The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (21 page)

‘
Capitan
Mendoza and I would bet
dinero
on the smoke being from a campfire of the
banditos
we seek,
senor.
’

‘Yeah.’ The soured way McCall voiced the monosyllable and the sheepish look in his slate grey eyes that he shared among his three companions was an admission he knew he was being foolishly petty. Then he hardened his expression and voice. ‘Let’s push on, uh?’

‘
Si,
there is a better chance to get close to them unseen under cover of darkness,’

Sanchez said.

Mendoza nodded to the translation and nobody consulted Edge who anyway agreed with doing as was suggested. So they went hungry for more than two hours past the usual 134

supper time as they rode through the fading light of evening into full night. Then ate cold rations washed down with canteen water during a brief pause to rest the horses. The column of smoke was long gone from the sky, but a pinnacle of rock a little to west of where the evidence of a fire had signalled human presence in the hills acted as point of reference as they advanced on the foothills.

The moon was high and glitteringly bright by then, three-quarters full in a starlit, cloudless sky. And Edge became disconcertingly aware of their vulnerability as they drew close enough to the broken country to be within rifle range of a skilled sharpshooter concealed in the deep moon shadow among the hills.

Then they were shrouded in the same cover of dappled darkness as they rode cautiously along a ravine over ground that sloped gently upwards. But although they were less exposed as potential distant targets now, it was unnervingly impossible to ignore the fact they were moving through ideal ambush terrain.

Edge sensed he was not the only man to experience a high degree of skin itching tension as he brought up the rear, leading the pack horse. Cold sweat oozing from the flesh between his shoulder blades and at the small of his back as he rested a hand on his upper right leg: close to the jutting butt of the holstered Colt and with the stock of the booted Winchester just a few more inches away.

McCall, who was immediately in front of him, and the two Mexicans in the lead, also sat stiffly erect in their saddles as they constantly swung their heads to left and right while he watched their back trail.

Then Sanchez held up a hand and reined in his mount. Slid down from his saddle as the others came to a halt: crouched to examine the ground while Mendoza, McCall and Edge stayed astride their horses and continued to scan their surroundings. They were out of the ravine, close to the top of a long, gentle slope, in the moon shadow of the towering outcrop of sandstone that had provided them with a bearing after the fire smoke was gone. Elsewhere across the broad hillside was a wide scattering of boulders and several deep hollows, very little brush.

Behind them to the north was the strip of broken country they had covered after crossing the extensive plain from Dalton Springs. Ahead, far to the south beyond the brow of this hill, were the rearing peaks of considerably higher ground: the Sierra Madres proper.

135

‘How close are we, you figure?’ McCall asked softly of Sanchez as the Mexican closely examined a flattened cigar butt.

The two Federales conferred before the junior officer responded: ‘We are very close, I think, sheriff.’

He rolled the butt carefully between a finger and thumb so it was squashed further then slowly disintegrated. But it did not come apart and shower dry tobacco shreds on the ground like many older butts he had destroyed in a similar manner back along the trail.

‘This is no more than two or three hours old.’

Mendoza spoke Spanish and Sanchez translated: ‘It will be better to leave the horses here. We should proceed as quietly as possible.’

The three mounted men swung down to the ground.

Edge was first to hitch his reins to the branch of a sturdy mesquite, then tethered the pack horse to the same piece of scrub. He slid the loaned Winchester out from the boot and immediately set off toward the top of the rise, staying close to the base of the outcrop in the dark of the moon shadow it cast.

Near the crest, before he reached a point where he would be sky-lined, he dropped to hands and knees, next on to his belly. Inched up into a position where he could peer down from the hill top, aware somebody closely behind him was doing everything he did. It was McCall who rasped hoarsely from a few feet away: ‘What do you see, mister?’

Edge murmured without turning around: ‘I see that sound advise is always worth taking, feller.’

‘Talk sense, damnit!’

Edge glanced back now, to show a sardonic grin as he replied: ‘It’s what I’m talking, sheriff. There’s a familiar looking rig down there. And the piece of advice I have in mind is that when a man knows he’s got right on his side, it makes real good sense to stick to his guns.’

136

CHAPTER • 16

_________________________________________________________________________

THE HILL was at the head of an extensive valley maybe a mile and a half across at
this end, gradually narrowing southward until it twisted out of sight to the west. Immediately at the base of the broad incline on the top of which Edge and McCall were sprawled, Sanchez and Mendoza making scuffling sounds as they moved up behind them, were the remains of what had obviously been a military fort. Today almost totally derelict, for of the dozen or so buildings which formed three sides of the compound once enclosed by the now crumbled four walls of a square, not one remained whole. Some were little more than lines of adobe no higher than a ragged foot or two. Others still had roofs and could maybe be made habitable again, if gaping holes in the timber and adobe were fixed, doors were replaced and windows glazed It was outside such a building with a truncated tower indicating it had once been a church that a familiar wagon with a tarp covered load was parked. McCall released a low whistle of satisfaction to signal he had seen the rig as Mendoza crawled forward and murmured:
‘Bueno, eso es!’

Sanchez wriggled into position beside the others and with the same degree of soft toned fervour as his fellow countryman exclaimed: ‘
Si,
that is it: at
Caja Fuerte.’

‘What?’ McCall demanded.

Sanchez repeated: ‘
Caja Fuerte.
Literally in your language it means strong box. It was said to be the most impregnable post along the entire border. But it fell to a ferocious attack by many bandits and has been abandoned for several years. As you can see?’

McCall said laconically: ‘I can see it sure don’t look so much now.’

‘
Si,’
Sanchez agreed dolefully. ‘
Capitan
Mendoza and I have heard of the damage done to
Caja Fuerte,
but I never believed it could be in such a terrible condition as this.’

He translated his opinion to Mendoza, who nodded emphatically that he agreed with what had been said. Then the senior Federale officer delivered a burst of fast spoken Spanish, during which Sanchez did a lot of tight lipped nodding. 137

‘The fall of
Caja Fuerte
was a humiliating defeat for the forces of law and order in our country,
amigo,’
Sanchez said to McCall. ‘It will help to
restablecer el equilibrio
–to redress the balance – if we are able to win the day here.’

‘So we’re not going to wait for the army to show up?’ Edge asked evenly, maintaining the same careful watch he had kept on the scene below while he listened to the exchanges. McCall backed off from the brow of the hill and rose stiffly to his feet in the shadow of the outcrop. ‘There’s no certainty the troopers from Fort Reed will get here before Shannon and the rest of them down there pull out, is there? And we could end up going deep into Mexico if we just keep on trailing them?’

Sanchez and Mendoza spoke in Spanish while, like Edge, they continued to survey the derelict fort. Then Sanchez looked up at McCall and reported:

‘With due respect, sheriff,
Capitan
Mendoza asks me to point out we have already crossed the border. We are in Mexico now, so the soldiers of the United States have no – ‘

‘Yeah, I know that,’ McCall broke in. ‘I’m with you men. It was Edge who brought it up about us waiting for the army.’

There was easily recognisable implied criticism in the lawman’s tone as the three men down on their bellies withdrew from the vantage point and got to their feet alongside McCall.

Edge shrugged. ‘I don’t want for us to go off at half cock just because of an old fight that ended with the wrong side winning.’

Sanchez began to translate for Mendoza, but McCall interrupted him:

‘I can understand why the United States Cavalry wouldn’t be welcome here. But I think a peace officer from north of the border ought to be allowed to take a hand?’

The translation was made and McCall expressed grim faced satisfaction as he heard Sanchez relay Mendoza’s response: yes, most emphatically, his help would not be turned down.

‘How about you, Edge?’ the Dalton Springs sheriff growled. ‘Guess you plan to be in on this whatever country we happen to be in? Invited or not?’

138

‘Way I see it, I was cheated,’ Edge answered evenly. ‘And you know how I feel about settling a score like that. Unless somebody cracks me over the head and another one locks me up?’

‘That’s not going to happen here, is it?’ McCall betrayed just a faint trace of relief as he turned and led the way back to the horses.

And the Mexicans grinned and made sounds of approval that Edge was willing to contribute his reputedly skilled firepower to the fight against a common enemy that was numerically superior.

After each man had attended to his horse, McCall demonstrated he had not been idly sightseeing while he peered down on the fort in the valley. He broke off a twig from a nearby clump of brushwood and used it to draw a plan of C
aja Fuerte
in the dust. Marked with a cross where each of them could take up a position and remain in cover until the time was right to call upon the Shannon bunch and the Mexican bandits to surrender.

It sounded a reasonable plan and after no objections were raised all four men armed themselves with rifles and extra ammunition and returned to the crest of the hill. Down on their bellies again, they waited for several minutes while they raked searching gazes back and forth over the derelict fort. Until, sure as they could be that no sentries were watching, they fanned out from the high ground and advanced on
Caja Fuerta
in a straggled line. Treading lightly every step of the way, making use of whatever scant cover there was, tensed to respond instantly to a cry of alarm or a gunshot. But the silence that pervaded the crumbled buildings remained solid, the men holed up there either blissfully unaware of the intruders while they slept – or holding their fire until the quartet of advancing men had no chance to escape a murderous barrage. The church outside which the wagon stood and where the men were presumably sleeping was midway along the mostly collapsed north wall of the fort. The more heavily damaged buildings designated as cover for Sanchez and Mendoza were to the west: those for McCall and Edge to the east.

Each man reached his position without incident and as Edge began to breathe easily for the first time since he started down from the hill crest, he saw McCall had chosen well. 139

Their positions were the best available, each substantial enough to provide cover and offer a clear field of fire toward the wagon and church.

So he continued to have no qualms about the plan of the lawman who was the least experienced in such situations as this but clearly had more than a fair share of common sense.

He wished only that he knew McCall better. The Mexicans, too. He preferred to do this kind of dangerous work alone. Or, if there was no alternative but to join forces with others, he liked to know how they had performed in similar circumstances. This line of thinking applied even if he was doing some safe routine chore of any kind in whatever field: but it was particularly so if he had to put his life on the line. For now though, he could do no more than hope that these professional lawman would give a good account of themselves when the lead started to fly.

The position McCall had allocated to him was in a partially walled, roofless and windowless building that a painted sign beside the doorway proclaimed had been the
Cocina

- the kitchen – in the heyday of
Caja Fuerte.
Which was of no consequence as he settled down as comfortably as possible amid the rubble of the crumbled adobe walls and concentrated his attention on the church.