“Señor,” said Luis with a tremor. “I think we are caught like the mice in the trap.”
“Yeah,” Edge answered, “And the cat that’s got us looks real hungry.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE cell stank of the fear of every man who had been thrown into it. This smell was released from every piece of straw that was moved beneath the feet, burst out of the rancid blankets on the wooden bunk like some evil perfume and seemed to ooze out of the thick adobe walls like condensation on a cold day. It appeared to be intensified by the darkness of the tiny room and as Edge rose from where he had been thrown by the two soldiers who had marched him from the plaza, he drew consolation from the fact that the stench covered the vile odor which emanated from Luis Aviles. The Mexican lay in the far comer, stunned or perhaps too petrified to move after he had been flung bodily into the cell. The stout wooden door slammed shut and four pairs of booted feet marched away down the corridor outside. Some sharp commands were rattled off, sounding far in the distance, and then silence descended once more on Hoyos.
Edge sat on the bunk and breathed deeply for several long moments, regaining the wind which had been knocked out of him. It had been quick and efficient, them officer not having to utter a word as four soldiers had moved forward from the ring of light. Two had disarmed Edge of his revolver and knife while the others searched Luis without result. Then the march across the plaza, speed encouraged by rifle muzzles jabbed painfully into the kidneys. An open doorway in a large, solid structure that might once have been a church. Along a corridor. Luis picked up and hurled into the cell, the larger Edge sent stumbling inside with a boot in the small of his back.
“Señor?” A rustling of straw, a groan as a bruised muscle was brought into action. Edge grunted.
“It is so quiet.”
“Let’s keep it that way.”
But Luis had counted as many soldiers as Edge, and his fear of the tall American was diminished in relation to the menace of the uniformed men. Edge’s steel-plated words were no longer sufficient to terrorize the old, man into silence. “What are they waiting for?”
Edge sighed, knowing the only way to discourage Luis was to ignore him. He thought he knew why the Captain was maintaining silence. He did not trust the fact of two men alone. The detachment had obviously been deployed in expectation of the arrival of many men. The way Edge had chosen to announce his arrival at the town indicated, perhaps, that he was a scout for a large group. Such a group, by the nature of the trail up the slope, would have to be waiting below, would not have seen the light of the torches. But they would have heard the single shot. The Captain was prepared to waste some time in awaiting a reaction. Then, when his, patience was exhausted, he would show some further interest in Edge and Luis Aviles.
“You think they will kill us señor?” Luis was persistent.
“After,” Edge answered shortly.
“After what?”
“The cat has played with the mice,” Edge replied and removed his hat. He squashed it up to form a pillow so that he would not have to rest his head on the stinking blanket, then stretched out on the bunk.
Luis, he eyes accustomed to the gloom now, looked on in amazement from his position crouched on the straw-littered floor.
“You can sleep at a time like this, señor?”
Long, even breathing and then a low snore was all the reply he received and after that, all he could do, was sit and tremble in fear, listening to the silence and trying to estimate the passage of time when a second took a minute and a minute an hour. Eventually, he began to sob softly, recalling the old days when he had ridden with groups of bandits large enough to storm a fortress like Hoyos and wipe out every soldier there. Recalling, too, the ten thousand dollars, American. Money that he was certain he would now never see. Or would he? He brought his fear under control and tried to force his dull brain to think constructively. The tall American had asked him what value he placed upon his life, even though he did not believe the story of the ten thousand. Could he make the federal army captain believe him? Would the captain spare his life if he showed him where the money was hidden? A ray of hope stabbed through Luis’ despair and he began to twist the crude ring around his finger, mind grinding out a plan of action that would save his life. Edge, sleeping and yet not fully asleep, could hear the sounds made by Luis and was able to ignore them knowing they were not part of any threat. But when a series of sharp commands were voiced outside on the plaza and a door was thrown open, boots rapped on a hard floor, he came instantly awake.
“Señor,” Luis said in terror. “They are coming for us.”
“And I’m going to ask the captain to cut out your tongue before he goes ahead with his own kind of tortures,” Edge replied evenly, just as the cell door burst open and light from a flaming torch showed four soldiers outside, perhaps the quartet that had escorted the prisoners there in the first place.
“You are to be interrogated,” one of them snapped. “You will come with us. If you try to escape you will be killed. But you will wish you were. On your feet.”
Luis leapt to his feet, while Edge took his time getting up from the bunk.
“Can I know the captain’s name?” he asked, his voice as unhurried as his movements.
“Captain Jose Alfaro,” he was told. “Why?”
Edge grinned coldly. “I’ve an idea he ain’t going to treat me nice. I want to know who to report to Abe Lincoln when I get back home.”
The soldier laughed shortly. “You have been away too long, señor. Your president was shot dead at the theater.”
Edge shrugged. “Perils of politics,” he said and went to the door.
“I am a poor, honest Mexican,” Luis babbled as he followed. “The Americano forced me to ride with him. Please tell Captain Alfaro of this.”
The short laugh again. “The Captain has poor honest, Mexicans for breakfast,” the soldier said.
“He save Americans for lunch?” Edge asked as he was urged forward by two rifle muzzles.
“No, señor,” the talkative soldier answered. “Americans he puts through a grinder and sprinkles over the food for the dogs.” They all laughed then, including the ingratiating Luis, who, received a rifle butt against the back of his neck for his trouble. When they emerged into the plaza, Edge had to squint against the brightness of the light after the ink black of the cell. The torches were no longer held aloft by soldiers, but had been fixed into brackets jutting from building walls. And there were more torches than before, blazing bright enough to turn night into a close imitation of day. The soldiers now guarded the town of Hoyos from the top of the walls and the big wooden gates had been drawn closed. But Edge and, Luis did not lack an audience as they were marched across the plaza towards a building hung with a sign: GOLDEN SUN CANTINA. For a large proportion of the civilian population of Hoyos had been encouraged from their homes by curiosity and had formed an expectant group across the junction where the town’s main street led off the plaza. Neither of the prisoners paid attention to the many watching eyes, instead looked at a spot a few yards in front of the cantina door, where two soldiers had just completed digging a pair of holes, six feet apart, and were now hoisting poles into them.