Edge: Killer's Breed

As Leaman nodded, Hedges signaled to the sallow-faced sergeant. He gave the order and the men stamped out their cigarettes or came up out of reclining positions to pull themselves into their saddles. Hedges mounted his own horse and waited impassively for the command to move forward. When it came, shouted down the line like an echo in a narrow canyon, the column of blue coated figures divided into two, one group sheering to the north into the mouth of a valley as the remainder headed up the rising ground of low foothills.

The shot from the sharpshooter perched high in the elm tree was like a whipcrack, just loud enough to cut across the thud of hooves at the walk and the jingle of harness. But the cry of the wounded man was magnified by the minds of frightened troopers who were thrown into panic by the harsh volley of rifle fire that followed the first shot.

"Charge!"

"Charge!"

"Charge!"

The timber had become sparser as the Union cavalry had climbed and now as the men heeled their mounts into a gallop they broke into open ground and thundered into a murderous barrage of rifle fire from a trench directly in their path. As they came out from cover the troopers rode into an echelon formation, the ranks of which became split by wide gaps as horses and men stumbled under the hail of bullets and ballshot. The screams of the wounded were drowned by the gunfire and the battle-cries of the advancing troopers.

Hedges rode with his body bent forward in the saddle as the headlong rush sent off a wave of pain from the wound in his hip. That bullet had merely creased him, cutting a three inch groove in his side and had seemed to be on the mend but now as he galloped toward the Confederate line he expected each orange plume and grey puff to signal a wound in a vital organ. It never happened, He reached the edge of, the trench unscathed, in the second wave of cavalrymen, and as his mount launched into a jump he kicked free of the stirrups and slid from the saddle.

The first rebel was in a half crouch, ramming powder into the muzzle of his musket as the hind hooves of the horse made contact with his forehead and he was jerked over backwards, pouring blood from a split skull. The second man, just bringing up his loaded musket for a hip shot, folded double as Hedges' boot heels thudded into his stomach. Then Hedges cracked his skull too, with the stock of the Spencer. Hedges hit the ground with a tremendous impact and heard a cry tear from his throat as the jolt wrenched at his wound. A gun exploded close to his right ear and a blue-coated form slumped into the trench beside him. Before a curtain of blood came down from his forehead wound to veil the features, Hedges recognized the sallow face of the sergeant. He turned to see who had fired the lethal shot and saw a young boy—no more than sixteen—struggling to reload an ancient Starr .54 muzzle loader.

"Ain't a healthy time to be young in, kid," he said as he fired the Spencer at point-blank range into the boy's terrified face. The bullet exited from the back of his head amid a great spray of blood and brain tissue.

To both sides of Hedges, along the entire line of the trench, blue, and gray-clad figures were locked in vicious hand-to-hand fighting as they rolled over dead comrades and tried to strike down their opponents with revolver shots or knife blades. He saw Morgan plunge a knife into the throat of a rebel and shouted a warning. But it was too late. Morgan whirled towards a fresh attacker and had his face turned to a pu1p by a charge of buckshot fired from two feet away. Hedges squeezed the trigger of the Spencer and the man with the scattergun pitched across the body of his victim.

"Forward," a voice shouted as Hedges recognized the excited tones of Leaman.

While those still engaged in the trench fighting remained to kill or be killed, the large proportion of the attackers scrambled clear of the blood-soaked ground and started up the mountain again, crouching and moving on a zigzag course as rifle fire erupted from more rebels concealed in the brush and trees ahead. There was no order in the advance now, as the men ran in terror and rage, many of them fighting as individuals with no concern for others. Hedges saw two Union troopers fling their arms high and fall forward in death throes with bullets in their backs, fired wildly by other Union men behind them. Then he saw three more veer away from the advance, tossing aside their rifles and stripping off their tunics as they fled from the fight.

He reached a patch of tall growing grass and flung himself into it, hearing several other bodies thud to the ground about him. Bullets and ballshot whined overhead or rusted through the grass.

A man screamed.

"God, Deveen's caught one," somebody said in horror.

"Figure he's lucky to be out of it," came a reply. "Listen to those guys."