"That's just a foretaste," Edge said as he lowered the telescope and handed it back to Murray.
"What do they hope to gain," the Colonel muttered as the drummers abruptly ceased their constant beat and the plaintive whimpering croaks of the tortured prisoner became audible to the men ranged along the top of the 'wall. The Apaches gazed at the fort with mute menace but made no overtly threatening move.
"Is that Cochise?" Edge asked.
Murray raised the glass again to examine the face of the taciturn chief. He nodded.
"Then I figure he's come for his kid brother," Edge said: "He either gets him or the Englishman fries his eyes out. Then they'll try a few more Apache fun things until they kill him. It'll take a long time. Then it will be the woman's turn."
"Thought you wasn't an Indian fighter, Edge," Murray accused.
"I ain't."
"So how do you know so much about Apaches?"
Edge spat and took the makings of a cigarette from his shirt pocket. He built the cigarette with measured slowness. "They're men," he answered. "And if they want something bad enough they’ll go to any length to get it. If I was out there and you had my kid brother in here, I'd do exactly what old Cochise is trying."
"That makes you no better than them," Murray said with repugnance.
Edge licked the paper and sealed the cylinder around the tobacco. "I ain't making no claims," he said.
Murray turned away with distaste. "Go and get the prisoner, Lieutenant," he ordered. "Bring him up here. At the double."
Sawyer picked out three men and they went down the stairway, at a run and increased their speed across the compound toward the stockade. The civilians bunched in the doorway of the cookhouse watched them with fear-filled eyes. Out on Rainbow's main street the Apaches, remained silent and unmoving, like rock-carved figures. The Englishman moaned his agony.
"Bet English is cursing Yankees under his breath," Edge said softly. "Hates the way they talk so much."
"I've given the order," Murray cut in, the softness of his tone not diminishing the anger of the words.
"I'm amazed by your decisiveness, Colonel," Edge said with heavy sarcasm and turned to watch as the arrogant Little Cochise was hurried across the compound and herded up the stairway. His eyes blazed hate at every man who looked at him as he reached the staging. Murray unbuttoned his holster and drew an army issue Colt. Little Cochise was pushed forward in full view of the waiting Apaches, and Murray raised the revolver and pressed the muzzle against the temple of the sub-chief.
"Your move makes it a stalemate," Edge said.
"This isn't a game of chess," came the hissed reply.
Edge nodded his acknowledgement of the fact and lit his cigarette, drawing deeply against it as Cochise pulled on the rope, jerking the woman alongside him. He took out a. knife and sliced the ropes at her neck and wrists, then put a foot on her back and sent her stumbling forward. She staggered several yards' toward the gates and seemed about to fall, but then corrected herself. One of the Apache drummers began to beat out a cadence and the woman matched her pace to it, almost as if each thud of knuckles against the hide was a physical stimulant to her muscles. As she drew closer to the fort and the soldiers could see at close range the extent of her facial scars, a series of low gasps and groans traveled along the line.
"Open the gates for her," Murray ordered and two men left the line to clatter down the stairway.
"You going to put him outside?" Edge asked, jerking his cigarette toward Little Cochise, as the gates were opened, just wide enough to allow the woman through. She summoned enough strength to break into a run over the final few yards.
"Then what will they do?" Murray posed, his face contorted by the battle raging in his mind.
"Kill English and then attack," Edge, answered easily as the drum beat ended and the gates slammed closed. "The woman was just it bluff."
"They'll do that if I don't release him," Murray said with a quiver in his voice.
"So make it one less Indian and let's get on with it," Edge came back. "English ain't exactly a friend of mine but he ain't done me any wrong I haven't evened up."
Below in the compound two men and a woman ran from the cookhouse doorway toward Lorna Fawcett, who knelt on the ground and hid her face in her hands as she sobbed out her shame and relief.
"But there's still a chance," Sawyer put it. "Maybe they'll keep the bargain,"
"You sound as convinced of that as you look; lieutenant," Murray muttered.
"They're getting restless, sir," a man down the line called as the Apaches mounted their ponies and began to murmur their discontent.
Edge glanced at Murray and saw the young colonel was still struggling on the borderline of making a decision. "Sun's getting higher and hotter, Colonel," he pointed out. "Awful tiring on the eyes."
"Damn you!" Murray yelled and squeezed the Colt's trigger.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As the side of Little Cochise's head spattered down on to the staging and his body began to crumble, Edge lashed out with a boot to catch the dead Apache squarely in the small of his back. The sub-chief pitched forward over the wall and cartwheeled down to the hard road outside the gates. Howls of enraged indignation rose from the Apaches grouped in the town and the elder brother of the dead man strode purposefully across to where the prisoner looked at the sun. The many hundreds of braves fell silent as their chief drew his knife.
"Fire at will," Murray commanded as he realized what was about to happen.
The fusillade of rifle shots fell short of their targets but covered the screams of the Englishman as the point of the knife dug into the skin at the crown of his head; then his shriek as a tuft of hair was grasped and wrenched free with a flap of bloodied flesh adhering to it. The chief waved the scalp in the air, glorying in, the screams of his victim, then silenced them with a vicious swing of his tomahawk. The head of the Englishman was cleanly severed from his body and as Cochise used his knife again, to slash through the ropes binding the man to the litter, the body toppled forward, leaving the head suspended by the twine through the ears.
As several of the soldiers reeled away from the sight, vomiting violently, Murray's own face turned toward Edge.
Edge took a final drag against his cigarette and arched it over the wall. "Not for nothing," he answered. "That Cochise, he's just got a mean streak."
The object of the men's exchange broke into a run across the street and leaped on to the back of his pony, yelling the order for a charge. But the chief himself moved forward only a few feet, allowing his braves to stream by on either side, into the range of the Winchesters. The murderous volley of rifle fire smashed a dozen braves from their ponies before they could get close enough to loose off an arrow and the survivors of the first wave sheered away to left and right to circle back to where Cochise waited.
"Those guys really needed those guns," Edge said as he fed fresh shells into his Winchester.
Murray ignored him. "Lieutenant, mount the Gatling on the arsenal roof. I don't think these savages will break through, but we'd better be prepared."
The commanding officer was a battle soldier. In standoffs and other circumstances which offered time for consideration, his conscience made itself a factor in every decision. In the heat of battle his mind operated like a well-oiled machine.
"You got a Gatling gun here?" Edge asked.
"You know the gun?"
"Fought against some in the Civil War," Edge answered. "Fouled up more times than they shot right."
"Gatling improved on the design," Murray said as he gazed out across the sprawled bodies of the dead Apaches to where the survivors had rejoined the main group. "Army bought a hundred this year and we've got one."