Return to Massacre Mesa - Edge Series 5 (29 page)

Slade confirmed at every opportunity when he was thinking lucidly that there was certainly a spring supplying sweet water at the mesa. But little faith was placed in what was said by the bearded man who could have been any age between forty and seventy 202

because as the heat of the day rose he became less coherent. He cackled and muttered to himself a great deal and sometimes claimed to know of a hundred water holes in the Cedars: but admitted none of them were within fifty miles of where they were shuffling disconsolately through the arid, scrub and boulder featured foothills. They made camp at least an hour before sundown and since exhaustion negated their thirst and hunger they were able to sleep long and deeply. This after they reached unconcerned agreement that there was scant need for a sentry roster tonight because there had been no sign of hostile Comanche behind them or in any other direction throughout the entire gruelling day. At just after ten the next morning, three hours into the new day’s joyless trek, the hungry, parched and exhausted group approached the crest of yet another rise among the sun-baked foothills and Edge and Lucy who were in the lead staggered to a sudden, flat footed halt. Then Tree, Goodrich, Dingle and Slade caught up and stopped alongside them. Finally Crooked Eye, who was bringing up the rear and keeping a look out for trailing Comanche, halted abruptly. From the high ground at the top of a sheer sided bluff the group variously hunkered down or carefully knelt and looked out over an army bivouac to the right and an Indian encampment to the left.

Lucy, who was thinner than ever and whose once attractive features were blotched and scarred, clutched a hand to her throat and raised the other arm. Pointed an index finger tremulously toward a massive slab of red sandstone to the south of which the soldiers had pitched their tents, herded their mounts into a remuda, lit a cooking fire and parked a wagon to the east and west of the camp. She whispered huskily: ‘Oh my dear God, is that what I think it is over there?’

Crooked Eye took a deep breath and confirmed dolefully: ‘It is the place where the massacre of the soldiers happened many years ago, Miss Lucy. It is called Mesa Desolado.’

Sam Tree, his once neat clothing now in a sorry state and his handsome, square set features as badly sun burnt as everyone else’s, growled miserably: ‘It seems to me like history’s set to repeat itself.’

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From their elevated vantage point, which was the highest ground in the immediate area save for the mesa, they commanded an ominous panoramic vista of what surely looked to have the makings of another one-sided battle between the Comanche and the United States army. Because a mile or so to the south of where the cavalry troopers had set up their exposed camp, and hidden to the unsuspecting soldiers among an extensive scattering of boulders and depressions, were more than a score of Comanche and their ponies. Along with a squaw and a white prisoner.

‘Hey, they’ve got Chester!’ Dingle rasped hoarsely. ‘That guy down there is Ches Conners, ain’t it?’

Zane Slade sprawled out full length to peer over the lip of the sheer escarpment and spit a stream of saliva. He muttered: ‘For a hell of a long time until all you folks showed up out here, I was the only white in these mountains. Not counting the patrols the army sent out on occasion, of course. So I reckon if I had a last buck, I’d be tempted to bet it on that prisoner of the Injuns being your buddy for sure, mister.’

Goodrich tugged nervously at his goatee and complained contemptuously: ‘That stupid bastard has got himself captured! We sure sent the wrong guy, Sam!’

‘It explains why he never came back to find us, uh?’ the relieved Dingle pointed out tentatively.

The group at the top of the bluff were positioned at least a hundred and fifty feet above and more than a half-mile distant from the Indians: somewhat further off from the twenty plus cavalrymen and officers. So it was impossible to see any individuals in detail. But the garb of the Comanche’s prisoner marked him out as a white man who was surely Conners. Likewise the clothing and their foreknowledge suggested to some of the group that the lone squaw in the band of Indians braves was Rose Bigheart. Conners was close to the point where the boulders started to thin out across open ground featured with stunted mesquite and cholla that spread toward the army camp. He was seated with his back against a large rock and he appeared to be bound with rope at the ankles and to have his arms lashed to his sides. Maybe he was gagged to keep him from shouting for help. Two braves were hunkered down nearby guarding 204

him. Rose Bigheart was some way off, close to the rear of the broken and boulderstrewn area where the high ground from which the rock-fall had spilled countless years ago towered above the Comanche’s hiding place. It was not possible to judge whether the three braves closest to her were positioned there to watch her. Elsewhere among the rocks and hollows other braves waited, each daubed with war paint and wearing a feathered war bonnet, armed with a rifle and with his pony hobbled nearby. An eerie silence pervaded both concentrations of fighting men waiting in the hot, glaringly bright sunlight of mid-morning: one group tensely prepared to launch an attack and the other totally at ease, unsuspecting that horrors lay in wait for them in the very near future.

‘Sam, we got to do something to warn them guys down there!’ Goodrich urged tautly, a tremor in his voice.

‘What we gotta do is see that Ches gets away from those savages!’ Dingle contradicted.

Lucy Russell clutched at her throat with both hands now and seemed incapable of speech while her wide-eyed gaze remained fastened on the scene below: surely visualising how the area had looked all those years ago when her lieutenant was fatally wounded.

Edge shook his head slowly from side to side, took out the makings and began to roll a cigarette.

Slade offered the toneless opinion: ‘I don’t reckon he’s got a pussycat’s chance in a city dog pound, mister. Them Injuns have plainly got a good use for that guy and that’s the only reason he’s still breathing. Once they’ve done with him, he’ll be a goner for sure.’

‘You really are one cheerful sonofabitch, ain’t you?’ Tree asked rhetorically, his scowl matching the tone of his voice while he glowered at the raggedly dressed, heavily hirsute Slade and drew only a careless shrug and a childish giggle in response.

‘Edge, we just have to warn all those soldiers down there!’ Lucy pleaded, 205

expressing utter helplessness close to tears, her painfully blistered lips acting to distort her voice.

‘But we got to be careful we don’t draw attention to ourselves!’ Goodrich seemed unable to wrench his tiny-eyed gaze away from where the Indians continued to wait patiently among the hollows and boulders that provided perfect cover for them, their mounts and their prisoner – or maybe two prisoners if the squaw was an unwilling participant in what was happening.

Edge countered dourly: ‘Feller, if you wanted to live in a perfect world you should never have crawled out of your mother’s belly.’

‘Damnit, the guy’s got a good point: we shouldn’t take any risks we don’t have to!’ Dingle argued. ‘That makes sense, don’t it, mister?’

‘It’s pretty damn plain the Comanche are waiting for something,’ Edge murmured, thinking aloud. And for the first time he paid closer attention to the top of the bluff than the heat-hazed scene below it as he searched for a covert way down.

‘Dark, maybe?’ Goodrich suggested.

Tree agreed: ‘That could be it, Brod.’

‘Nah!’ Slade argued. ‘Them Injuns wouldn’t have got themselves all prettied up with that paint and the feathers if they were gonna wait around for all that time. There’s a lot of hours left until nightfall.’

‘I heard that Indians didn’t ever fight at night?’ Dingle’s nervousness was undiminished as he winced and gingerly fingered his swollen mouth.’

‘You’ve been listening to too many old wives telling tales, mister,’ Slade accused scornfully. ‘A Comanche’ll fight any time and any way that suits his cunning mind if he figures he’s got a good enough reason for it.’

‘Be obliged if you folks wait here for a while,’ Edge said as he stowed the recently made cigarette in a shirt pocket and then added to Crooked Eye: ‘Except for you, kid: I’d like for you come with me if that’s okay with you?’

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Only Tree felt the need to protest at how Edge had seemed to assume leadership again as he started to demand: ‘Just where do you – ‘

But Edge, with the young buck alongside him, was already striding away to the right: staying far enough back from the lip of the bluff so they could not be seen either by the troopers or the Indians below.

‘Do you think Rose Bigheart is Mountain Lion’s prisoner?’ Crooked Eye asked.

‘The same kind of prisoner as the White Eyes who hates Indians?’

‘She’s too far off to see for sure.’

‘But I think you will do all you can to keep her alive when the fighting begins?’ he said earnestly.

Edge reminded: ‘You know the score, Crooked Eye: the reason why most of us are out here risking our necks in these hills?

‘The Comanche are my people, Mr Edge.’ There was a glint of determination in the youngster’s good eye. ‘Even though Mountain Lion and his braves are renegades, I cannot betray them to the White Eyes. Even to a White Eyes who is my good friend?’

‘Say what you have to kid,’ Edge invited. ‘We’re nearly to where I’m going.’

‘I would want to do whatever I can to protect Rose Bigheart from harm. From wherever it threatens, unless it meant I had to -?’

They reached the spot where Edge had been headed since leaving the group a quarter mile or so away and he grinned fleetingly down at the solemn faced boy. ‘I won’t ask you to do anything you wouldn’t want to, kid. And after things have hotted up it could turn out that you’ll be the only one left alive and free to look out for yourself and anyone who happens to take your fancy.’

Then he turned his attention to the narrow, gully-like cleft that cut down across the face of the cliff at an angle that made it far less steep at either side. It was ten feet wide at its broadest and narrowed at irregular intervals to half that distance: littered with shale and larger chunks of rock that threatened a perilous descent to anyone who 207

tried to climb down to the base of the bluff by this route.

‘Do you want me to test it, Mr Edge?’ Nothing in the young buck’s expression implied he would have reservations about doing what he suggested. Edge moved nearer to the lip of the cliff again, checked impassively on the scene below and saw that little had changed: and there was no sign the Comanche were any closer to launching their attack than they had been before. He also surveyed the top of the cliff to both sides and confirmed from here something he had judged about this situation from his original position. There was no other way down from any point to the south: this because of the way the ground reared up so steeply, to form a bluff atop a bluff like a giant step, the face of the higher ground as sheer as the lower cliff. To the north it was at least a half-mile until the ground crumbled away, in easily negotiable stages, close to the area where the troopers were camped. The uniformed men oblivious to the presence of a bunch of Indians clearly prepared to attack but as yet some way out of effective rifle range. From here, too, Edge was able to see that anyone making the steep and dangerous descent by way of the deeply scored gully would be out of sight of both the Comanche and the army all the way down to the base of the cliff. Where a scattering of rocks and depressions formed a part of the same area of cover in which Mountain Lion and his braves bided their time with seemingly infinite patience. So the major danger was of taking a bone-crunching fall down the near vertical crevice or starting a minor avalanche of tumbling shale and rock that would surely alert the waiting Indians.

‘No, kid: I reckon I ought to – ‘

‘But I am lighter in weight than you. So there would be much less risk of – ‘

‘But you getting to the bottom wouldn’t be any kind of test for me and the rest making it down, kid. I’d like for you to go tell the others this is the way down for them

– any that want to give it a try?’

‘But what if – ‘

The young buck was sullenly disappointed that he was not going to be allowed to 208

do what he wanted as he swung his head to peer back at where the apprehensive group waited. Then he grimaced at Edge and seemed about to refuse to do as he was asked. But Edge had already lowered himself into the top of the gully and was applying all his concentration to what he had to do. So he had no time to look up and register Crooked Eye’s scowl but he heard the soft spoken Comanche words that were rasped in the tersely embittered tone of angry obscenities.

‘Say or do whatever you want, kid,’ Edge muttered through gritted teeth as he sought solid foot and hand holds or secure niches in which to rest the butt of the Winchester like a cumbersome walking cane. All the time tensely aware of the danger that any of them might collapse under his weight and spill him helplessly down the narrow passage carved into the cliff face. ‘But remember,’ he concluded. ‘The sooner those blood brothers of yours know we’re around, the quicker the killing will get started.’

The boy snarled a single curse in English and when Edge took a moment to peer back up he was in time to see an expression of anguished indecision on the youthful face before Crooked Eye withdrew from sight.

In the near silence of the mountains that was perhaps emphasised out of proportion by the nerve stretching tension of knowing about the opposing groups of armed men below, it seemed to Edge that every time he set down a booted foot on a rock ledge, or felt a patch of loose shale move under the rifle butt, or took a deep breath and let it rasp out, the sound was amplified a thousand-fold. And could surely be heard by every man within at least a mile of where he made his slow, sweating, aching progress down the gully.