California Killing (15 page)

Edge saw a young face peering around the thick trunk of a tree. He squeezed the trigger of the Winchester and saw the youngsters jaw scatter blood and bone fragments. The kid flung his gun into the air and clutched at his lower face as he staggered out into the open. Breen and Dexter fired in unison, and the youngster collapsed with a bullet in each side of his chest.

"Recount," Edge muttered.

"Christ, they're murderin' us, Sam!" Burt roared as he attempted to peer around his covering tree and was forced to pull back as three bullets thudded into it.

"They ain't no Mission people," Cary whined, chipping away a section of the building with four snap shots before ducking back into cover.

"The nuns ain't even women," the man with a cast in his eye complained bitterly. "What you reckon, Sam?"

He looked around for a reply and did a double-take at the tree behind which Hood had concealed himself. For the little bug-eyed man was no longer there. He was snaking along on his belly, making for the trees at the rear end of the stage.

The man considered the move. All the firing from the Mission was concentrated upon the area in front of the stage, and he realized the wisdom of Hood's retreat. So he waited for a break in the shooting and dashed out behind the tiring, lathered horses.

Edge aimed under the belly of a horse and the running man pitched headlong into the stirred-up dust, clawing at his shattered kneecap. Breen and Dexter fired together and the man uttered his death rattle as he took two bullets in the head.

Unconcerned with the fate of the men he had left behind, Hood reached the clump of trees he was heading for and crouched low, waiting for a fresh volley of shots which would indicate his action had been detected. But he was safe. The hail of bullets issuing from the Mission continued to thud into the trees at the front of the stage.

Burt shifted his crafty, half-fearful gaze from the body of the man who had just died and looked across at Hood. The bug-eyed man raised a finger to his lips, then jerked it down at his chest and away, to point at the parked flatbed with the lumber leaning against it. Burt pasted a grin on his sweating face and nodded. Then he flattened himself against the tree trunk as a renewed burst of gunfire sent bullets piercing into the far side. As
the reports diminished into the heat-hazed distance of the plateau, Burt shattered the menacing silence.

"You in there - whoever the hell you are!"

The dwarfs snapped their eyes towards Edge, who waved his hand, palm down. Outside, at the corner, Breen and Dexter took their cue from the curtailment of firing.

"You
want something?" Edge called.

"We've had it," Burt answered. "Only two of us left. Here come our guns."

The hatchet-faced man shot a disbelieving glance at Burt; then shrugged his shoulders and followed his lead by tossing his rifle out into the open. Both men still wore holstered six-shots. As the rifles bounced, puffing dust, Hood pushed himself into a higher crouch and scuttled silently from the cover of the trees to that offered by the flatbed.

"Come out holding hands," Edge ordered. "Free hand on the head."

The two men stepped out into the open, hands clasped together, free hands crushing their hats.

"Ain't that sweet," one of the dwarfs said with a chuckle.

"Edge," another called softly.

"Yeah, I know," the half-breed replied in a harsh whisper. "Four dead ones and two live ones. We're missing one."

His hooded eyes raked the area in front of the Mission and failed to spot the familiar form of the bug-eyed Hood. At the comer of the building, Breen and Dexter, still cloaked from neck to ankle in the voluminous habits, examined the same patch of terrain.

"Dexter!" Edge yelled.

"Yes?"

"One shy. You see him?"

"No."

Edge focused his attention on the two men who stood in attitudes of nervous surrender. "Sing it solo or duet," he hissed. "Where's Hood?"

"Everyone's dead," the hatchet-faced man answered.

Edge squeezed the trigger. The man looked surprised, then toppled forward, gushing blood from a hole in the center of his forehead. Burt let go of the dead man's hand as if it were a red hot poker.

While all attention was directed to the trembling, sweating Burt, Hood made a crouched run for the corner of the Mission at the opposite end from Breen and Dexter.

"He lied," Edge said easily when the laughter of the childishly dressed little men died down. "You don't look quite that stupid, feller."

Burt stared at the shattered window as if hypnotized, tensing at the metallic sound of the Winchester's action as it pumped a fresh shell into the breech. Looking at the dark-skinned leanness of Edge's face resting against the stock of the rifle, he thought he had never seen a man who appeared less like a priest. He licked his lips and then his eyes flicked to the side of the Mission where Hood had disappeared.

"Obliged," Edge said and the Winchester roared again, the bullet sprouting a ghastly blossom of blood from Burt's leather vest, left of center. Even before the dead man had hit the ground, Edge was spinning into a sprint through the dusty pews towards a window at the rear of the Mission. He was about to smash the colored glass when it exploded into a million shards, showering down over him and forcing him to duck to the side.

He heard the whinny of a horse and then the yell of a man urging the animal into flight. The dwarfs sprang into excited movement, rushing from the archway and around the side of the Mission. Edge peered over the window sill and saw Hood riding away at the gallop, his frock-coat flapping in the slipstream.

One of the dwarfs raised his pistol to send a shot after the fleeing man, but Edge fired first. The gun spun from the man's fist, its barrel buckled by the impact of the rifle bullet.

"Whose side you on?" the dwarf snarled angrily as Hood rode out of range, heading for the mouth of the gully which lead off the plateau.

"The winning one," Edge muttered as Breen and Dexter rushed around the rear of the Mission, their movements clumsy in the flapping skirts. He used the stock of the Winchester to smash away the jagged shards of glass and then hoisted himself up and through the window.

"I could have blasted him out of the saddle."

The dwarf was still angry and the hard lines of his fifty-year-old face made him look even more incongruous in the child-like garb. Edge strode over to him and squatted down in front of him. The dwarf met Edge's cold blue eyes and quaked.

"You need him alive, uh?"

Edge nodded, his expression impassive. "Him more than you, little man."

The dwarf tried to swallow his apprehension. "You can have him, Mr. Edge."

Edge straightened up. "Big of you," he said.

Chapter Sixteen

T
HE
dwarfs hitched up the flatbed and headed back to town, taking the three surviving animals from the stage team and the spare horses from the group tethered behind the Mission. Edge Dexter and Breen shed their restricting clerical attire and rode hard into the gully.

Edge rode several feet to the front, his watchful eyes following the sign left on the trail by the fleeing Hood. The rancher and the sheriff rode in the stiff, upright attitudes of concentrated tension: each with his own motive for mounting excitement as the half-breed led them along the mountain crest.

All three were so concerned with their own thoughts and actions that none was aware of the presence of a fourth pursuer who joined the chase. He had ridden hard from the far side of the sun-baked plateau, taking a wide half-circle around the slow moving flatbed and entering the gully a long way behind the three trackers. And when he emerged at the far end, he continued to maintain a position at the rear, a mere dot against the broken terrain flanking the crestline trail.

Much further ahead lost to sight among the rises and falls of the ground, Hood demanded the utmost from his mount, his jabbing heels drawing blood from the animal's sides to add to the sign of his retreat. He kept to the rutted trail for more than three miles before swerving off it and sending the horse into a headlong dash down the cracked bed of an old water course. The course made a sudden turn to the left and then increased the steepness of its fall before seeming to end abruptly at the edge of a patch of brush. But the passage of countless horses had broken and flattened a path through the undergrowth and Hood followed it at speed with the confidence of long experience. He came clear of the undergrowth and entered a stand of trees, emerging at the far side on to a gentle, grass-covered slope sweeping down to the valley floor. Hood roared for more speed from his lathered mount as he headed down the slope at a tangent, toward the foot of a towering cliff which blocked off one side of the incline.

At the foot of the slope, on level ground, he raced along close to the rock-littered foot of the north-facing side of the precipice, its shade taking the intensity from the sun's heat. He followed this course for a little under a mile, heading for a clump of thickly growing vegetation, where he reined his exhausted mount to a walk, going through a gap in the growth. It was very cool in the dappled shade of the greenery, and cooler still in the tunnel through the cliff face. But he did not linger, pressing forward to emerge into strong sunlight again. He was in a deep ravine which ran parallel with the cliff for some five hundred feet before it made a sharp turn to the north to achieve a broader exit into the valley.

Hood was at the boxed end of the steep-sided narrow canyon and he angled across it to the far comer where. A crude timber and adobe cabin had been built against the rocky wall. At one side of the cabin was a corral, fencing in seven horses.

With no further need for the animal which had carried him from the Mission, the ugly little man did nothing to relieve its distress after he dismounted. Instead, he heeled open the door of the cabin and went inside. The trapped heat strengthened the rancid stench of the atmosphere which was thick with the stale odors of many unwashed bodies.

Unconcerned by this, Hood moved from the bottle-littered main room into a smaller one at the side. A bunk piled with evil-smelling blankets was pushed against a wall. He crouched beside this and reached underneath. His protruding eyes became fired with the light of greed as he dragged out a large, iron-bound sea-chest fastened with a massive padlock. He reached into his pocket and cursed when his probing fingers failed to find the key. Then he reached under the frock-coat, drew his revolver and fired point-blank into the lock. It burst open as if made of matchwood.

He lifted the heavy lid and sighed, then gloated for several precious seconds as he looked at the bundles of bills crammed inside. But the urgency to get away overcame the pleasure of the moment and he dragged a blanket from the bed and began to pile the money in its center.

Edge, Dexter and Breen had halted their sweating mounts, and were surveying the vast panorama of the valley floor. Hood's trail had been easy to follow down from the mountains but at the foot of the sheer cliff face there were no tell-tale hoofprints in the unyielding ground: just intermittent, difficult to see spots of blood from the hard-driven horse. And at the point where prickly vegetation added a splash of color to the brown of the rock, even this sign disappeared.

"Into thin air again," Breen said sourly, taking off his hat and brushing sweat from his hairline. "Happens every time. They just stay under cover and wait for a man to get close enough to pick off."

"Ain't they anymore," Edge pointed out softly as he raked his hooded eyes across the vastness of the valley, knowing that if Hood had cut north, he would still be in sight.

Dexter, his age beginning to tell after the frantic chase, looked hopefully at Edge. Then the shot rang out, muffled but close and all three looked into the clump of brush and stunted trees.

'Edge grinned coldly as he sidled his horse closer. "I reckon we got him," he said.

Breen shook his head, the gesture killing the start of a smile on Dexter's face. "Not yet we haven't," the lawman warned. "No man's ever been this close to Hood's hide-out and lived to tell it. But Hood's had it put around that the place is thick with traps."

Edge reached out to brush aside some of the branches and grunted with satisfaction when he saw a way through. He turned in the saddle to look at the other two. "Couldn't get a stage through here. Must be a wider entrance someplace." He pointed a long, dark-colored finger. "Head along the foot of the bluff. If I flush him out, blast him."

"Take care," Dexter urged.

"It's how I got to live this long," Edge answered and steered his horse between the branches.

Breen and Dexter exchanged a glance and then heeled their mounts in the direction Edge had indicated. At the bottom of the slope, the lone rider who had followed the trio from the Mission, waited a further minute before clucking encouragement to his horse. The animal moved forward and was held at a steady distance from the sheriff and the rancher.

Edge halted his horse at the canyon end of the tunnel and dismounted, sliding the Winchester from the boot. He leaned against the cool rock and raked his eyes over the cabin with its corral of horses at the side and the stolen animal moving listlessly, dragging the reins, in front. Then his eyes settled on the open doorway. After half a minute, he saw a movement in the shadows. A moment later, the short figure of Hood emerged, his bald head sheened with sweat in the strong sunlight. A bundle formed by a filthy blanket with a length of rope securing the four comers, was slung over his shoulder. Within the confining walls of the narrow canyon, the sound of the Winchester's action was magnified to the volume of distant pistol cracks. It immobilized Hood.