He was in Indian country now. Cheyenne to the south, Pawnee to the north and Ute, Navaho and Apache ahead of him. White settlements were thin on the ground and those he saw he skirted. He decided he had taken his full share of unwanted trouble and the itch to find Forrest and the others was getting stronger. What Annie had told him about Jamie’s killers, their utter lack of remorse and confidence in their apparent immunity had caused Edge to re-assess his earlier line of thought. Now, although he was prepared to search for the rest of his life for vengeance, the earlier he reaped it the better.
But then fate took a hand again. It was afternoon and the ground he was riding along was on the rise. He was following a wagon route up through the foothills towards the mountains, staying on the trail because he knew it would take him though by the easiest route: had been blazed by settlers heading west for California. And he followed the track for another reason. It bore signs of a passage by a wagon train in the not too distant past. A wagon train meant people, but for the most part good, decent people unlikely to create trouble unless provoked. More important, it meant good food, well cooked by town-bred women: an attractive prospect for Edge’s appetite, jaded by underdone jack rabbit and coffee made insipid by the need to conserve his diminishing supply.
The first sign of trouble ahead was a column of black smoke some that rose above the crest of the hill, looking black and oily as it marred the clear blueness of the sky. The trail cut a course around the base of the hill, rising only gently so that heavily laden wagons could be hauled up with relative ease. But Edge chose to cut off the trail, heeling his horse up the side of the hill towards the smoke. He started at a gallop, but as the incline steepened the animal slowed and Edge had to adopt a zigzagged course, finally dismounted and led the animal by its bridle the final few yards to the crest.
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.”
Edge hardly listened to the man as he looked around; saw six adult men, couple of boys in their early teens, three girls of the same age and seven women. Their armaments comprised a dozen single shot muzzle-loaders, a Spencer repeater and a revolver to each man. Plus a pitchfork that the old-timer clutched menacingly. If they waited around to make a stand against the rest of the Apaches from camp, they wouldn’t have a chance. He moved to the wagon closest the foot of the hill and looked around it, judged the nearest rock to be ten yards away. The next cover large enough to hide him was fifteen yards beyond: a patch of brush. After that it would be easy, the choice wide. Only a matter of deciding which cover concealed the braves.
“You’ve got all those guns loaded?” he asked without looking behind him.
“What you gonna’ do?” a man asked.
“There ain’t no more than half a dozen of those red men on the hill right now,” he answered. “But pretty soon the whole tribe is going to be there and we’ll be like fish in a barrel for them. I want you to cover the whole area with lead ‘til I reach that patch of brush there.” He pointed. “Then you move out every wagon excepting for one. You move them fast, like the whole Indian nation was on your tail. If you don’t, then that’s what it’s going to feel like. One man on the last wagon stays to pick me up.”
“I’ll stay,” the old-timer volunteered with enthusiasm. “My wagon’s last anyway.”
Edge nodded his agreement.
“How’ll I know the Injuns ain’t got you?” the old-timer asked as Edge prepared to go between the wagons.
“We all got our problems,” Edge told him coldly. “Put it this way, I get back here and find you’ve chickened and run, I’ll have to catch up with the train by myself. And I won’t be none too happy.”