Edge: Killer's Breed

Hedges shook free of the hands and snaked around the corner and along the side of the building. Down at the end of the alley and across the street he could see a house with its windows smashed and through them the flashes of exploding powder as rifles and revolvers were fired at close range. He gritted his teeth against the pain and stopped short at a window. He peered through and saw the office of the depot with six Confederate soldiers inside—three at each of two open windows—firing in turn.

"Morgan, take three men and get in from the back," he ordered.

The young trooper, still uncertain of himself in his new position of authority, waved his Colt at the nearest trio of soldiers and started back down the alley. Hedges looked at the other, three and drew back from, the window, indicating that they should take up position there.

"As soon as the rebs look like they know Morgan and the others are breaking in, blast them."

"Lieutenant?" The speaker was the soldier who had mistakenly shot the young boy and his mother. Hedges looked at the back of the man's head. He was concentrating his attention through the window.

"Something you want?" He winced at a new stab of pain from his side.

"Answer to a question, sir."

There was a sudden, violent increase in the rate of rifle fire out on the street and from the soldiers at the front windows of the stage depot offices, and then a lull.

Hedges spoke in a whisper. "What?"

"I'd much prefer a repeater to this old Springfield rifle I got, sir," the man said, his own voice low. "And since you don't appear to want, to use that there Spencer, I'd be obliged to exchange mine for it."

Hedges was grateful that all three troopers were concentrating their attention on the side of the office, for he knew that the flush of shame and anger was sending a deep redness across his face, generating almost as much heat as the bullet wound in his hip.

"Attend to your duty, soldier," he hissed.

"Yes, sir!" the man said derisively. 

"Ought to know better," one of his companions muttered. "You're an enlisted man and he's an officer. Officers give the orders and enlisted men fight."

Hedges struggled to form an answer, but at that moment one of the Confederate soldiers fell, the life blood draining from a wound in the back of his neck. The other five turned with terror-stricken faces and the side window shattered as the three men kneeling outside squeezed their rifle triggers. Inside, Morgan and his men opened up. The stench of burnt powder wafted out through the broken window to the accompaniment of the screams of the dying. The men at the window drew revolvers and showered the office with rapid fire.

"Hold it," a man called from inside. "They're all dead."

The three troopers scrambled in, not offering to help Hedges, who felt fresh blood pumping out of his wound with each movement as he hauled himself through the window.

"Any casualties?" he demanded, peering through the layers of grey gunsmoke, seeing the sprawled bodies of the gray uniformed men.

"Not a one, sir," Morgan said with a note of pride. "We blasted them Rebs good."

"So let's not push our luck," somebody said. "McClellan must get here soon. Let's hole up and wait. What d'you say, lieutenant?"

"Hedges! Can you hear me Lieutenant Hedges?"

The voice was faint, almost every word separated from the next by a gunshot. Hedges went to one of the front windows and pressed his back against the wall to peer out. There were more bodies on the street now, obscene in the stillness of death. But nothing else had changed out there since he had first seen it—except perhaps that the shadows had shortened as the sun inched up the eastward wall of the cloudless sky.

"Captain?" he yelled and ducked back as a bullet splintered wood from the window frame.

"Did Mitchell get to you?" All shooting ceased.

"Who's Mitchell?" The question to his own men.

"One of the troopers who the Captain took with him," Morgan answered.

"Hey, Yankees?" The voice came from the far side of the street, further down than the sergeant or his group could have reached. "Here comes Mitchell."

There was the sound of a slap and a horse whinnied, then bolted out from between two buildings, dragging something on the end of a rope tied to the saddle horn. It was a man, stripped naked, the stark whiteness of his flesh turning red as his body scraped along the street surface, each yard of the journey ripping off another area of skin. A burst of laughter sounded from each side of the street and was drowned in gunfire as bullets were pumped into the speeding body of the screaming man. He was dead before he passed in front of Hedges' horror-filled eyes.

"That make you feel like blasting those no-good southerners, sir?" the familiar, taunting voice inquired, spitting out the courtesy title as if it were a curse.