The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (22 page)

A building which, because of divine intervention due to vested interest, or the luck of the draw, had sustained less damage from battle, the elements or neglect than any other in the fort.

A smaller building next door to the church and set back from its façade also still had a roof. Likewise a largish building at the north west corner of the fort from which came sounds and smells that indicated it was serving as a stable tonight. Time crawled through the moon silvered night while Edge had no reliable way to measure its inevitable passage. Until nature began to put into effect the age old pattern from which ancient man had learned to gauge the passing hours of the day. False dawn broke: dull at first, then silvery grey as it spread out from the eastern horizon to slowly encroach upon and quickly drive away the dark of night from the sky. Then vivid redness in advance of the rising sun, until the yellow if its leading arc began to cast grotesquely elongated shadows of inanimate rocks and brush and buildings. And then a man: short and fat and dishevelled from sleep.

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Edge ducked his head lower at the sill of the topless window aperture. But he did not lose sight of the newly awakened Mexican who had emerged from the door-less doorway of the derelict church, scratching his pot belly under his shirt and running the back of his other hand over his nostrils and mouth.

The two hundred and fifty feet from where Edge was hunkered down and the front of the church had seemed a long way in the silent, unmoving dark. Now, in brightening daylight as the rotund little man ambled toward the building in which the horses were stabled, it looked no distance at all.

Inside, the man cursed at the animals and they whinnied and stamped. The wrangler, or maybe a horse, kicked over a bucket that rolled noisily and collided with something solid.

Somebody roared a string of Spanish obscenities inside the former church. And this acted to trigger an ill tempered barrage of raucous shouting as other men came irritably awake.

And Edge began to suspect that all was not as it should be at
Caja Fuerte.
A man came to a window to survey the new day and two more appeared in the doorway. All of them Mexicans. Either because it was too early to be viewed with enthusiasm or they were just naturally grouchy when they first awoke, the expressions of all three and the spits they directed at the parched ground outside showed they would much rather the night be longer so they could still be sleeping. One of those at the doorway stepped outside and went toward the neighbouring building. The second emerged to make a token examination of the wagon and its freight and replied to something said by the man at the window. Then both of them withdrew from sight into the church.

Edge looked at where he knew McCall was hidden, then across at the building in which the two Federales were positioned.

Nobody signalled by word or gesture and until the wrangler reappeared to start back for the church, all remained quiet and unmoving in what was left of the once highly prized Federale post.

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The Mexican went on by the church and turned toward the building at the side and to the rear. Then, a short time after he had gone from sight, smoke began to wisp into the bright, rapidly warming morning air.

Despite the danger of his situation, the sight of the smoke caused Edge to feel suddenly hungry. And he briefly envied the men - five of them - who ambled out of the church and went to join the other two in the building where breakfast was being prepared. But the emptiness in his belly did not cloud his judgment as he confirmed what he had suspected when he heard only Spanish being spoken within the church. Every man who had been bedded down at
Caja Fuerte,
and was now about to eat, was Mexican. So, knowing how forthright the man was, it seemed blatantly obvious that Luke Shannon was not here. Nor Chrissie, Craig and Strange. Edge shifted his squinting gaze from the doorway of the church to the thickened column of smoke, then across to where Sanchez and Mendoza waited. Next rose and leaned through the half window of the former kitchen to peer toward McCall’s hiding place. Within the confines of the fort and its immediate surroundings only the smoke moved, rising vertically perhaps thirty feet until a gentle air current wafted it eastward. Then Edge: a man who preferred to work alone, do things his way and take the initiative when he considered the time was right.

He straightened to his full height and angled the rifle across the front of his body. One of his hands was fisted around the stock, thumb to the hammer behind a loaded breech, with the index finger curled to the trigger. The other was clasped tightly around the muzzle end of the barrel as he stepped over the remains of the front wall of the onetime kitchen. He did not begin to ooze sweat from every pore of his body until he was totally exposed in the glaringly bright morning sun. Did not try to pretend to himself that the beads of salt moisture were squeezed out of his flesh by the Mexican heat. There was a distant murmuring of talk from the building with the smoking chimney. And maybe some muted exclamations of shock from elsewhere in the fort: but he knew he could have imagined these, because it was inevitable the three lawmen in hiding would react somehow to the unexpected sight of him as he began to pre-empt McCall’s plan. 142

After ten seconds or so when the Shannon bunch – if they were at the old fort –

would surely have made their presence violently known, Edge dropped his fist away from the Winchester’s muzzle and extended his arm to the side, palm down. To signal that Sanchez and Mendoza should stay where they were.

McCall, closer to him than the Federales, hissed: ‘What the hell are you playing at, mister?’

Edge halted. Kept peering at the church instead of turning toward McCall as he resisted the urge to wipe beads of sweat off his forehead before he took hold of the rifle barrel again and growled out of the side of his mouth:

‘Be better for us if they don’t have any weapons, feller.’

He moved on, blinked rapidly whenever sweat threatened to run into his eyes and blur his vision.

‘You crazy sonofabitch! How you gonna – ‘ McCall cut himself off as he realised it was a waste of time talking to the back of a man in no frame of mind to listen. Between the split seconds of total blindness when he blinked, Edge kept his attention firmly focussed on the church doorway and the corner of the building around which the Mexicans had gone on their way to eat.

All the time listened for a sound to warn of danger from elsewhere. Or an audible sign McCall, Sanchez and Mendoza were about to launch the plan devised on the hilltop last night, and let Edge take his chance out in the open.

But the only sounds in the solid surrounding silence were of his own muted footfalls and breathing, the ebb and flow of eating noises and talk from within the improvised mess hall out back of the church and of the horses in the makeshift stable. Only Edge was seen to move, apart from the diminishing smoke and the infinitesimal shortening of shadows as the sun rose, getting hotter. But not as hot, he knew, as it felt to him.

Then the sweat dried in an instant, seemed to freeze on his flesh, when he reached the doorway of the church. Turned and pressed his back hard against the wall beside it. Held his breath as he peered across at the crumbled buildings in which McCall, Sanchez and Mendoza were hidden. All was still and silent.
He had made it, damnit!

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He let out the pent up breath and allowed his lips to draw back from his gritted teeth, unsure if and uncaring whether this resulted in the kind of smile that showed to the watching men the full extent of a relief bordering on exhilaration that he felt. Then for the first time since he stepped out of cover, he made a fast move. Swung around on to the threshold of the church doorway, levelled the Winchester from his hip and thumbed back the hammer as he raked the muzzle from side to side. A disturbed fly buzzed angrily. The dust motes he had kicked up settled around and on his shoes. He drew in a deep breath and discovered the church smelled of stale tobacco, old sweat and decay.

He stepped into the building which had been stripped of all the former furnishings and artefacts that had made it a place of worship many years ago. Now its bare floor was littered with clothing, blankets, saddles and other personal belongings of the men eating breakfast with a great deal of noisy relish in the building next door. Their preoccupation with food and increasingly boisterous badinage served to cover any sound he made in crossing from the front to the rear of the church, zigzagging among the scattered gear.

He paused frequently to stoop and collect rifles and gunbelts with revolvers in the holsters. Did a little basic mental arithmetic as he began to move back toward the open doorway and figured the seven bandits now had only three revolvers between them. Not counting the wagon load of weapons he was in no position to appropriate. Twenty feet short of the threshold he came to an abrupt halt. Grimaced and cursed under his breath as he prepared to abandon the rifles and gunbelts, swing his own Winchester to the aim. For footfalls were hitting the hard packed ground beyond the side wall of the church, warning that one of the Mexicans was through with breakfast. Edge changed direction: moved faster but did not tread any more heavily. Angled toward the far side of the church where a flight of wooden stairs slanted steeply up the wall toward an aperture in a front corner of the ceiling. He was almost at the top when the returning man halted outside the doorway. Began to whistle tunelessly. Edge felt as if every droplet of moisture in his aching body was being squeezed out of his pores as he climbed the remaining steps, tensely ready to react should a tread give a protesting creak. But it did not happen.

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He was through the trapdoor opening and standing in the belfry of the short bell tower when the whistling was curtailed with an abruptness that maybe meant the Mexican was alarmed at something seen or heard to be amiss.

But while Edge stood rigidly unmoving with the hot breath trapped in his lungs, a match was dragged across the adobe of the outside wall. And the Mexican sighed his contentment with a first lungful of smoke.

The man made no move to re-enter the church and Edge let the pent up breath trickle silently out of the side of his mouth as he cautiously lowered himself on to his haunches and carefully set down every weapon except for his own Winchester. This could not be accomplished in total silence, but there was still background noise from the feeding men and the one out front of the church who by turns whistled, sang a few snatches of the song on his mind or spat into the dust.

Loud enough to cover the small sounds Edge made with the guns, then as he moved across the floor of the bell-less belfry to reach a slit window in the front wall. Where he was directly above the sombrero-ed head of the tone deaf man who leaned against the wall beside the doorway. Standing token guard on the wagon while from time to time he raised a cigar to his mouth, drew deeply against it and expelled the smoke which billowed out from under the curled brim of his hat.

From his vantage point above the unsuspecting guard, Edge could clearly see the sparsely shadowed ruins in which McCall, Sanchez and Mendoza were hidden. But when he signalled with a brief hand gesture through the foot wide slit he did not expect to draw any blatant response from any of the men whose hiding places were within the sentry’s field of vision.

The rest of the bandits did not take much longer to finish their first meal of the day and as they sauntered out of the building beside the church they continued to joke and laugh: clearly now they had full bellies more content with their lot than when they first awoke.

Which seemed to Edge to provide an ideal circumstance for him to spring his trap. But a few moments later, as the half dozen men ambled into sight around the front corner of the church and the sentry straightened from the wall to create an impression he was on alert watch, McCall demonstrated he shared the same opinion. 145

The tall, leanly built lawman stepped fully into view, Winchester levelled from his hip and swung the rifle back and forth in an arc to cover the group as soon as they were clear of the wagon’s cover and bellowed:

‘Hold it right there! You men are under arrest!’

The talk and laughter stopped abruptly and there was a stretched second of shocked silence, the feet of the Mexicans rooted to the arid ground, their startled attention fixed upon the American with a silver star glinting in morning sunlight on his chest. Until obscene exclamations exploded from constricted throats. Before the men were jolted back into silence by two gunshots: Sanchez and Mendoza firing into the air to draw attention to themselves as they stepped out of cover.

Then the two Federales advanced on the church and Sanchez yelled in Spanish: translated McCall’s command for the startled men to surrender.

‘Hands in the air!’ McCall roared as he stepped forward. ‘All of you! Now!’

Edge recognised the bandit named Luis as he moved to the front of the frightened group below and demanded in quivering English:

‘What is the meaning of this?’

No man had obeyed the order to raise his hands.

Sanchez paraphrased it again in Spanish.

McCall’s anger expanded so that his voice was almost a manic shriek: ‘I said hands in the air, damnit!’