Edge: The Loner

On the other side the ground sloped away on a shallow incline and Edge looked down at the source of the smoke. A wagon lay on its side, terrified grays still trapped in its shafts as its canvas and timbers blazed. Then, as Edge looked on flames found a keg of gunpowder and the wagon went up with a roar, showering debris and sparks, the blast killing the horses.

Some hundred yards further up the trail were seven more covered wagons, drawn up in an irregular rectangle, the heavy work horses still between their shafts. People, men, women and children, crouched in the center of the hurriedly organized, inadequate barrier, waiting in almost utter silence. Not complete silence, for when the roar of the exploding wagon had diminished Edge could hear a woman sobbing. Edge looked back down the trail and thought he knew the reason for her grief-stricken wails. The body of a man lay about twenty yards from the burning heap of rubble that had once been a wagon.

He surveyed the scene as a whole again, narrowed eyes looking across the trail and up the rising slope on the other side that formed the ground before him into a small valley. Whereas on Edge’s side the hill was unmarked except for tall, gently waving grass, on the other it was littered with rocks and boulders, with clumps of brush providing additional pockets of cover. With just a cursory glance over the terrain Edge spotted three braves, their naked upper bodies devoid of war-paint. He figured them for part of an Apache hunting party, probably as surprised by their find as the people in the wagon train were by the attack. Another, more intense search of the hillside, enabled Edge to pinpoint two more braves and he heard a faint whinnying from behind a large clump of trees near the crest of the rise, indicating where the Apaches’ horses were concealed.

After a full minute had gone by and the braves had made no hostile move, Edge knew that they were waiting for help: that a brave had been ordered back to camp for reinforcements. It wasn’t Edge’s fight: he had his own problems and it would be easy to circle the ambushed wagons by keeping below the hill crest, out of sight of both white men and Indians. But a decent meal, with maybe provisions enough to get him to Warlock without further need to make human contact was what swung Edge’s decision.

He stood from his half crouched position, yanked on the bridle to bring his horse to the crest of the hill and mounted. Then he dug his heels and charged down the slope, drawing the Henry from its boot and waving it in the air, his deep throated yell throwing the wagon train defenders into confusion for several seconds. Not so the Apache braves, two of whom rose from cover to aim at the descending rider, one with a bow, the other a rifle. But Edge was out of range and both arrow and bullet thudded into the ground harmless yards away from the hoofs of the horse. Then one of the men at the wagon train defenses recovered and loosed off a rifle shot. The brave with the bow tossed his weapon high into air as he screamed and toppled over a rock that had been his cover, his body twisting and turning like a rag doll to end as an ungainly heap at the side of the trail.

Other braves opened up with a fusillade of shots and a shower of arrows, to be replied to with rifle and handgun fire from the defenders as Edge galloped his horse into the protective cover of the wagons, skidding her to a halt as he leapt from the saddle. A ring of frightened faces looked at the newcomer, then one or two of them glanced back up the hill over which he had come, in hopeless search for more help.

“There ain’t no US cavalry, ma’am,” Edge said to one of the women whose fear-filled disappointment was the most obvious. “Just me.”

“Every new gun’s a help, son,” an old timer said, loosing off another shot at the face of the hill where there was not now a sign of the braves.

The woman who had been crying burst into a fresh spasm of sobs.

“Husband was on the end wagon,” a man said as if he felt Edge was owed an explanation. “Arrow got him in the head. Horses tried to bolt up the hill and turned the wagon over. Smoked a goddamn stinking pipe, did Jess. Must have fell clean out of his mouth and poured sparks in the back. Powder went up just fore you got here.”