‘What?’
‘Try to live other folks’ lives for them?’
‘Yeah,’ the half-breed agreed, then added cryptically, ‘It ain’t been good for me, living some other feller’s life.’
Wilder gave him a long, quizzical look. But, from the set of the hawk-like, heavy bristled profile of the man, knew the soft spoken comment was not to be expanded. ‘Cole Lassiter bein’ that way about her, it figured there’d be a blowup when he heard what happened to Maria. That she’d quit school and finished up in Denver, pregnant by some two-bit railroad worker.
‘It seemed like he went off his head.’ Wilder snapped his fingers. ‘Changed, just like that. Gave hell to all us that worked for him. Lot worse for Craig and his two partners. I tried to talk sense into him, on account of he’d always listened to me. But not any more. Decided he couldn’t trust me. Anythin’ lousy he wanted done, he’d talk straight to the men. The kind that’d do anythin’ for a bonus. Like Harding. And Van Dorn. And Ben Buel.
‘I knew Bar-M hands had been stirrin’ up trouble for the sheepmen. But I didn’t find out about the slaughter of the animals until it was done.’ Wilder paused, a grimace of revulsion cutting deep lines into his mournful face. ‘That was bad enough. But what he told Buel and Wes Young to do was a whole lot worse.’
The man paused again, as if he had to take time to summon up the courage to speak the words.
‘Kill Joe Redeker,’ Edge supplied.
Wilder gasped. ‘How…?’ Then he nodded. ‘You knowin’ that means you were in that ghost town once before.’
‘This morning, feller. And all last night. The girl was ready to blow her brains out. Redeker involved me so I had to blast Buel. He took care of Young himself.’
There was another long interlude in the conversation, during which it was obvious that the quartet riding behind were listening to the talk.
The foreman sighed. ‘Don’t guess a guy like you would, but you needn’t lose no sleep about killin’ Ben Buel. Pity Wesley Young had to die. He wasn’t a bad guy.’
‘It is worthy to use evil in the cause of good,’ O’Keefe intoned.
‘Obliged,’ Edge answered sardonically.
Wilder ignored the exchange as he veered his mount to the right, following the hidden trail down into a curving canyon. ‘Cole Lassiter was like a cat on hot bricks all today. Worryin’ about why Buel and Young hadn’t brought Maria to him, I found out later. When he couldn’t take it no longer, he had all of us that weren’t out line ridin’ and fence fixin’ mount up and leave the ranch. He didn’t give a frig about the three men we found dead out on the range. Just told us about the killin’ of the sheep. But when we found Buel and Young it hit him real hard. Hard enough to knock him off his horse and get sick the way you saw him.
‘It was startin’ in to snow again then. Like you saw at first, he was still givin’ orders. Wanted us to ride every which way lookin’ for Maria and the guy with her. But even if he was strong as before, weren’t no man he’d have got to go out in that blizzard. So I decided we should hole up in the livery stable for the rest of the day and night.
‘He hated us all for that. Me the most, but I knew he was sick. And now I’m sure he ain’t gonna get well again, I reckon I owe him this much I’m doin’ for him.’
‘Brother!’ the priest said loudly, his voice echoing off the rock walls of the canyon, ‘even if the man were dead, the woman must be brought to the stable!’
‘Amen,’ came the inevitable response from Angel North.
‘Sure hope the ornery old bastard lives,’ Wilder murmured,
The legs of the six horses continued to sink as deeply as ever into the snow. But the flakes were packed less firmly than before so that the going was easier. The sound of crunching snow was counterpointed by the steady drip of water from the canyon rims.
‘I ain’t never known a thaw this early in winter,’ Wilder rasped.
‘Do not question it, sir,’ O’Keefe urged.
Beyond the canyon the trail dipped down a slope and then swung almost due east along a shallow valley. At the far end of it, perhaps a mile distant, a light shone brightly on a much higher level than the valley bottom.
‘It was the wrong stable, Father!’ Angel North gasped. ‘The star in the east!’
The priest crossed himself, which was the first genuinely religious gesture he had made.
Wilder turned his head to direct a scowl back over his shoulder. ‘That’s the lamp that lights the sign of the Fallon Hotel, lady,’ he growled.
‘And first time around there wasn’t any room at the inn,’ Edge reminded flatly.
A kind of reverent silence was clamped over the group as the riders progressed slowly towards the light. And despite his earlier, almost involuntary decision to dismiss the seemingly divine overtones to so many recent incidents, the half-breed discovered he was again strangely disturbed to find himself a component part of this Christmas Eve in Wyoming.
A sidelong glance at C. B. Wilder showed that the mournful face was set in a frown of unease.
The valley along which they were riding dead-ended at another which ran from north to south and the town of Fallon was perched high on the eastern slope of the latter. It was a recently built town of brick and timber buildings flanking several broad streets laid out in a grid pattern. The light at the mid-town section continued to gleam warmly. Until it abruptly took on a quality of cold, false hope: when the riders from the ghost town saw the river which barred their access to Fallon.
‘Sonofabitch!’ Wilder exploded. ‘Will you look at that, John! And you, Willie! The Wind River ain’t never like that until spring thaw!’
He had to shout to be heard above the roar of the tor-renting, white lashed water that raced in a fury of frenetic movement before and below them.
By some strange trick of the Rocky Mountain terrain, they had been unable to hear the thunderous noise of the flooding river until they reached the end of the east-west valley. And looked down into the deeper depression that ran from north to south.
‘It has to be twice as high as normal, C.B.,’ the fat cook of the Bar-M yelled.
‘And runnin’ ten times as fast!’ the youthful French added.
Wilder shook his head in disbelief. ‘At Christmastime, yet! There ain’t no way we’re gonna cross it like that.’
‘Nonsense!’ O’Keefe bellowed. ‘The Almighty will provide.’
He heeled his horse forward and Angel North hurried to ride at his side, the two of them driving their mounts dangerously fast down the steep slope toward a darkened building less than twenty feet from the new level of the river.
‘How’s it usually crossed?’ Edge asked after a narrow-eyed survey of the swollen river, the town on the opposite slope and the towering, jagged, snow cloaked ridge above the town.
‘You can ford it in summer!’ Wilder shouted in reply. ‘By Doniphan’s Ferry when it’s too deep for that!’
‘That’s the Doniphan house!’ Willie French yelled, pointing down at the unlit building in front of which O’Keefe and Angel North were dismounting. ‘Old Ralph won’t cross tonight!’
‘Have faith, Willie!’ John Groves urged, and heeled his horse down the slope.
The youngster eyed the rushing water anxiously, then sighed and took off in the wake of the fat man.
‘Thought that crazy priest reckoned the thaw was supposed to help us?’ Wilder growled. ‘What’s he gonna do now? Fix it for the water to open up so we can just ride over?’
‘That was by the feller they found in the bulrushes,’ Edge answered, not loud enough for his reply to be heard above the thunder of the river as he urged his gelding down the slope. ‘O’Keefe figures we’re getting close to the walking on the water time.’
Wilder yelled at his horse to catch up with the half-breed and they reached the front of Ralph Doniphan’s house as two splashes of light fell from windows. And they joined the still mounted Groves and French in watching as the priest continued to thud his
fists against the door. Angel North stood serenely at his side.
The noise of the river was much louder down close to its bank. Spray from the furious torrent was flung high and drenched across the newcomers. A long, flat-bottomed boat was leaning against the timber side of the house, turned upside down to keep earlier snow and the later water out of it.
A new wedge of light sprang out into the night as the door was wrenched open from inside.
‘What in friggm’ tarnation is all the friggin’ noise about?’ a man roared as his tall, broad frame became a dark silhouette against the lamplight behind him.
A shriller but less powerful voice—that of a woman—was indistinct from within the house.
‘Sir, I and my companions must cross this river!’ O’Keefe shouted. ‘Kindly make ready your boat!’
Ralph Doniphan was attired for bed in an all-engulfing white nightgown. Just for a moment it seemed not to hang loosely over his towering frame. Instead appeared to bulge with every line of his body as rage caused him to pull himself erect.
‘Do friggin’ what?’ he thundered. And again there was a moment of hallucination when the volume and power of his voice seemed to drive the rushing river into frightened silence.
‘Ralph!’ The woman’s voice was a mere scratch on the actual silence pervading the house.
‘Make ready your boat, sir!’ O’Keefe replied, necessarily loud but lacking any rancor in face of Doniphan’s rage. He raised a hand as if to doff his low-crowned hat. ‘Or allow I and my companions to take it!’
He jerked the revolver free of its clamps and aimed it at the chest of the big man. Calm as the woman now, he put the hat back on his head.
‘Have pity!’ Angel North pleaded. ‘You will feel nothin’! But it will cause Father great hurt to have to kill you, sir!’
‘Brothers, take the boat to the water!’ O’Keefe called.
‘It’s my livin’!’ Doniphan roared, suddenly bewildered and afraid. ‘That boat’s my livin’!’
‘We’re with you, Father!’ John Groves asserted, and jabbed young French in the ribs before he swung to the ground.
Wilder and Edge remained astride their horses as French dismounted and ran to catch up with the fat cook. The foreman appeared to be totally immobilized by the scene in front of him. Edge deliberately unfastened the buttons of his coat.
‘Emily!’ Doniphan roared, abruptly emerging from the same kind of incredulous analgesia which continued to grip Wilder.
O’Keefe had turned away from the door to check that Groves and French were doing what he had asked.
Doniphan swung a hand behind him, then thrust it forward. It was fisted around the butt of a long-barreled revolver.
‘You...’ he started.
‘Father!’ Angel North shrieked.
The ferryman had a momentary advantage, but the watching half-breed was certain he would lose it. For it was a situation with which Edge was very familiar. Two men with guns. One of them with no regard for human life. The other who cherished his own existence and could not, perhaps only for the briefest of moments, end that of another without considering the terrible consequences.
The priest had merely to snap his head around. The Frontier Colt was still on target. He squeezed the trigger.
The big Ralph Doniphan fell back inside the house and a woman screamed.
‘Oh, my God!’ C. B. Wilder cried, and slammed his heels against the flanks of his mount to send it snorting toward the house.
The scream of the woman changed tone into a wail—like that of an animal in excruciating pain.
‘It had to be done!’ Angel North shouted to Groves and French who had skidded to a sudden halt at the sound of the shot.
The two Bar-M hands stared at each other, their bewildered minds struggling to reconcile violent death with their supposedly divine mission.
The fat cook with the pock-marked face died first. The young red-head a moment later. Their clothing and flesh shredded and sprayed more forcefully across the snow than the spume from the raging river. Both of them blasted from close range by charges from a double-barreled shotgun.
It was fired from the window by which they had halted, the first shot shattering the pane so that flying shards of glass added to the mutilation of the men.
‘The Doniphan boy!’ C. B. Wilder shrieked as he leapt from the saddle and stumbled crazily in the snow close to where O’Keefe and Angel North stood. He fell down hard, sprawling full length.
The priest and his woman wrenched their staring eyes away from the blood-spattered corpses of Groves and French, frightened by the intrusion of Wilder. Then they saw who he was and became calm.
Until another revolver shot exploded and the Bar-M foreman was inert in the wedge of light pointing out from the open doorway. The bullet had drilled through the crown of his hat and through his skull into his brain.
The priest had to bring his eyes and his gun to bear on the target now. This time it was the mechanics of guns which acted in his favor. His was already cocked after killing Ralph Doniphan. The ferryman’s wife had to use time in thumbing back the hammer of her weapon.
‘Evil—!’ was her dying word as O’Keefe’s Colt exploded another killing shot.
Edge heard the voice and the report. The new death occurred inside the house, out of his sight. And he saw only the killer and his woman on the periphery of his vision: his eyes focused upon the square of light at the shattered window beyond them. The narrow slits of blue glinted as dangerously as the shards of glass still clinging in the frame.
The head and shoulders of a man showed at the window, dark and featureless against the light from behind. The obscene length of a double-barreled shotgun protruded from the shadowy figure. Light from the lamp and from the moon showed in stark detail the twin hammers, cocked. The trigger guard. The white finger curled close to the point of tipping the hammers.
Edge was the target.
He drew, cocked, leveled and fired the Remington. The bullet hissed through the river spray and exploded crimson droplets from the flesh at the centre of the man’s forehead. His head snapped back from the neck. His hands released the shotgun which bounced off the window frame and dropped to the snow outside.
The third member of the Doniphan family to die on this eve of evil dropped out of sight.
As he holstered the revolver, Edge noticed for the first time the brightly colored paper and sparkling tinsel decorations which trimmed the walls of the lighted rooms. And he thought fleetingly of the farmstead in Iowa at Christmastime. When Jamie and he had spent hours in the making and hanging of similar festive bunting.
‘Have no regret, sir!’ O’Keefe urged as he replaced his hat after fixing the gun inside—and misunderstood the reason for the frown on the half-breed’s lean, bristled face. ‘We are soldiers in the army of the Lord. Come the dawn of the new day and all our actions will be seen to be justified.’
Both he and Angel North upturned their faces to the moon and star lit sky. And the depth of their genuine belief in O’Keefe’s words was plain to see.
Edge shifted his unblinking gaze away from them toward the swollen, rushing river. ‘Soldiering I’m good at,’ he drawled cheerlessly as his eyes became baleful. ‘But a sailor I got no wish to be—especially on this Christmastide.’
Chapter Nine
ONCE, during the war, he had briefly captained a stolen Confederate ironclad down the James River in Virginia. The waters had been calm. More recently he had travelled as a passenger aboard a Missouri sternwheeler thrashing northward from Omaha. The surface of that river had been smooth enough to freeze over in the south Dakotas.
Inevitably, violence had played a bloody part on both trips. This he had accepted without attaching any blame to being water-borne. It was a crossing of San Francisco Bay in a tiny rowboat which had developed his aversion to being away from dry land.
But this new experience was worse than that. Out in California he had been able to burden the responsibility for his fate on the
skilful shoulders of a reluctant boatman who knew the deep, salt waters of the bay. While he had withdrawn into a private world of insulating thought—been almost oblivious to the dangers of drowning until the crossing was over and he viewed it in retrospect.
This night it was left to him to handle the long, broad beamed, flat-bottomed mackinaw—after the others had helped to push and drag it down to the rushing water and launched it out into the violent currents. For, after leaping aboard, they huddled together on a centre seat and clung to the gunwales at either side—trusting in God, the strength of their grip and, perhaps, the ability of the half-breed to get them to the far bank.
Cursing through clenched teeth, his eyes cracked to the merest slivers of icy blue against the stinging spume, Edge could control nothing except the rudder—his feet braced against lockers and both hands fisted around the tiller.
But even had the stunted, rotund priest and the full-bodied woman taken up the oars, they would probably have had little effect on the progress of the mackinaw. For the rushing, resentful, viciously malevolent river claimed and treated the boat as another piece of bankside debris, tossing and pitching it like a chunk of driftwood.
For what seemed an eternity of stretched seconds, the tall, lean half-breed surrendered to the encroachment of the ice of fear that spread from the pit of his stomach to engulf his entire body. But then he summoned up the experiences of a lifetime to conquer the terror. His lifetime and what was left of it was his sole possession and now he saw the ugliness of the flooding river as just one more evil challenge from the ruling fate which sought to rob him of everything.
The initial thrust of the bows into the water was almost immediately negated by the powerful sweep of the rushing water. Inky blackness thudded against the hull and became a million drops of icy whiteness spraying over the side, lashing the three figures and merging again as a bubbled swill around their feet.
The bows came about and would have smashed into the grassy bank from which the mackinaw had been launched had not Edge held the rudder hard over. Instead, it was rushed downriver at the dictate of the flood.
EDGE: Eve of Evil (Edge series Book 28) Page 10
