“Attention!” Captain Alfaro ordered and the firing squad dragged their feet together, straightened their shoulders.
“Captain!” Luis screamed as tears began to overflow his eyes. “I have money. Much money. I can buy my life.”
“You are poor and honest,” Alfaro flung at the condemned man. “Such people never have money.”
Luis shook his head in desperation. “I am honest,” he screamed. “Poor only because the money is not on me. But I can take you to it, captain. Ten thousand, American.”
The captain allowed a burst of laughter to rip from his lips and several of the soldiers shared his humor. On the other side of the plaza the watching townspeople did not join in, the amusement. They looked on in sadness, neither knowing nor caring whether Luis was guilty of the crime for which he was being punished. But they felt a sympathy for the old man because he was one of them, a man at the mercy of a corrupt army, commanded in Hoyos by a brutal captain whose whim might just as easily have caused him to select anyone of them in place of Luis. They, too, each of them knew, would have made wild claims in an effort to delay the crack of the rifles. So whether it be amusement or sympathy that was turned against Luis Aviles, it was based upon a common disbelief of the words he spoke.
In the whole plaza, only one man examined Luis with an expression which might indicate serious consideration of his words. That man was Edge, who until this point regarded the ten thousand dollars as a figment of a deranged imagination: a fantastic idea dreamed up by Luis to help him face his intolerable life as the poorest man among the destitute citizens of San Murias. But now Luis was pleading for his life, knew that even if he were believed, he would have to fulfill the promise in order to avert his fate.
Captain Alfaro, still smiling his amusement, drew deeply against the cigar and raised his hand. Six rifles were raised in unison, leveled at the man tied to the pole, with its ridiculous adornment of the sombrero.
“The ring!” Luis screamed through his tears. “My ring will lead you to my money,”
The fusillade came almost as a single sound which lashed across the plaza like a whip crack. Luis’ head fell forward and his eyes grew enormously wide as he realized he could see the toes of his boots, that his poncho showed no blood-soaked holes and that he felt no pain. He raised his head in time to see the six man firing squad pitch forward, was filled with a tremendous surge of joy as he saw it was their blood which spouted to soak into the dust of the plaza, With roars of panic the watching soldiers scattered, struggling to bring up their rifles, some loosing off wild shots at unseen targets as others fell and rolled, twisted and writhed as bullets ripped into vulnerable flesh, As one of the men guarding Edge collapsed into a heap with a bullet in his heart the other fought to recover from his shock, wasted too much time in the attempt. Edge moved with the speed of a desperate animal, the skill of a man who has learned his trade under the unrelenting eye of death itself.
His left arm snaked out and encircled the throat of the captain and he dragged him backwards as he turned to direct a kick at the guard, his boot crashing into a kneecap. The guard screamed and dropped his rifle as he went down, screamed again as Edge’s right hand came clear of the back of his neck and flashed in an arc, the point of the razor slashing through the flesh of his throat, As the guard died Edge put his lips close to Captain Alfaro’s ear.
“No gun,” he whispered as the captain fumbled with his buttoned holster flap, trying to get at his pistol. Struggling violently, the captain did not curtail his attempt, gasped as the razor sliced a great flap of flesh from the back of his hand. “I said no gun,” Edge reminded. “Adios, amigo. I figure you’ll get a warm reception where you’re goin.”
He drew back his right hand and then drove it forward. Alfaro gave a gentle sigh as the razor stabbed neatly between his ribs and punctured a lung. Edge released his grip on the man’s throat, let him fall and looked up to see who his benefactors were, as the shooting was halted abruptly by a sharp word of command. Edge saw Luis Aviles still tied to the pole, his body convulsed by the laughter of relief; the uniformed bodies of the soldiers spread across the plaza in many attitudes of sudden death; the frightened faces of the unharmed civilians as they got to their feet. And above all this, seeming to grow out of the hard adobe on top of the wall, the figures of a score of rifle-toting men, outlined starkly against the rapidly brightening sky. One of the men was almost comically shorter than the rest, and his weapon was not a rifle.
“I thought I killed you, gringo,” he called from his perch just to the right of the gate.
“I was lucky, I guess,” Edge replied, glancing down at a rifle dropped by one of the dead guards, estimating his chances.
