Edge: Killer's Breed

Once there he stretched out fiat and decided he could not be seen from below. He waited, listening to the fading sound of his horse's hoofbeats as the animal galloped away. Then came thunder without lightning and Edge turned his attention away from the direction in which he expected the riders to approach, to look towards the other end of the ravine. "It was not thunder he heard, but the thudding of countless unshod hooves as hundreds, perhaps thousands of animals headed up the ravine. After hearing the sound, he felt it; the ground trembling beneath his prone body. Small, and then larger pieces of rock started to roll, then cascade down the sides of the ravine.

It took longer for the posse to hear the stampede, for the beat of the hooves of their horses was loud in their ears. But as Sheriff Layton and his deputies rode out of the darkness into Edge's view, the sudden slackening of their pace told of their realization. Edge shot a glance back in the other direction and saw his horse bolting like the angels of death were on its tail. As, in a way, they were.

For, hard on the heels of the terrified horse, were the leading runners of what must have been the last of the enormous buffalo herds. Great, black beasts with shaggy manes, their eyes shining as white as their horns as their feet pounded at the ground, hurling their massive bodies forward at stampede pace.

The bolting horse went down, its dying whinny hardly audible above the thunder of beating hooves. Then the posse started to turn, their shouts of alarm as ineffective as the final sound of the horse against the clamor of the rushing beasts.

Layton went down under the charge, his head and body trampled into an unrecognizable mass of pulped flesh and shattered bone. Another man fell on to the horns of a beast and was tossed up and on to the head of another; then a third man was gored and flung about before finally dropping into the middle of the rushing animals. The remainder of the lawmen managed to wheel their horses and race away.

From his vantage point Edge watched the onrush, but was unable to see if any more men went down in its path as they were swallowed up by the darkness. He gazed down with a hard grin narrowing his eyes and splitting his mouth over the whiteness of his teeth, and did not come up from off his belly until the final maddened beast had passed and the sound of hoofbeats was swallowed up by distance.

Then he moved off the shelf and went carefully down the slope to amble over to where the battered body of Layton was crumpled. Imbedded in the blood and bone was something that shone faintly of silver and he stooped down and dug it free. He grimaced when he saw it was a five pointed star set in a circle. He dropped the badge back on to the body and grinned as he looked along the ravine, now filled with a solid silence.

"Now that the buffalo's gone, thanks fellers," he muttered. "And it weren't even your beef."

EDGE

Blood on Silver & Red River

Available Soon!

 

Title

# 1 THE LONER

# 2 TEN GRAND

# 3 APACHE DEATH

# 4 KILLER'S BREED.

# 5 BLOOD ON SILVER

# 6 RED RIVER

AND MORETO COME…