Edge: Killer's Breed

"I'm always right," Hedges said hoarsely. "In what regard!"

"When you said you weren't in the same league."

Forest looked back over his shoulder and Hedges followed the direction of his gaze. Stretched out in a straight line along the course Hedges had ridden was a row of perhaps twenty bodies, each with a horrible, gaping wound even now still pumping blood, into the earth. Hedges grinned and spat as he wheeled his horse.

"Dead right, Forrest," he muttered, and started back to where the Union forces were regrouping.

Forrest grinned his own brand of evil now. "Learned a new lesson, too."

"What was that?"

"Easier to kill them from behind."

Hedges nodded. "Now you're right," he agreed.

That was not the end of the carnage at Shiloh. Throughout the night, as Buell's army continued to pour in with their columns of supplies, the senior officers conferred and planned their strategy. And at first light the joint forces of Grant and Buell moved forward, mounted cavalry, the infantry and the supply wagons and artillery trampling into the ground the remains of the Confederate dead.

"Reckon we'll win this one?" Seward asked.

"I reckon," Forrest answered. "Yeah, Billy. I reckon we'll beat the shit out of them this time."

"Heard they lost one of their generals last night," Douglas put in. "Feller named Johnston."

"Generals is human," Bell pointed out. "Bullets make 'em bleed same as anyone else."

"Sure like to get me a general," Seward muttered. "Sure like to do a general like what we done to Captain Jor…"

Forrest was riding beside Seward, immediately behind Hedges and he took his foot from a stirrup and lashed out with it. The toe of his boot dug painfully into Seward's calf. The boy yelled in pain and swung in the saddle, glaring angrily at the other man. But Forrest's evil expression silenced his retort.

"You kill Jordan?" Hedges asked without turning around.

"Billy's got a big mouth, captain," Forrest answered.

"Then you better make sure he keeps it buttoned," Hedges advised evenly.

"Jordan weren't no loss," Bell commented.

"You know that, and I know it," Hedges came back, still not turning to look at the men riding behind him through the early light of the new day. "Might be some people won't look at it that way."

"Billy won't go shooting off his mouth no more … will you Billy?"

Seward seemed to shrink in size under the withering gaze of Forrest. He opened his mouth to speak, but could raise no sound. He shook his head emphatically.

"And Captain..."

"Yeah, Forrest?"

"Ain't no man goin' to tell it how it really was."

"You threatening me, Forrest?" Hedges reined his horse just enough so that the big, cruel-faced man could draw alongside him.

Forrest's menacing expression could have been carved from solid rock and it did not alter one iota under Hedges' steady scrutiny. "I ain't talking to exercise my tongue," he replied coldly.

Hedges' hand flashed to the back of his neck and whisked out the opened razor, his hand chopping out to rest the blade on Forrest's tunic collar, a fraction of an inch from the flesh of his throat.

"Jesus!" Seward hissed.

Forrest swallowed hard and the swelling of his throat caused the razor to nick his skin. "You still got a tongue, Forrest," Hedges said softly. "You threaten me again and I'll cut it out and stick it up your ass."

"Yeah," Seward exclaimed and giggled. "He talks a lot of crap."

"Where'd you get the razor?" Forrest asked hoarsely.

"Guy I knew had a pa who was a barber," Hedges answered and lowered his arm, then replaced the razor in its neck pouch. "Guy's got no use for it anymore."

The first shot of the second day in the battle of Shiloh cracked through the morning and Forrest dropped back from the head of the column, lashing out another kick at Seward's leg.

"Smart talk me again, punk, and I'll stick your head up your ass."

"Can you men spare some time to fight the Confederacy?" Hedges asked sardonically as more gunfire rang out."

Yeah!" Forrest rapped out angrily. "Let's go finish this war so we can take these damn uniforms off. Then I can settle me a few private scores."

"Hope you can scare the enemy more than you're scaring me," Hedges snapped over his shoulder as he drew his saber and held it high in the air, then pointed it to the front. "Forward!"

Once more Hedges led his troop into the forefront of the battle, streaking into the hail of enemy bullets, taking a terrible toll of human life with gun and saber. Again, after he had given the command to action, Hedges was overcome by an awesome desire to kill, a lust that cut him off from every aspect of the battle except that in which he was personally engaged.

Around him, as the battle of Shiloh blazed its way into history as the bloodiest conflict yet waged on American soil, and the Confederates turned and fled, Captain Josiah C. Hedges committed legal mass murder with a cold-bloodedness that knew no bounds.

"Leave some for us," Seward yelled as Hedges pumped two shots into the head of a rebel just as the giggling boy was preparing to kill him.