‘It doesn’t have to be over my dead body, feller,’ the half-breed growled.
‘Please don’t!’ Starr begged, and stood erect in his stirrups to lengthen his reach for the sun and emphasize his surrender. ‘We was just doin’ what the boss told us when we killed them sheep of yours! There weren’t nothin’ else we could do! Look, I’m givin’ up!’
Tears spilled from his small, real eyes. Saliva ran out of a corner of his mouth and made white bubbles in his bristles.
‘Yeah, you’re givin’ up, Starr! The friggin’ ghost!’
They shot him then. Three men in sheepskin coats with the collars turned up to brush the undersides of their hat brims. Standing knee deep in snow under the trees. With Winchesters to their shoulders.
Just for an instant the sun glinting on the barrels of the rifles was dimmed by muzzle flashes. Starr’s scream sounded simultaneously with the single report of the volley. Edge looked toward him and saw the riflemen had taken no chances over the longer range. They had aimed for the larger target of the victim’s body, and scored hits in the chest. The impact of the bullets against his flesh forced him to sit down hard in the saddle. Then tipped him backwards over the rump of his horse. The animal snorted and pawed at the snow. Then became as calm as the two riderless stallions nearby.
Edge had eased up into a sitting position and he pushed the hammer of his rifle gently to the rest as he swung his hooded eyes away from the new corpse to look again at the men under the trees.
‘Merry Christmas to you, son,’ one of the ageing men said wearily as they all lowered their rifles.
‘Though it don’t look like there’s much goodwill about this season,’ the man on his left muttered.
The third one cleared his throat as he watched the half-breed get to his feet. ‘Not with three dead men out here and the carcasses of more than a hundred head of our sheep piled in the timber.’
He looked about to spill a different brand of tears than those Starr had shed.
‘It’s Christmas?’ Edge asked.
All three were briefly surprised by his ignorance.
‘Tomorrow it will be, son. You must have been away from civilization a long time, I reckon?’
The half-breed nodded absently. Then asked: ‘And you’re sheepmen?’
‘We was until the bastards killed our animals,’ the one close to tears supplied, not interested in anything outside of his own misery.
But the other two were intrigued by Edge’s pensive frown as he ploughed through the snow to his gelding and thrust the rifle back into its boot.
‘You got somethin’ on your mind goes deeper than these killin’s, son?’
The half-breed rasped the back of a hand over the bristles on his jaw. ‘Shepherds,’ he mused, indicating the three men with a hand. Which he then formed into a fist with the thumb extended to point toward the bullet-riddled body humped in the snow behind him. ‘A Starr in the east.’
He lost the interest of another of the sheepmen who joined his embittered partner in morose contemplation of the closer corpses of Van Dorn and Raven.
‘You don’t look like no religious nut, son,’ the oldest and most garrulous man growled.
‘No,’ Edge murmured absently. ‘And I guess Joe screwed Maria pregnant.’
‘Hell, son, you talkin’ about the second comin’?’
The half-breed pursed his lips and allowed a brief sigh to escape. Then formed his mouthline into a sardonic smile. ‘I wouldn’t know, feller. They never told me how many times it took them.’
Chapter Three
THE flock of sheep, still clad in their unshed winter coats, had been herded into a rope corral deep in the timber. Then slaughtered with a barrage of repeater rifle fire. The carnage had been carried out several hours previously for the carcasses sprawled and piled on the thin carpet of snow under the trees were stiff with rigor mortis. The intense cold had suspended decomposition of the flesh but the stench of dried blood was still strong in the air.
The horses of the sheepmen which were tethered to a low branch had grown used to the tainted atmosphere. Edge’s gelding continued to make nervous sounds and movements until the open air abattoir and its malodorous atmosphere were well behind the departing men.
The half-breed had been invited to ride with the sheepmen back at the scene of human slaughter.
‘Name’s Owen Craig,’ the oldest of the trio had introduced. He was pushing sixty with the wrinkled and flaccid skin to show it. But his stance was still upright and his movements easy and fluid. His hair was a mixture of jet black and silver grey. His eyes were blue, bright and alert.
‘That there’s Doug Smith.’ This was the man most affected by the loss of the sheep. Perhaps five years Craig’s junior. And a bald head shorter than the other’s six feet height. His flesh had a padding of fat that tended to conceal the wrinkles of the skin. His cheeks bulged beneath his small, bloodshot, dark brown eyes. And his chin took several steps down towards his thick neck.
‘I’m Lonny Bassett,’ the third one volunteered. ‘And I reckon you ought to stick with us if you wanna get off Lassiter land alive.’
He was in the middle, age wise. And also came between the others in his height and build. In fact, he was medium in all things physically visible, except for a bushy grey moustache that looked disproportionately large for his florid face. He had brown eyes which seemed to show a permanent doleful expression. Like those of a docile animal—a sheep, perhaps.
‘Lonny ain’t sayin’ he don’t think you can take care of yourself, son,’ Craig hastened to add. ‘We was watchin’ you and these here animal killers. And I reckon you could’ve plugged all three without no help from us.’
‘Right!’ Bassett said quickly, pumping his head up and down to confirm his agreement. ‘And maybe we should say we’re sorry for buttin’ in on your play. But it was personal between us and them. After what they done to our animals, we just had to take care of the bastards ourselves.’
‘Hope you can understand that, son?’
Craig and Bassett were anxiously eager to hear the half-breed’s response. Smith was undergoing a gradual change of emotions from grief toward grim satisfaction that a wrong had been righted by resort to revenge.
‘No sweat,’ Edge told the men who were listening. ‘Just needed them to get out of my way.’
‘Outta everyone’s way now,’ Craig growled, eyeing the corpses with distaste. Then, to Edge: ‘Young and Buel, too? Or did you tell this bunch the truth about. . .’
‘The truth, feller.’ He led his gelding by the reins into the timber, where the snow was spread more thinly and the animal could muzzle through it to find and crop at sweet grass. ‘I didn’t take notice which was Buel’s horse.’
The sheepmen followed him, but not the two stallions. They seemed content to stay with their three stablemates from the Bar-M.
‘You know what happened to ’em, son?’
Edge was rolling his first cigarette of the day. He lit it, watched eagerly by the older men. ‘I shot Buel. Feller named Redeker killed Young.’
‘Hot damn, is Lassiter gonna be mad!’ Doug Smith exclaimed in high excitement.
Bassett grinned, showing twin rows of perfectly shaped but darkly stained teeth beneath the big moustache.
‘What you got against Cole Lassiter, son?’ Craig asked, suddenly burdened by the anxiety he thought all of them should be sharing. ‘If it ain’t buttin’ in on personal business, course,’ he added quickly.
The good humor of Smith and Bassett was abruptly curtailed by their partner’s tone. Smith cast nervous glances about him with his bloodshot eyes, and his fleshy cheeks quivered. ‘You think we maybe oughta be ridin’ outta here, Owie?’ he suggested. ‘We been too lucky too long.’ Bassett pumped his head in agreement. Craig vented a non-committal grunt, his deeply interested attention still directed toward Edge. ‘Unless you got one mighty important reason for ridin’ west from here, son, you better not. Best you get off Lassiter range and far away as
you can as quick as you can.’
‘South’s best anyway,’ Bassett encouraged. ‘On account of there’s a regular trail skirting the Bar-M property. That’ll take you west faster than across this stinkin’ range.’ The half-breed looked around at the blue-tinged, eagerly expectant faces of the ageing men. And in back of these expressions saw subtle traces of the fear which lurked just beneath the surface exterior.
‘Christmas is a bad time for a man to be alone, son,’ Craig said sadly, his tone implying a conviction that Edge would refuse. ‘Let’s go.’
‘You’ll go with us?’ Bassett blurted. The half-breed dropped his cigarette stub into the snow and its fire hissed out. ‘You fellers figure you’ve been lucky, Maybe it’s catching.’
His decision drew broad smiles from all three. ‘We’ll start right now,’ Craig growled, his excitement almost out of control. ‘Okay, son?’
‘Christmas,’ Edge replied with a thin-lipped grin.
‘How’s that, son?’ Craig spoke the confusion of all three.
The half-breed lightened his smile. ‘Present time.’ The sheepmen’s good humored peace of mind was short-lived and their happiness diminished quickly as they led Edge up the slope through the trees. And, in the small clearing where the sheep had been corralled and slaughtered, each of them hurried to unhitch and mount his horse. They pointedly avoided looking again at the bloodied and stiffened carcasses. And it was obvious that their minds were elsewhere for a long time after the scene of wanton carnage was far behind them: for the set of their lips and look in their eyes provided tacit evidence of bitter hatred directed toward distant enemies, living and dead.
The timber did not finish at the crest of the rise. It rolled over the top and spread down the southern side of the hill, thickening at first then thinning out. The four horses found the going safe and easy, steered over the snow trampled by the flock of sheep and the cowhands who had driven them on their final journey.
It took an hour to ride clear of the wood and in that time a bank of cloud had built up on the northern horizon, dark hued and ominous with the threat of a new blizzard. To the south the white mantled terrain offered easy riding but promised scant shelter for when the fresh snow fell. For it took the form of rolling hills with shallow inclines and convenient routes around the higher and steeper rises. The sign which marked the route taken by the animals and men toward the timber-covered hill came in from the south west.
Craig struck out due south across previously untrodden snow. All three sheepmen had difficulty in lighting ready-filled briar pipes as the first breath of a cutting wind curled over the hill behind them to snatch at the match flames. A stronger wind far to the north nudged the cloud bank into motion. Above the quartet of riders, slightly ahead and to the left, the sun shone as brightly and ineffectively as before: innocently unaware of the dirty grey veil which would soon be drawn across its face.
Edge rode beside Craig, and Smith and Bassett trailed close behind.
‘You didn’t tell us your name, son?’
The dead sheep and the dead men were temporarily forgotten. But there had been no resumption of good humor. The impending storm, the prospect of the long ride ahead and other factors of which the half-breed had no knowledge weighed heavy on the minds of his companions. And Edge himself discovered he felt uncharacteristically ill at ease without being able to understand why. Knew only that the sensation was not connected with any of the definable reasons which were disturbing the sheepmen.
‘Edge,’ he offered absently.
‘Just that, son? No first name?’
‘Not any more.’
‘Good enough, son.’
‘Has been for a long time.’
The elder man looked at the younger with the wisdom of his greater age and then shook his head, perhaps acknowledging that he would never be wise enough to decipher the mystery riding beside him. He drew hard against his pipe, decided he did not like the taste and knocked the glowing ashes out on the snow.
‘You never did answer that other question, Mr. Edge?’
‘Which one was that?’
‘One I had no business askin’, maybe. About your quarrel with Cole Lassiter and the men that work for him?’
‘Buel and Young got hexed into pulling guns on me, feller,’ the half-breed supplied flatly. ‘Habit of mine to kill folks who do that.’
Another habit had command of him now and his narrowed eyes were sweeping the white country for signs of danger, their focus too long to take note of the men riding with him. But he sensed their shocked expressions as they stared at him—convinced by his tone that he had told the truth. But the reason for his callous response to the threat of an aimed gun was too painfully personal to talk about. And it was his secret that, as a young boy, he had pointed a gun at his brother. In play instead of threat. But the motive had made no difference when he squeezed the trigger of the old Sharps rifle—and a bullet that should not have been in the breech had made Jamie a cripple until the day of his agonizing death.
‘Van Dorn and the others,’ Edge went on in the same tone. ‘Figured they were getting ready to pull guns on me.’
His explanation and the manner in which he gave it—his expression as dispassionate as his voice—caused the trio of sheepmen to experience a new degree of icy chill that had nothing to do with the strengthening wind and the sudden murkiness of the light as the sun was obscured by cloud.
There was a long period of verbal silence then, while all four men tightened the lanyards of their hats, ensured their coat collars gave the maximum of protection, and looked carefully around to imprint the geography of the terrain on their minds—hopeful of retaining some memory of it when the blinding snow began to drive across their vision.
The clouds raced to blanket the entire blue dome of the sky. The wind at ground level eased to a light, bitterly cold breeze. But everyone knew this was just a lull before the full force of the blizzard hit them.
‘But you know his daughter, son?’ Craig posed at length,
‘Lassiter’s?’
‘Yeah. She’s the Maria you said about a while ago. The one that’s with child.’
Edge had been able to calm the strange disturbance in his mind while he attended to the more practical chore of memorizing the directions of prominent features on the landscape which soon would be lost to sight. But the sheepman’s mention of the girl’s name rekindled the feeling of unease. And with a grunt of irritation he allowed entry to his mind an explanation he had previously made an effort to bar.
Religion had never, at any high level of consciousness, played an important part in his life. He had been directly concerned with it only as a child when his parents, at irregular intervals, had given unorthodox scripture lessons to the young Josiah and Jamie. Irregular because the work of running the Iowa farm left little time for academic pursuits of any kind. And, for the most part during those formative years, the God-fearing parents had been content that their offspring would learn the virtues of practical Christianity from example.
During the violence of war and the brutal years which followed it, almost every experience of Edge’s life had seemed to contribute to a worldly denial of things spiritual.
Until now, as he admitted to himself that he was riding with these three ageing men for no other reason than a series of coincidences oddly linked by a parallel with the Nativity: that it was Christmas Eve, a girl with the Latin root name of Mary was expecting a child, her man was called Joseph, and Craig and his two partners were sheep herders.
‘I guess she’s to blame for all this trouble,’ Craig rasped as Edge gave a slight shake of his head, discounting the presence of a man named Starr from his analogy.
‘You can’t do that, Owie,’ Bassett chided. ‘That kid ain’t responsible for what her old man does.’
Craig sighed. ‘Yeah, you’re right. But ain’t no denyin’ it was her gettin’ knocked up and headin’ for home that drove Cole Lassiter crazy.’ His voice rose from its vague, pensive level.
‘That’s crazy mad, meanin’ he become an ornery sonofabitch, son. I ain’t sayin’ he’s gone off his rocker.’
‘It matter?’ Edge asked.
A shrug and then Craig hunched lower into his sheepskin coat as the wind gusted strong for a few moments. ‘Guess not. Cole Lassiter nor his men never liked us, course. Figures, them runnin’ beef and us tendin’ sheep. Be a long time yet before cattlemen face up to the fact that they gotta get along with folks like us, I reckon.
‘But there weren’t no real bad trouble between us until his daughter wrote Lassiter that letter from Denver. Him and his hands just used to cuss us whenever they saw us. And run off our animals whenever they strayed on to Bar-M range.’
‘Lost us a few the way they done it,’ Doug Smith snarled. ‘You gotta be a lot gentler with sheep than with beef.’
‘Sure,’ Craig agreed, then had to search his mind to pick up the thread of his interrupted story. ‘Well, then the letter come. Should have been real private, somethin’ like that. But what that letter said was spread around Fallon faster than a quarter horse could run from one end of Main Street to the other. Seemed like everyone down to the smallest kid in the schoolhouse knew Maria was comin’ home with a bastard in her womb and bringin’ the man that done it with her.
‘That was three weeks ago, son. Lonny found out about the letter when he went to town for supplies. They killed three of our animals the next day. Van Dorn and Raven. Cut their throats and dragged them behind their horses up to our shack. Told us the sheep had wandered on to Bar-M range, which I don’t doubt they had. Told us that if just one more of our animals stole Bar-M grass they’d slaughter the whole flock. Cole Lassiter’s orders. Didn’t say nothin’ about the letter, course.
‘Way I figured it, Lassiter had to unload his feelin’s someplace. Maria and her beau weren’t close enough so he hit out at us on account of we were handy.’
EDGE: Eve of Evil (Edge series Book 28) Page 4
