The wind moaned. Then came the rapid series of metallic clicks that were the sounds of Barlow’s Winchester being pumped. The slow cadence of hooves at the walk and the creak of a heavily laden wagon in motion. Brad went for his gun.
‘Don’t!’ one of Evans’s men yelled.
The gun was fumbled clear of the holster and Brad showed a grin of triumph. He was a lot smoother cocking and leveling the revolver. But the grin broke up and became a look of nausea. For he knew he had been taken. Edge’s lean body was like a statue and his head stayed half turned away. The Winchester, held low at its centre of balance, was pointed diagonally across the stockyard. But his right arm moved in a blur of speed, drawing, cocking and leveling the Frontier Colt.
Brad fired first because that was the way Edge wanted it. And now it was the rest of his body that moved while his right arm and hand remained rock steady. He leaned to the left and lunged down into a half crouch. Brad’s bullet, fired from a gun in a trembling hand, went wide of the mark. Edge’s Colt exploded a fraction of a second later. The bullet struck the target - the cowboy’s chest, high up and left of centre. Brad died on his feet, with a cry of disappointment rather than pain. His arm dropped to his side and the gun slipped from his lifeless fingers. A small, dark stain on his sheepskin coat spread like a blossoming flower. The man’s eyes stayed open. His mouth gaped wider. Then his head fell forward, his chin hitting his chest. The cold breeze gusted and helped gravity in knocking the dead body to the ground.
The wind moaned as the wagon was rolled to a creaking halt. Dust blew across the slumped form and some of it was trapped by the sticky wetness of the fresh blood. Edge drew himself erect and slid the Colt back into the holster. He faced his victim.
‘Arresting or burying, sheriff?’ the half-breed asked.
‘Looked like self-defense to me,’ the lawman growled.
‘Can we leave?’ Clint called.
‘Without the dead man’s horse,’ Edge allowed.
‘Sure thing,’ another man agreed eagerly.
The pen gate was swung wide and the men crowded through. They mounted up fast and Hollis Millard led them out in a string, riding wide of where Brad grew stiff on the ground. George Frimley was last in the line, leading Evans’s horse. A gelding remained in the pen. The men walked their horses around the rear of the passenger depot, then heeled them into a dust-billowing gallop along the side of the single-track railroad.
‘You know a name I can put on the lousy grave marker?’ the lawman asked sourly as he stepped out of the doorway of the stage depot.
Edge turned around and noted that the sheriff had left his rifle behind him.
‘It don’t matter, mister!’ Aunt Matty called. ‘But his name was Bradford Bean.’
The reins were slapped across the backs of the team and the wagon jerked forward to roll down the final twenty yards of the street. Both women climbed down from the high seat and went to the rear of the wagon. Muriel Tree still limped on her sprained ankle. Barlow looked on in amazement as they took out two shovels and approached the body.
‘What the lousy hell, ladies?’ he roared. ‘I take care of funerals in this town.’
‘How much do you get for a burial, young feller?’ Aunt Matty wanted to know, leaning on her shovel.
Edge moved over to the pen holding the single horse. He took the Winchester from the boot, dropped it to the ground and replaced it with his own. Then he started to check over the horse, saddle and bedroll. He nodded his approval, but began to uncinch the saddle.
‘Anything from five bucks to fifty, depending on how special.’
Aunt Matty dug out a five-dollar bill from a pocket of her long coat, screwed it up and tossed it towards the surprised lawman. ‘This skunk don’t want nothin’ special. And me and Mu’ll make sure that’s what he gets.’
Barlow caught the bill as it blew on the wind with the expertise of a man with a knack for acquiring easy money. ‘Well, I’ll be…’ he said with a shrug.
Edge had dropped Brad’s saddle to the ground and led the horse from the pen. ‘Don’t point a gun at me again and you’ll carry on being,’ he said flatly as he steered the horse towards the rear of the wagon.
He reached over the tailgate and took out his own saddle. Then he continued to lead the horse back along the street, heading for the hotel he had passed on his first walk through the town. It was easier to see this time, because the two shots had roused the local citizenry. Lighted windows squared the formerly dark facades of most of the buildings, and the heads and shoulders of the curious were silhouetted against them. Back at the stockyard, the sheriff watched in awe as the two women lifted the body of the dead man and carried him out on to waste ground beyond the pens.
‘Hey mister!’ a voice croaked from a partially open doorway as Edge ambled by. ‘What’s happenin’? Who’s that the women are haulin’?’
‘Kinda like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve,’ the half-breed answered cryptically as he angled towards the hotel entrance.
‘How’s that?’ the puzzled watcher asked.
‘He’s Bean. Now he’s gone.’
Chapter Four
EDGE shaved, bathed and slept after ensuring that the hotel livery took care of his newly acquired piebald gelding. He paid in advance for his room and the stabling service. Thus, when he rose and left the hotel at daybreak, there was no reason to wake anybody else. But he was not the only man awake in Railton as he set off at a walking pace astride his horse heading south down the street, shaded from the first rays of sunlight by the buildings on his left. For, as he emerged into the stockyard, he saw a figure over beyond the pens. He reined his horse around in that direction and recognized the uniformed railroad man who had been in such a hurry last night.
The man was standing at one end of a low, narrow mound of freshly dug earth. At the other end, a small headstone had been set up. The railroad man did a double take at Edge, recognized him, and became nervous.
‘Mornin’,’ Edge said easily.
The man blinked, licked his lips and recovered his composure. He took off his peaked cap to scratch his head and nodded towards the small, marble tombstone. ‘Ain’t that the queerest thing you ever did see?’ he asked.
Edge cracked his eyes against the sunlight shafting through the clear, still air of morning. ‘Plain you never did meet a feller named Bob Rhett,’ he answered, drawing a quizzical look from Railton’s other early riser. He heeled his horse into a position where he could read the carefully inscribed, black-stained lettering on the grey of the stone: DEAD FROM MURDERING BARNABY TREE. The local mason cuts a neat stone,’ he said.
The railroad man replaced his cap and shook his head. ‘Them women had the marker in the back of their wagon, Already had the letterin’ on it. Watched ’em myself set the stone on the mound after they filled in the grave.’
Edge nodded and looked down at the ground around the stockyard. ‘Figured the wagon was riding a little heavy for a rig loaded with just hay,’ he muttered.
But now there were just the footprints of the railroad man and the hoof tracks of the gelding in the dust. The wind which had now subsided had covered whatever sign had been made last night.
‘Headed south at the side of the railroad,’ the man supplied. ‘Old lady in the back and the young one drivin’. Asked me where the guy and the bull was booked through to. Told ’em Dry Lake Bend. That’s where the tracks stop goin’ south and swing to the west.’
Edge took out the makings and rolled a cigarette. ‘Should I be interested, feller?’ he wanted to know evenly.
The man shrugged. ‘They said that if you asked, I was to tell you. You didn’t ask, but I told you anyway.’ He squinted up at the tall man lighting the cigarette. ‘Anythin’ wrong with that?’
Edge flipped the dead match down on to the grave. ‘Nothing, feller,’ he agreed, raised a hand in farewell and heeled the gelding forward.
‘Sure glad about that!’ the railroad man called after him.
‘Like to
spread a little happiness,’ the half-breed tossed in reply, angling his horse to go around the back of the passenger depot. Then he set the gelding on a straight course, due south along the side of the sun-glinting rails. Ahead, the track disappeared into the heat shimmer and soon, the morning haze to the north drew an ethereal veil across the town of Railton.
The ground began to slope downwards and the heat began to build up. At noon, he rested in the shade of a water tower at the side of the track after allowing the gelding to drink from the hose. He ate some jerked beef and sourdough bread and contemplated a share of fifty thousand dollars. The thoughts aided his digestion and when he climbed into the saddle after the break, he demanded more speed from his horse.
At mid-afternoon he saw the first sign left by those who had taken this route before him. He was at a place that had been sheltered from the wind of the previous night. The ground was sandy here and held the impressions of many hoof prints, over-scored by the parallel ruts of a laden wagon. The sign made no difference to Edge. There had probably been others during the morning - discarded cigarette butts, horse-droppings and patches of dried wet - which he had failed to see because he was not looking for them. But the clearly visible railroad track pointed the way to Dry Lake Bend.
When he reached this point, the sun was red heralding evening and he guessed he had lost perhaps three thousand feet of altitude. There was still a lot of residual heat from the afternoon and the night would probably be a lot warmer than it had been up in the higher country. The Dry Lake was a big one - an enormous dish of cracked ground to the east of a range of low hills. The railroad made a wide sweep around the eastern shore and the station was at midway point. It was not much of a place. There was a water tower, a high stack of cut logs and a shack. On the side of the tank on top of the tower was a sign which proclaimed the name of the station. The Tree’s wagon was parked outside the shack and the team had been unhitched. The four stallions were drinking water from a trough beneath the tower as Aunt Matty pumped a fresh supply into it.
Edge, a cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, walked his horse over the final hundred yards to Dry Lake Bend. And the woman did not hear the clop of hooves until the man and animal were crossing the top of the long shadow from the tower. Then she snapped her head around from staring at the shack. She had not been concentrating on her chore and the water was brimming over the lip of the trough. There was a familiar expression of hatred on her ugly face, but it was not directed at the half-breed. Relief showed briefly when she recognized the newcomer. Then she stopped pumping and made to run towards him.
But a scream exploded from inside the shack. A man laughed.
‘Come here and do like I say, you bitch!’ the man yelled.
The woman screamed again and footfalls thudded on a hollow floor. The door was wrenched open and Muriel Tree lunged out into the evening sunlight. It glowed on her sweat-sheened nakedness, glinting on the beads that coursed across her quivering flesh - over her big, bouncing breasts; around the slight bulge of her trembling belly; and down her well-formed, pumping thighs. The terrified woman pulled up short and stared blindly around her, wiping the tears from her eyes. Then she saw Aunt Matty and plunged towards the older woman.
Edge halted his horse at the end of the trough and the gelding dipped his head to drink. Across the backs of the other drinking animals, the half-breed grimaced at what had been done to the beautiful body of Muriel Tree. From neck to midway down her thighs, she had been assaulted by a ravaging mouth. Dull red teeth marks showed against the milk-white flesh. Here and there among the forming bruises were trickles of dried blood. She flung herself into the arms of the older woman, not seeing Edge through her terror. A terror that heightened still more as a naked man lumbered out of the shack, bellowing like a crazed Indian on the warpath. He pulled up short and glowered around him, blinking against the rays of the dying sun. Muriel screamed and tore out of Aunt Matty’s embrace to cower behind the more slightly built woman. The sound drew the man’s lustful attention to where his quarry was seeking refuge.
‘We struck a bargain, you bitches!’ he snarled, swinging around and starting to amble like a grizzly bear towards the water trough.
He looked something like a grizzly: at least six feet tall, and solidly built to a weight of more than two hundred and fifty pounds. Most of his bulk seemed to be hard-packed flesh with plenty of muscle. But, despite his nakedness, there was not a lot of flesh to be seen, for he carried a thick matting of black hair. Only his feet and the palms of his hands were free of it. And on his head, just his brow and cheeks, for he wore a thick beard. Another heavy mane grew from his skull. Edge guessed he was on the downward slide out of middle age.
Suddenly, he glimpsed Edge astride the drinking horse and he pulled up short. The way his eyes were glazed and his hirsute body swayed, the half-breed guessed the man was drunk with something more substantial than sex.
‘What the friggin’ hell are you doin’ here?’ the big man demanded.
Aunt Matty and Muriel snapped their heads around. The older woman’s eyes pleaded for help. If Muriel recognized the half-breed, she saw him only as another man. She gaped her mouth for a scream but her vocal chords seized up.
‘Thinking, feller.’
‘Thinkin’ what?’
Edge curled back his lips to show a cold, thin grin. That I don’t reckon mine much.’
‘Please!’ the older woman begged. ‘Our horses were droppin’. They had to have water. He said Muriel had to pay for it.’
Edge raked his eyes from the ugly face of Aunt Matty to the despoiled body of Muriel. ‘Water comes high in these parts. Hope my mount don’t drink that much.’
‘Water him and get on your way, mister!’ the naked man ordered. ‘This here’s railroad property and you’re trespassin’.’
He took another unsteady step. Muriel clung to Aunt Matty, who continued to stare at Edge in desperation. Then a knowing look entered her eyes.
‘We’ll pay you, Edge!’ she rasped.
‘Ain’t interested in the fortune you two ladies are sitting on. Third of that high priced beefsteak on legs’ll do.’
Aunt Matty didn’t have to think about it. ‘You’re on!’ she snapped.
‘Lucky for the horses she ain’t,’ Edge replied as he nodded at Muriel and jerked on the reins to raise the gelding’s head and steer him around the team.
‘Beat it, I told you!’ the hairy man snarled, standing his ground as the mounted half-breed approached. ‘Don’t you mess with me, mister. One time I took four bullets and then killed the bastard with my bare hands.’
Edge’s hooded eyes raked over the man at close quarters and he believed that the warning was no idle boast. Little less than both loads in a double-barreled shotgun could be guaranteed to drop a man like this at a first attempt. He halted the horse a couple of feet in front and slightly to the side of the hirsute giant. ‘Seems to me the lady paid what she owes for the water, feller.’ He tried a man-to-man leer. ‘With plenty of interest.’
‘I’ll say when she’s paid!’ His eyes had cleared of their glaze now. There was no longer a slur in his voice. But the liquor still had a grip on his sense of balance and he swayed as if in a gentle evening breeze.
Edge sighed. ‘I don’t want to have to kill you, feller,’ he said softly.
The giant laughed - longer and louder than in the shack. He cupped his palms over his hips and threw back his head. The hair on his head, face and body glistened in the sunlight as he quivered with mirth. Edge sat watching and waiting, apparently at ease and off-guard. But, recalling his attitude during the gunfight at Railton, Aunt Matty knew the pose was a lie.
‘Go and get dressed, Muriel,’ she whispered to her sister-in-law. ‘It’s all over now.’
But Muriel, withdrawing back from the brink of hysteria, was still gripped by a fear that froze the sweat on her naked, assaulted body. She did not hear the words of Aunt Matty and maintained her wide-eyed stare at the two men. When the n
aked man, still laughing, lunged at the mounted half-breed, she vented a shrill moan of defeat.
The attack he had been expecting triggered Edge into instant action. Not fast, but deliberate. He slid his feet from the stirrups and leaned forward, into the hairy embrace of the giant’s curving arms. But he held his own arms out from his sides, bent slightly at the elbows. As he was dragged out of the saddle, his captor curtailed the laughter and vented a murderous roar that gusted foul-smelling breath into Edge’s face. The horse snorted and veered away in fright at the new sound.
While the half-breed was in mid-air, held tight against the naked front of the man by a crushing grip, he timed two moves simultaneously. One was to lash a kick between the splayed legs of the giant. The second was to straighten his arms. It was the front of his calf that crashed into the crotch of the man. Not as hard as his boot would have been: but hard enough to wrench a groan of pain and momentarily weaken the victim. The weakness lasted just long enough for the man not to be able to counteract the arm-straightening tactic. And, when he did try to reassert his crushing embrace, the half-breed had slipped through the trap to crouch on the ground.
Edge snapped into higher speed now, streaking his left hand to the nape of his neck. The giant bent down to claw at his shoulders, digging in his powerful fingers and wrenching upwards. The action aided his opponent. Edge’s left hand aimed for the man’s stomach, wrist turning to swivel the blade of the razor. The upward momentum into which he was forced did the rest. The blade sank half its length into the pulpy flesh above the giant’s legs. Warm moisture gushed out over Edge’s hand. The giant did not begin to scream until the blade started a slicing action. It found a more resistant target and its wielder had to use his own strength as the double grip on his shoulders was released. The big man fell backwards, clawing for the source of his agony. The blade came free as blood started to pour from the wound.
The touch of hands increased the man’s pain and he flung his arms wide as he fell to his knees. Blood and less vividly colored liquid drained from the terrible wound and was eagerly soaked up by the ground. The man’s scream subsided to a moan and he fell into a faint.
EDGE: Ten Tombstones to Texas (Edge series Book 18) Page 5
