EDGE: Savage Dawn (Edge series Book 26)

by George G. Gilman

  She made a sound deep in her throat. To his expectant ears it had a note of rising anger and he forced himself not to look up. Until she said, ‘Yes, if that is what you want.’

  It was soft and toneless: totally lacking in emotion. When he raised his head to look into her face he saw that her expression matched the voice.

  ‘I guess I should say that it’s what you want that matters, Isabella.’ He heard the husky note in his own voice.

  ‘Did you say that to your first wife?’

  There was a burst of loud talk and an explosion of laughter in the cantina. The noise seemed to come from much further away.

  ‘I do my best to forget about the past, you know that,’ Edge told her.

  ‘But a man cannot forget what he is. And you are a man who always gets what he wants—whatever the consequences.’

  The elderly, gray-haired and stoop-shouldered Cirilo Banales had been the last to leave the packing station after the curtailed session of the cabildo. He had shuffled slowly across the plaza, trying to overhear what was being said by the couple under the live oak. Now he hovered in the doorway of his cramped and crowded general store: watching for signs which might reveal the subject and result of the conversation.

  Women never have been included in that,’ Edge told her. ‘And if I think about it, very little else is.’

  She nodded. Her sheened hair seemed to momentarily catch fire as it moved in the rays of the sun, slanting in under the branches of the oak as afternoon progressed.

  ‘We have already talked much. Before we reached the Mission of Santa Christobel. And in the time of peace, grief and loneliness when we completed our journey. You know I feel I owe you a great debt, Josiah Hedges. And I know that when you ask me to marry you then it is something you want very greatly. But the time is not right. First I must consider what my father would have done had he known San Parral was threatened by such a man as Ortiz Gonzalez.’

  She started to turn away.

  Edge said, ‘Obliged, Isabella.’

  ‘I do not think you will want to remain in this village after we are married. You have done much for the people here because you wanted me. I ask for nothing more. You have my answer.’

  She turned all the way then, and moved in her totally natural sensuous way across to the living accommodation section of the family blacksmith shop.

  Sad faced, Cirilo Banales backed into his store and closed the door, convinced, from the attitudes and lack of emotion displayed by Edge and the señorita, that marriage had not been the subject of their talk. Disheartened because the announcement of such a betrothal would have been a fine morale booster for the villagers after the arrival of the Americans and their prisoner.

  Edge watched Isabella until she had entered her home without a backward glance. Then started towards the cantina, discontented with the way he had handled the proposal and with reservations about the outcome. But attaching no blame to Isabella for the way he felt.

  The air of Melendez’s cantina was fetid with the old heat of morning and the new of afternoon, the smells of coffee, rye, mescal, tequila, pulque, tobacco smoke and the sweat of unwashed bodies. From the open rear door, hot air infiltrated even fouler stenches from the privy out back. It was a square room, forty by forty feet, with the bar simply lengths of unplaned lumber resting on kegs. The tall, handsome, supercilious Julio Melendez patrolled the narrow strip between the makeshift bar counter and a wall of shelving showing his wares and the dusty glasses in which he sold his stock in trade.

  Half a dozen tables, each ringed by six chairs, were crammed into the remainder of the floor space. Brass spittoons were placed beside every table. A half dozen adobe pillars supported the smoke-stained and fly-spotted ceiling. The sole decorations comprised a cracked mirror and a curling poster advertising a long-gone bullfight in Mexico City, hung on the wall at either end of the bar. Melendez’s Mescalero Apache wife and occasional whore for passing strangers swept the floor from time to time. But spiders were allowed to weave their tapestry on the ceiling and walls undisturbed.

  ‘Señor Edge!’ the thirty-year-old Melendez greeted with expansive hand gestures. ‘It is good, is it not, to have drinking companions in the heat of the afternoon?’

  The half-breed did not share the villagers’ dislike of Melendez, which was based on the Mexican’s ill-treatment of his Indian wife and suspicion of his credentials. The handsome man had arrived in San Parral a few weeks ahead of Edge and Isabella, claiming to be a cousin of Jose Lajous who had been killed by Isabella’s father in the gold mining country of Montana. There had been no way to disprove his story and he had been very persuasive in staking his claim to ownership of the cantina.

  To Edge, he was just a man who rented him a room, served him drinks and gave his food orders to the sullen Apache girl.

  ‘Good for your business, feller,’ the half-breed allowed.

  ‘Be happy to stand you a drink, Edge,’ Parker offered. ‘Proof, if any is needed, that there is no rancor about what happened to Bruce Wayne.’

  ‘Was a fair fight right enough,’ Red Tyree said, fast and slurred, nodding his head vigorously.

  All of them, seated around the table closest to the bar, looked a little bloated with liquor. They had not been in the cantina long, so either they had drunk a lot in a short time or it had been a long, dry spell for them. Each had a tequila bottle and a glass in front of him.

  ‘And got us a five part share in Wayne’s bounty money,’ Amos Hawkins drawled happily.

  The bell in the church tower began to sound again. In the slow, measured cadence of a funeral knell.

  ‘Hey, they buryin’ Wayne already?’ the pale-faced Jack Burton asked, surprised.

  ‘The dead get to smell worse than the living pretty soon in this heat,’ Edge supplied, weaving between tables to reach a closed door in the wall opposite the bar.

  ‘Couldn’t’ve dug a very deep hole,’ the overweight Gibbon said in a complaining tone.

  ‘There ain’t a doctor in town,’ Edge supplied. ‘If a man gets buried alive, less dirt on top of him, the better his chances.’

  The fat man gave the half-breed’s response a moment of morose consideration. Then grinned foolishly. ‘Hell, you’re kiddin’.’

  ‘Different way from you, Al,’ Hawkins countered, pushing a finger into Gibbon’s bulging belly. ‘Twins, at least, I reckon.’

  Gibbon joined in the general laughter at the joke against himself. Then he took a swig from the neck of his tequila bottle and his gray eyes expressed injured pride,

  ‘Edge!’ Parker called as the half-breed started through the doorway. ‘I’d like you to know my men and I aren’t totally without compassion.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Edge allowed indifferently.

  The handsome face above the disheveled city clothes showed irritation with the easy disinterest. Then the smile was back in place, looking as sincere as ever. ‘The woman, she was unimportant. Wayne was a member of our group. But not popular. He caused us more trouble than enough because of his desire to constantly prove his skill as a gunman.’

  ‘You don’t owe me a thing, feller,’ Edge said evenly. ‘Had my own reason to kill him.’

  He stepped across the threshold then, and closed the door behind him, sensing the dislike directed towards his back. Primarily by Parker. But the others seemed always to change their mood to fit the feeling of their leader.

  There was a short corridor, with two doors leading off at either side. On the right the doors gave on to the kitchen and the room Melendez shared with the Apache. On the left were the two rooms for rent, one of which Edge had occupied for three months.

  The woman came out of the kitchen, balancing a tray of five bowls of chili, as the half-breed pushed open the door to his room. She was not yet twenty and had the firm, slender body of a girl. But her dark eyes had seen much of which her broad mouth refused to speak and these experiences had aged and harrowed her face.

  ‘Señor,’ she whispered, as subservient
as always in the presence of a man, whether he had used her or not.

  Edge nodded absently and went into his room. It was tiny, cramped by its meager furnishings of a single wooden bed, a chair, a closet and the half-breed’s saddle and bedroll. But it was the cleanest part of the cantina—although not at the insistence of Edge. For some reason, perhaps because he had not availed himself of her services as a whore, the Apache woman was the most efficient hotel chambermaid Edge had ever encountered. As usual, while he had been drinking that morning, she had swept the floor and made up his bed. His decision made, he had asked for a bathtub of water and had bathed and shaved in preparation for asking his question of Isabella. The bathtub, soap and towels were gone now.

  He lifted his gear from the floor in a corner and left the room. The door to the cantina was still open and he could hear the bounty hunters enjoying the company of the Apache. Their talk and laughter had a good-natured ring.

  ‘Señors!’ Melendez yelled. ‘The girl is expert at many things besides the cooking of delicious food!’

  ‘Hey, you mean what I think you mean, Julio?’ Red Tyree asked as the abrupt silence in the cantina coincided with the final note of the funeral toll.

  Melendez grinned broadly, ignoring two flies which crawled across his sweaty face. ‘I ask only one dollar for her, señor. For I know you will wish to enjoy her pleasures many more than one time.’

  The Apache had distributed the chili and was moving back towards the kitchen. A fast burst of her native tongue from her husband caused her to halt and turn around to face the men at the table. Like a trained dog responding to its master.

  Gibbon continued to eat his chili with a greedy relish. Tyree and Hawkins surveyed the woman on display with keen interest. Burton grimaced.

  ‘Like mine with more meat on ’em,’ he growled, and resumed eating.

  Edge moved around the other side of the table where the woman stood, not looking at her. He knew of old—from watching when Melendez offered his wife to other passing strangers and to Federales from the San Parral post—that she would be stoically resigned to whatever the outcome of the proposition.

  ‘What do you think of her?’ Parker asked Edge, seeming to be genuinely interested in an opinion.

  ‘She just makes my bed, feller.’

  ‘Señor Edge has eyes for only one woman in this vill…’ Melendez began. Then his grin froze and ebbed from his face, and his throat contracted as he found his gaze trapped by the ice-cold blueness of the half-breed’s narrowed eyes.

  ‘Enough said,’ Parker acknowledged.

  ‘Be obliged if you’d all follow the bartender’s example on that subject.’

  ‘Sure. You leaving town?’

  Melendez gestured for the Apache woman to return to the kitchen. All the newcomers resumed eating. Gibbon and Burton with a certain nervousness, Tyree and Hawkins resentfully and Parker with a knowing look. All had seen the tacit threat in the slitted, glinting eyes of Edge. It was an identical expression to the one he had directed at Bruce Wayne the moment he shot him.

  ‘Maybe just to exercise my horse,’ Edge said evenly,

  ‘Maybe?’

  ‘The woman you brought in? Like to tell me where you got her?’

  ‘Happy to be of service,’ Parker answered, and looked happy again. ‘Three days easy riding north of here. Off the trail to the west. The boys and I were following sign from a village a lot smaller than this one.’

  ‘Moreno?’ He and Isabella had driven through it when they brought the wagon to San Parral.

  ‘We didn’t ask. Just wanted to know who had made such a mess of the place. It required a little persuasion, but Al is good in that department. Seems a man whose name we must not mention here was responsible.’

  Gibbon grinned, enjoying the memory of his work in Moreno as much as the chili which he ate and dribbled down his chin.

  ‘The people here ain’t scared of the name Ortiz Gonzalez,’ Edge said. ‘It’s his reputation that gives them nightmares.’

  ‘He certainly is a mean one,’ Parker allowed. ‘By all accounts. But the sign we followed did not get us to meet him. Just his woman and the women of his men.’

  Melendez was no longer grinning. The naming of the most feared bandit leader in northern Mexico had caused him to reach for a bottle of tequila. As the talk continued, he sought to soothe his waking nightmare by sucking at the fiery liquor. But all the bounty hunters recalled the events of the bandit camp with unconcealed pleasure.

  ‘Moreno didn’t have much to give so the men were away looking for a richer prize. If a celebration is called for, it will be without female company.’

  ‘You killed all but the woman of Gonzalez?’ Melendez gasped, and took a deeper swig from the bottle.

  ‘One was a pleasure,’ Parker replied, extending a forefinger into the air. ‘More would have been a nuisance. And the right one was enough.’

  ‘Three days easy riding?’ Edge said. ‘Did you ride easy?’

  Parker broadened his grin. ‘There is a well-defined line between bravery and bravado, Edge. If I had thought we could have captured Gonzalez unaided, I would have remained close to the camp.’

  The half-breed nodded. ‘Obliged.’

  He continued across the cantina.

  ‘We’ll remember the subject of your lady friend is a sore point,’ Parker called after him.

  ‘Go with the bartender’s woman and maybe you’ll get a sore point, feller,’ Edge replied from the sunlit doorway. ‘And, like I told you, there ain’t a doctor in this town.’

  Chapter Four

  THE dwarf-like Sorreno was working with a will on the horses of the bounty hunters. And, as Edge saddled his own well cared for black gelding with worn but serviceable gear, the tiny Mexican revealed the reason for his hustle. It kept his mind occupied—but not completely closed to other things,

  ‘Señor Edge, you are not leaving us?’

  ‘For a time.’

  Sorreno’s wrinkled face showed only mild reassurance. ‘It was truly the woman of Gonzalez which the strangers brought here?’

  ‘Alfaro was sure enough to pay them for their trouble.’ With the saddle cinched to the horse’s back, Edge drew the Winchester from the boot and checked it had a full load.

  Sorreno swallowed hard, ‘So Gonzalez will surely come here?’

  ‘Why else would Alfaro pay government money for her, feller?’

  Then San Parral is doomed,’ the little old man intoned mournfully.

  ‘Ortiz Gonzalez is only a man,’ Edge growled, leading the gelding towards the open double doors.

  ‘But what a man, señor.’

  ‘Just so long as his heart’s in the right place.’ He was outside in the glare of the afternoon sun.

  ‘Señor?’ the liveryman asked, confused.

  Edge swung up into the saddle. ‘Put a bullet in it and he’ll die the same as anyone else.’

  The plaza and street were empty. But he sensed watching eyes as he rode slowly along the centre of the curve. He also sensed the mood of the watchers: underlying fear at the inevitable repercussions of the noonday events—and from .some quarters contempt that a man reputed to be a hero appeared to be leaving the village at a time of need.

  ‘Señor Edge, you are not going to eat with us?’

  The half-breed had ridden past the church with a new mound of freshly dug soil out back. He did not halt as Jesus Vega appeared in the doorway of the house next door. The right cheek of the boy was puffed, beginning to change color from angry red to dull black.

  ‘Maybe later, kid.’

  Then you will be coming back?’ The youngster called this on a rising note of excitement.

  ‘You can make book on it. If you want to risk another beating from your pa.’

  The solemn-faced priest moved into the doorway beside his son. ‘The gambling I most strongly disapprove of is with human life, señor,’ he called after the departing rider. ‘So I urge you to take care, rather than wish you good luck.’


  Edge was already aware that his response to the boy’s questioning had brought some relief to the villagers within earshot. As he rode out on to the trail beyond the final two houses, he visualized them crossing themselves and speaking silent prayers for him. And felt no sense of shame that his reason for leaving San Parral was entirely selfish.

  The morning sentry at the gates of the Federale post had been relieved. The new guard was older. Just as smartly turned out and standing to immaculate attention—another helpless target for marauding flies. Only his eyes moved, following the progress of Edge and envying the half-breed his civilian freedom. There was no malevolence in his gaze, of the kind with which the Federales and the Mexican villagers regarded each other. For the soldiers respected Edge’s indifference to them, accepting it as far better than hatred.

  Not that there was anything personal in the mutual dislike. The villagers, with the exception of Julio Melendez who took a lot of money off the soldiers, hated simply the presence of the post and its occupants: fearing it as an open invitation for Federale-baiting bandits to raid San Parral. And for their part the soldiers would have preferred a less isolated post than in this one-whore town. Even more, junior officers, non-coms and enlisted men detested serving under such a stern disciplinarian as Comandante Alfaro.

  Edge rode on beyond the post where dirt was regarded just as much an enemy as the bandits of Ortiz Gonzalez—as indifferent as ever to the status quo which he had no interest in altering.

  The valley along which he rode was broad—virtually a plain between the distant, heat-shimmered ridges to east and west. Outside of the lemon groves which surrounded the village on three sides, only cactus plants grew, and these at widely spaced intervals in pockets of dusty soil among the vast platforms of rock.