked still sitting on the bed as Edge stepped up to him.

Edge stood before him, clenching and unclenching his fists."What are they?"

"They don't allow certain moves," the Englishman answered and launched himself forward so that the top of his head thudded into Edges stomach. "That, for instance," the Englishman went on as Edge began to double up, hot breath burning through his throat.

"I get it," Edge gasped as he started to fall backward and suddenly accelerated the action and kicked upward with both feet. The toes of his boots found contact with the other man's groin so that the Englishman was lifted bodily from the floor and was forced to let out a roar of agony. "The Bastards' Rules?"

"We both know them," the Englishman croaked as both men climbed to their feet and faced each other, bodies slightly bent to ease their respective pains.

The Englishman came in low and feigned a right cross, sent a left jab hard into Edges already injured portion. The fresh wave of pain only added more power to the uppercut which Edge smashed into the others jaw, knocking him backward across the bed. He sprang forward, hands clawed, and made contact with fingernails on the cheeks of the man beneath them, drawing blood. But a powerful thrust of the Englishman's body, followed by an upward movement of his leg into the American's crotch sent Edge sliding forward to crash into the floor on the far side of the bed. Edge was only halfway to his feet and beginning to turn when the Englishman sprang on to his back and crossed his arms around his throat. Edges legs buckled under the weight and he had to struggle to breathe through his constricted windpipe. But he summoned enough energy to turn and move across the room in an ungainly run, heading for the window. Then he stopped abruptly and bent, sharply so that the forward momentum was enough to somersault the Englishman off his back and feet first through the window in a shower of splintered glass.

Edge stood inside the room, gasping for breath and rubbing his stomach but managing to curl back his lips in a grin, watching carefully as the other man got painfully to his feet. "You had enough, feller?" he called out.

The Englishman, his face running with blood from the wounds opened by Edges fingernails, answered with a gentle smile as, with the arrogance of a victor, he brushed pillow down from his suit. "You haven't got enough time to make me throw in the towel, Edge," he said lightly. "Not if you live to be a hundred."

Carefully, he removed his well-cut jacket and seemed about to drape it over the balcony rail. But in the next moment he had exploded into movement as he pivoted and threw the coat through the window. It wrapped itself around Edge's head and before the American could fight it clear the coat's owner had dived back through the window to land with a mid-air head butt into the stomach. Edge was slammed against the bureau, its comer digging into the small of his back to generate a fresh wave of agony from a different source.

Edge howled with pain and stood swaying for a few moments, seemingly finished, as the Englishman advanced, the look of a killer shining in his eyes. Edge allowed him to close the gap to three feet, then clasped both hands together and swung up his arms in a fast, powerful action so that the two fists merged. into one caught his opponent squarely under the jaw. The Englishman's howl was not bogus as he was lifted clean off his feet and then crumpled to the floor, trying to roll himself into a tight ball. But his back was exposed and Edge landed two crashing blows to the kidneys with the toe of his boot before the Englishman uncurled and stretched out flat on his back, holding his hands aloft in surrender.

"You win," he gasped. But as Edge stepped back the upraised arms suddenly shot out and locked around his legs. A sudden jerk and Edge was falling, heard his teeth jar together and tasted bile in his mouth as the back of his head crashed into the tallboy. "The first' round," he heard the Englishman say.

Edge was stunned by the head blow and heard the voice from far off. The weight of the Englishman thudding, on top of him and the crunch of blows smashing into his face also reached Edge as if from a great distance and they numbed rather than hurt him. But he knew that to give in to the continuous hail of punches would be to admit defeat and he tried desperately to force unwilling muscles to obey the command of a weary brain. His efforts were feeble, easily countered by the Englishman, until Edge felt the warmth of his own blood on his face and the sharp sting of open wounds galvinated him into a fresh attack. He rolled slightly to the left and then with force to the right. Taken by surprise at the sudden new-found power, the Englishman was unbalanced and thrown clear, to receive a crack on his own head from a leg of the bed.

Breathing deeply, the air rattling in their throats, both men pulled themselves up into a squatting position and looked at each other's bruised and bloodied faces.

''This is ruining my suit," the Englishman panted.

"Ain't doing your face much good," Edge pointed out.

"You don't exactly look like a lady killer yourself, old boy," came the reply.

Edge spat and saw blood in the spittle, realizing the stinging in his mouth was from where he had bitten his tongue. "Anytime you want to tell me what the map means, I’ll listen.”

"Not even if you live to be two hundred years old."

Edge sighed and pulled himself erect, felt himself sway and struggled to contain it. The Englishman had to use the bed to help him get to his feet.

"I might just make it," Edge came back. "But if you don't learn to handle yourself better than this you won't see another birthday."

The Englishman shook his head, trying to clear it of dizziness. "You talk like a man, but you fight like a woman who deep down wants to be raped."

"How would a fairy know anything about raping women?" Edge flung at his opponent.

"Talk, talk, talk," the Englishman sneered. "I heard you Yankees try to talk your way out of everything, Why don't you put your fists where your mouth is?"

They took a step toward each other, raising their fists, much slower than before, the Englishman's smile and Edge's grin just visible through the blood on their battered faces.

"One of you guys called Fallowfield?" The voice from the doorway brought both of them up short and each turned to look at the man who stood there, covering them with a revolver in each hand.

"He is," the Englishman snapped and pointed at Edge.

"He is," Edge said a moment later, and pointed a finger of his own.

The man's confused eyes swept from one battered face to the other, his expression showing the frantic workings of his, mind. Edge, sensing possible death rather than a beating, found the energy to take advantage of the gunman's discomposure. His left hand snaked to his belt, drew the wooden-handled knife and with a powerful wrist action he sent it spinning, underarm, toward the man in the doorway. The blade sank deep into the man's stomach and he looked down at it in surprise for a moment before the agony hit him and he dropped both guns as he reached to tug at the handle.

"Rude to come in without knocking," Edge said, moving toward the man as he supported himself against the doorframe.

But the Englishman got there first, smiled at the gunman, knocked his hands away and jerked the knife as the injured man screamed and spouted blood on to the floor. "Stomach ache?" he asked conversationally.

The man was whimpering now as he clutched at his stomach, trying to staunch the flow of blood. His legs began to bow as he nodded in reply to the Englishman's question.

The Englishman made his smile into a sympathetic expression and rested a hand on the gunman’s shoulder. "I have the perfect cure," he said and lifted the knife in a high, wide arc, slashing open the man’s throat from ear to ear. "Wonder why he wanted me?" he asked as he stepped back, avoiding the spray of blood from the falling body.

"Thought he was your fight trainer," Edge said, holding out his hand for the return of the knife.

The Englishman stooped to wipe the blood from the knife on the shirt of the dead man before handing it to Edge, handle first. Then he shrugged. "Seemed rather a dim-witted chap. Might almost have been a relative of yours."

Edge slid the knife back into its sheath and squared up once more before the Englishman, but again a voice came between them, this time from the street in front of the Pot of Gold.

"Fallowfield! You in there, Fallowfield?"

"Popular tonight," Edge said dryly.

"It's the title that gets you Yankees," the Englishman said. "It's the aristocracy's good breeding that impresses the natives."

"Ain't a trace of blue blood on your face," Edge said softly. "Same color as mine except maybe it’s a little watered down."

"You hear me Fallowfield," the voice from the street called.

Edge went to the pile of bedclothes, picked up his Colt and tossed the small double-barreled gun to the Englishman. Then he went to the window, picked up the Spencer and stepped through the shattered pane on to the balcony.

"You have a thing about roofs?" the Englishman asked as he fitted his gun back in the spring loaded gun holster.

"High ground's always best," Edge answered, climbing on to the balcony rail and hoisting himself up to the sloping roof.

"Fallowfield, this is Wyatt Drucker. You killed my son."

"Oh dear!" The Englishman said with a sigh as he followed Edge up on to the roof. "It appears the only Gospel to reach this continent is that according to St. Matthew."

"How's that?" Edge asked as he crawled up the slant of the roof, the Englishman beside him.

"Five, thirty-eight," came the reply. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

"Not so," Edge returned. "They know the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not kill. But they only apply it to the other feller."

They had reached the apex of the roof and could look down the opposite slope into the street where they saw three mounted riders staring at the front of the building.

"My fight," the Englishman whispered.

"You won't get close enough to Use your peashooter," Edge pointed out. "And you've only got two shots anyway. I'll sell you my rifle."

"Fallowfield, come out here you yellow skunk," Wyatt Drucker yelled.

"Impatient cove," the Englishman said, eyeing Edge speculatively. "How much?"

"Fifty per cent of whatever's at the place marked with a cross."

"You set a high price," the Englishman said with a smile.

Edge shrugged his shoulders. "It's a seller's market."

"Chap who had the stomach ache has two guns downstairs," the Englishman pointed out.

Edge shook his head. "No good. You need two of those guys out before you hit the street. Never do it with a revolver at this range."

The Englishman thought about it for several moments, then nodded. "Throw in your gunbelt and it's a deal"

"Minus the knife?"

"All right."

Edge rolled on to his back and unbuckled and untied his belt, withdrawing the knife from its sheath before allowing the Englishman to pull the belt from his back as he rolled over once more.

"Fallowfield, we're coming in!" Drucker called, but neither he nor his men made a move as the Englishman buckled the belt at his hips, then tied down the holster.

"Talk, talk, talk," the Englishman said with a sigh. "Bloody Yankees all over." Then he pulled himself into position astride the ridge member of the roof and raised the Spencer to his shoulder. "Drucker!"

As the name was shouted aloud the three men in the street turned their faces skyward and went for their guns. The rifle cracked twice, a split second and a slight movement of the muzzle separating the two shots. But the men flanking Drucker toppled from their horses at the same moment, ugly red stains spreading across their shirt fronts. Before their bodies had hit the ground a third shot exploded in the night air and Drucker's hat skimmed from his head. The rancher withdrew his hand from his gun as if the butt had been red hot.

"Fancy—like your clothes," Edge said with derision as he began to scrape at his nails with the point of the knife, removing pieces of the Englishman's skin. "That fast, you could have plugged Drucker too."

The Englishman swung one leg over the roof apex and began to inch down the slope on his backside, carefully keeping the rifle trained on Drucker.

"Talk, and no sense of honor," he murmured.

"But a better sense of priorities," Edge replied, glancing along the street and seeing that the fires had been put out: that the three shots had drawn attention toward the Pot of Gold. "Self preservation comes first."

The Englishman dropped from sight, down on to the balcony, but from Drucker's expression of half hate and half fear, Edge knew the Spencer was still aimed at a target.

"Get off your horse, Mr. Drucker," the Englishman instructed as Edge began to slide down the roof slope. By the time the rancher had complied and the Englishman had moved out into the center of the street, facing his adversary over a distance of some twenty feet, Edge was on the balcony, leaning casually on the rail as a detached spectator with a grandstand view.

Drucker was a tall man, and broad, but he realized the disadvantage of such bulk in a showdown and turned sideways-on to the Englishman, reducing the size of the target. And now that both men were facing each other with Edge obviously taking no part in the fight, the rancher had regained his courage. He even smiled when the Englishman lowered the rifle butt to the ground and then let the weapon fall into the dust.

"Careful with that rifle," Edge called as Drucker began to move sideways and the Englishman stepped in the opposite direction.

"I'll clean it for you," the Englishman answered, not taking his eyes off Drucker's still smiling face as the two men completed a quarter circle.

"You ain't gonna be alive to do anything," Drucker chided.

"Talk, talk, talk," the Englishman, muttered.

A movement on the roof of a building diagonally across the street abruptly captured Edge's attention, dragging his eyes away from the gunfight. It had been a mere flicker on the periphery of his vision and as he now concentrated on the area, the building appeared as a solid dark mass in the night, as immobile as rock. A man less attuned to respect for danger would have marked down the suspicion to imagination, but Edge did not allow himself to be dissuaded from the study. For up to ten seconds his narrowed eyes raked back and forth along the roof line and when the near-naked figure appeared in silhouette, first in a crouch and then standing erect, bow held in the firing position, Edge was ready.

He had time to curse once at the fact of his rifle lying in the dust of the street before he drew back the knife and sent it zinging across the balcony rail. Traveling at the greatest speed the power of Edge's arm could generate, the knife flashed once in the light of a lamp and then entered the shadow. It found its mark with the softest of thuds and the Apache on the opposite roof appeared to perform a delicate, almost artistic ballet leap before falling backward. The sound of his body hitting the roof was lost in the noise from along the street as a troop of soldiers approached. Edge glanced back at the drama below him and saw the two men still circling each other, waiting for openings, and realized they had been unaware of the Indian's presence and his death.

"You men!" a voice shouted from among the soldiers and Edge turned to see Colonel Murray riding at their head with his rifle leveled.

"It's a private fight, Colonel," the Englishman said as the troop halted outside the line of the circle. Again he spoke without taking his steady gaze off Drucker, who was no longer smiling. Drucker recognized the killer look in the other's face and knew the moment for drawing was close at hand. The bodies of the two dead cowboys were sprawled in the center of the circle as mute testimony to the fate of the loser.

"Who killed those men?" Murray barked.

"It was them or English," Edge called down, gaining the attention of Murray and his men. "Another one inside the hotel English had to even up the odds."

"I can do my own talking, Edge," the Englishman put in with an angry tone.

"And you'll have to if you kill another white man," Colonel Murray said gravely. "That goes for you, too, Mr. Drucker. I'm placing Rainbow under martial law. The fort is undermanned and the Apaches won't let it rest at one attack. We need every able-bodied man we've got. If you continue with this, I'll try whoever survives and he'll be executed by firing squad the moment I know we're safe from Indian attack."

He heeled his horse forward, halting directly between the Englishman and Drucker and looking from one to the other.

"Looks like the army came between you and your man," Edge called down sardonically then flashed his right hand toward a non-existent holster as the Englishman drew and fired. The killer instinct was etched deep into the blood-streaked face of the Englishman and Edge was certain this final jibe had ripped through the tough hide of the man's coolness. But the bullet went high and to the left. A scream sounded on the roof and the body of a brave plummeted down, hit the balcony rail close to Edge and thudded on to the street.

"You looked scared for a moment, Edge," the Englishman called, the innocent smile back on his face as he holstered the still-smoking gun.

Edge parted his lips in a cold grin, swung a leg over the balcony, hung for a moment and dropped to the street. He picked up the Spencer and dusted it off. "Figured you might shoot low and wide," he said, holding out his hands for the gunbelt as the Englishman began to unbuckle it. "Colt's a big gun for a runt like you."

"Talk, talk, talk," the Englishman muttered yet again as Edge took the gunbelt and headed across the street as he buckled it.

As Edge entered the alley to go behind the building in search of the brave and his knife, Nelson Mortimer came down the street aboard a flatbed wagon loaded with two pine coffins.

"You're one short, Nelson," Edge told him.

Confusion showed on the grave face of the little man in his funeral garb. "I only heard two shots, Mr. Edge," he said.

"There are subtler ways to skin a cat," Edge told him.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE town of Rainbow slept uneasily, the recent violence of the Apache attack fresh in the memory to trigger the imagination into nightmares of what could happen when the braves returned in greater number. Most of the civilian population were barricaded in the unsubstantial safety of their homes or hotel rooms, untrusting of the single army patrol which Colonel Murray had detailed for sentry duty around the limits of the town. The bulk of his men were inside the gates of the fort and the army commander had made no secret of the fact that he valued the consignment of weapons higher than the lives of the townspeople. Edge did not even try to sleep, but sat on the bed with the Englishman's map spread across his knees, his lean face, washed clean of blood but still bearing traces of the fight, set in an expression of deep thought. He was recalling the old miner, Zeb Hanson, and his fruitless search for a legendary mountain of silver. Zeb had not had a map and Edge was toying with the idea that perhaps the old timer had been digging for twelve years in the wrong mountain.

A discreet rapping of knuckles on the door interrupted Edge's line of thought and he quickly folded the map and tucked it into his shirt, then pulled the rifle out from under the bed. "Yeah?"

"Your partner, old boy," came the response in the familiar, cultured English tone. "We need to talk."

"Thought you didn't like talking?"

"You've stolen my means of action, old boy. Can I come in?"

"I been expecting you," Edge told him. "Door's not locked."

The Englishman entered and sighed when he found himself looking down the length of the Spencer's barrel. "You really are the most nervous chap, Mr. Edge," he said as he closed the door and leaned against it, "Isn't there anybody you trust?"

"Yeah, the guy I shave," Edge answered.

"What's the spot marked with a cross?"

The Englishman shrugged and Edge noticed that he, I too: had' cleaned up his face. And his suit looked as if he had just picked it up from the tailor. "Perhaps nothing, old boy. The man who offered me the map in payment of a debt said it was worth a million dollars,"

"How much did he owe you?" Edge asked.

"Fifty dollars. He thought his aces arid kings were good but my low flush was better."

Edge made a sound of disgust from deep within his throat. ''You can't be that stupid—a million, bucks for fifty."

"I'm not, old boy," he answered with the gentle smile. "I was within a second of killing him before he, offered me the map. That made me consider the story as feasible. Then I did have to kill him, when he tried to steal the map back again. He talked a little before I ended his agony. It happened in Wichita, Kansas. I took the next stage west."

"What did he tell you?" Edge was still pointing the rifle, apparently in a casual attitude. But his narrowed eyes studied the Englishman closely, the memory of the man's speed with the trick holster warning against a moment's inattention.

"You wouldn't reconsider our arrangement, old boy?" the Englishman asked without conviction,. "A readjustment of the percentages?"

Edge grinned coldly. "Don't push it, English," he said with a shake of his head. "I've got the map now. Could be that if we change the split you'll get the small end. What is it, a silver mine?"

"Oh, dear, you really are completely lacking in information, old boy. You only know the legend. I have the facts. "

"And, I repeat, I have the map."

The Englishman put his hands in his pants pockets, but Edge did not allow himself to be lulled into a sense of security by the casual attitude, and continued to direct the Spencer toward the door.

"It's gold, old boy. A whole wagon load of gold ingots with no identifying marks. The gold was refined in Mexico and shipped north under the protection of the Mexican army in 1835."

"What did they get for it?"

"Not a thing, old boy. What they wanted was help from the Indians in this area—the Apaches, Papago, Pima, Maricopa, Hopi and Navaho."

"To do what?"

The Englishman shook his head. ''If you knew your history, old boy, the answer would be obvious. In 1835 Texas was fighting for her independence from Mexico and the Mexicans were very reluctant to relinquish such a large portion of land. But they were losing and they were prepared to try anything—even a deal with the Indians. Then something went wrong and there are several versions of what it was. I'm inclined to believe the story that the army escort tried to steal the shipment and then fought among themselves—lack of trust again, old boy."

"Who drew the map?" Edge demanded, ignoring the final comment.

"The only survivor from the escort. He left the wagon where it was, hidden in a cave on the other side of the northern ridge and plotted the way out, intending to return when he considered it safe to make use of the cargo. What happened to the map from then until it came into the possession of my card-playing chum is anybody's guess."

Edge's expression became thoughtful again, but he maintained his careful vigilance. "Why'd you waste time hanging around Rainbow, English?" he asked at length.

The Englishman grinned and it was almost an apologetic expression. "Money, old boy. A wagon loaded with a million dollars worth of gold isn't exactly a buggy with a fringe on top. Luck didn't ride with me on the stage west and I reached Rainbow with three dollars and the clothes you see me in now. I had to win enough to buy a team and a wagon. The one up in the cave might have rotted down to its axles by now. It's more than thirty years old, you know."

''You get them?"

He nodded. "Bought and paid for. Waiting at Olsen's livery stables. The team inside and the wagon out the back."

"So what are we waiting for?" Edge asked.

The gentle smile taunted Edge. "Perhaps for you to summon enough courage to go out into Indian country?"

"Ain't the Indians that worry me," Edge answered.

The smile continued. "You have nothing to fear from me, old boy," the Englishman said. "With the Apaches on the warpath, two guns will be better than one. And if the gold has to be transshipped, two pairs of hands will be better. But …" His expression darkened suddenly and his tone became heavy with menace. "I still don't like the split."

"Then neither do I," Edge countered, matching the other's threat. "And I know your opinion of talk, English."

Silence settled upon the room, interrupted only by the spluttering of the kerosene lamp, as both men attempted to outstare each other. They finally called it quits with emphatic nods which spoke tacitly of an agreement that the deal was one of all or nothing. Then the Englishman turned and pulled open the door, waiting patiently to usher Edge through. But although Edge stood up from the bed, he did not move forward. "Only the guy I shave," he said softly.

"And that's a hard man," the Englishman said as he went out into the hallway.

"As your heart," Edge countered, following him.

The Pot of Cold was strictly a hotel that, night and there were no creaking bedsprings or muted cries of passion as the two men went along the hallway, down the stairs and across the saloon area. Lust could not compare with the stronger, more passionate, fear of further Indian attack. Out on the street there was the same aura of deserted desolation with not a light showing anywhere, and no sound but the footfalls of the two men to disturb the absolute stillness. But both men knew about the army patrol, and both were aware of the lone braves who had stalked the rooftops earlier. So they moved with caution, keeping to the shadowed sidewalk and only darting across the width of the street to Olsen's Livery Stables when they were sure their passage would be unseen. For a few seconds the low, cold looking moon threw their shadows long across the gray dust, then they were swallowed up by the darkness of the opposite sidewalk.

There was an alley between the livery and the neighboring lawyer's office and the Englishman entered this with Edge hard on his heels. Only the stabled horses heard their approach and started up a nervous whinnying.

"You intend trying to run the Apache gauntlet with only your peashooter?" Edge whispered as they emerged into a pool of moonlight at the rear of the livery.

The Englishman's, teeth shone in a smile and he pointed to where a flatbed wagon was standing. "Take a look under the seat of the wagon, old boy. While I get the team."

" Edge waited a few seconds to watch his partner go to work on the padlock securing the rear doors of Olsen's Livery and saw him picking at it with a short length of twisted wire. The lock fell open with a satisfying click.

"Very damn subtle," Edge said sardonically.

The teeth shone again. "But effective, old boy. Very damn effective."

As the Englishman pulled open the doors Edge crossed to the wagon and lifted the hinged seat to look into the box beneath. And now it was his turn to grin as he, reached inside and lifted out an elegant repeater rifle. He stood for a few moments, admiring the lines of the weapon, then began to run his, fingertips along the smoothness of the stock and over the soft sheen of the brass frame.

"What do you think, old boy?" the Englishman said softly as he led two strong-looking work grays out of the stable.

"It looks like an old friend of mine called Henry," Edge answered.

The Englishman soothed the horses into the wagon shafts and began to harness them. "Close relation," he explained. "Same breed, but different fathers, if that's possible. Both of the New Haven Arms Company. B. Tyler Henry fathered the Henry rim-fire .44 repeater. Has a steel or bronze frame. A tubular magazine of 15 rounds and you feed in the shells from the front after drawing' the spring up into the muzzle section of the mag."

"You've been going to night school," Edge put in. The Englishman was unmoved by the sarcasm. "What you're holding, old boy, is a brass-framed 1866 Winchester one of the first models of its kind to come from New Haven Anus. You load it from the rear, so you can feed in the shells a damn sight faster than a Henry."

"Same cocking action?" Edge asked and jerked the trigger guard down and forward to test it for himself.

"The same," the Englishman confirmed as he finished harnessing the horses and started back toward the stable. "Gun's named for Oliver F. Winchester who runs New Haven Arms."

"As fast?"

"A shot every two and a half seconds it says in the specifications. You could be faster,"

"I am," Edge said softly to the retreating figure, and replaced the rifle in the box seat as he waited for the Englishman to return with another two work horses.

"Would it Interest you to know that Colonel Murray is guarding ten thousand of those rifles?" the Englishman asked when he did reappear.

"I heard about an arms shipment," Edge answered. "Why don't he break them out and issue them?"

"Murray's a soldier by the book, old boy," came the reply as the Englishman coaxed the two lead animals between the shafts. "Rainbow's a supply fort. His job is to distribute the new Winchesters to other forts throughout the territory. And the whole army's been told they can't use the guns against the Indians until Washington decides the uprisings can't be contained by talking. Like I said about the Yankees, talk, talk, talk."

"How d'you know all this; English?" Edge asked.

The gentle smile was highlighted by the moon. "I know a man who knows a man. Played poker with him and he lost." He checked the tension of the bits and sighed with satisfaction.

"Ready to roll?"

"Think so, old boy. If you still have the map."

"I've got it," Edge answered and hoisted himself up on to the box seat, holding out a hand to help the Englishman aboard. But he withdrew it quickly as a rifle shot rang out and wood splintered from the edge of the seat. Before the splinters hit the ground Edge had cocked the Spencer and the Englishman had spun around the double-barreled pistol nestling in his hand.

"Move another inch and you'll both take a step into hell," a voice barked out from the roof of the stage depot, the tone leaving no doubt that the speaker meant what he said.

Edge and the Englishman did as they were told, moving only their narrowed eyes as they saw a line of uniformed figures come erect on the roof. They heard scrabbling sounds on the roof of the lawyer's office behind them and knew they were covered from both directions.

"I think some bastard figured us," Edge said out of the corner of his mouth.

"Spell Drucker with an F," the Englishman answered as the rancher stepped from the alley, beside Colonel Murray.

"Drop your weapons," Murray commanded as Drucker struggled to contain an evil grin of triumph.

They complied and at another command from the army man Edge climbed down easily from the wagon. It was Drucker who came forward, his own guns holstered but confident of the cover provided by the soldiers. He halted first before the Englishman and ran his hands expertly over the elegant suit, searching for other concealed weapons. The bulk of the man seemed to dwarf the Englishman.

"You don't ought to talk so loud in hotels," Drucker taunted.

"I didn't know there were worms in the woodwork," the Englishman retorted with a soft, venomous tone.

The insult failed to provoke Drucker, who moved over to Edge and removed his Colt and the knife but missed the razor. Edge could see the rancher was immune to words so held his peace and fixed the man, with a slit-eyed stare which spoke a thousand threats. But this did not prevent Drucker delving his hand inside Edge's shirt and quickly withdrawing the map, which he transferred to his own shirt while his back was toward the colonel. "Hear there's gold in them there hills," he murmured with a grin.

''I'll arrange for your coffin to be lined with it," the Englishman said as Drucker backed away to stand beside Murray again.

"Mr. Drucker here reported you planned to desert Rainbow," Murray said gravely. "I've told you already that we can't afford to lose any men, with the Apaches sitting on our doorstep," He glanced up at the stage' depot roof. "Sergeant Horne!" he shouted. "March these men to the stockade and detail a guard. They're to be shot if they attempt to escape."

"Doesn't that rather defeat the object, Colonel?" the Englishman asked as some of the soldiers climbed down from the roof.

"Cowards aren't any use to me," came the response and then the colonel's expression became pensive as he studied both men. "But 1 know you aren't yellow."

"But we just abhor killing," the Englishman said, emphasizing his cultured tones.

"There are exceptions," Edge said, fixing Drucker with a steady stare.

"Let's go," Sergeant Horne ordered, jerking a gun muzzle into Edge's back. He moved forward under the insistence of the pressure.

"I hate jails," the Englishman said, falling in alongside him as the heavily armed escort brought up the rear. "They're always full of bums."

"Then you ought to enjoy it," Edge answered.

The Englishman sighed deeply. "I keep telling you: just a little odd, that's all."

Edge spat. "Just the same, I'm having the top bunk."

CHAPTER NINE

THE Apaches attacked at dawn, riding into the town from the east with the harsh glare of the sun at their backs, dazzling the frantic eyes of Rainbow's defenders as they came awake to the sound of blood-curdling warcries. The eight-man army patrol met the first assault, caught outside the last house at the eastern end of the cross street by fifty braves led by Little Cochise, brother of the tribe's chief. The patrol was headed by a tough sergeant, a veteran of the Civil War who immediately ordered his men toward the cover of the house as the first hail of arrows thudded into the ground several yards short. Six of the men did as ordered but the seventh, a young man, brave as he was reckless, knelt down on one knee and began to loose off rifle fire at the galloping braves. Two fell from their ponies with mortal wounds and a third went sideways with a hole in his shoulder but managed to stay mounted as he wheeled away. Then Little Cochise released his decorated lance with enormous power and howled his triumph as the barbed head thudded into the soldier's stomach and emerged dripping blood at the back. As the remainder of the patrol dived head-long through the windows of the house, Little Cochise grasped the shaft of the lance and dragged the dead soldier behind him, circling the house with the braves howling at his heels. The second wave of Apaches streamed into the town, loosing arrows toward houses from which rifle and small arms fire was beginning to sound.

Inside the house, as Fred Olsen struggled into his pants and his elderly wife hid beneath the bedclothes, the sergeant ordered each of his men to a window on both floors and then went down with an arrow through his throat as he cracked open the back door. A fountain of blood sprayed into the eyes of a corporal at the window and the man was still trying to wipe it clear when an Indian rode in through the open doorway, daubed face a mask of hatred. The brave released his tomahawk in a spinning throw and the soldier screamed as the blade buried itself in his chest. The brave howled with triumph and leaped from his horse, drawing his knife to claim two scalps. But in the next moment his head was no more than a crimson pulp clinging to gleaming bone as the half-dressed Fred Olson fired both loads in a double-barreled shotgun, aiming from the top of the stairs.

Outside, the dead soldier came free of the killing lance and his best friend, firing from an upstairs window leaned out for a better shot at Little Cochise. His aim was wide and an arrow thudded into his back. He fell headfirst from the window and was struck by six more arrows before his dead body smashed to the ground. The braves continued to circle the house, closing the gaps as injured and dead riders fell from their horses; gripping their ponies with their legs so that they had both hands free to prime and fire their bows. They rode outside their ponies, offering less of a target, sometimes leaning forward and down to fire from below the animals' necks. Then, at a howled command from Little Cochise, the braves wheeled in toward the house in a rushed attack from all directions. Four Apaches fell as they attempted to dismount, but the remainder got through, three swinging up on to the porch to enter the upper floors. Two soldiers positioned in the sitting room at the front killed three painted braves as they dived in through already shattered windows but were themselves killed by other braves, one taking a tomahawk in his skull, the other having his throat cut by a slashing knife blade. At the rear of the house Fred Olsen obliterated the faces of two Apaches and, then swung the empty shotgun around his head, cracking the skulls of three more before six overpowered him and scalped him alive before plunging a knife into his mouth opened in a scream.

The house became suddenly quiet, a nerve-rending haven of false peace against the distant gunfire and howls as the main fight moved to the center of town. Upstairs in the main bedroom the woman whimpered beneath the bedclothes as one soldier guarded the window, another the door. They were all that remained of the patrol and they sensed, in the silence, their impending doom.

"Where the hell they gone?" the man at the window said, a tremor in his voice.

"Not home for breakfast, that's for sure," his companion answered, sweating freely from fear but not revealing the terror in his tone as he stood squarely in front of the closed door, aiming his rifle.

The man at the window poked his head outside, trying to spot a sign of stealthy attack and as the woman under the bedclothes began to sob, the soldier died. A brown hand reached down from the roof, grasped the soldier's hair and jerked on it as another hand swung a tomahawk, sheering cleanly through the neck. The head fell into the street and the body back into the room as the brave on the roof emitted a tremendous roar of victory. At the same instant the flimsy panel door was split lengthwise as a lance penetrated it and had enough momentum to strike deep into the chest of the last soldier. Then the door crashed off its hinges and Little Cochise led a dozen braves into the room. They dragged the bed away from the wall and began to dance around it, whooping into the terrified ears of their whimpering victim, priming their bows as they did so. At a signal from the chief twelve arrows were fired at point-blank range and the whimpering ended as a dozen broadening red stains spread across the coverlet.

Similar orgies of barbaric killing were taking place in houses throughout the town as wave after wave of Apache braves circled their objectives, then dismounted at the run for the final assault.

At the Pot of Gold ten braves poured whisky down their throats before smashing the bottles and setting light to the contents. One man tried to run through the flames and emerged with his clothes blazing. The braves ignored him as he rolled in agony burning to death. They were content to surround the building and pour arrows at anyone who tried to escape through upper story windows. The aging madam thought she had got clear down the outside stairway, but came face to face with a young brave. She fought back her terror and raised the hem of her nightgown, exhibiting the entire length of her naked body, wrinkled and flaccid. The brave leered through his warpaint, and reached out to grasp one of the sagging breasts. The woman cried out at the tightness of the grip then shrieked in agony as a knife slashed down to sever the breast. On the roof a naked whore knelt in prayer a moment before a blazing beam collapsed and she fell screaming into the searing heat of the fire.

The empty stage depot and the sheriff's office were fired and sparks showered the nearby livery stable, setting light to the hay loft above. As terrified horses lashed out their hoofs, Wyatt Drucker climbed on to the seat of the wagon and whipped the hindquarters of the two lead grays which thundered away from the flames. Three braves met a pounding death beneath the galloping hoofs of the horses as Drucker emerged from the alley in a screaming turn and he made no attempt to swerve as Nelson Mortimer crawled into his path, the undertaker holding up the bloody stumps of his wrists in a plea for help. The hoofs trampled him and the wheels almost cut him in half. Drucker got clear of the town with the wagon bristling with arrows, but without a scratch on himself.

But the Apache rampage through the town was merely a diversionary tactic, designed to draw the soldiers from the fort. It failed. The big gate stayed closed and the uniformed figures remained at their posts high on the walls, rifles aimed and ready for when the braves came within range. Many of the acts of butchery and destruction were committed in full view of the men and, a ripple of angry conversation spread along the line.

"Save your energy!" Colonel Murray barked, his face wan behind the weathered exterior, his expression forced into a scowl of anger to mask the horror he felt.

He was standing on the platform above the gates, flanked by Lieutenant Sawyer and Sergeant Home. The lieutenant fumed away and retched dryly as a barman ran out of one of the saloons with blood gushing from gaping wounds where his ears had been.

"Don't you think, sir, that …" Home began.

"I’ve done my thinking, sergeant," Murray snapped coldly. "We didn't 'ask those people to build their town out there. My God!"

This last was hissed as a mounted brave turned into the street dragging a naked girl by the hair. A soldier at the fort loosed off a shot that kicked up dust yards short of the Indian.

"Put that man on report!" Murray barked as he saw the girl released, only to die under a hail of falling arrows, some of them carrying burning rags.

Then, as the sweet, nauseating stench of her burning flesh rose to the nostrils of the soldiers, the town became quiet and the street was suddenly devoid of movement. The silence was matched by that from within the fort

"What's happening, sir?" the lieutenant asked at length, his voice a hushed whisper as if afraid the words might carry to the Apaches.

"They know the plan's come unstuck," Murray replied, not taking his eyes off the scene of blazing buildings and a street littered with dead whites and Indians. "They wanted us to move out and we didn't. Little Cochise has to figure out something else."

"What else is there, sir?" Home asked, his tone implying that he already knew the answer.

Murray didn't answer him. "Take a detail and break out the new guns, sergeant," he ordered tightly. "Issue one to each man. Then release the prisoners and see they are armed in the same way."

Home saluted and moved off, barking orders which sent' six men after him. The others held their positions, needing no command from Murray to warn them that the Apaches could attack without warning at any moment.

"You think it will be a full-scale attack, sir?" Sawyer asked when the silence had lengthened to proportions he found difficult to endure.

"Maybe," was all Murray would allow as he rubbed a hand along his unshaven jaw.

Few of the men on the wall were shaved and completely dressed, having been ordered directly from their bunks to the fort's defense at the start of the attack. It. had been cold in the first rays of dawn, but now the sun had gained height and the men did not attempt to button their tunics and shirts. The heat and the fear caused their bodies to run freely with, sweat.

"Smarten up those men!" Murray barked suddenly, glaring at Sawyer.

The lieutenant sprang forward, moving along the line to ensure that the disgruntled troopers obeyed the order. Murray turned away to watch as Edge and the Englishman strolled across the compound and started up the wooden steps to the top of the wall. He resented both men with a degree of emotion which can only be experienced by a lifelong soldier for civilian indiscipline. But he respected their fighting skills and suspected he would soon need to call upon them.

"Good morning, Colonel," the Englishman said brightly. "Not the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in, but it was peaceful until our red visitors arrived."

Edge looked down on Rainbow impassively, hooded eyes taking in the vista of death and destruction. He spat into the dust before the gate.

"Looks like the Apaches mean business this time," he muttered. "Where they gone?"

"Hiding," Murray answered, "Regrouping for an all-out attack this time, I'd say."

His tone and expression invited a comment from Edge, but the tall, lean man continued his survey of the town.

"Appears you were not a lot of help, old boy," the Englishman said.

"I lost an eight man patrol out there someplace," the Colonel answered angrily. "That's eight more than I can afford to lose."

"Touchy," the Englishman murmured as the detail of men led by Sergeant Home began to haul crates of rifles and ammunition up the stairway.

At a nod from the fort commander the detail began to distribute the guns and shells. Edge had already been given back his own Spencer, but chose to rest this against the wall as he tested the action of the Winchester. The issue of the new weapons caused an interested Hurry of conversation all along the line of defenders.

"Everyone out there killed?" Edge asked when he had finished his examination of the gun and began to feed shells into it.

"As far as we can tell," Murray answered. "Drucker may have escaped. He made a run for it on your wagon."

"I'll be damned," the Englishman said. "Map, Edge?"

Edge spat again. "He took it."

"What map?" Murray demanded as Sawyer returned to the group,

"Our business," Edge answered, resting the rifle and checking the action and load of his Colt.

"Bastard," the Englishman muttered.

"Colonel," a voice called from along the line. "It's starting."

Every pair of eyes turned to look down at the town to see a line of white men, women and children snaking out on to the street, roped together by their necks. There were twenty of them, spread out across the width of the street and they began to advance slowly toward the gates of the fort. As the line moved down the street, Apache braves began to appear behind the prisoners led by an elderly, garishly daubed shaman who intoned a low-keyed monologue to the accompaniment of a beat supplied by two drum-toting braves who ambled along in his wake. The beat of the drum and wailing of the shaman did not drown out the sobbing of several women in the human shield. Behind their spiritual guide, the braves, mounted and on foot, paced themselves to the drumbeat. Their bows and lances were at the ready.

"It doesn't compare with the Lord Mayor's Show form spectacle," the Englishman said.

"Shuddup," Edge told him softly, "You ain't funny anymore."

"Christ, sir," Sawyer said "What can we do?"

"Try praying," the Englishman said and glared at Edge, throwing down a tacit challenge.

But Edge had his attention focused on the ghastly parade, which now had swelled to perhaps a hundred and fifty war-painted Apaches; one central group bunched closely around a handsome young brave who carried a decorated lance.

"Chief?" Edge asked of anyone who knew the answer.

"Little Cochise," Murray replied. "Sub-chief. His brother Cochise is big man of the local tribes. They're both troublemakers."

"And this one's smart," Edge said, thinking aloud. "You're going to have to open the gates, Colonel."

Murray's expression hardened. "Those people aren't my responsibility. This fort, the men and their supplies are."

"There are kids in that line."

"People had no right to bring kids into this wilderness," Murray shot back.

Edge lapsed into silence. It was an opinion with which he agreed. One of the leading braves released an arrow. It struck home between the shoulder blades of one of the three Chinese laundrymen in the center of the line of prisoners. His body slumped, dragging against the ropes around the necks of the men at each side of him. The line hesitated, but moved on again as the drum beat continued, uninterrupted, the other Chinese having to carry their dead companion.

"They don't speak our language, but they sure make their meaning clear," Edge said softly.

"And then there were nineteen," the Englishman said lyrically. "One at a time until we open up, sir," Sawyer said in horror.

Murray's young face revealed the same kind of horror, but it was evident to a greater extent, as he struggled with the agony of decision. An arrow swished, through the pregnant air and all at the fort could see the point burst through a woman's throat a moment before she fell, to be immediately scooped up by the man beside her. The line of prisoners was close enough now for the desperation on their faces to be vividly displayed for the defenders.

"Open the goddamn gate, you sonofabitch," a voice called from a turreted position at a comer of the fort.

"Put that man …" Murray began.

"No, sir!" Sawyer cut in, his tone as hard as rock, his eyes shining with defiance.

Murray's face suddenly blossomed purple with rage and Sawyer stepped back a pace in full expectation of a blow.

"You may live through this, Colonel," the Englishman said softly. "But not for long. Man's got to have sleep."

The familiar, awesome sound of the swishing arrow cut across the verbal silence and a boy of no more than ten years was lifted off the ground by the shaft piercing his back.

"Sergeant Home!" Murray rapped out sharply.

"Sir!"

"Open the gates."

"Not that I think any of us are going to live through it," the Englishman muttered as Sawyer ran down the stairs with Home behind him and both men hurriedly withdrew the big wooden bolts securing the gates.

"Run, out of funny lines, English?' Edge said as he moved to the inside lip of the platform over the opening gates.

"There's a time and a place for everything, Edge," came the reply.

Edge nodded as the gates came wide and the line of prisoners was formed into a V-formation to bring them and their dead inside the opening. The shaman and his drummers held back as the braves closed in, primed bows at the ready to prevent a double-cross.

"It’s almost the time," Edge said, hooded eyes looking down at the heads of the braves as they streamed into the fort. "And this must be the place," he said, launching himself off the platform.

There were gasps from the soldiers on the wall and howls of fury from the braves below as Edge, his legs splayed, thudded on to the back of the horse behind Little Cochise. His razor had been drawn in mid-air and as he made contact with the horse he thrust one arm around the sub-chiefs middle as his other hand went to the throat, pressing the blade against the vulnerable flesh. In the moment it took the Apaches to recover from the shock, Edge had slid over the hindquarters of the pony, jerking Little Cochise with him. Then he did a fast pivot on his heels, dragging the Indian with him, to ensure that both the close guard and their fellows were fully aware of the danger. The slightest movement of Edge's wrist would prevent Little Cochise from becoming any bigger.

The braves began to babble and some offered threatening gestures, but made no move as the Apache in Edge's grasp screamed an order.

"Anyone here talk the same kind of crap as these guys?" Edge shouted.

"Wasn't' on the curriculum at Oxford, old boy," the Englishman called down. "I have trouble understanding some of you Yankees."

But there was no need of an interpreter, for the handsome, young sub-chief with the cruel eyes had already got the message and was shouting orders to his braves. Some moved at once, others hesitated but within a minute of the capture, every Apache except for Little Cochise, had gone back out through the gates.

"Now you can close the gates, Colonel," Edge said easily, still retaining a firm grip on the Apache sub-chief, who submitted without struggle to his indignity.

But Lieutenant Sawyer and Sergeant Home did not wait for the order and slammed the gates hard as soon as the final Indian had gone through.

"Really, Edge," the Englishman said as he descended the stairway from the wall. "If you stand there much longer holding that savage, people will start to talk about you."

"I’ll take him, sir," Sawyer said, drawing his revolver and holding it on Little Cochise.

Murray remained on the wall, watching the slow, reluctant retreat of the Apaches as they headed in a column through the ravaged town. Not until he was sure they were gone, heading east at a gallop, did he detail a platoon to cut free the prisoners.

"Mr. Edge," he called down.

Edge squinted up at him.

"My compliments and thanks."

"Keep them," Edge said coldly. "What I need is a horse. Mine's just well-done steak in the livery right now."

"Not without me he isn't," the Englishman put in hurriedly.

"That's what I figured," Edge said with a sigh.

"You'll be supplied with horses and saddles," Murray told them.

"Obliged," Edge answered.

"You earned them.

"In spades," Edge said and spat into the dust.

The Englishman smiled. '"I didn't see any niggers. Thought they were all Indians."

"You'll die laughing," Edge told him as he headed across the compound toward the stables.

"And you'll bury me face down, I suppose?" the Englishman came back," simulating a mincing gait as he joined Edge.

"Yeah, and plant pansies on the mound."

CHAPTER TEN

"JUST how, old boy, do you propose to get the gold without the map?" the Englishman asked as he rode down the street of carnage, picking their way between the sprawled bodies and the detail of soldiers who had been ordered to bury the dead.

He had taken the time to wash and shave and to give his suit yet another brushing so that he presented a model of well-groomed cleanliness as he jogged along beside his disheveled companion. Edge’s hard face was patterned by a dark beard line and his clothes were crumpled and crusted with the sweat and dirt of battle. He merely grunted in response to the others question as he turned to head along the cross street which left Rainbow in an easterly direction.

The sun had completed a quarter of its morning climb, shining hot and hard into their eyes, giving discomfort to the Englishman whose narrow-brimmed Derby offered little shade. Edge rode with the wider brim of his black hat pulled low and for the most part looked down at the dusty, potted surface of the street, concentrating on the parallel lines which came into view at intervals among the confusion of signs left in the churned-up dust layer.

"Ah, the bloodhound technique," the Englishman said at length. "Drucker has the-map so we follow Drucker."

"Can you figure anything better?" Edge asked without looking at him.

The other shrugged. "Excellent plan, old boy. Until the tracks fade out, as they are sure to do when we get up in the mountains."

"Then it will be your turn to get smart," Edge told him, favoring him with a mirthless grin. "I've started us off."

"With a pure stroke of genius," the Englishman answered with heavy sarcasm as they rode clear of the edge of town, passing the house of Fred Olsen with the decapitated head of a soldier lying in front of it. "Rather a drastic method of scalping, don't you' think?"

In the open country of the valley the wagon tracks became clearer, veering northward toward the rearing face of the ridge, while the Indian sign continued on a straight course, following the line of the stage trail. Edge urged his horse into a canter and, taken by surprise, the Englishman had to race forward at a gallop for several yards in order to catch up. He was not a good horseman and his well-schooled, army-trained mount knew this and resented it, giving the Englishman an uncomfortable ride.

"I wish you would let me. know when you're going to make any sudden moves like that, Edge," the Englishman said breathlessly when he had finally matched the pace of his mount with that of the casually expert Edge.

"You can always go back and wait for the stage," Edge told him as they came up against the sheer wall of the ridge face and began to ride along the foot of the cliff.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" came the resentful reply.

"Half-a-million dollarsworth," Edge countered with a cold grin.

The two men lapsed into silence, Edge having no desire for conversation, the Englishman because, he found it necessary to concentrate his entire attention on riding the recalcitrant animal between his legs. Once Edge reined to a sudden halt to examine the cliff face and taken unaware, the Englishman had to swing in a wide circle to rejoin him. But immediately Edge started forward again, still following the wagon tracks. Edge was recalling the crudely drawn map and trying to place the starting point of the dotted line which wound up to the hiding place of the Mexican government gold. Although the plan had obviously not been drawn to scale, it seemed to Edge that the start of the plotted route had not been very far east of town—certainly not the distance of some five miles which was where the cliff had crumbled sufficiently for the north-bound spur of the stage trail to find an access. The face was already getting less steep and at the point where Edge had called a halt there had seemed a chance of getting a horse halfway up. But then an overhang of rock barred further progress.

So Edge rode on, and did not stop again until he saw signs that Drucker had halted the wagon and four.

"Drucker with an F stopped here," the Englishman said.

"You're learning," Edge answered, raking his eyes up the face of the ridge side which now had a cant too shallow to be called a cliff.

"But he went on."

Edge spat. "He had a wagon. We ain't. Come on."

"Not on your life," the Englishman said quickly as. He saw Edge start his horse up the sharp incline. "This isn't exactly a mountain goat I'm riding."

"So go and find a million-dollar poker game," Edge told him, but halted his horse abruptly when he heard a dry, clicking sound, unmistakably the noise of a rifle being cocked. He didn't turn around, but lowered his right hand so that it was close to the butt of the Colt. "You stupid as well as yellow?" he asked quietly.

"I've been dying to use one of these new Winchesters," the Englishman said with quiet menace.

"You'll die if you do," Edge answered, maintaining his calm tone. "Even if I haven't got enough strength left to pump you full of lead myself, there are a hell of a lot of Apaches in these hills itching for more killing. One shot and they'll come running."

"They must be miles away by now," the Englishman replied, but his tone implied that he doubted the truth of his own statement.

Edge sighed. "Cochise is the big chief. Little Cochise is his brother. The chief knows Murray won't kill his kid brother because he's too good a hostage. So he's figuring a way right now to spring him. And he ain't likely to be doing his figuring in California."

Now Edge turned in the saddle to look down upon the Englishman who was still drawing a bead on him with the Winchester: but there was little threat in the pose.

"Drucker must think he can reach the place by another route," he said, his handsome face showing something close to desperation.

"Drucker's got a few hours start and the map," Edge pointed out. "He must figure he can pick up the trail from the other side of the hills—the way the Mexicans took the wagon. The guy who made the map came down this side, on a horse or on foot. We backtrack him."

The Englishman made one more try. "You can't remember every twist and turn of the route."

Convinced he had made his point, Edge urged his horse forward and upward. "I got a nose for money in any form," he said, with more conviction than he felt. "I also got a phobia about sitting in the sun passing the time of day when the whole Apache nation is probably camped a sp1t away."

Then he Started to speak softly to his horse, urging the big stallion up the natural pathway, and heard the action of the Winchester as the Englishman slid the shell out of the breech. Then there was a string of ungentlemanly curses, interspersed with cries of alarm as the inexpert rider berated his mount up the slope. The route was by turns difficult and comparatively easy, sometimes cutting diagonally across pocked expanses of rock and at others following ledges cut by eons of wind and weather. For a time the Englishman fell further and further back, until Edge—irritated by the constant stream of disgruntled abuse and nervous cries which was disturbing his own mount—yelled at the man to relax and let his horse have free rein.

The Englishman complied and the horse, well versed in forming a part of a cavalry column, picked his way skillfully in the wake of Edge's mount. It took two hours to reach the top of the ridge, more than three hundred feet above the floor of the valley and both men and animals were sweating freely from the exertion in the hot sun which had beaten down unmercifully as they made the climb with no shade. At their backs the valley was spread out in miniature, the curves of the river gleaming, the town and fort of Rainbow appearing as children's toys. It all looked tranquil, almost idyllic, except for the pall of ugly black smoke which was still suspended over the buildings, witnessing the ferociousness of the Apache attack. Ahead, the ridge fell gently away before losing itself ill a series of undulating hills featured with craggy buttes and grotesque outcrops, dotted with dry, unfriendly patches of vegetation all the way to the first uplands of the high Rockies. So clear was the air that in the far distance both men could see the snow-capped peaks of the highest mountains, gleaming like jewels in the sun which was approaching the crest of its own peak. There was another gleaming patch closer than the mountains, less than a mile away.

"This animal's in a hurry," the Englishman said, struggling to restrain his horse while he patted at his sweat-sheened face with a handkerchief.

"He can smell the water," Edge said, pointing ahead, but not concentrating his own attention in that direction. His hooded eyes roved over every square inch of the terrain spread before him, realizing the impossibility of their task and searching for signs of Indian trouble.

"So let's go and get some, old boy," the Englishman suggested. "My own canteen is almost empty and fresh water is a delightful prospect."

Edge seemed to ignore him as he continued his study, then grunted to indicate that he was reasonably certain the way ahead was safe. He heeled his horse onward. The waterhole, when they reached it, was an inviting circle of coolness in an indentation which suggested it was much larger after a rainfall. Edge halted on the rim of the bowl and stood in the stirrups to glance around the area of rough, ravaged terrain.

"Now what are we waiting for?" the Englishman demanded with unconcealed impatience; unable to take his eyes off the crystal-clear water spread below him.

"You go first," Edge told him. "When you and your horse are watered, come back and keep watch while I go down."

The Englishman laughed harshly. "I think you're imagining an Indian behind every rock."

Edge fixed him with a steely eyed stare. "You better hope it's only imagination," he warned.

The gravity of Edge's tone caused the Englishman to glance around nervously and his thirst was forgotten for a few moments as he realized that the surrounding countryside did, in fact, offer sufficient cover for almost as many Indians as the dollars the two men had come to get. And when he looked down the smooth slopes of the sides of the waterhole he saw that to be trapped down there would be to invite certain death.

"I bow to your better judgment," he said, trying to force lightness into his tone and failing miserably.

"Get!" Edge snapped continuing with his suspicious survey.

"I'm getting," the Englishman returned and urged his horse down toward the water's edge.

There were not a million of them and, they were not spread around. Just a hunting party of six who rode into open country from around a rocky crag with no expectation of seeing a white man standing guard on a waterhole for which they were obviously heading. They were no more than a quarter of a mile away, close enough for Edge to see them break stride as they spotted him.

"You taking a bath down there, English?" he called without taking his eyes off the Apaches who had now pulled their ponies to a halt.

The Englishman had drunk his fill, and was in the process of recharging his canteens as his horse continued to suck at the refreshing water. The Apaches made up their minds and urged their ponies into a gallop, trailing dust as they charged toward Edge.

"Almost through," the Englishman called.

"Well, don't drink it all," Edge called down, turning his horse. "There's six guys heading this way who look mighty thirsty."

With this he dug in his heels and the stallion sprang forward, carrying his rider toward a small rise liberally scattered with rocks. The Englishman yelled in alarm, dropped the canteens and hauled at the reins of his horse to drag him at the run up the slope of the waterhole. But at the top he skidded to a halt and went into a crouch as he saw the Apaches wheeling away, streaming toward where Edge, was leaping from his horse behind the cover of an' enormous boulder. The Englishman snatched the Winchester from his saddle boot and slapped the hindquarters of his horse, sending the animal willingly back to the water's edge.

As Edge leaped from his horse at the run, withdrawing his own rifle, he caught a glimpse of the Englishman appearing at the lip of the waterhole and then rapidly ducking back out of sight. Then he himself had to take evasive action as three arrows snapped their shafts against the rock and the braves began to whoop their warcries. He pressed himself hard against the boulder, worked the action of the Winchester as another wave of arrows fell about him: then jerked erect and began to fire. His eye, narrowed behind the backsight, saw the Indians no more than a hundred feet away approaching in a phalanx, their previous preoccupation evident from the jack rabbits slung around the ponies’ necks. But now they were hunting bigger prey and their faces were set in expressions of ecstatic hatred as they rushed up the slope, priming their bows for the kill. The sight of Edge, rising like an apparition from behind the boulder, seemed to surprise them and the tall, lean man took full advantage of the moment of indecision. He aimed first at a brave who was riding slightly ahead of the others, over-anxious for a scalp. The bullet took him high in the shoulder, knocking him sideways from his pony into the path of the next rider, whose mount stumbled over the injured brave and almost threw its rider. A second bullet drilled a gaping hole in the forehead of another brave and Edge had time for a third shot, smashing the fingers of a fourth Apache before the other two let fly arrows which forced him to duck back behind the boulder. The three braves who were still mounted veered away to the left as two loose ponies galloped around the rock.

"About time," Edge muttered as he heard a rifle shot from the area of the waterhole and chanced a look around the rock to see the three mounted braves make a sudden change of direction to take them toward where the Englishman was positioned. Then he saw the Englishman stand, making a target of the top half of his body above the lip of the waterhole: saw him go through the action of firing the rifle. But there was no puff of telltale smoke and no report. He saw the wrist movement that should have ejected an empty case and fed a fresh round into the breech and although he was too far away to see it, Edge knew the kind of expression of fear and frustration which would be pasted upon the Englishman's face. "New gun's got him into a jam," Edge muttered as he saw his erstwhile partner fling the Winchester away and jerk his arm to release the tiny, double-barreled pistol.

But in the next moment the Englishman's problems with a jammed rifle were of secondary importance as Edge spun to face the source of a sound and found himself confronted by two snarling braves. They were only ten feet away; the one with a smashed hand preparing to launch a knife at Edge as the other—who had a gaping wound in his shoulder—wielded a tomahawk which he obviously intended to use at close quarters.

"Still a mite too handy," Edge murmured and sent a bullet crashing through the good wrist of the knife-thrower who dropped his weapon and folded to the ground screaming his pain.

The other brave took the gun report as a signal to leap forward, tomahawk raised. He was already behind the gun muzzle as Edge tried to swing the Winchester for a second shot. But there wasn't time and he could only fall sideways, out of the line of the descending blade. The Apache landed full length on the ground and immediately sprang to all fours and was beginning to come erect and turn as Edge swung the Winchester again.

"The axeman goeth," Edge murmured as he squeezed the trigger and the brave sat down hard, dropping his weapon and staring at the large hole in his naked right thigh. "One for the Chinaman," Edge continued easily, and fired again, ripping a gaping wound in the brave's other thigh. "One for the woman at the end of the line." Again he worked the action of the Winchester and sent a third bullet smashing into the brave's good shoulder. "That one's for the kid," he said, unmoved by the brave's screams and the look in his brown eyes which begged for mercy. "Last time," he said with an icy grin as the brave's belly grew a hole at its center. "Guess English would call that one for the pot," he concluded.

"Edge!" The Englishman yelled the name at the top of his voice and the monosyllable rang with both pain and terror. Edge turned to look toward the waterhole and saw the Englishman in full view, staggering like a drunken man as he struggled to yank an arrow from the front of his shoulder. One of the braves who had attacked him was sprawled nearby in an attitude of death while the others, having obviously already made one pass, were thundering toward him again.

"Not a hope," Edge said to himself as he surveyed the range, but he began to fire and continued even when he saw the puffs of dust kicked up short of the galloping ponies. The two Apaches had their bows slung across their backs and Edge could see no flashes of knife or tomahawk blades as they closed in on the helpless Englishman. They were riding close together and it seemed as if they were intent upon trampling the white man beneath the flying hoofs. But, at the last moment as the Englishman turned to try to run from them, the braves sheered away from each other to pass on each side of their victim. Then, with a smoothness and skill circus performers would envy, the braves leaned away from their mounts and lifted the Englishman clear of the ground. A tomahawk was drawn then raised and brought down. But it was the flat side of the blade that made contact and unconsciousness rather than death which brought an end to the Englishman's struggles. The man who had delivered the blow relinquished his hold and the other brave threw the unconscious form of Lord Fallowfield across the neck of his pony.

"You ain't no maiden," Edge muttered as the two Apaches headed for the rocks from which they had emerged, "but maybe you're the closest they can find."

He heard a groan behind him and turned to see the brave with the useless hands trying to haul himself erect against the large boulder. When the man realized he had been seen he froze into a half standing position, trying to force agony from his face and replace it with a scowl. But his pain was too harsh. Two fingers had been blown from one hand and there was a mushy red hole drilled through the opposite wrist.

"Cochise?" Edge demanded, pointing after the retreating Apaches, but looking into the eyes of the wounded brave.

The man flinched at the snapped word, but held Edge's stare without altering his expression.

"Cochise?" Edge tried again, with the same tone and still pointing. The brave held his silence. "English don't like talk," he continued after a moment. "Maybe you'll be meeting him in the happy hunting ground in the sky. You can have long silences together. But keep your back against a cloud."

Then he shot the Indian, firing from the hip with the Colt, grouping three bullets in the area of a silver dollar on the man's heart. After that he went to find the Englishman's, Winchester, unjammed it and fed the unused ammunition into his own gun. He took Lord Fallowfield's horse, too, because it was closest and had already been watered.

He rode north.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LORNA Fawcett was a beautiful woman. Even dressed in shapeless, undecorated squaw's garb, her hair matted and unbrushed, her face smudged by dirt and devoid of lipstick and rouge, the natural beauty of face and figure were evident. Her hair was the color of newly rusted metal and hung long to the middle of her back, the crowning glory of a face with green eyes, a rich, full mouth, and an unmarked complexion on skin sculptured by a fine bone structure. It was the face of a woman of twenty-five which until a few days ago had shown no marks of a single experience which could be termed bitter. But then Chief Cochise and a band of braves had attacked her father's farm. Now as she stood close to the slit opening of Cochise's tepee, looking across the Apache encampment set in the mouth of a wooded canyon, the horror of what she had seen and experienced that terrible day was like a dulling stigma on her every feature, emblazoning her mental anguish but unable to detract from the classic lines of her beauty.

They had come in the morning, as her mother was preparing breakfast. Her sister Rachel was still in bed and her father was feeding the livestock. The Apaches had approached stealthily and killed her father at the wire fence before he could do more than wing one of them. Lorna had been by the window and seen the arrow thud into his chest, then started to scream as a brave leaped from his pony to claim the scalp. Even before her mother had time to rush to Lorna's side twenty more braves, led by the tall, arrogantly handsome Cochise, had sprung into the house through doors and windows, whooping their triumph and brandishing knives dripping with the blood of slaughtered livestock. Two of them emerged from the bedroom carrying the screaming Rachel, their hands exploring her nakedness as lust contorted grotesquely daubed faces. As Lorna and her mother tried to rush across the room to Rachel's aid, Cochise restrained Lorna with an arm around her waist, while her mother was felled by a vicious slap across the face. Lorna began to struggle frantically, fear and rage exploding from her throat in a continuous, high-pitched wail which was drowned by the demonic laughter of Cochise and the jubilant whooping of the braves as they staked out Rachel on the floor and bound the girls’ mother to a chair.

Then the orgy began, as brave after brave dropped his breechcloth and threw himself upon the helpless body of a girl who had gone to bed a virgin. As the girls' mother pleaded for release from the torture, those braves who had spent themselves at the bloodied loins of the hysterical Rachel rampaged through the rooms, smashing, tearing and defiling everything which had made the house a home for the Fawcetts. As Lorna watched, she experienced a metamorphic transformation inside her mind, perhaps even her soul. She became quiet, almost docile, in the vice-like grip of the Apache chief and her throat, seared by the screams, blocked any further sound. Her bright eyes continued to stare, wide and pained, at the scene of savagery, but it was apparent that she had capitulated to the inevitability of what was happening. It was as if a shutter had been slammed down upon her will to resist and when the last brave had satiated his lust and two more leaped forward to hack off the breasts of their victim, Lorna could merely shudder at the sight and wince at the sound her young sister's screams. And when the tomahawk crashed down on to, and then through, the skull of her mother there were no more emotional reserves upon which Lorna could call. She watched the action and saw the great spurt of crimson blood with an expression of vacant acceptance, and the set of her features did not alter as the braves grouped before her and made their wishes clear with the lower parts of their naked bodies as they shouted to Cochise.

But Cochise had his own plans for Lorna and the braves accepted his orders meekly, garbing themselves in their breechcloths and filing out of the house to mount their ponies. Then, with the ease of a child carrying a rag doll, Cochise slung Lorna across his shoulder and left the house, whispering softly in her ear words she would not have heard even if the Apache had been speaking English. For the viciousness of what she had witnessed had rendered Lorna insensible to everything which happened after her metamorphosis. Thus, she experienced without emotion the ride to camp, the hatred of the Apache squaws as she was led to the chief's tepee and the ordeal of Cochise's cruel raping.

Since becoming the chiefs white squaw she had accepted everything without resistance, eating, sleeping, and spreading, her voluptuous body beneath the hard maleness of Cochise whenever he signaled her to do so. Her only contact was with him and she was allowed to roam no further than a few feet from his tepee: she was universally hated by the Apache squaws and the object of blatant envy from the braves. She was a beautiful zombie and showed her first sign of human curiosity when she saw the two braves ride into the center of camp with a white man as their captive.

Standing before the tepee in the bright afternoon sunlight, she followed the progress of the braves and their prisoner with bright eyes and there issued from her throat a low grunting sound which could have been indicative of pity for Lord Hartley Fallowfield or perhaps was an exclamation of recognition for a fellow human being who was not a member of the savage tribe with whom she had been forced to live. The braves and their captive immediately became the center of interested attention and as they approached the chiefs tepee other braves fell in behind them so that when the two mounted Indians halted in front of Lorna, they were at the front of a huge assembly of braves. And, formed into lines at each side, were the women of the tribe. There was no noise, except for the quiet groans of the white man as he regained consciousness. The braves who had captured him slid from their ponies and the animal across which the Englishman was slung was urged forward a few paces. Then, as the Englishman groaned again he tried to raise his head but dropped it at once, moving his center of gravity so that he slid off the neck of the pony and crumpled into a heap on the ground. The flap of the chief’s tepee was pushed open and Cochise stepped out, the clean lines of his handsomeness unmarked by warpaint.

He stood beside his white squaw and surveyed the scene in silence for several moments, then barked a question. Both braves stepped forward and began to answer at the same time, anxious to claim the capture as his own. Cochise silenced them with a sharp command and pointed to just one of them, who rattled out his report. Lorna Fawcett continued to look at the Englishman, who had raised his head and was staring back at her with a confused expression.

"What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?'" he croaked, trying to raise a smile but failing.

They were the first words of English the girl had heard since she had listened to the hysterical pleas of her mother and her lovely face showed comprehension. But she held her peace and watched without emotion as at a command from Cochise, the two braves hauled the Englishman to his feet. They had to support him in the upright position for his confused brain could not coordinate his muscles and he stood like a drunken man. His black hair was matted with dried blood from where the tomahawk blow had split his scalp and as he stood Lorna saw for the first time the broken shaft of an arrow protruding from his shoulder, the patch of black, coagulated blood crusting his suit coat. Pain masked his face, but he attempted to hold himself with dignity as Cochise stepped in front of him, hatred shining in the dark, Apache eyes. Moving with a precise speed, Cochise brought up his arm, grasped the arrow shaft and jerked it from the wound, raising an agonized scream and drawing fresh blood from the Englishman, whose pain was mercifully swamped by the soft blackness of a faint. The braves prevented him from collapsing to the ground and in obedience to another command from Cochise, dragged him unceremoniously into the chief’s tepee. The group began to break up then, but two of the more elderly squaws came forward at a signal from Cochise and followed the braves in through the flap. Lorna went in after them and sat in the comer, watching as the braves were dismissed and the women began to attend to the unconscious man's wounds, using herbs and hot water from the cooking pot and applying salve with bunched leaves. Cochise, too, watched for several minutes, then seemed to tire of the nursing and moved out of the tepee without a glance in the direction of Lorna. He never paid any attention to her unless the biological urge stirred in his loins.

The squaws worked with skill and in silence and even in her trancelike condition Lorna was able to realize that their care was having a beneficial effect, for the Englishman, stretched out on the crude settle, began to breath more regularly and his face grew, less haggard and gained some color. A gentle bathing of his brow with warm water finally revived him.

He awoke to find himself naked above the waist and saw his shoulder was padded with a leaf dressing and felt that his head was also expertly bound with a crude bandage. He glanced around him, grimacing with pain, but able to force a smile at the two squaws, who answered him with vacant stares. Then he saw Lorna and raised his hand in a weak gesture of greeting.

"So I wasn't dreaming," he said, his voice still accented by a croak which detracted from his cultured tones. Her expression was no more friendly than that of the squaws.

"Don't you speak English, my dear?" he tried.

She moved her head in an almost imperceptible nod and he gritted against his pain to try to broaden his smile.

But when he attempted to raise himself into a sitting position one of the squaws forced him to lie down again. She did not have to exert very great effort. "Are you their prisoner, too?"

Again the slight movement of her lovely head encouraged the Englishman. "How long?"

Now she shook her head and he sighed.

"I suppose I'm for the high jump?" A quizzical expression caused him to amplify the remark. "They're only building, me up to knock me down. They'll kill me?"

She lifted her shoulders in a shrug and the movement raised the bodice of the unattractive smock to indicate the fullness of her breasts, unfettered beneath the drab material. The Englishman smiled his appreciation.

"I can see why the boss collared you for himself," he said.

"Aren't you afraid to die?" she said suddenly and seemed to be surprised by the sound of her own voice. They were the first words she had spoken since leaving the farm.

"It talks as well as walks," the Englishman answered, and adjusted his expression into one of sympathetic interest. "What's your name, my dear?"

"Lorna Fawcett," she told him, taking a step nearer to where he was lying. "They will kill you."

While one of the squaws stared hatred at Lorna, the other went to the flap and babbled in her native tongue.

"Don't you have' any influence with the big man?" For the first time there was a note of fear in the Englishman's voice and his smile was suddenly ragged at the edge. He sighed. "I suppose not—except flat on your back with your legs open. No use to me."

"I'm not here from choice," she told him. "They killed my family."

The flap was drawn aside and Cochise glowered into the tepee.

"We've all got our problems," the Englishman rasped as Lorna scuttled back against the hide wall.

Cochise regarded the Englishman in stony silence for several moments, then barked a command which sent the remaining squaw scuttling past him out of the tepee. Immediately, two braves rushed in, grasped the Englishman by his arm pits and dragged him off the settle and toward the flap. Cochise stepped aside and they pulled him outside. The chief turned to follow them, hesitated, then gestured with his head for Lorna to accompany him. She went, meekly, feeling the first stirring of human emotion since her ordeal had begun—trepidation not for herself but for the fate of the Englishman. And this turned to horror as she saw what the braves were doing to their prisoner.

The tepees of the camp had been set up in a circular pattern, with a broad open space at the center, surrounded by those of Cochise, his brother and other subchiefs and the shaman. In the middle of this space the two braves who had removed the Englishman from the tepee were staking out the prisoner, tying his hands and feet to four lances which had been driven into the ground at such a distance that his limbs were stretched to their extremes. The other members of the tribe were formed into two lines, facing the prisoner on each side, with a space left vacant at the center of one line to allow Cochise and his white squaw to view the proceedings. The chief sank into a cross-legged posture on the ground and gestured for Lorna to do likewise. But she was looking at the Englishman, whose face and naked upper body glistened with sweat from fear and the effort of trying to struggle against the tightly-knotted restraining ropes. Angered by the woman's non-compliance with his command Cochise chopped her viciously across the back of her knees and she sat down hard with a cry of pain. The rest of the watchers sank to the ground then, their brown faces showing varying degrees of eager anticipation for the entertainment to come.

High on the top of the canyon wall to the southwest Edge looked down at the Apache encampment and although he was too far distant to make a visual identification, he knew in his mind that the prisoner staked out between the lances was the Englishman. He had not followed the braves from any altruistic motives, but rather had taken the same route as they did because it followed the easiest course through the foothills of the northern mountain range and he surmised that the survivor of the bullion wagon escort would have taken the simplest way through. But when the braves had been challenged by two-more of their tribe and allowed to pass, Edge had, swung wide, guessing that the Apache camp was nearby and ringed by sentries.

He had missed the arrival of the braves and their captive at the camp, but had dismounted and crawled forward to the lip of the canyon in time to see the Apaches assemble in what was obviously the preparation for some ritual. Then the prisoner had been man-handled from the largest tepee in the camp and tied down to await his fate. At first Edge had been too impassively intent upon watching the Englishman to take note of anything else happening on the canyon floor, but then he did a double take at the woman who was violently dragged into a sitting position beside the chief. She was a red-head and in Edge's limited knowledge of the American Indian such a coloration was unknown. So he studied her more intently and even from a height of more than three hundred feet he decided that her skin tone was too light for an Apache. He recalled the sweet smelling nightgown at the Fawcett farmstead and his mind fastened upon a theory.

But then a shout from below captured his attention from the past and thrust it into the present as his hooded eyes raked across the canyon floor with its hundreds of lightly-garbed Apaches and the regular, conical shapes of the tepees. He saw a dust cloud moving fast between the tepees and then two mounted ponies emerged from it, ridden by braves who clasped decorated lances. While still more than a hundred feet from the captive Englishman they released the lances and the weapons slithered through the clear afternoon air, thudding, to an explosion of whooping, into the ground on each side of the prisoner's head with no more than an inch of space separating them from the vulnerable flesh. He saw the Englishman's body writhe up into an arch, but the ropes held firm.

While the sounds of appreciation were still echoing along the canyon two more riders approached at speed, this time from the opposite direction and twirling tomahawks above their heads. They rode close together, their legs almost brushing each other, until the final yard when they separated to go to each side of the spread-eagled man, The tomahawks were raised aloft and then sent spinning downward, burying their heads into the earth only a fraction of an inch from the hirsute armpits of the Englishman.

Much closer than Edge, Lorna Fawcett could see each movement made by the Englishman. She could see that every muscle in his sweat-soaked body was trembling; that as unshod hoofs again pounded the iron hard ground, the man contorted his face into a mask of terror, abandoning any attempt to meet death bravely. This time there was a lone rider who galloped directly toward the splayed V of the prisoner's legs, sliding an arrow from the quiver on his back and fitting it to his bowstring as he rode. The whooping rose to a crescendo as the brave urged his pony into a leap, lengthwise over the Englishman, and brought down his bow to send the arrow point-blank a half-inch from the prisoner's crotch. Although unharmed, the Englishman emitted a shriek and Lorna, fearing he had been hit, screamed. But her cry became a yelp as Cochise lashed out at her and smashed her back-handed across the mouth, drawing blood from a split lip.

Up at the top of the canyon wall Edge drew his fingertips along the harsh stubble of his beard and pursed his lips as he saw two more mounted Apaches approach the tormented Englishman, one from each direction, drawing knives as they came. They crossed on different sides of the prisoner and released their knives in unison, drawing the first blood. The points buried themselves in the ground but the finely honed blades streaked through the skin at each side of the Englishman's waist. Blood oozed from the wounds to trickle down the blades and spread in the dust. The watching Apaches were delirious with delight which was heightened as the Englishman issued a diatribe of obscenity, laced with screams of horror.

"Stop it, stop it, stop it!" Lorna Fawcett shrieked and it took the Englishman several moments to realize she was addressing him.

"Christ, help me!" he croaked, jerking his head so that he could look across the intervening ground at her.

"Can't you see they're playing with you?" she shrieked, "They're savages. They only recognize two traits in a man—bravery and cowardice. If they know you're afraid they’ll only prolong it."

"I'm no bloody hero!" he screamed back.

The audience had become silent as they listened without comprehension to the exchange, many of them looking at Cochise with eyes which challenged him to take action against his babbling squaw. For several long moments it seemed as if the chief intended to ignore Lorna's new-found eloquence and her interference with the test of valor he had set. But Cochise was in fact allowing his rage to reach full flood, his face running the gamut of expressional change from ice-cold impassivity to boiling virulence.

From high overhead it seemed to Edge almost as if the whole canyon floor had been petrified. He had heard the voices of the Englishman and the white woman as scratches on the silence which had descended over the assembly of Apaches and had then seen utter immobility grip the entire encampment. But then, abruptly, there was a flurry of movement before the chief’s tepee. Cochise put the whole weight of his body into another sideways, back-handed slap across the woman's face which sent her crashing full length on the ground. And before she could even recover her senses the Apache chief had thrown himself upon her sprawled body with his hand streaking to his breechcloth to draw his knife. The blade Hashed once, then again in the sunlight and Lorna Fawcett wasn't beautiful anymore as deep gashes opened up in each cheek, from the eye to the jawline, spreading a warm stickiness which was much redder than her hair.

"Now it's your turn to be brave," the Englishman croaked through his own pain as realization hit the woman and she began to scream with all the power in her lungs.

Looking down from his vantage point, Edge sighed and began to draw back from the lip of the canyon, conscious of a stirring of what he recognized as anger at what he had witnessed, but unwilling to involve himself in a problem which did not concern him. But then the crackling of a twig under a moccasin sent him into an evasive rolling movement that put him on his back, staring up at two Apache sentries who had heard the whinny of his horse and come to investigate. They were intent upon capture rather than a kill and brandished knives, their bows over their shoulders, strings across the chest, wood slanting down their backs.

"Shouldn't creep up on a guy like that," he yelled as he swiveled the Colt on his belt and shot one of the braves through the open foot of the holster.

The big caliber bullet entered the braves throat and blew a larger hole as it exited through his cheek, spinning and crumpling him into a writhing heap on the ground. As every Apache in the canyon looked up in the direction from which the shot had come the second sentry was on Edge, anxious now for a kill as his quarry was forced to abandon all thoughts of using the revolver a second time. The knife arm was raised and brought crashing down, the full swing curtailed by a hard, edge-of-the-hand chop to the wrist. The brave yelled his pain but retained his grip on the knife and drew back for a second thrust. Edge was pinned to the ground by the straddled legs of the Apache and had no time to reach for his razor—the only accessible weapon as the knife point descended again. This time the swing came at a different angle and Edge's chop merely deflected the blow, so that the knife dug into the ground close to his ear. In the time it took the brave to withdraw the blade Edge had snatched out his razor, the handle slotting snugly along his fingers and palm, the fine blade extending three inches. As the brave raised his hand Edge slashed with the razor, gouging a river of blood from wrist to elbow on the inner arm. A second, sideways slash, severed a nerve and the knife dropped from lifeless fingers as the brave's eyes grew wide with terror at the ghastly wound on his arm.

"Looks like you ain't got it anymore," Edge said, throwing his body up into a sudden arch which tossed the brave clear of him. The man rolled once and then disappeared from sight over the lip of the canyon. He screamed, but the sound maintained an even pitch, without diminishing and Edge crawled forward and peered down, his features forming into a cruel grin. The screaming brave was suspended in mid-air, hanging on with his good arm to the bow, the other end of which was hooked over a patch of brush growing out of the side of the canyon wall.

"Quit hanging around," Edge muttered as he reached down and slashed through the bowstring, sending the brave plummeting to the floor of the canyon to enraged whoops from the Apaches who watched from below. Then he turned to the other brave, who was still writhing on the ground as he cradled the side of his face in bloodstained hands.

"Pity you ain't a horse," he told the unhearing man. "Could shoot you then. Guess you'll just have to suffer."

He took one final glance down at the Apache camp and saw the braves hurrying toward their ponies, then moved quickly to where his army mount was ground hobbled. He heeled him into a fast gallop, heading toward the natural trail he had come up by, even though he knew it led to only one place. But he considered the high walls of Fort Rainbow were better protection than unfamiliar foothills when the Apache nation was on the warpath.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The evening sun was changing color from dull, yellow to vivid red as Edge rode at full gallop down Rainbow’s main street toward the gates of the fort. The hanks of his horse were lathered white and his own body was running with sweat which pasted, his shirt to his back. It had been a long, hard ride with the leading group of Apaches close on his heels all the way from the canyon to the, crest of the northern ridge. Only a small party had ventured after him on the frantic, half-running-half-sliding descent down the face and it was the group of' braves who thundered in his wake as he entered the town. But a change came over the Indians as he led them closer to the fort. Their enraged yelps and horrendous-whooping warcries faltered and then ended and as Edge glanced over his shoulder he saw the braves were dropping back. But Edge continued to ask his mount for everything the animal's stout heart could produce and as the fort gates were flung wide he went through at a full gallop, wheeling in a tight turn as they were slammed closed behind him. A volley of rifle fire rang out from the top of the wall, halting the pursuing braves who spent a few moments venting their frustrated rage before turning to leave.

As Edge dismounted, drawing in deep breaths, he stroked the neck of his exhausted horse and watched the approach of Colonel Murray who strode across the compound from his quarters.

The officer regarded Edge with small pleasure. "You decided to come back."

Edge turned on his cold grin, "It was a joint decision. Me and a few hundred Apaches."

"We have better uses for our ammunition than to protect reckless adventurers," Murray snapped. Edge studied him more closely and recognized in the haunted eyes and drawn lines of his pallid face the sign of a man nearing the end of a short tether. Then he glanced around the fort lit by the fading light of a dying day and saw a variety of similar expressions upon the faces of both soldiers and civilian townspeople as they moved about the compound. And not only was it in the faces of the men and women that their fear was evident. It was apparent in the cautious manner they moved and the quick, suspicious turning of heads and reaching for guns that was triggered by each sound not immediately recognizable.

"You expecting it to hit the fan soon?" Edge asked when he had finished his survey.