Seven Out of Hell (8 page)

“We can all see,” Rhett put in, leering. “It’s sticking out like a sore thumb.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Forrest responded, and guffawed as he headed for the door of the house next door.

Down the street the women watched in silence as the Union troopers in Rebel grey entered the houses and closed the doors. Then the old man came out of the church.

“Do you think we fooled them, Mrs. Proctor?” he asked nervously.

The grim-faced red-head drew in a deep breath and expelled it as a sigh. “We’ve done our best, reverend,” she replied. “But I’ll feel a whole lot safer when Terry’s Raiders get here.”

*****

“You, you and you!” Shin said as he re-entered the car and stabbed a well-manicured finger at Alvin, Beth and Edge.

“What?” the boy asked nervously.

“Mr. Mao wishes to dissuade pursuit,” the Chinese replied. “So we take three hostages from each car. All hostages die if we followed.”

An old lady with silver hair and a kindly face gasped. “Surely you cannot be so cruel?” she accused.

Mr. Shin smiled. “We no cruel. No suffering. Kill quick.”

The shotgun swung up and both barrels belched smoke. Many passengers covered their ears against the roar of the explosion which was almost painful within the confines of the car. The old lady no longer had a kind face. She was thrown back against her seat, then toppled forward on to the floor, the gaping, blood-spurting holes in her flesh tinged black by the powder of the short-range shot.

“She feel no pain,” Mr. Shin announced, still smiling. In the sudden silence, he cocked his head on one side, listening. A series of shotgun blasts rippled down the length of the halted train and he nodded. “Picture worth a thousand words,” he said to the horrified passengers. “Now everyone have no doubt we mean business.”

He barked a command in Chinese and the two guards moved away from their positions, one aiming his shotgun at Alvin and Beth, the other covering Edge.

“You come now!” Shin commanded.

Alvin and Beth looked over their shoulders towards Edge. The half-breed got slowly to his feet and ambled along the aisle, stepping over the dead man and glancing down at the mutilated face of the old lady. Her hair was no longer silver as it floated in a wide pool of her own blood.

“The money fell their way,” he muttered. “Head they win.”

The second guard made a threatening motion with his shotgun and Alvin scrambled to his feet, urging the woman to rise beside him.

The hostages were hustled out on to the car’s platform and then down on to the grassy bank of the stream. A dozen prisoners - nine men and three women - were already there, herded into a frightened group. Other members of the gang had been spread throughout the train for there were now a score of robed Chinese surrounding the group, staring at the hostages from the deep shadows cast by their coolie hats. Four of them had the sacks of loot slung over their shoulders. The remainder, with the exception of Mad, cradled shotguns. The leader had his hands clasped under the veil of his sleeves. Shin conferred with him and Mao rapped out an order.

Edge glanced around at his fellow prisoners and saw the near paralyzing fear lurking in eyes that still mirrored the bloody slaughter they had witnessed.

“Mr. Mao say form two lines,” Shin instructed. “We march to camp.”

The hostages shuffled into the formation required. Edge was at the end of the line, next to a trembling, middle-aged drummer whose face was sheened with sweat dried by the chill mountain air. Alvin and Beth were in front of him.

Shin nodded in smiling approval and suddenly pointed at the two men heading the line. “You. Face each other. Hold hands.”

The two did as ordered and Mao approached them, inclined his head and turned his back to them.

“You carry Mr. Mao across water,” Shin ordered and the two mea crouched. Mao sat upon their clasped hands and was lifted clear of the ground. The smooth-faced gang leader rattled out a rapid stream of Chinese and Shin pumped his head in acknowledgment. “We go now. Mr. Mao say, you drop him you regret day mothers tell fathers okay. Okay?”

The two men nodded emphatically and as Shin smiled in approval, they moved forward, splashing ankle deep into the icy coldness of the rushing stream. Flanked by the guards, the line of hostages followed. The passengers left on the train stared from the windows with wide-eyed concern as the prisoners and their captives waded through the sparkling water, the men at the front being forced to raise their burden higher and higher as the level of the water rose almost to waist level at the mid-way point.

The quaking fear of most of the hostages was supplemented by shivering cold as they climbed up on to the opposite bank.

Mao rattled out a further order and Shin smiled at the two men heading the line. “Mr. Mao thanks you.”

They lowered their burden with sighs of relief, flexing their aching muscles. Mao whispered to Shin, who looked along the line, nodded, then strode towards the end. He halted beside Alvin and Beth. His smiling eyes lingered on the woman’s cleavage.

“Mr. Mao asks that the lady walk beside him.”

Beth’s sensuous features showed nothing of what she thought about the request. But anger broke through Alvin’s fear and his complexion darkened to a purple hue. He tightened his grip on the woman’s hand.

“No!” he rasped, and his eyes pleaded with her. “Beth?”

She managed to force a smile for him. “If it’ll keep us alive, dear,’ she said softly.

Alvin hesitated, fear fighting fury behind his young face. Suddenly every shotgun was pointed at him.

“Mr. Mao no like to be kept waiting,” Shin urged.

Tension stretched like an invisible band around the group, threatening to snap with an explosion of sudden death. Edge’s words were like an escape valve.

“She figures she can handle him.”

Alvin read the implication behind the remark and spun around, seeking to vent his frustration on a man apparently as helpless as himself. But as his blazing eyes became locked on Edge’s ice cold stare he saw an enormous latent power and became hypnotized into immobility. Beth jerked free of his grip and stepped out of the line.

“I’ll keep the guy company,” she said to Shin, the tone and her expression revealing the well-learned lessons of her former profession.

“That good,” Shin replied, motioning with his empty shotgun.

Her deportment was also a carefully calculated ploy and despite the danger of their situation, few of the male hostages could quell a stab of desire as they watched the woman’s swaying hips and thrusting breasts. When she halted alongside Mao, she smiled beguilingly at him and he bowed slightly from the waist.

The line moved forward again, angling away from the stream and the railroad, towards a cleft in the side of the ravine. And they had not gone many yards before Mao unfolded his arms and laid a proprietary hand on Beth’s vibrant rump, the yellow fingers splaying before forming into a lustful claw.

Alvin snarled, his head bobbing to and fro as he peered ahead along the line of marching prisoners.

“You just got to admit it, Alvin,” Edge muttered to the boy. “Mao can’t lose any way it falls. He won it with the head. Now he’s got the tail.”

Chapter Five

T
HE
troopers used only two of the houses offered them, and neither of these for sleeping. Rhett, Bell and Douglas joined Hedges; and Seward and Scott followed Forrest into the house next door. They were little more than cabins, single storied with a sparsely furnished sitting room and a bedroom and kitchen each. In common with their outward appearance, they were neatly kept and extremely clean, but loose hinges, warped boards and sagging shelves witnessed the long absence of men to attend to such chores.

“What the hell’s happening?” Bell wanted to know as the Captain assigned his section of the troop to keep watch from the windows.

Hedges peered out through a cracked pane at the street. “You know the facts of life, trooper?” he hissed.

“Aw, come on, Captain,” Bell answered. “You let me out with those dames and I’ll show you.”

“So how come there’s that many women in this town and no kids around?”

Douglas was guarding the kitchen window at the rear. “Hey, I never thought of that!” he exclaimed.

Hedges grinned mirthlessly out at the empty street as he heard the church door slam shut. Then a bolt was shot home. “That’s because when you men got screwing on your minds, you can’t think.”

Rhett was in the bedroom. His nervousness could be heard in his voice. “And if they really trusted us, they’d be no reason to keep the children hidden?”

“Smart,” Hedges complimented with heavy sarcasm. “And if you could count as well you’d know that one of our horses and one of the women have gone.”

“Man!” Bell breathed.

“I figure more than one,” Hedges responded in low tones.

“Why, Captain?” Rhett called anxiously from the bedroom. “I can’t figure any of this. Georgia’s Rebel land. You reckon those women realized we’re Union?”

“I ain’t doing anymore figuring until I see who the missing woman brings back with her,” Hedges answered. “Now cut out the yakking. We’re supposed to be sleeping.”

Bell swallowed hard, his eyes swiveling up and down the street narrowing against the glare of sunlight, coming wide to peer into the deep shadows thrown by buildings. “Suddenly I ain’t tired,” he whispered to himself.

For an hour nothing moved in the tiny town and the sole noise came from the stream in its ceaseless rush to tumble down to the foot of the rise. Then the seven troopers heard a sound invade the silence from far off: and as it grew steadily in volume they were able to pin down the direction. It was coming from the north-west. And moments later, just before it came to an abrupt end, they identified it. A group of horsemen riding at the gallop.

In the last house but one on the street, Frank Forrest bared his crooked, tobacco-stained teeth in an evil grin. “Figure to creep up on us, Billy,” he said softly.

Seward nodded and checked the action of his Spencer. “How many you reckon, Frank?”

“Sure ain’t no regiment,” the sergeant answered. “Don’t figure they’ll give us much trouble.”

Forrest was at one of the front windows of the house, Seward at the other. Scott crouched in the bedroom. Each man had been fighting drowsiness in the heat and silence of the waiting: but now they were alert, keyed up for action - even exhilarated by the prospect of renewed killing.

A similar pulse of excited anticipation throbbed in the hearts of the eleven men advancing up the slope on the town side of the stream, from where their horses were held by the woman who summoned them. Their ages spanned a broad spectrum, from very young to past sixty, their builds from short and rotund to tall and emaciated and their garb from disheveled Confederate uniforms to ill-used denim. But despite the obvious differences between them, there was a certain uniformity about the men which could be identified in the set of their grizzled faces and the haunted, deep-set eyes. For here could be seen the look of the hunted, cowering behind the thin veneer of triumph as the fugitive sensed a much sought reversal.

And as the men drew nearer their objective, the desire for revenge showed most vividly in the dark, red-veined eyes of their leader, Bill Terry. For it was in him that the seeds of bitterness had been sewn deepest. He was a short, compactly built man of forty-one who had served his apprenticeship in the art of cruelty as slave master on a Virginia cotton plantation before becoming a bank robber. Then had come the Civil War and he had elected to evade regular army service in the Confederate cause and chosen to fight a guerilla campaign. The band of stage robbers, rapists, con men and murderers who followed him took his orders not because of his self-appointment to the rank of captain, but because he proved himself to be the meanest and toughest man in the group, particularly in using a saber captured from a Union officer.

It had been a good war for him, until his raiders hit the Union camp at Murfreesboro in the summer of sixty-two and abducted some women. A troop of Union cavalry had given chase and of the raiders, Terry was the sole survivor, making good his escape after burning an officer’s lady at the stake.

Since then, his war had turned sour and he could no longer wage a hit-and-run campaign against the North with the support of the Richmond administration. For word of his atrocity had been communicated to the Confederate capital and both the army and civil authorities had issued wanted posters on him. Thus, he was forced to adopt the tactics of his pre-war days as a criminal - stealing, running and hiding in company with the human dregs who comprised his newly formed raiders.