"I think you understand this, Edge?" she said breathlessly, stressing that she was calling him by his surname again.
"Ain't hard, Mrs. Rochford."
"So you know what is required of you. As a hired man, you have to do as I tell you and I am telling you to get out from under those blankets and—"
"Like I just told you, lady, it ain't hard," the half-breed cut in, needing to consciously force something akin to a natural tone into his voice as her nakedness stirred his sexuality.
"Laughing time is over, mister! I need a man and since you're the only—"
Despite all else that was happening, Edge heard when Rochford ceased snoring. When he was midway through drawling:
"If that's the case, best you cover yourself up and go back to bed. On account of I've seen women got bigger nipples than you've got tits. And as for that beaver, I figure a mouse—"
"You bastard!" the woman screamed, and slammed her arms down to her sides so that the nightgown floated gently in at either side to envelop her again. But before it did, and while the half-breed had switched his narrow-eyed gaze to the rear of the wagon, Helen Rochford's arms moved again. And she rose up on her knees as she leaned forward.
"Helen!" Geoffrey Rochford yelled, horror etched deeply into his face and injecting shrillness into his voice as he started down the steps that reached from the rear of the wagon to the ground.
Edge had glimpsed, on the periphery of his vision while he looked toward the wagon, the sudden moves of the woman. Then realized she was reaching for the Colt in the holster of the gunbelt draped over the saddlehorn. But was too late to prevent her getting a double-handed grip on the butt. Had time only to whirl toward her on his rump, letting go of the blankets he had been about to slide beneath again. His hands streaking toward hers and closing over them as she thumbed back the hammer and pushed the forefingers of both hands through the trigger-guard.
"No, Helen, no!" her husband screamed.
"Die, you bastard!" the woman rasped.
Edge could not tear the revolver out of her grasp. Could only, by brute strength allied with the determination to survive, wrench her hands and arms and upper body to the side—this against the woman's enraged determination to kill him which seemed to imbue her with a power out of proportion to her slight physique.
The gun cracked and the woman gasped as she stared at it: like she was shocked by the fact of it firing. Then she coughed against the acrid attack of the black powder smoke in her throat. A moment later screamed as she stared fixedly across the bizarrely equipped night camp, and ceased to fight the half-breed's tacit demand for the Colt.
And now Edge looked in the same direction she did as he plucked the revolver easily out of her hands. Was in time to see Geoffrey Rochford, blood oozing from his forehead and down his broken nose, pitch backwards off the steps and sprawl out, arms to the sides and legs splayed, on the ground at the rear of the wagon.
"Dear God!" Helen Rochford moaned, covering her face with her hands as she struggled to her feet. "What have I done? Geoffrey! Have I killed my husband?"
"If you haven't, lady," Edge said evenly as he came erect and pushed the Colt into the waistband of his pants at his belly, "no one can say you didn't have a pretty good shot at it."
Chapter Five
Edge heard running footfalls and labored breathing behind him as he went around the fire, between the table and the harpsichord. But did not glance toward the woman until he reached the gunshot man and dropped to his haunches beside Geoffrey Rochford. For the sounds made by the barefoot woman in the flimsy nightgown were receding. So she meant him no harm. And then she began to wail her horror at the harm she had already done, just as the half-breed cupped his hands to his mouth to form a bullhorn and yell:
"Your husband ain't dead, lady!"
He guessed that she heard his voice against the shrill, animalistic sound venting from her own lips but perhaps was not able to understand the words he said. Or expected the worst and so purposely misheard him. Whichever, she kept on running—out on to the trail and southward along it. Still visible as a wraithlike form in the billowing garment for some time after the frenetic sounds of her panicked retreat had faded from earshot.
But, eventually, as Edge prodded the embers of the fire into bright flames and set a skillet of water to boiling, he glanced for a final time after the Englishwoman and failed to glimpse her. Then devoted his entire attention to what had to be done for the injured man. Which seemed little enough at first: for Rochford, although he was unconscious, looked to Edge to have suffered only a minor flesh wound. The bullet from the handgun having inscribed a long wound across his forehead, shallow where it began above the right eye and where it ended above the left: but perhaps bone deep above the bridge of the nose. So it was more likely the fall to the ground, maybe after he tripped on the hem of his long nightshirt, that had plunged the man into unconsciousness, rather than the effect of the bullet that had done little more than graze him—with fast decaying velocity after traveling so many feet across the camp.
But the half-breed, inwardly cursing behind his impassive facade this fresh trouble, treated Geoffrey Rochford where he lay—just in case moving the senseless man might create a dangerous side effect to his condition. A treatment that was not complex, carried out in the bright light of two kerosene lamps placed on the steps at the rear of the wagon. First Edge bathed the three-inch length of the gory wound with boiled water that had cooled a little and then he dried it, spread some antiseptic salve on it and lay a strip of clean, white fabric over it: the salve taken from a medicine box he found in the wardrobe aboard the wagon while the temporary dressing and the pieces of rag he had used to clean and dry the wound were torn from one of Helen Rochford's cotton chemises he took from the chest of drawers.
After this was done, he doused both the lamps, went to the fire, stirred new flames from its embers and sat on the one chair that was still at the table. The bottle of brandy, almost half full, was on the table and he took a drink from its neck. Then poured a generous measure into one of the two crystal balloons that flanked the bottle. Made a cigarette and lit it before he sipped at the brandy. Gazed pensively southward along the trail but could not see very far on this moonless night: saw not a sign of the woman in white. Then, the cigarette not a quarter smoked and the brandy sipped at only twice, he shifted his attention toward Rochford as the clock chimed once to mark three thirty and the injured man called:
"Helen?"
He sounded fully conscious and miserably aware of what had happened to him. But he continued to be sprawled in the same attitude with his arms spread wide and his legs splayed, like he was staked out.
"You're stuck with me, feller," the half-breed answered as he rose from the chair, carrying the brandy balloon.
"Edge?" Rochford's head seemed as transfixed as his body and limbs. "She didn't kill you? My God, what an awful mess. You didn't shoot. . .?"
"I figure she thinks she killed you, feller," the half-breed answered as he came to a halt beside the spread-eagled man and realized the bullet had done more than merely crease Rochford's flesh. "Took off into the night. You can't see, can you?"
"That's what makes it so awful," the Englishman answered in a dull tone as his eyes continued to remain unmoving at the centers of their sockets, staring sightlessly up at the cloud blanketed darkness of the sky from between unblinking lids. "I thought at first the dressing was over my eyes but it isn't, is it?"
"No."
"It didn't touch my eyes, did it? The bullet?"
"No. Didn't do anything but take out a strip of your skin, feller. On the outside."
"It could merely be a temporary condition. I must hope that is so, anyway. But meantime, Helen is my prime concern, sir. She was almost ... she had on ... she was insufficiently attired for roaming about at night. And that apart, this country is not the ideal place for a woman alone to—"
"Sure, we'll go look for her," Edge cut in after he had
taken the contents of the brandy balloon at a single swallow and as he hung the cigarette back at the side of his mouth. "Just as soon as you feel able to travel."
"Which is now, sir," the Englishman answered at once and, well practiced in the matter of taking care to seem to do things with dignity when he was drunk, he got stiffly to his feet despite being blind, groggy and in no little pain. But then had to request: "I fear it will be necessary for me to ride in the rear, Mr. Edge? And I do not. . ."
He extended both arms and shuffled around in a half turn. Then brought one hand back to his face, to hold the loose dressing in place over the bullet wound.
"No sweat, feller," the half-breed told him, took hold of the wrist of his extended arm and turned the man, to lead him to the rear of the wagon and place his free hand on a strut of the steps. "Can you make it inside while I fix the team?"
"Thank you, yes. And thank you so much for what you have already done for me. While I was even less able to fend for myself."
"No sweat."
Edge remained at the rear of the wagon, close enough to reach out and support Geoffrey Rochford if he slipped. But then, when the Englishman was safely aboard, he moved away to break camp. First buckled on his gunbelt and replaced the revolver in the holster. Next gathered up his gear and stowed it on the footboard of the wagon—kept out of his bedroll just a sheepskin coat which he donned against the chill of the night after he had put the two mules and the horse into the traces and doused the fire. Finally rummaged quickly through the contents of the chest of drawers to ensure the Rochfords kept nothing valuable in among the clothing, then stowed the steps and raised the tailgate of the wagon. Said as he completed this:
"There's nothing I'm leaving here that's needed to help locate your wife, feller."
"I ask nothing else but that you find Helen for me, sir," the man in the bed answered morosely. "And, of course, in view of the additional inconvenience you have been put to on our behalf, there will be an adjustment in the remuneration you will receive."
Edge moved along the side of the wagon and climbed up on to the seat. Spoke a quiet word of command to the animals and flicked the reins as he released the brake lever. Then, back on the trail, he held the reins between his knees while he slid the Colt from the holster, extracted the expended shell case and pushed a fresh round into the chamber. Said over his shoulder as he thrust the revolver back into the holster:
"Long as she heads down the trail to Tucson, it's no inconvenience to me."
He thought the injured man had failed to hear him, but it was unimportant and so he did not repeat himself. And perhaps as long as a half minute had elapsed when the Englishman replied:
"My wife attempted to kill you."
"She made a lousy job of it."
"You have not agreed so readily to help me find her so that you may pay her back for that?"
Edge spat off the side of the wagon and rasped: "I don't give a shit about your wife, feller. Which means as far as I'm concerned, she ain't worth taking the time to repay. By smacking her in the mouth, paddling her butt or squeezing a trigger. I'm going to Tucson and if I happen to spot your wife on the way, I'll let you know. It ain't much, but I guess the way things are for you, it's the kindest—"
"There is something you should know about me that will explain the situation between Helen and I, Mr. Edge. And explain, too, why she was driven to act in such a wanton manner tonight."
"I just got through telling you it doesn't matter to me what—"
"I am impotent, Mr. Edge. Married to a woman with perhaps more than the average needs in that direction. Able to do no more than give Helen a poor substitute for the fulfillment she so desperately desires. A beautiful woman, as you must agree, Mr. Edge? Sexually attractive to every normal man who sees her. And I mean normal in the sense of being capable of offering her fulfillment, sir.
"Until now—until tonight—she has always been able to resist temptation, Mr. Edge. It has been sheer hell for her and for me. You have seen how we drink too much. Heard how she treats me like dirt when the mood takes her. But a man such as I must indulge a woman such as she, sir. She is beautiful and I am proud to be married to her—to have her for my own even though I can never possess her the way other men possess their women."
"None of this is my business, feller," the half-breed said when Rochford paused, perhaps to compose himself so that he could stem the tears that were threatening to spill from his sightless eyes.
"I want you to know. So that you will not think so harshly of Helen. Will you continue to listen to me, please?"
From far to the west came the call of a coyote, too subdued by distance to disturb the trio of animals in the traces of the wagon so that the constantly rhythmic sounds of the easy-moving rig continued without interruption.
"I've always been a better listener than a talker, feller," Edge said.
"Have you ever been married or had a woman—"
"I was married, but that ain't the reason I'm a better listener than a—"
"If you can make jokes about the woman you loved then you never loved her as much as—"
"It's your wife you want to talk about!" the half-breed cut in, and his voice was as cold as the glint in the narrowed eyes that gazed momentarily back through the years.
But then Edge forced his mind to the present. And was in time to hear the man in the back of the wagon vent a gasp of fear. Before Rochford said, as the half-breed took up his raking survey of the night-draped Gila Mountains:
"I'm sorry. I was wrong about you, sir. It was recently you lost your wife. It was because of the memory of her you responded to the advances of my wife the way you did?"
"It was a long time ago, feller, and my wife has nothing to do with anything about you or your wife. You want the truth, I could have screwed your wife without needing to think about it. If you hadn't been around. Which was before I knew the way you were and while she was showing me what was available. You know what I mean? I told you I listened better than I talked."
"You're a liar, Mr. Edge."
"Your opinion, feller."
"Not as regards your ability to listen as opposed to talking," Geoffrey Rochford countered, a little impatiently. "As well as you know. You are not the kind of man who could have possessed any woman who approached you in the manner that Helen did. I am afraid that Helen has been married to a man without balls—if you understand my meaning—for so long that she must metaphorically castrate every man with whom she comes into contact.
"It has happened time and time again in the past. Every man she has come into contact with has been made to look small—or else she will have nothing to do with him. From hotel bellboy up to my friends, some of whom are the cream of English aristocracy, sir. In such instances, she is humored or my money serves to smooth ruffled pride. But, dear God, when I heard what was happening at the encampment tonight, I thought that perhaps I had driven Helen insane. That such a beautiful and desirable woman should seek to dominate a man into taking her—and a man such as you. When her common sense should have warned her that you, being the kind of man you are, would be antagonized by such a—"
Rochford abruptly curtailed what he was saying, like somebody who had been killing time with talk until he heard something he was waiting for. Or maybe . . .
"You in trouble, feller?" Edge asked, hopeful of the opposite—that the helpless Englishman fate had forced into his care had begun to get his sight back.
But it was not to be. "All you appear to be doing, sir, is driving this wagon along the trail at the same speed as before," Rochford announced suspiciously.
"We didn't leave too much behind, feller," Edge answered. "And the animals didn't have a full night at—"
"I am not criticizing you on that score, sir. It is still night?"
"Getting close to four in the morning. Guessing that from the time by the clock when we left—"
"No moon still?"
"Right."
"So you ar
e making no attempt to track Helen?"
Edge held the reins between his knees again, this time while his hands were busy with taking out the makings and rolling a cigarette.
"I told you, feller. Tucson is where I'm headed. And if she's on the trail still, there's a good chance we'll catch up with her."
"But what if she wandered off the trail?"
"Barefoot and the night as dark as it is, I figure it would take the best Indian tracker moving at a snail's pace to pick up her sign and follow it."
Rochford took some time to think this over and once more the coyote in the far distance of the west vented a howl, the call hardly audible above the noise of the moving wagon and the animals which hauled it.
"Perhaps I should ride on the seat with you?"
"You should?"
"Perhaps she may go into hiding when she hears our approach. If she sees you alone, she will fear the worst. But if I am in view . . .?"
"Could you make it out here, sitting up, for very long, feller?"
"I don't know, Mr. Edge. No, you are probably right."
"Try if you want. But if you keel over and fall off the wagon, I'm not going to doctor you again."
"God, what a mess!"
"If it helps any, I think she'll have enough sense to stay close to the trail. After she got over the jolt of what she thought she'd done to you. And I figure, too, that when she sees the wagon she'll risk me blasting her to hell instead of facing up to much longer running around these mountains with next to nothing on."
The silence from behind the half-breed was considerably longer than before and he kept an open mind about the reason for this as he smoked his cigarette and maintained his watch over the unspectacular hills on all sides.
Then Geoffrey Rochford said dully: "You know, I think you're right. She'll be sober by now and she has a lot of sense when she's sober."
"So you can quit worrying about her, feller. And let go about yourself, uh? No better place to keel over than in bed when there's nowhere to fall."
EDGE: The Blind Side Page 4
