Edge: Killer's Breed

"Man, will you look at all this redeye," one of the troopers muttered.

"And not a drop to drink," Hedges hissed, pressing his ear against a door opposite the one by which they had entered. He could hear conversation interspersed with gunshots and guessed the barroom was on the other side of the panel. He turned to the men. "Take a crate each back into the stage office. If I find one of you has even smelled a cork I'll pour the whole bottle down your throat and set light to your tongue."

The troopers began to haul out the crates, the sounds of the battle acting as a screen for the small noises they made. When the last man had gone Hedges uncorked a bottle and poured the contents around the room. He wasn't satisfied and emptied two more bottles in a like manner before striking a match and throwing it to the floor. Flames licked and then gripped, giving off a sour smell and as Hedges backed out of the door, wood began to crackle in the blaze, sending up plumes of dense black smoke. As Hedges re-entered the stage depot smoke and flames were belching from the open door at the rear of the saloon.

The storeroom of the depot was cluttered with inflammable material, but Hedges chose a bale of hay, which he dragged through into the office, staying at the rear behind a long counter as bullets ricocheted around the room. All the troopers were positioned near the windows, firing out into the street. Hedges beckoned to the nearest man and instructed him to begin uncorking the bottles while he broke open the bale and stuffed hay into the necks.

"We gonna hot things up, sir?" the man asked.

"Fire!" a shout rang out as Hedges nodded, and it was not an instruction to the riflemen. "The saloon's on fire."

"Roof," Hedges snapped, indicating that the man helping him should lift the crate of prepared fire bombs and follow him. "You men, take care of the rest of these and stay put till we come back."

The depot was only one story and the stairway went up in an alcove between the office and the back room. A trap door at the top gave access to the flat roof and a wooden sign at the front provided cover as Hedges and the trooper moved forward. Hedges worked the action of the Spencer to feed a shell into the breech.

"Whatever's left of the other group is in the house right across the street," he muttered. "Reckon you can reach the building next door?"

The man rose into a crouch to peer over the top of the depot sign. He nodded. "The funeral parlor. Think I could get the bank next door to that as well, sir."

"Don't be ambitious till the parlor's burning," Hedges said. "Get fire raising. I'll cover you."

His hip transmitted waves of pain as he went down to one knee behind the sign and rested his cheek against the stock of the rifle, preparing to fire his first shot of the war. As the trooper set fire, to the first bottle and swung his arm in a powerful arc to hurl it across the street, smoke from the saloon billowed up on to the roof, The bottle hit the front wall of the funeral parlor and poured down with liquid fire.

"Try for the windows," Hedges instructed.

The second bottle bounced off the roof but the third smashed through the window with the gold leaf printing on it. A man cried out in alarm and Hedges curled back his lips in a cold grin as he saw the orange glow which told of success. "You just turned the funeral parlor into a crematorium," he said. "Let's see if the bank's got money to burn."

A cheer rose from the troopers in the office below, and, seemed to encourage the fire bomb thrower into giving of his best. There was an iron grill behind the plate glass window of the bank, but it could not prevent the burning whiskey from spraying inside as the first bottle found its mark.

"What’s your name, soldier?" Hedges asked.

"Mantle, sir," the man replied, arcing another bottle across the street as billowing black smoke darkened the sun.

"You're ahead of your time," Hedges said and squeezed the Spencer's trigger.

Like the stage depot, the funeral parlor had a trap door on to the roof. A man escaping from the fire had only got his head and shoulders clear when Hedges' bullet drilled a hole in his temple.

"Heads, you lose," Hedges muttered as the dead man slumped back down the stairway.

The bank had no rear exit and the four Confederate soldiers had no alternative but to make a rush through the double doors at the front. The street was now heavily blanketed with smoke and Hedges got only one clear shot at the escapers. The gray uniformed figure clutched at his chest and pitched headlong into the street. A volley of rifle fire sounded from further along the street and in a fleeting moment when a ray of sunlight pierced the smoke, Hedges saw the three other men fall.

Leaman or some of his men had survived the hail of bullets sent into the livery, and when soldiers began to run from the saloon, the sergeant's group also made their presence known.

"I got one to spare, sir," Mantle reported.