Edge: Killer's Breed

Edge heard voices and cracked open his eyes. He saw a woman bending over him, perhaps middle-aged but looking old because the hard life of frontier farming quickly sapped the juices of youth. But behind the lined, shell-like texture of her time and weather-worn features he could see traces of a former beauty. And there was, also, visible in steady gray eyes and set of the finely sculptured mouth, an intrinsic kindliness about the woman which would survive long after the mere physical beauty had been lost without trace. As he looked at her, the woman unaware of his study, she raised a hand, back of it to her forehead and brushed a strand of gray hair from her eyes. It was a gesture that flooded Edge's mind with memories, for this had been a frequent, unconscious action by his mother. But the hair which fell into her eyes was golden, the color of ripened wheat shining with morning dew. Then, as if by command of his imagination, his eyes fastened upon such hair, wet and plastered to the head of Grace Hope. He knew this was not his mother, for the face was too young and the eyes were brown. And the face was pretty rather than beautiful. But he had seen her somewhere before, her expression showing fear instead of the tender concern it now depicted. His mind, verging on delirium, struggled to recall the circumstances, but failed. It was too much effort to pin down one fragment of memory when a thousand others were crowding in on him, scrambling to be acknowledged and savored.  

Then, as he closed his eyes, blotting out the faces of two women without knowing whether or not they were real or figments of his tormented imagination; he saw the smile of Jeannie and he fastened upon this. Because Jeannie had been real and it seemed very important to cling to reality as the yawning cavern of darkness opened again. But this time he did not fall into it alone. Jeannie took his hand in hers and went with him, the smile becoming a laugh as they tumbled together, down into space and backwards through time.

CHAPTER TWO

LIEUTENANT JOE HEDGES was uncomfortable in his uniform as he endeavored to walk in a straight line down the main street of Parkersburg just across the Ohio Stateline in West Virginia. The weather in that June of eighteen sixty-one was warm, even though it was late at night, but it was not only the early summer heat that caused him to unfasten the top three buttons of the blue tunic of his Union cavalryman's uniform. He had lost count of the number of drinks he had taken and he could, not even remember how many saloons he had taken them in. He only knew, as he staggered towards the edge of town, that there had been too many saloons and too many drinks. For the hard liquor was swilling against the inner wall of his taut stomach and the alcohol was coursing through his bloodstream, making him sweat more with each step he took and attacking his brain to play havoc with his co-ordination.

But, he thought, as he blinked and tried to focus his eyes upon a lamp which hung outside the dry goods store at the eastern end of town, it had been a good night. Reckless and stupid, but a man of twenty-five away from home for the first time in his life was entitled to kick over the traces provided he was willing to accept the consequences. Especially a man who had been among the first to volunteer after the rebel attack on Fort Sumter, expecting to see action immediately but instead only to experience long weeks of dull, routine camp duty. Relief from this daily round only came with marches eastwards, rendezvousing with other volunteers, making camp and then breaking it again to move on.

Compounding Hedges' discontent with this new phase of his life, from which he had expected so much, was his low opinion of most of the men around him. There was just a nucleus of regular soldiers in his company, the majority of them inept and malingers while the bulk of the troopers and infantrymen were volunteers, like himself, with all the faults and virtues of enthusiastic amateurs. With training, he felt, the large proportion of them would make good soldiers. But a training program did not exist. Symptomatic of what was wrong with the Union army—at least that part of it which Hedges had experienced—was the method by which he had gained a commission. He was a crack-shot with his own .52 caliber Spencer repeater rifle and with the .44 caliber Colt revolver issued by the army and this ability immediately gained him sergeant's chevrons. Then, as soon as his group joined up with the main force of General McClellan and a staff officer discovered Hedges could read and write he was promoted to lieutenant. No account had been taken of whether he possessed the qualities of leadership.