Edge: Apache Death

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."