Edge: Apache Death

Murray suddenly developed a nervous tic in his right cheek and he quickly raised a hand to try to conceal it. He looked up and over the western wall of the fort and drew in his breath for a long sigh. "My guess is tonight. Fort Lawrence—twenty miles north of here—was overrun last night and every man was slaughtered. Then at dawn today the town of Rocky Haven was wiped out—that's the next town east on the stage trail. The army has been put on to a war footing. Where did you have your run-in with the Apaches, Mr. Edge?"

Edge ran a finger down the flank of his horse and brought it away cloaked in a sweat foam. "Two hours hard riding from here. Don't reckon anybody could do it in less."

"How many of them?"

Edge picked up the reins and began to lead the animal across the compound toward the stables. Murray fell in beside him.

"Three hundred and maybe more. Not less."

"Any rifles?"

Edge spat. "They weren't using them on English."

Murray looked at him sharply. ''The Apaches captured Fallowfield?"

"Yeah. And they've got a white girl as well. Seems she was the girl of the chief s dreams until she got out of line. Now she's a kind, of nightmare with big boobs."

"Weren't they killed?" Murray asked, then snapped a command to a nearby soldier who sprang forward to take care of Edge's mount.

Edge relinquished the responsibility gratefully. "Maybe."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Edge shrugged and nodded toward the stockade in one comer of the compound, its spiked topped fence and substantial gate patrolled by two armed guards. "Little Cochise still in the pokey, Colonel?"

"Of course. He's our insurance. What do you mean; maybe?"

"Indians were playing some kind of Apache roulette with English and then the girl riled them. I tangled with a couple of braves and that sort of interrupted the proceedings. I had to beat it. English and the white squaw weren't very healthy when I left, but they were still breathing. My guess would be that English, at least, is still alive. But I bet he's not making with the smart lip anymore."

Murray's haggard face took on a thoughtful frown. "Was Chief Cochise at the camp?"

'Wasn't close enough to ask him who he was," Edge answered. "But the braves who jumped me tried to take me alive and kicking."

''They want hostages?"

"Exchange is no robbery," Edge pointed out.

Murray scowled. "I'm not about to give up an Apache sub-chief for a no-good British gambler."

Edge grinned at him without humor. ''If you want the rank you got to be prepared to make the decisions, Colonel," he muttered. "Any chance of a bed and a bath?"

"Use my washroom," Murray allowed without enthusiasm. "You can sleep in the men's quarters. There's plenty of room. We’re at less than half strength."

"What about the townspeople?"

"You saw what was left of them," Murray reminded. "We also found a man with only half an arm left and another with his eyes gouged out."

Edge spat into the dust. "They say there's worse trouble at sea."

Murray eyed him with abject bitterness. "Don't you have any feelings, mister?" he asked scornfully.

"Yeah," Edge replied, moving away toward the Colonel's quarters. "I feel dirty and tired."

The rooms in which the fort's commanding officer lived were austere and impersonal, fitted out to army regulations. Like the man who lived in them, they were cold, hard and lacking anything not dictated by the book. But Edge took no note of the decor or furnishings and did not concern himself with their function as a pointer to the psychological make-up of Colonel Murray. He moved directly through the quarters to the small washroom and chose to, take his bath in cold water rather than go to the trouble of heating it. After he had soaped the dried sweat from his body he luxuriated in the water for a long time, allowing its cool caress to ease the tension out of him. Then, when he felt fully relaxed, he was able to apply a cool and analytical brain to the million dollars-worth of Mexican gold and how to get it. And, he soon came to realize, in such ideal circumstances, the answer to the problem was ludicrously simple.

Wyatt Drucker was reputed to be the richest rancher in southern Arizona Territory. All Edge had to do, therefore, was locate Drucker's ranch and wait patiently for its owner to return with his illegal fortune. Or maybe Drucker had already found his prize and was back at his spread counting the take. Whatever the timing, the method of getting the gold would be the same—painful for Drucker. Very painful: for in Edge's experience, the richer the man, the more resolute was he to keep his money.

As Edge enjoyed his bath and considered his ridiculously simple plan the sun was completely swallowed up by the western horizon and the final crimson rays of its light were extinguished by the stealthy hand of a moonless night. The sentries on the high walls tightened their grips on the new Winchesters and struggled to adjust their tired eyes to the darkness as they stared out across the ruins of the ravaged town which still gave off a nauseous odor of death and burning.

But the soldiers were looking in the wrong direction. As their eyes raked the empty street and deserted buildings and their brain struggled to quell vivid mind-pictures of Apache braves flitting among the deep blacks and grays which patterned the town, the raiders crept along the foot of the towering ridge and gathered in the angle where the sheer rock face met the three foot thick adobe wall of the fort's eastern defenses. There were twenty of them, on foot and with faces and naked upper bodies devoid of war paint which might show up against the black cloak of night. They had approached in pairs, carrying between them ten trunks of young trees, each some twelve feet long; and one member of each two man team had a length of rope coiled around his shoulder. Working quickly and silently, two of the trunks were lashed together, end to end. These were rested against the wall of the fort and then slid carefully upwards so that a third trunk could be upended and lashed into position. With the addition of each new trunk the lengthening prop grew heavier and more braves were required to inch it up the wall.

Although Murray expected a frontal attack and had concentrated the main guard to watch at the town side, the flanks of the fort had not been left completely unprotected and at regular intervals the braves had to interrupt their task as the two man patrol sauntered toward the section of wall under which they were positioned. The Apaches needed only eight of the ten trunks to reach to just below the top of the wall, the long, crudely formed ladder canting at a thirty degree angle and bowing at its center. With a speed and order that told of careful planning, the braves began to shin up the trunks in parties of three, finding easy hand and footholds on the trunks which had not been stripped of their bark. At the top of the trunks the advance trio snaked over the wall and crouched in the inky darkness, looking along the wooden staging toward where the two sentries were turning for the return of their guard patrol.

A low whistle warned the other raiders to hold their position but did not reach the two soldiers who were talking in soft tones, glancing only occasionally out into the sea of darkness which stretched out eastwards from the fort. More often, they looked down into the compound which was a comforting oasis of light supplied by spluttering kerosene lamps.

"When I get out of this man's army, I'm for the easy life. Gonna find me a rich woman with a big house in New York where there ain't no Injuns. And I'm gonna eat and sleep and count her money all day and every day."

The speaker was an old sweat, a busted sergeant who made a new plan each day and talked about it every waking moment. His companion was much younger, a soldier for sixty days with a fresh face as yet unshaven and a determination to become the best trooper in the United States Cavalry.

"No screwing?" he asked with a shy smile. The profanities, which were as much a part of a soldier's life as saluting officers and griping at the food, did not roll off his well-schooled tongue and he seldom ventured beyond the outer threshold of profanity.

The older man grinned at him. "Rich women ain't ever fair of face, son," he said. "And I ain't about to go feeding my meat to no other pussies so me rich wife gets riled and tells me to go to hell."

"Hell, isn't any reason ..." The young soldier broke off the sentence and sighed softly as the Apache brave gently encircled his throat with the crook of an arm and sank the knife into his left breast. The old sweat died with a low croaking sound, curtailed by cold steel digging deep into the side of his neck and penetrating his jugular vein.

The braves withdrew their knives and lowered the two bodies into the pools of blood already forming on the staging. The third Apache whistled softly and within seconds the whole group were crouching at the top of the wall, peering down across the compound to where unsuspecting townspeople and off-duty soldiers were forming a line outside the cookhouse. The raiders were all young, with powerful, supple bodies and intent strongly featured faces. With bodies crouched and faces set in expressions of resolute determination, eighteen of the braves watched patiently as the two who had made the kills sliced off the scalps of their victims. Then all twenty filed down the stairway into the compound, their moccasined feet padding silently on the treads. The fort's arsenal was adjacent to the stables and was locked but unguarded because Murray considered Fort Rainbow impregnable to anything except a full-scale frontal attack. The stockade, which was patrolled, was at the opposite comer of the fort from where the raiders had gained access and the party split into two groups, one of five and the other of fifteen. The smaller group moved off first, stealing one at a time through the shadows, keeping out of the cones of flickering light thrown by the oil lamps, ever watchful for a sign of alarm from the men and women filing into the cookhouse. Then, as soon as the last man had reached the comer of the stockade, the rest of the braves set off from the foot of the stairway, ducking into the open door of the stables.

The unarmed hostler had just finished attending to Edge's horse and his eyes and mouth snapped wide in terrified surprise as he turned and saw a half circle of grim-faced Apaches ranged, about him. "Keeeerist!" he exclaimed, and fell sideways, reaching for a pitchfork leaning against one of the stalls.

Fifteen braves snaked knives from their breechcloths and released them simultaneously. Fifteen blades buried their points into his body, their handles bristling from his flesh in two lines from neck to groin. The man went backward into a water trough, the blood from his multiple wounds staining the contents crimson. His death was signaled by a low moan and a loud splash, neither of which attracted attention from outside. Brown, grimed hands drove into the bloodied water to withdraw the instruments of death and as five of the braves went into the stalls and began to systematically slash the throat of the trapped animals, the other ten , moved to the arsenal side of the stables arid started to pry loose the boards of the dividing wall. One came free, then another. The blood-stained knives dug into the wood and more boards were lifted clear until a large hole, some five feet by four, had been ripped in the wall. Then five of the braves ducked inside.

Not a word had been spoken since the raiders had reached the outside foot of the wall and they continued in silence as the five braves scrambled through the hole and moments later began to pass cases of Winchester rifles and boxes of ammunition out into the eager arms of those who had stayed in the stables.

Out in the compound one of the guard’s on the stockade reached the comer around which the other five Apaches were hiding. The man began to swing his body into an about-turn but was suddenly jerked backward, into the shadows, by a hand which grasped the edge of his tunic jacket. His yell of surprise was curtailed by an evil-smelling hand which fastened over his mouth and nose. His arms and legs were pinned to the ground by other strong hands and he was held so firmly that only his eyes could move, flicking to left and right in naked fear as he saw the shadowed figures bending over him. But within moments his vision was blurred as the air trapped in his lungs went stale. In a last desperate attempt to cheat death he willed his muscles to turn his limbs to jelly. But the Apaches were not fooled. They knew how long it took a man to suffocate to death and did not release their hold until the soldier was asphyxiated. Then nimble fingers unfastened his tunic buttons and unbuckled his belt. In less than a minute since he died, his uniform had been stripped from him and donned by one of the raiders. Then the brave elected to carry out the impersonation shouldered the guard's rifle and ambled out from the shadows to start along the front of the stockade.

Edge emerged from Colonel Murray's quarters and breathed in deeply of the cool evening air. Freshly bathed and shaved, he felt relaxed and pleasantly weary, with only the gnawing stomach cramp of hunger forcing itself to the forefront of his priorities above the need for sleep. But a man who lives with danger must, if he is to survive, have an built-in physical mechanism which swamps all other considerations when the mental faculty of his sixth sense signals trouble.

Colonel Murray was coming across the compound from the cookhouse, carrying a tin mug of steaming coffee and looking less tense after the sedative effect of a good dinner. He was about to call a greeting to Edge but no sound emerged as his mouth dropped open, and he came to an abrupt halt, spilling the scalding coffee down his pants leg. For, with an almost hunting animal movement, Edge had swiveled his head, stared toward the stockade for an instant and then thrown his rifle up to his shoulder. The shot cut across the silence of the, compound with an ear-splitting report that drew the shocked attention of every person in a position to witness the result. It was followed by the scream of the bogus soldier as the bullet smashed into the side of his head, and a round of startled gasps from the watchers.

"What the hell …?" Murray exploded, tossing away his mug and starting to run toward where Edge was now in a crouch, raking his eyes across the facades of all the buildings at the rear of the fort.

"I was in the same army you are," Edge snapped at him without relaxing his vigil. "Never, did see a soldier wearing moccasins on guard duty."

Then the four other braves broke from the cover at the corner of the stockade and another shot from Edge's Winchester signaled a fusillade from the soldiers on the wall. Two braves dropped dead from a run and a third stumbled as a bullet ripped into his shoulder, recovered, and was lifted and smashed against the arsenal wall by four more bullets tearing into his stomach. The fourth man dived into the stables doorway.

"Hold It!" Edge yelled as Lieutenant Sawyer emerged from the men's quarters, trailing a pack of cards behind him and followed by Sergeant Horne and a group of ten enlisted men, all clutching rifles, all dressed only in pants and under-vests. "There's got to be more of them."

"Advance," Murray countermanded. "Those savages only had knives."

"That's all they came with," Edge muttered, speaking to himself and not moving from his own position a few feet from the door of Murrays quarters.

The men went at the run, spreading out in a V formation with Sawyer in the lead and Horne on his right side. It was Home who fell first, his chest exploding into a great swathe of mangled flesh and shattered bone fragments as a half dozen shells ripped into him from the hayloft above the stables.

"They've got the Winchesters!" Murray yelled incredulously as more rifle fire exploded within the stables and two of the enlisted men collapsed, one gushing blood from a head wound, the other clawing at his stomach. The soldiers began to fire now, those who were backing Sawyer and the sentries on the wall, joined by others who emerged from the cookhouse on the run. A hail of bullets poured into the stables doorway and through the opening in the hayloft above. One brave ran screaming from the doorway, clutching at his shattered jaw as two more pitched forward from above. More heavy slugs tore into their bodies, confirming their deaths with great spouts of blood. Another soldier went down with redness blossoming on his chest and his shriek drowned by the barrage of rifle fire.

A bullet kicked up a dust puff inches from Murray's boot and the Colonel ran at full tilt to join Edge. A few more rifle shots sounded and silence descended except for the baleful whimpering of a soldier who sat in the center of the now empty compound, trying to hold back the blood which was draining from a wound in his groin.

"What were you in the army?" Murray snapped, wincing in sympathy for the injured man.

"Captain."

Even if you were a goddamn general I outrank you now," Murray threw at him. "I’m running this fort and I don't want, any civilian smart-talking me back."

A rifle barked and the injured man was thrown backward in death as his forehead split open.

You ain't running it very well," Edge muttered pointedly."Why don't you burn them out?"

Murray looked at Edge as if he considered him a simpleton. "There are fifty horses in there."

Edge spat "I ain't heard a sound out of them. I figure there's only fifty carcasses in there."

It was obvious Murray had not considered this before for his face was suddenly heavy with the shock of the realization.

"Colonel!" a voice called from the far side of compound.

"Sawyer?" Murray answered.

"We're going to lose a lot of men if we try to rush them again.

Rage spread a dull redness across the Colonel's face. "Goddamn it, lieutenant I'm not an imbecile. Hold your tongue and wait for an order."

"Sir!" the lieutenant acknowledged as another fusillade of shots resounded from the stables, the Apaches firing blind.

"Burn it!" Edge snapped.

"You know how much high explosive is stored in the arsenal next door to the stables?" Murray demanded.

Edge grinned without humor. "No, Colonel, but we'll all find out soon enough. It's all getting thrown at us."

Murray pondered the point for several minutes, glanced' malevolently at Edge and folded his hands around his mouth. "Lieutenant, organize a fire-fighting detail. Have the marksmen keep the stables under surveillance and put every other man on the detail. Civilians as well."

"Your order, Colonel," Edge told him. "I only made a suggestion."

"What do you want, a commendation?"

"No. Action." Edge reached up with his rifle and unhooked the kerosene lantern that hung above the door to Murray's quarters. He turned the wick high; ducked as a bullet splintered wood from the door frame and hurled the lamp as he straightened. It seemed to be falling short of the target, but as it sailed into a decaying arc before the hayloft opening Edge brought up his rifle and loosed off a shot. Sprays of burning oil splashed into the loft and down the front of the stable and immediately wood and hay caught and started to bum furiously.

Murray looked at Edge with an expression close to repugnance. "You enjoy destroying things don't you, Edge," he said.

"It helps when you don't have a conscience about it," Edge answered without looking at the other man, fastening his eyes on the stables facade as the flames caught hold. Two shots sounded from within the building, then there was a babble of alarmed cries before the crackling of the burning wood swamped it.

"Get the fire-fighters ready," Murray yelled, his anxious eyes following the course of the spreading blaze as the all-devouring flames licked toward the arsenal. A half dozen braves came out of the stables doorway in a rush, firing as they emerged, and, ran into a solid wall of bullets from a row of kneeling marksmen on the far side of the compound.

"Move those buckets!" Murray ordered and several men ran forward to start a human chain between the well by the cookhouse and the stables.

Another bunch of Apaches rushed from the stables and dropped two soldiers and a woman before they met their own fate. The fire-fighters dashed back into cover.

"Hell, is the entire Apache nation holed up in there?" Murray exclaimed.

"You can't be that lucky," Edge told him as the whole of the stables frontage was lost in a sheet of yellow flame that shot high into the air, lighting up every feature of the interior of the fort. From this wall of fire burst three braves; unarmed and screaming their agony as their hair and breechcloths were consumed by flames.

Edge snapped off three shots and the braves were dropped in their tracks, falling on to the bodies of their dead brothers, spreading the fire to the inert forms. Murray ordered the fire-fighters forward and a medical orderly ran out to attend to the army's wounded. A woman dashed to the center of the compound and fell to her knees, clasping her hands together and staring skyward.

"Please God, let it be over;" she cried, spilling tears down dirt-streaked cheeks.

"He ain't listening," Edge called to her. "It’s only just beginning."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EDGE slept alone in one of the big bunkhouses which comprised a dormity for forty troopers. The men who normally had their quarters there, and the others-who bunked in a similar long room next door, were all on the wall, covering every square inch of ground around the fort. The last remnants of the town's population, numbering seven men, six women and two young boys, chose to spend the night in each other's company in the cookhouse, sharing their fear and thus reducing it.

The soldiers heard the drums first, then the civilians. A near-hysterical scream from a woman roused Edge to instant alertness and he, too, heard the steady, ominous beating of clenched fists upon taut hide. He had been stretched out, fully clothed, on a bunk and he came erect with a sigh and moved outside. He breathed in deeply of the clear, cool air and glanced up at the sky. The cloud which during the night had obscured the half moon was already rolling away toward the west, as if afraid of the first rays of the new sun that were search-lighting up from the eastern lip of the world.

Edge stretched again and strolled across the empty compound toward the well, glancing up at the line of blue-coated troopers ranged along the wall. The steady beat of the drums was growing louder, getting nearer. There was already a half-filled bucket standing on the lip of the well and he bent over it, splashing the cool water on to his face. Then he took off his hat and used the dipper to pour water on to his head. He heard a whimper behind him and turned to see a woman framed through the holes and tied to the sides of the litter, forcing him to look ahead. To stare ahead now, into the first harsh rays of the morning sun with eyes that had lost their means of protection: the Apaches had sliced off the Englishman's eyelids.

"That's just a foretaste," Edge said as he lowered the telescope and handed it back to Murray.

"What do they hope to gain," the Colonel muttered as the drummers abruptly ceased their constant beat and the plaintive whimpering croaks of the tortured prisoner became audible to the men ranged along the top of the 'wall. The Apaches gazed at the fort with mute menace but made no overtly threatening move.

"Is that Cochise?" Edge asked.

Murray raised the glass again to examine the face of the taciturn chief. He nodded.

"Then I figure he's come for his kid brother," Edge said: "He either gets him or the Englishman fries his eyes out. Then they'll try a few more Apache fun things until they kill him. It'll take a long time. Then it will be the woman's turn."

"Thought you wasn't an Indian fighter, Edge," Murray accused.

"I ain't."

"So how do you know so much about Apaches?"

Edge spat and took the makings of a cigarette from his shirt pocket. He built the cigarette with measured slowness. "They're men," he answered. "And if they want something bad enough they’ll go to any length to get it. If I was out there and you had my kid brother in here, I'd do exactly what old Cochise is trying."

"That makes you no better than them," Murray said with repugnance.

Edge licked the paper and sealed the cylinder around the tobacco. "I ain't making no claims," he said.

Murray turned away with distaste. "Go and get the prisoner, Lieutenant," he ordered. "Bring him up here. At the double."

Sawyer picked out three men and they went down the stairway, at a run and increased their speed across the compound toward the stockade. The civilians bunched in the doorway of the cookhouse watched them with fear-filled eyes. Out on Rainbow's main street the Apaches, remained silent and unmoving, like rock-carved figures. The Englishman moaned his agony.

"Bet English is cursing Yankees under his breath," Edge said softly. "Hates the way they talk so much."

"I've given the order," Murray cut in, the softness of his tone not diminishing the anger of the words.

"I'm amazed by your decisiveness, Colonel," Edge said with heavy sarcasm and turned to watch as the arrogant Little Cochise was hurried across the compound and herded up the stairway. His eyes blazed hate at every man who looked at him as he reached the staging. Murray unbuttoned his holster and drew an army issue Colt. Little Cochise was pushed forward in full view of the waiting Apaches, and Murray raised the revolver and pressed the muzzle against the temple of the sub-chief.

"Your move makes it a stalemate," Edge said.

"This isn't a game of chess," came the hissed reply.

Edge nodded his acknowledgement of the fact and lit his cigarette, drawing deeply against it as Cochise pulled on the rope, jerking the woman alongside him. He took out a. knife and sliced the ropes at her neck and wrists, then put a foot on her back and sent her stumbling forward. She staggered several yards' toward the gates and seemed about to fall, but then corrected herself. One of the Apache drummers began to beat out a cadence and the woman matched her pace to it, almost as if each thud of knuckles against the hide was a physical stimulant to her muscles. As she drew closer to the fort and the soldiers could see at close range the extent of her facial scars, a series of low gasps and groans traveled along the line.

"Open the gates for her," Murray ordered and two men left the line to clatter down the stairway.

"You going to put him outside?" Edge asked, jerking his cigarette toward Little Cochise, as the gates were opened, just wide enough to allow the woman through. She summoned enough strength to break into a run over the final few yards.

"Then what will they do?" Murray posed, his face contorted by the battle raging in his mind.

"Kill English and then attack," Edge, answered easily as the drum beat ended and the gates slammed closed. "The woman was just it bluff."

"They'll do that if I don't release him," Murray said with a quiver in his voice.

"So make it one less Indian and let's get on with it," Edge came back. "English ain't exactly a friend of mine but he ain't done me any wrong I haven't evened up."

Below in the compound two men and a woman ran from the cookhouse doorway toward Lorna Fawcett, who knelt on the ground and hid her face in her hands as she sobbed out her shame and relief.

"But there's still a chance," Sawyer put it. "Maybe they'll keep the bargain,"

"You sound as convinced of that as you look; lieutenant," Murray muttered.

"They're getting restless, sir," a man down the line called as the Apaches mounted their ponies and began to murmur their discontent.

Edge glanced at Murray and saw the young colonel was still struggling on the borderline of making a decision. "Sun's getting higher and hotter, Colonel," he pointed out. "Awful tiring on the eyes."

"Damn you!" Murray yelled and squeezed the Colt's trigger.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As the side of Little Cochise's head spattered down on to the staging and his body began to crumble, Edge lashed out with a boot to catch the dead Apache squarely in the small of his back. The sub-chief pitched forward over the wall and cartwheeled down to the hard road outside the gates. Howls of enraged indignation rose from the Apaches grouped in the town and the elder brother of the dead man strode purposefully across to where the prisoner looked at the sun. The many hundreds of braves fell silent as their chief drew his knife.

"Fire at will," Murray commanded as he realized what was about to happen.

The fusillade of rifle shots fell short of their targets but covered the screams of the Englishman as the point of the knife dug into the skin at the crown of his head; then his shriek as a tuft of hair was grasped and wrenched free with a flap of bloodied flesh adhering to it. The chief waved the scalp in the air, glorying in, the screams of his victim, then silenced them with a vicious swing of his tomahawk. The head of the Englishman was cleanly severed from his body and as Cochise used his knife again, to slash through the ropes binding the man to the litter, the body toppled forward, leaving the head suspended by the twine through the ears.

As several of the soldiers reeled away from the sight, vomiting violently, Murray's own face turned toward Edge.

Edge took a final drag against his cigarette and arched it over the wall. "Not for nothing," he answered. "That Cochise, he's just got a mean streak."

The object of the men's exchange broke into a run across the street and leaped on to the back of his pony, yelling the order for a charge. But the chief himself moved forward only a few feet, allowing his braves to stream by on either side, into the range of the Winchesters. The murderous volley of rifle fire smashed a dozen braves from their ponies before they could get close enough to loose off an arrow and the survivors of the first wave sheered away to left and right to circle back to where Cochise waited.

"Those guys really needed those guns," Edge said as he fed fresh shells into his Winchester.

Murray ignored him. "Lieutenant, mount the Gatling on the arsenal roof. I don't think these savages will break through, but we'd better be prepared."

The commanding officer was a battle soldier. In standoffs and other circumstances which offered time for consideration, his conscience made itself a factor in every decision. In the heat of battle his mind operated like a well-oiled machine.

"You got a Gatling gun here?" Edge asked.

"You know the gun?"

"Fought against some in the Civil War," Edge answered. "Fouled up more times than they shot right."

"Gatling improved on the design," Murray said as he gazed out across the sprawled bodies of the dead Apaches to where the survivors had rejoined the main group. "Army bought a hundred this year and we've got one."

"Maybe you ought to have upped your order," Edge said, nodding out to where a dozen braves were hauling a wagon from behind one of the saloons as others threw brushwood, planks and bed linen into the back. "Gonna make it hot for us."

"Get water!" Murray yelled. "You, you, you, you."

The colonel pointed to a dozen men who backed away from the wall and started down the stairway toward the well. A score of lamps were smashed on to the back of the wagon as it was wheeled out into the street, back toward the fort’s gates. The glazed, lidless eyes of the severed head of the Englishman looked on as flames flickered and then roared. Cochise raised his hand and dropped it and the wagon began to move, powered by a dozen braves who grasped it by the shafts and broke into a run. Reeking smoke billowed up, screening the braves as they trundled the wagon along the street, gaining speed with every step.

"Fire at will," Murray yelled as two groups of mounted Apaches rushed along at each side of the blazing wagon. Bodies sprawled and ponies went down, throwing their riders, but the wagon kept rolling, gaining momentum as if the braves behind it found new strength in the sight of their dead brothers. A few of the riders got close enough to the fort to release arrows and lances and three soldiers fell backwards off the wall, their hands clawing for the shafts buried in their flesh. A fourth man leaned out too far for a better shot and was spun by a lance piercing his shoulder. His high pitched scream was curtailed as his falling body plunged into the burning wagon the moment it crashed' into the gates. The rest of the soldiers continued to fire down upon the scattering of mounted riders and those braves who had survived the wagon run, as the men with the buckets threw the water ineffectually down on the raging inferno before the gates.

"Give 'em back their guns," Edge yelled through the choking black smoke. "You lost that round, Colonel."

But Murray was in no mood to listen or reply to Edge any more. He knew that Cochise was seeking vengeance at any price and that the Apache chief was prepared to pay part of the cost in the blood of his own braves. Once the gates were down a full scale attack would be launched and there wasn't a chance in a million of stopping a horrifying proportion of the Indians from getting inside the fort.

"Keep pouring," Murray ordered as he glanced across the compound and saw that Sawyer and his detail were in the process of climbing on the arsenal roof; each carrying a component of the rapid fire Gatling Gun.

"Mind if I go and find a better place to die?" Edge asked rhetorically as he moved toward the head of the stairway up which the buckets of water were being passed.

"Chickening out?" Murray snapped."

Edge spat. "I just figure that if you keep all your men on this wall you're going to lay an egg." He started down the stairway as the hinges of one of the gates tore free and the burning planks of pine crashed into the seat of the flames, sending up a shower of sparks. In the compound a group of civilians were grouped around the sobbing Lorna Fawcett, trying to encourage her into one of the buildings.

"They're like beasts of the jungle," a woman said to Edge.

"But it was their jungle first," he answered as he examined the buildings of the fort and decided that the roof of the bunkhouses offered the best vantage point. But he went first to the arsenal and took out a box of ammunition. He tossed it up on to the roof, then threw up the Winchester before reaching for the verandah and hauling himself aloft. Glancing across to the adjacent roof of the arsenal he could see Sawyer and his men feeding cartridges into the hopper of the wicked-looking Gatling Gun. The weapon, which was mounted on a tripod, had six barrels, each with a separate bolt, cocking and firing mechanism which were activated by a crank at the rear.

"How many rounds a minute you likely to get out of that barrel-organ?" he called across.

"Makers specify 300," Sawyer answered.

Edge grinned as the second gate crashed down. "All be over in a minute then. Can't be more than that many Apaches left alive out there."

The fire was now the only bar to the Indian attack. Murray realized this and pulled his men off the water chain and started to deploy them along the wall and down in the compound, yelling for the civilians to be issued with rifles. The commanding officer himself stayed on the wall, to the right of where the staging over the gates were now in flames. But the heart of the fire had burned out so that now it crackled rather than roared and the beating of the Apache drums could be heard again, resounding out their presage of violent death.

"Get ready!" Murray called and Edge looked toward the gates as the smoke cleared, seeing a line of Apaches ranged across the main street of Rainbow. Edge sank to his knees and then pitched forward so that he was stretched out in a prone position. He used the barrel of his Colt and the point of his knife to pry up the lid of the ammunition box, then tipped it on its side so that he had easy access to the cartridges, then, as the first warcries of the braves sounded, he rested his cheek against the stock of the Winchester and lowered his left eye behind the back sight. Throughout the fort, as the leading arc of the new sun breasted the east wall, soldiers and civilians did the same. The whoops reached a crescendo, drowning out the drums and then unshod hoofs thundered, the stomping power of so many ponies at a gallop seeming to vibrate the very walls of the fort.

"Think the bastards mean it this time," Edge muttered as the men on the wall opened up, pouring a hail of hot lead down upon the advancing braves, firing again and again, as fast as their trembling hands could work the actions of their new weapons. But they were no more than twenty-five and as their fire power took out the front riders more braves increased speed to fill the gaps.

As the range narrowed the first shower of arrows swished up to the wall. Three men were hit in the chest and fell backwards into the compound. A woman who rushed out to help a man groaning through the final seconds of his life collapsed on top of him without a sound as an arrow cleared the wall and thudded between her shoulder blades. Another soldier, no more than eighteen, took a lance full in the stomach and turned before he fell. The shaft of the lance hit the ground first and the weight of the boy caused the point to burst out from his back with a great fountain of bloodied entrails. The flagpole above the gate burned through and toppled sideways,

smashing through the skull of a man who was in the process of reloading his rifle.

Then the leading group of braves leaped across the dying embers of the burned-out wagon and into the fort. A fusillade of rifle fire rang out and three braves fell, but four more jumped from their ponies and made it into cover.

"Jesus, they've got the Colonel," Sawyer yelled and Edge took out two of the second batch of braves before glancing up at the wall. He was in time to see Murray stagger across the staging, the Colonel's face masked by blood flowing from around the shaft of an arrow buried in his left eye. Another arrow penetrated his chest and Murray crumpled to the staging.

"Looks like you're in command," Edge told the lieutenant.

"Oh, my God," Sawyer yelled. "Fire, fire, fire, damn you."

He jabbed a shaking hand into the ribs of the trooper squatting behind the Gatling and the man began to crank. The six barrels started to rotate, belching smoke and spitting death, spraying the entire area of the gates with high caliber bullets, mixing the blood of Apache and pony and piling their bodies into an untidy heap. But it had been firing for less than fifteen seconds when metal screeched against metal and a loud clang signaled a jammed mechanism.

Edge sighed and shook his head. "Never trust anything a Johnny Reb made," he muttered. "Dick Gatling ought to have stuck to his planting in Carolina."

As Sawyer shouted obscenities at his men, urging them to free the tangled metal, braves streamed in through the gateway again, losing some but getting a great many into cover. The detachment of soldiers on the wall had been reduced to ten men without even a non-com to lead them. While inside the fort the Apache infiltrators ceased their warcries and crept stealthily into and over buildings to strike silently.

A trooper's head rolled out from a doorway and was kicked viciously into the center of the compound by a moccasined foot. A terrified child scooted out into the open, chased by his hysterical mother and both pitched forward with arrows growing from their backs. Knives flashed and tomahawks thudded, arrows swished and captured rifles cracked. Upon the wall four men died in as many seconds and the remaining six tried to make the foot of the stairway on the run, blasting as they went. A dozen braves spilled out their lives in blood, but only one soldier reached the compound, there to be ripped apart by the chattering fire of the Gatling as the mechanism came free.

"Cease fire!" Sawyer shrieked in terror as he realized the machine gun was no longer of use, its deadly spray not differentiating between friend and foe. It was his final command. An arcing arrow bored a course downward through his right cheek and into his throat. "Oh, mother!" he managed to sigh before he died, pitching forward off the arsenal roof.

Seven braves scrambled up on to the roof and threw themselves at the gunnery detail, who had no time to snatch up their rifles or draw revolvers. Edge picked off three with the Winchester, then another a moment after the brave had slashed the throat of a trooper. An army boot smashed into the groin of an Apache and then became separated from the leg as a tomahawk hacked through the ankle. The trooper's scream was curtailed by a knife in the heart and his murder died as Edge sent a bullet into the brave's heart. The last trooper was locked in a deadly wrestling match with two braves and managed to turn the knife of one and drive it into the Apache's belly. An instant before the other brave could bury his tomahawk into the exposed skull of the trooper, Edge's Winchester cracked again, smashing the wrist of the hand clutching the weapon. The trooper snatched up the axe and swung it with all his strength, burying the entire blade into the Indian's stomach and shoving the blood dripping body across the roof and over the edge.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You found it?" Edge asked.

"Anyone else left alive?"

"Just you and me."

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

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

"The Englishman's buddy!" Drucker exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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