The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (23 page)

The man’s rage made him sound more scared than the bandits looked: until everybody was equally afraid when the pair of Mexican government law offices, less than thirty feet from the huddle of their fellow countrymen, exchanged tacit signals. And half crouched: then without warning began to fire their Winchesters in a lethal eruption of exploding lead, stabbing muzzle flame, billowing black powder smoke and echoing reports. And maybe three seconds later, like he was startled into action after a double take at the Federales, McCall started to fire his rifle. Squeezed the trigger, pumped the action and squeezed the trigger again in rapid succession.

146

Men cursed, screamed, twisted and pitched to the ground, their blood spraying, oozing and spreading.

Just one of the three men with a handgun was able to draw it and get off a single shot. It drilled harmlessly into the ground. Two others were close enough to the church doorway to lunge across the threshold, intent on finding cover and reaching the weapons that had been left in the building.

Edge had seen his fill of the carnage below and whirled away from the slit as the fusillade of gunfire continued unabated, the bullets surely now thudding only into the unfeeling flesh of corpses.

He returned to the top of the steep staircase and started down through the trapdoor opening. Then saw the two surviving bandits at the same instant they saw him while both were stooped among the scattered gear, frantically searching for weapons. Their unwashed, thickly bristled, sweat beaded faces showed clearly the realisation they would not find what they sought. Then their expressions changed to puzzlement, next anger and finally terror.

The barrage of gunfire from outside ended and Edge halted on the stairway, Winchester held two handed across his belly, pointedly not threatening the men below. Who shifted their wide eyed stares from the impassive Edge on the stairs to the sun bright doorway and back as a gaping mouthed horror became etched into their faces. Edge started to tell them in Spanish: ‘It’s all right. I’ll see to it you don’t – ‘

They did not, could not, or chose not to hear him. Elected to take their chances out in the open.

One rasped: ‘
Vamos!’

‘
Si!’
the other one agreed.

They lunged for the doorway.

McCall yelled: ‘Watch out, you guys!’

Edge started down the final steps of the stairway and roared: ‘Hold your fire out there! They’re not armed!’

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He glimpsed the panicked bandits from the rear in the final moments of their lives as they raced away from him, their arms raised high in surrender. Until a volley of rifle fire ended their doomed attempt at survival. And they corkscrewed to the ground amid billowing dust and lay inert among the sprawled forms of their bullet shattered fellow dead. When the final echo of the gunshots had died away into the surrounding hills and his eardrums adjusted to the end of the clamour, the silence was so solid that for stretched seconds a man unused to the violence of gunfire could think he had been struck deaf. But in his time Edge had become accustomed to the uproar of countless gun battles. So it was no surprise for him to hear the angry rasp of yet more pent up breath rushing out between his tightly compressed lips.

Then the rattle of a metal hipflask he accidentally sent skittering across the dirt floor as he took the first step toward the church doorway.

‘Edge!’ There was still a shrill note of fear in McCall’s voice. ‘Any more of them assholes in there?’

Edge replied sourly: ‘The only soul left in this place is me.’

McCall’s relief was raucously evident. ‘Asshole is what I called them, damnit! Not souls!’

Edge canted the rifle to his shoulder and moved on to the threshold of the church. Heard the voracious buzz of hungry flies as they descended and began to feed ravenously on the fast drying blood leaked from the corpses.

He shifted his glinting eyed contempt between the scowling Dalton Springs sheriff and the broadly grinning Mexican government agents as he said flatly: ‘Whatever: there ain’t none that got away. You fellers have shot all the fish in this barrel.’

148

CHAPTER • 17

_________________________________________________________________________

THE THREE men stood in a widely spaced arc, each of them eyeing Edge balefully,
their Winchesters aimed heedlessly in the same general direction but angled down at the ground.

The shrillness was gone from McCall’s voice as he attempted to snarl but managed only to croak: ‘Mister, if I hadn’t been told different, I’d say you were scared to fire a damn gun!’

Edge looked at him long and hard, undecided if he was as genuinely disgusted as he tried to sound and said: ‘We’ve already talked about how and when I use my weapons, sheriff.’

He shifted his attention to the Federales and asked evenly: ‘I’d guess you fellers are under orders to take no prisoners, uh?’

Although Mendoza was not able to comprehend the words he seemed to identify something of the sentiment expressed on the hard set face of Edge and he guiltily averted his dark eyed gaze.

Sanchez showed a degree of reproach when he shrugged his narrow shoulders and countered defensively: ‘
Senor,
you were safely inside the
capilla
. Some of the
banditos
drew their revolvers against us. We had to defend ourselves.’

‘That sure is right!’ McCall’s voice sounded almost back to normal again. ‘Seems to me you’re happy to shoot a man in the back at long range, but when it comes to – ‘

Edge felt himself drained of the facility to experience anything except a kind of exhaustion that had little to do with missing out on a night’s sleep. He studied McCall as he might examine something bad smelling he had stepped into and interrupted the man:

‘Maybe I was too busy being the judge and jury. So I didn’t get around to being one of the executioners.’

McCall snorted and busied himself with taking out and lighting a cheroot. Sanchez allowed without contrition: ‘Maybe we did make the mistake,
senor.
But
sin
importancia . . .
It does not matter. They were
la hez
. . . The scrum of the earth, no?’

149

He shrugged again, looked at Mendoza, drew a nod from his superior officer and continued grimly: ‘Mexico is a poor country. The expense of the trials and the executions has been saved. Also,
senor,
you may
tenga la
. . . You may rest assured this scum will not be able to have a hand in any more
duplicidad
which involves the men who will do anything for
dinero
without asking questions?’

Edge felt a mild stirring of anger, but he did not need to make much of a conscious effort to suppress it. Reasoned that the trading of insults and innuendos was superfluous in the wake of the massacre: nothing could alter what had happened here, even if he had the inclination to and was able to convince these men who represented law and order to have second thoughts about their part in it. And the morality of their future actions certainly was no concern of his.

He stepped out of the church doorway and carefully avoided treading on spread eagled human flesh as he moved through the sprawl of blood splattered, bullet riddled corpses.

McCall demanded on a stream of cigar smoke: ‘Where the hell do you figure you’re going?’

‘To get the horses,’ Edge replied without looking back as he moved along the side of the wagon. ‘I don’t want to have any part in cleaning up the mess you fellers made here.’

‘You’re only out of jail on bail, mister! You better not run out on – ‘

Edge cut in as he paused at the corner of the church and looked with eyes narrowed to glinting slits of ice blue at the trio. ‘If ever I don’t do what I say I’m going to do, it’s because matters have been taken out of my hands.’

Nobody said he was heading in the wrong direction to get the horses. But he felt the need of something to settle the churning in his empty stomach, so he detoured to the building in which the doomed men had eaten their last meal. It had been a three roomed house, maybe where the fort’s chaplain had been quartered in the old days. Inside, the smell of cooking was still strongly discernible in the fetid atmosphere. The fire in a circle of stones under the chimney in the kitchen was almost out, the food in the pot and on discarded plates had started to congeal and countless flies that preferred something more varied than drying human blood were feasting noisily on the leftovers.

150

But there was still tepid coffee in one of the two lidded pots standing in the dying embers and after he had tipped the dregs from one of the dead men’s tin cups he half filled it and drank the lukewarm, strong tasting brew in two swallows. It went down well but he guessed any liquid with more body than water would have had the same effect as it flowed through a throat sullied by the foul taste of being a part of what had just taken place out front of the church.

Then he trudged up the hill to the north of the ruined fort, sweating from nothing except the rising heat of the day. And gave the horses water and some feed then saddled them and led them up to the crest of the high ground.

Where he rolled and lit a cigarette as he made a cursory survey of the surrounding terrain. Saw nothing moving except the victors of the one sided gun battle below. While overhead a small flock of high flying buzzards was breaking from a circle to head south after spotting there were no easy pickings to be had at
Caja Fuerte.
By the time he brought the horses down to the derelict fort most of the gristly chores involving the newly dead had been completed. Just a final corpse remained to be shrouded in a blanket, draped over the back of a saddled horse and lashed securely in place. Disconcertingly close contact with the blood soaked newly dead was taking a physical and emotional toll on the trio of lawmen. So they could at first do no more than eye Edge dolefully when he returned, looking relatively rested and refreshed in contrast to their own exhaustion. This weariness probably as much to do with their mental states as from enduring a night without sleep and the exertion expended on the gruesome tasks occupying them.

Then McCall tossed down the cigar butt, went to his horse, unhooked a canteen and drank thirstily from it, his back to the Mexicans while they secured the last body to the saddle on a grey gelding.

This done, Sanchez roped the seven burdened animals into a string while Mendoza put the pair of team horses into the wagon traces.

Much of the facial bruising from the beatings they had suffered at the Dalton Springs jailhouse had significantly diminished. But they often grimaced as they worked, clearly still pained by the old injuries concealed under their clothing. Edge asked of McCall: ‘Has anybody noticed we’re short three fellers and a woman?’

151

The sheriff scowled. ‘These two say they never saw where Shannon and his bunch broke off to go their own way. I figure I have to believe them.’

‘I guess that’s so, sheriff.’

McCall lit another cheroot and the face he pulled suggested it tasted bad. But in truth the acrid smoke had nothing to do with his expression.

‘Anyway, Shannon’s back to being just my problem. If I – or any other United States lawman – get him behind bars again, the Federales want to hear about it. For now though, Mendoza and Sanchez are happy enough just to gave got their hands on the guns and wiped out the anti-government group who took delivery of them.’

Edge shrugged that he had no strong opinion on this, then took the saddlebags and canteens off his mount and moved away to lean against the front wall of the church. McCall continued to smoke without enjoyment while the pair of Federales silently completed their preparations to leave then went to their horses and unhooked canteens. Then Sanchez said wearily: ‘It is done.’

‘Si, lo hecho, hechoiesta,’
Mendoza muttered and sighed contentedly. After both drank deeply from the canteens, Sanchez translated for McCall:

‘What is done is done, that is
el capitan’s
opinion, sheriff.’

‘In this kind of situation,’ McCall countered sourly and peered at the string of horses burdened with corpses, ‘we say in English what’s done can’t be undone.’

Then he directed an almost rueful glance at Edge, maybe revealing he had indulged in some serious thinking while he helped with the fresh corpses and now shame was beginning to gnaw at his conscience.

This as Edge slid down the wall until he squatted on his haunches and began to chew on a hard tack biscuit taken from a saddlebag. He found it difficult to swallow and was glad his mouth was full with the indigestible food because it meant he had to remain silent: unable to contribute to an exchange intended to make other men feel less guilt ridden. Then McCall stepped inside the church and could be heard moving among the scattering of dead men’s personal effects.