Edge: Ten Grand

“They all belong to your guilty conscience,” Edge told him and jabbed him in the back with the rifle muzzle.

The two men went forward, reached the dark opening and entered. After the moonlight which had bathed the plateau outside the walls, it was like entering a dark cave on a sunlit day. Luis heard Edge halt behind him, to take time to adjust his eyes, and he did likewise.

“Señor?”

Edge grunted.

“I cannot see any bodies.”

“Don’t feel bad about it,” came the reply, punctuated by the crack of a rifle shot. The bullet kicked dust a few inches in front of Luis’ boots, but he yelled as if it had pierced his flesh. Edge tightened his grip on the Henry as his eyes flicked over the dark shapes of buildings.  He had seen the flash of the shot, knew the exact point from where it had been fired. But the sharpshooter was obviously not alone. Equally obviously, he could have shot to kill had he wanted to.

“There are just the two of you?” a voice said from another direction, cutting across the sniveling of the old man.

“How many you expecting?” Edge called back.

“We have a bullet for every bandit in the area,” the disembodied voice answered flatly, and then became part of a whole as a match flared and a face leapt out of the darkness.

It was a young, handsome face with dark eyes and full lips, finely chiseled and high cheekbones. In the flame as it touched the end of a long, thin cigar, it was a face topped by a cap with a shiny peak.  Below, on the edge of the area of flickering light, could be seen the uniformed collar and shoulders bearing the insignia of a captain in the Mexican Federal army. It was a face with an insolent smile that almost invited Edge to loose off a shot at it.  But then other lights flared, and were touched to torches, blazing into life all around the wide plaza that was spread just inside the town gate.  Each torch was held high by a Mexican soldier and each of these soldiers was joined by another who aimed a rifle. Edge allowed his Henry to clatter to the ground as his eyes completed a hundred and eighty degree turn and estimated a detachment of about fifty men.

“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.