EDGE: Eve of Evil (Edge series Book 28)

by George G. Gilman

  ‘My help in troubled times, sir.’

  ‘Comes from her keepin’ all the tools of her old trade,’ Smith growled sourly.

  ‘It is God’s will,’ the priest countered, unperturbed by the sheepmen’s attitude to his relationship with the former whore. ‘One of woman’s functions is to provide comfort when man’s road is long and tiring.’

  ‘Amen,’ the whore from Virginia City chanted. ‘My mission is to raise up the spirits of my Father when they flag.’

  ‘And something else, I figure,’ Edge muttered, pushing the Remington into his holster. ‘Seeing as how you’ve got a crutch for him to lean on.’

  Chapter Six

  THE superstitious belief of the heavily fleshed Doug Smith in the ability of fortune for good or ill to play a ruling part in his life had as its foundations the religious teachings of years in the distant past. And it was he alone who objected to the Irish priest and the ex-whore joining the ride away from the line shack after the blizzard had finally blown itself out.

  Edge did not hear the sheepman voice his criticisms of the strange pair of evangelists. Nor see or hear the responses it drew from the couple and from Craig and Bassett. Because he was alone for several minutes in the stable out back of the shack, eating frugally from the sparse supplies in his saddlebags, before Owen Craig joined him.

  ‘You as short of grub as me and my buddies are, son?’ the wrinkled-faced old man asked earnestly.

  ‘I got nothing to spare, feller.’

  Craig blew into his cupped hands and shook his head. ‘Ain’t askin’ for nothin’. Tryin’ to tell you that unless you got plenty, you’d better head for Fallon same as we all are.’

  Edge fit a ready rolled cigarette. ‘That God’s will?’ he asked wryly.

  The sheepman grimaced. ‘Message from that screwball that reckons he’s got a direct telegraph line to the Almighty, is all. But it ain’t got nothin’ to do with the man upstairs unless these blizzards are some kind of sign.’

  The half-breed peered out from the open doorway of the stable at the snow-covered mountain landscape under a brightening sky. ‘Covers sign is all, feller.’

  ‘What? Oh, yeah. But snow blocks trails, too. And O’Keefe reckons there ain’t no way we’re gonna get through Jason’s Pass to reach Bredyville. Not until after the spring thaw, that is. He and his woman come through this mornin’ and nearly didn’t make it on account of lasts night’s storm. Won’t nobody make it after this new snow.’

  ‘No other way west, feller?’

  ‘Jason’s Pass is the only easy way when it’s high summer, son.’

  ‘And Fallon’s the only other place where I can get supplies around here?’

  ‘Unless you count the Bar-M ranch.’ Craig grimaced again, the fines cutting deeper into skin hanging loosely on his facial bones.

  ‘What’s east along the trail that runs south of the range?’

  ‘Fallon, is all. Heads east until the valley that bounds the property on that side. Then swings north, up through an old ghost town and north east to Fallon. A long way round. Quickest route for us is to back-track.’ He licked his lips. ‘That’s all of us, if you decide to come along.’

  ‘No sweat, feller.’

  ‘Doug ain’t too happy about O’Keefe and the woman. Used to have religion at one time. It don’t bother you, son? The way them two talk and act?’

  Snow had crunched under booted feet, the sound not loud enough to mask Craig’s words from the ears of the newcomers. The priest and the one-time prostitute looked in through the stable doorway.

  ‘I trust you have no objections, sir?’ O’Keefe asked.

  The woman smiled beguilingly at Edge, in the inviting, professional manner of her former trade.

  ‘Just as long as we get a couple of things straight at the outset, feller,’ the half-breed replied.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  He nodded toward Angel North. ‘She should know I got nothing against whores. Never have and don’t intend to start now.’

  If the woman was hurt by the barbed words, she showed no sign of it. She simply nodded, as calmly as did O’Keefe.

  ‘The second, sir?’

  ‘Applies to you. Don’t ever point your hat at me.’

  They left a few minutes later, under an afternoon sky which was still grey with the weight of unfallen snow. But high to the west the cloud had a slick sheen where the sun was struggling to break through. They rode for a long time in silence. Then the priest and his woman began to talk. In low tones, but they did not seem deliberately to be guarding their conversation from the ears of Edge and the three sheepmen. Occasionally, a snatch of what they were saying could be heard and invariably it was in a religious vein. O’Keefe appeared to be continuing with his task of instructing his eager convert in the ways of her newly chosen life.

  These overheard phrases served to strengthen Doug Smith’s resentment which, if the direction of his malevolent glances was a true indication of his feelings, was now aimed entirely at the unorthodox priest.

  ‘Bullshit!’ the fat sheepman blurted at length, unable to keep his rancor under control any longer.

  He and Bassett were the back markers. O’Keefe and the woman rode ahead of them and Edge and Craig were in the lead.

  The priest allowed the spitefully spoken interruption to curtail his flow and turned serenely to look levelly and without anger at Smith. ‘I do not deny a man the right to hold opinions different from my own, sir,’ he responded evenly. ‘I simply consider it my mission to try to change them.’

  Smith’s several chins and heavy cheeks were quivering with indignation. ‘You did a fine friggin’ job with Denby and Reece.’

  O’Keefe remained unruffled. ‘It would seem I did you and your friends a great favor.’

  The sheepman shook his head. ‘I ain’t denyin’ that, mister! But don’t you try to pretend you did it in the Lord’s name! You tricked ’em with the whore’s body and then shot ’em down like dogs. You tryin’ to make out that was God’s will is what galls me!’

  ‘How else can you explain it, sir? We were lost in the blizzard, without food or adequate clothing. And we stumbled on an ample supply of provisions and shelter. Daughter would have gladly paid for these comforts with her body. But her days of degradation are over now. I demand that she be given respect and treated with tenderness. The two men you speak of had no such intention. I’m sure your friends will agree?’

  He looked expectantly at Bassett, Craig, then Edge.

  Craig allowed: ‘Al Reece never did to my knowledge treat anybody or anythin’ with respect.’

  He spat into the snow.

  The priest nodded his satisfaction with the meager agreement of these words. ‘And I say again, it was God’s will.’

  Smith spat, more forcefully than Craig.

  ‘Somethin’ else, Doug,’ Bassett put in thoughtfully.

  ‘What?’ the man riding at his side snapped.

  ‘It all ties in with what Mr. Edge was sayin’ early on this mornin’. It being Christmas Eve and all.’

  Abruptly he had the attention of all except Edge, who was almost totally immersed in his habitual exercise of checking the surrounding terrain for signs of danger. More so than usual now, as he got an inkling of what was on Bassett’s mind: and endeavored to bar the idea from his own.

  ‘About Maria Lassiter expectin’ a kid by a guy named Joseph. Us bein’ sheepmen. Even Starr.’

  ‘Sir?’ the priest asked, puzzled and becoming excited.

  ‘What’s that all got to do with it, Lonny?’ Craig wanted to know. And in his voice and face there was a trace of nervousness.

  ‘Look what’s happened?’ Bassett invited. ‘East wasn’t the way we figured to head, was it? Yet we are. And a woman called Angel is along with us—told us there was no chance we could go the way we wanted.’

  ‘Please!’ O’Keefe urged, as Smith stifled a scornful protest and became as nervously pensive as Craig and Bassett. ‘You are going too fast. I know
none of this. Please tell me exactly what has happened. In detail.’

  ‘What do you think, son?’ the man beside the half-breed asked as Bassett began to satisfy O’Keefe’s eager curiosity. ‘You started us on this kick. Are we lettin’ our imaginations run away with us or what?’

  ‘I don’t know, feller,’ Edge replied and tried again to use humor as a bar to the intrusion of unwanted thoughts.

  ‘But I figure we shouldn’t believe anything Maria Lassiter says.’

  ‘How’s that, son?’

  ‘Won’t be the first time a knocked up spinster claims she’s going to have a virgin birth.’

  Craig’s reaction to the cynicism was a snort. Then he half turned his head to listen to Bassett’s amplification of the events of the morning and the answers he gave to O’Keefe’s avidly interested questions.

  When this was finished with, a new silence settled upon the group of riders moving slowly but inexorably through the deep snow. But there was no acrimony insinuated in the atmosphere now. For the subject of their thoughts was too absorbing to admit side issues.

  One woman and five men rode in close proximity to each other: yet were detached and alone on every level up from the merely physical. Five men because Edge, despite his attempts to contemplate only the practical reasons for reaching Fallon, was unable to remain unmoved by the possible consequences of the strange string of coincidences.

  For several minutes he tried another line of defense against the persistent images of unreality, which sought entry to his mind: calling upon the experiences of the past to use self-anger at his inability to maintain his thought processes in the here and now of the real world. But this was as much a failure as cynicism had been.

  And he was forced to acknowledge that the happenings of the day in which he had played a part could presage some world shattering event in the near future. And, as soon as he surrendered to this possibility, he experienced an easing of tension deep within himself.

  The heavy frown which had previously given his cold pinched face the rigid look of a wood carving was abruptly transformed into an easy smile.

  ‘Crazy,’ he said softly.

  ‘Ain’t it, though,’ Craig rasped.

  But the half-breed had not been referring to the events which held the old man and the others in deep thought. Instead, to his own reaction to them. Or rather, his conscious efforts not to react to them.

  To himself he repeated the word with which Doug Smith had re-opened the subject: Bullshit! And grinned, the light in his narrowed, glinting eyes colder than the air pressing against his skin and the snow being crunched beneath the hooves of the gelding. Relieved to have beaten whatever power had tried to force unwanted ideas into his mind. For by allowing them entrance he was able to examine them calmly and dismiss them rationally.

  Because his struggle to ignore them had given the ideas false importance and thus had he fallen into the dangerous trap of worrying about the unknown. And a vivid example of how dangerous this was had been his contemplation of death while he was a prisoner at the line shack.

  By the very nature of the kind of man he had become, Edge had to be a realist in order to survive. For when death threatened, as it so often did, it was futile and defeatist to merely reflect upon it. And yet that was what he had done, his normal objectivity clouded by abstract thought triggered by... bullshit.

  Of the others riding through the fresh layer of snow spread upon the earlier fall, the short and rotund priest was the first to emerge from the period of reflection.

  ‘Hallelujah!’ he proclaimed. The hour of the second coming will soon be upon us! Let us give thanks to God and commune with him!’

  Edge had dug the makings from a shirt pocket and was rolling a cigarette. ‘You want us to look the other way while you and the whore do that, feller?’ he asked.

  ‘The act which enables procreation is a wondrous thing, unbeliever!’ O’Keefe countered, unperturbed by the half-breed’s cynicism. ‘In worshipping the body of one’s partner one is also worshipping the creator of such a wondrous thing. But there are many ways of praising the Almighty!’

  ‘When the spirit’s willing but the flesh is weak,’ Edge muttered, lighting the cigarette and peering north toward the timber clad rise where he had first seen the trio of sheepmen.

  ‘Let us pray, brothers!’ O’Keefe invited. ‘We who have been chosen to witness the return of the Lord Jesus Christ to this sinful world.’

  ‘Yes, let us pray!’ Angel North agreed with shrill eagerness. ‘Yes, yes!’

  The priest with the gun inside his hat launched into a long and rambling prayer, his voice strong as he intoned the spontaneous words of praise and gratitude toward the empty sky and across the white barrenness of the country on all sides.

  The sheepmen imitated the actions of O’Keefe and the woman by clasping their hands in front of their chests and screwing their eyes tight closed. Their horses continued to carry them north, the animals taking their lead from the gelding of the open-eyed, impassive faced half-breed.

  For perhaps thirty minutes the priest’s stentorian voice rang out, never faltering as his theme switched from this Christmas to the first one, from this to the sins of the world at large and of the present company in particular, then back again.

  Edge, concerned only with the stamina of his horse, his diminished supplies, the possibility of another blizzard and the dangers of a run-in with another group of Bar-M hands, kept constant vigil on the convoluted whiteness that rolled away from him in every direction.

  ‘Amen!’ the priest concluded.

  The woman echoed this and the sheepmen chorused it a moment later. Then a new verbal silence settled over the slow moving group, far less heavy than that which had preceded O’Keefe’s orison. It lasted for a long time, until the priest broke it as they started up the lower slope of the tree covered hill.

  ‘There is no way that we can travel faster, I suppose?’

  ‘Not unless you can arrange for the snow to thaw, feller,’ Edge answered.

  O’Keefe nodded. ‘It was a foolish thing to ask. We have been shown too many signs. The Almighty will take account of the difficulties of our journey.’

  When the crest of the rise was reached the mood of the three sheepmen altered. They were close to the clearing where their animals were slaughtered and their eyes became dull as their mouths formed into expressions of remembered grief and anger. In the clearing, fresh snow had drawn a pure white blanket over the carcasses, concealing the ugly crusts of congealed blood and the sightlessly staring eyes of the wantonly killed sheep.

  ‘What happened here?’ O’Keefe asked, suddenly nervous as he looked from the bristled faces of Craig, Bassett and Smith to the strangely humped layer of snow. Then: ‘Ah! This is where the killing of your animals took place. As brother Bassett told me. But be comforted. Soon the Son of God will be amongst us again. And this time, surely, the evil that is in all men will be expunged for all time.’

  ‘Amen!’ Angel North proclaimed.

  But the memory of the brutal wrong done to them continued to claim the sheepmen’s thoughts until the group moved out of the timber at the foot of the northern slope. Here, with no foliage to interrupt the fall, the new snow had completely covered the bodies of Van Dorn, Raven and Starr: and to fill in the tracks left by the wanderings of the five Bar-M horses.

  No mention was made of the shoot out which had occurred on the fringe of the timber and, as the group swung toward the valley which marked the eastern extent of Lassiter range, the silence remained unbroken except by the crunch of snow beneath hooves. But no words were necessary. For, as the scene of former evil receded behind them, the sheepmen again became infected by religious hope for a future of heaven-sent good.

  Behind them and to the right, the slick sheen of the sun trying vainly to punch a hole through the clouds sank lower down the western dome of the sky. And the brightness of its light grew inexorably dimmer. The approach of evening plunged the temperature of the mountain ai
r to lower degrees of coldness. Frost began to sprinkle white crystals on the snow, on clothing, on the coats of the horses and even the bristles of men’s faces. The air they breathed, unmoved by even the slightest stir of wind, seemed to form films of ice against the membranes of their lungs.

  ‘We ain’t gonna make Fallon tonight, son,’ Craig growled. ‘Not unless it gets warmer. We’ll end up frozen stiff as old corpses.’

  ‘The Almighty will provide!’ O’Keefe assured.

  His voice, like that of Craig’s, was given a tone of hoarseness by the bitterly cold flow of air through his throat. But whereas the sheepman spoke with the tough conviction of undeniable truth, the priest’s words contained little force beyond hope.

  ‘Just need for Him to hold off more snow for a while,’ Edge said as the group reached the ridge overlooking the valley with the ghost town at its head.

  The priest gazed down at the distant buildings huddled darkly against the snow and emanated fervent confidence again. ‘And He has provided, brothers! A place for weary travelers to rest and take shelter from the elements! How say you, Daughter?’

  ‘It’s another sign, Father,’ the whore from Virginia City responded with a radiant smile. ‘Let’s go fast so we can give our thanks!’

  ‘What’s wrong, son?’ Craig asked anxiously when Edge made no move to heel his horse down the slope.

  ‘Yeah, Edge!’ Bassett urged. ‘Let’s get over there before we all freeze to our saddles!’

  ‘Just thinking it could be real warm in that town,’ the half-breed answered.

  ‘How’s that, son?’

  All of them were peering hard at Edge as he directed the stare from his slitted eyes toward the huddle of buildings.

  ‘On account of there ain’t no smoke without fire, feller.’

  Eyes shifted their puzzled gazes away from Edge to look at the town. For stretched seconds they failed to spot any movement. Then the woman caught her breath and the others stiffened and leaned forward. For a blur of darkness which was not static captured their attention. And they recognized it as a drifting wisp of black wood smoke.