‘May not even be our problem,’ the rancher answered. ‘Don’t know if this is my land or not until the survey’s been made,’
‘So we just leave ’em here?’ Carver asked.
‘You have somethin’ else in mind, Carver?’
Harding laughed. ‘Hell, Mr. Ryan. Carver don’t even have a mind.’
Carver joined in the laughter. ‘I sure had a mind to give the snot-nose what was comin’ to him.’
Chapter Four
PAIN was no longer a sea washing over Edge in waves. It was a series of hammers thudding against his flesh and through it to strike at his bones and his vital organs. Each hammer was raised and smashed down onto him in perfect unison. The battering had the same cadence and rhythm of a galloping horse. And the sound was the same, too: counterpointing the groans and gasps which the beating forced from his throat.
He opened his eyes and the lids caught fire. He stared into red heat. The burning merged with all the other agonies engulfing his body and his vision cleared. The crimson color retreated and he saw a blurred, rushing panorama of black and grey. The constant pain exploding at every nerve ending tried to block his mind from thinking of any other aspect of his existence. But the half-breed knew pain of old and had learned long ago how to handle it. Not by ignoring it. That was impossible. But it could be accepted.
Accepted with self-pity, if a man was a fool and a coward. Like Bob Rhett ... He rejected this name. It came from too far out of the past.
Ryan. Harding. Carver. A man named George. These were the names he at last managed to drag from his memory and thrust into the forefront of his tenuous consciousness. Hatred. That was the way to handle pain. Deep-seated, bitter hatred towards those who had inflicted the punishment. Allied with a determination to avenge what they had done. In such a way could a man accept his present condition and resolve to recover from it - in order to inflict even greater punishment upon those who attacked him.
The thirst for vengeance battled with the fires of agony in Edge’s mind. For a long time his mind twisted and turned through the labyrinthine passages of the conflicting emotions and his eyes were closed again. The black and the grey were gone and the insides of his eyelids showed the former crimson. But the color was no longer even. The backdrop swirled and broiled and different shades of the same color advanced and retreated.
Edge knew he was on a horse. Recalled the promise of the man named Ryan. Draped over the saddle of the horse and tied there. The blur of black and grey when he opened his eyes was his upside-down view of the country at night as the horse galloped across it. That accounted for the regular beat of the pain. As each hoof of the bolting horse hit the ground, it jarred every punished muscle and every battered area of flesh of the man upon its back.
He didn’t know whether his face showed a bitter grin. Was aware only that he felt the need to express a degree of satisfaction. His defense against pain was working. By remembering names and events of the recent past, he had forced his reluctant mind to accept useful logic rather than indulge in futile self-pity. He did not know precisely where he was, but he knew how he had got there.
He was unaware of time. It was still night. The same night of the beating. The speed of the bolting horse told him that. And the degree of his own agony. If that night had ended and an entire day had passed, the horse would be exhausted and his pain would have lost its sharpness.
The hammer blows assaulting him slowed in pace. The muscles of his back were thrust harder against the restraining ropes that held him across the saddle. He continued to stare into the variegated crimson of his inner eyelids and sensed that the horse was slowing and turning.
Edge trusted broke horses. Horse-sense was no mere smart phrase thought up out of the air by a smart mouth. It was horses which were the smart ones. They knew how to stay out of trouble. Ryan claimed he bred only the best kind and Edge had good reason to trust the man’s word on this. It was a good bet that well-bred horses were also well trained.
The punished man consciously shook his head: as opposed to having it swung from side to side by the jolting progress of the animal beneath him. His mind was wandering back to Ryan and that was not necessary any more. The rancher and his hard-fisted hands had served their purpose for now. The half-breed knew he was going to pull through: providing the horse didn’t plunge over a cliff, break a leg on rough ground or try for a river crossing in the wrong place.
And he had to trust the horse not to do any of these things. For his body was way behind his mind in overcoming the grueling effects of pain. His mind was equal to the task of telling him he should halt the horse, untie himself from it and get his bearings. But the effort of simply shaking his head used up more strength than he thought he had.
The horse stopped, and gave out a whinny that trembled through its entire body. Edge heard the trickling of water and the sound emphasized the acrid taste of congealed blood in his mouth.
‘Danny! Danny! Come quickly!’
The woman’s voice reached Edge’s ears. It seemed like many hours after the horse had stopped to drink, but he did not trust such a guess. Time still had no meaning. He may have blacked out. Perhaps only for a second or two. He could hear the horse sucking up water. Taking the same drink from the same water? ... Or another drink from someplace else?
He heard footfalls, the tread light and padding across soft ground.
‘What’s wrong, Maria?’
A man’s voice. Danny? From a long way off. The horse backed up and gave another whinny. Nervous sounding this time. The woman spoke softly. In a language Edge understood but had not spoken for many years. The Spanish tongue of the Mexicans, such as his father had sometimes spoken. Maria was telling the horse not to be afraid. That it was all right and nothing was going to hurt it. The animal responded by standing still. Maria moved closer. Edge could hear her clothes rustling as she walked. Then he smelled her. She smelled good. Fresh, clean, feminine. No perfume. The natural smell of a woman after she had bathed.
She sucked in her breath sharply. When she expelled it, the air powered a scream, ‘Maria!’
Danny was closer. The shrill tone in which he shrieked the name held all the anguish in the world. His footfalls thudded in a flat out sprint. The scream ended and Maria began to breath rapidly, as if she was experiencing the same exertion as Danny.
Edge opened his eyes and the multi-hued crimson vanished. The world was no longer grey and black. For a moment it remained blurred, then his vision cleared. He saw Maria first. Squatting on the ground and staring at him through horror-widened eyes. She was about twenty-two or three with a slender body clothed in a simple pink dress that was stained and patched and torn. She had jet black hair, cropped short which clung to her head like a tight-fitting hat. Her face was darkened by heritage, its features even and pretty. Ordinary and lacking character.
He saw her in the light of sunrise. The harsh yellow of the new day’s birth pangs showed him other things - beyond where the woman squatted. The bank of the river from which the horse had drank. A broad meadow with some grazing sheep and a milk cow. On the far side of the meadow was a small, crudely built shack with a larger barn at the side. At the side of the barn was a corral with a half dozen horses in it. The man was streaking across the meadow on a diagonal line from the barn to where the horse, Edge and Maria were waiting. The half-breed caught only a glimpse of him before his eyelids grew too heavy and he was looking into the crimson pool again. At least that was the right way up - if there was a right and a wrong way. The images of reality he had seen were all inverted: viewed upside-down from beneath the curved belly of the horse.
‘Who are you?’ Maria asked in English. ‘What has happened to you?’
‘Maria!’ Danny yelled, less anxious now that he could see his wife.
Was it his wife? Edge didn’t know. He simply made the assumption. And immediately he dismissed the doubt as unimportant. He never liked accepting help. It wasn’t his way. Favors demanded favors in return, even if such
responses were not invited. But he needed help now. More than he had ever needed it in his life before.
‘I was with the wrong people at the wrong time, ma’am,’ he heard himself say, without recognizing the croaking note in his own voice.
Danny stopped running and drew gasping breaths. He had to force out the words. ‘Maria? Are you all right? Who is he? Where did he come from? Is he dead?’ He was an American.
That was three other fellers,’ the half-breed croaked, and managed to snap open his eyes again.
Danny was squatting down beside Maria, with an arm draped over her shoulders. He was in the same age group as the woman and dressed in work-worn Levis, dusty boots and check shirt. He had a mop of red, curly hair above a freckled face. At some time he had suffered a broken nose. His eyes were pale brown. There was strength in his face and his compact body looked as if it was host to a lot of power.
He drew back a little as Edge spoke, and looked as frightened as Maria. But then it passed. ‘Man, are you in a mess!’ he rasped.
‘It can’t look any worse than it feels, feller,’ Edge answered.
‘Danny, we must get him off the horse and into the house,’ Maria said, recovered from her own horror and now just anxious.
‘Obliged for the thought, ma’am,’ the half-breed said, closing his eyes. ‘But it ain’t always just the thought that counts.’
Edge blacked out again.
Daniel Oakley and his bride of three weeks backed the thought with the deed. They led the sweat-lathered horse and its unconscious rider up the slope of the meadow to the front of the small shack. A fire was already curling smoke from the chimney and the pretty young Mexican woman went inside to put water on the stove to boil. Her husband hitched the reins of the weary gelding to the tail-gate of a buckboard and used a knife to saw through the ropes which held Edge to the saddle. There were two of them. One looped under his belt and lashed to the saddle horn. The second, longer length bound a leg to one stirrup and an arm to the other.
The young Oakley displayed his strength then, by the manner in which he lifted the unconscious dead weight of Edge off the horse and carried him inside the house. There were just two spartanly furnished but scrupulously clean rooms inside. Maria was busy at the stove in the kitchen section of the main room and her husband moved across and into the bedroom. The bed was already made and he gently lowered his weighty burden onto the patchwork quilted cover. For the first time, he was able to see and study the face of the stranger from a normal viewpoint and he reacted with a grimace. Maria entered the bedroom silently, until she announced her presence with a gasp.
‘He could die, I reckon,’ Danny said grimly.
‘Madre de Dios!’ his wife whispered, and crossed herself.
If Edge had had friends, it was unlikely any of them would have recognized him as he lay on the bed, breathing as if every intake of air would be his last. His features were a nightmarish parody of the human face. There was not one section of flesh which was normal. A mass of swellings were colored blue and purple. This where the blood from ugly splits and bursts had not run and congealed to black. The worst bruising was around the eyes which looked incapable of ever opening again. The most blood had come from the nostrils and the wounds made by teeth sinking into the swollen lips. It was this which was making his breathing so labored.
Tentatively, Danny stooped and began to unfasten the buttons of the blood-stained shirt and the red undershirt beneath. Because nothing could be so terrible to look at as the battered face, the discolored bruises on the torso drew no further reactions of horror from the couple.
‘Is there anything we can do, Danny?’ Maria asked earnestly. ‘Should you ride to El Paso for a doctor?’
‘We can’t afford a doctor,’ her husband pointed out.
‘He may have money.’
The man shook his head.
Maria nodded. ‘No, of course not. Men so evil as to do this would take anything of value he had. So we must do what we can.’
And the Oakleys did what they could for the tall, lean stranger who did not regain consciousness while they cleaned his wounds, bathed his bruises and applied salve and dressings. They could do no more than this, knowing only enough to tend the visible injuries. They could not diagnose internal damage.
But they were hopeful for the results of their crude medical treatment. The man was resting easy and breathing more naturally when the young couple left the bedroom to resume the chores around their small homestead. No longer worried about the health of the stranger, Danny and Maria had time to consider their initial anxieties about him. Who he was and why he had been so brutally beaten? And these anxieties were heightened when, as he unsaddled the tan gelding in the barn, Danny saw the Big R brand on the animal.
Like every other farmer and homesteader in the valley, Danny and his bride had good reason to hate and fear Wood-row Ryan. They had inherited the place from Danny’s newly dead father and with the land had come the responsibility to share its income with the man who claimed he owned every square inch of the valley. So far, the new owners had not been faced with the humiliating reality of their true position as tenants working another man’s land. They had been in San Antonio when they got word of the older Oakley’s death and bequest. An attorney in El Paso had read them the will and had then advised them of the position adopted by Woodrow Ryan.
With each of the twenty-one days that had passed since they arrived after their marriage in El Paso, Danny and Maria had expected the next to bring a visit from Ryan men. But none had come so far. The only people they had seen were reluctant tenants like themselves, moving back and forth between their homesteads and the stores and merchants in El Paso. All of them had confirmed what the attorney said. And all of them warned the newcomers to the valley against resistance to Ryan’s will. He had the legal papers and, if these were not accepted, he had the men to enforce the rights he claimed.
As he came out of the barn after attending to the stranger’s horse, Danny considered keeping the matter of the Big R brand to himself. But he rejected it immediately. Maria and he had kept no secrets from each other before they were married and had vowed to continue with this code when they became man and wife. So he went into the house where she was preparing breakfast and he told her.
‘Does that not mean he is a Ryan man?’ the woman asked as she set a plate of bacon and eggs in front of her husband.
‘Unless he bought or stole the horse,’ Danny replied.
Maria could not face eating after seeing the terrible injuries of the man sleeping in the next room. She sat down across the table from her husband with just a tin mug of coffee. ‘It does not matter who he is!’ she said emphatically after long moments of silence. ‘He was hurt and in need of help.’ She glanced up at the crucifix which was the room’s sole ornament. ‘It was our duty to aid him.’
Danny’s freckled face showed earnestness, then he nodded his agreement. ‘That is absolutely right, Maria,’ he said emphatically. ‘Who he is and what he did to earn the beating is none of our concern. Nor is the horse he was ridin’. We only did what any decent human beings would do.’
A wan smile turned up the corners of the woman’s full mouth. She reached out across the table and gripped her husband’s hand lightly. ‘But it is not ill-will to wish him quickly recovered and gone from here, I think?’
Danny nodded again, but with less resolution. He glanced over his shoulder to the closed doorway which gave on to the bedroom. ‘Though if he was well and not a Ryan man, I wouldn’t mind him being here when the Big R hands show up, Maria. He’s big and he’s strong and he’s tough. And mean with it, I’d guess.’
‘Danny!’ Maria said crossly, withdrawing her hand. ‘You promised. Your father worked this land and paid Ryan. You promised we would try to do the same before causing trouble.’
Now it was the husband’s turn to reach out and clasp his wife’s hand. His smile was brighter than hers had been. ‘Just daydreaming, Maria,’ he promised. ‘You rememb
er - we said we would never get married unless we had our own piece of land. Life cheated us, mi bien. I was just thinking that, with a man like that one... we could perhaps—’
‘An army of men like him would be needed,’ Maria cut in, and her free hand reached out to cup his. ‘And even then, they say that Ryan has many to help him.’ She glanced at the closed door and shuddered. ‘He might even be one of them.’
With this possibility re-established, a mood of gloom insinuated itself into the tiny house. Breakfast was hurriedly finished and the Oakleys sought to forget about the stranger by plunging themselves into the work of the small farm: going about their chores today as they would have done each day had the land been their own.
It was Jack Clayton who told them of last night’s trouble when he drove his buckboard to a halt at the side of the spur trail that cut diagonally across the Oakley homestead to join the El Paso trail. The middle-aged Clayton and his painfully thin wife were both grim faced and pale as they watched Danny and Maria emerge from the barn. Maria turned towards the house after giving a wave of greeting, intent upon sharing mid-morning coffee with the Claytons.
Won’t be able to keep anythin’ in our stomachs for awhile, Mrs. Oakley,’ Clayton called. ‘Just stopped by to tell you somethin’ you oughta know about.’
The Oakleys were immediately anxious, first catching the bitter tones of the man, then seeing the grave expressions on the faces of their distant neighbors. The newly-weds clasped hands as they approached the heavily-laden buckboard. Its high-stacked load of hay provided a patch of shade in the hot morning sun.
‘Was killing up beyond the Crosby place last night,’ Clayton announced as his wife stared blankly into place. Marilla was usually the most light-hearted of women. ‘Yates, Selby and Kelsey. Kinda hard to recognize them.’
‘Blown into pieces,’ Marilla intoned.
‘With a shotgun,’ her husband explained.
Maria gasped and pressed closer to Danny. The young couple stared up at the man on the buckboard seat, waiting for more.
Edge: Vengeance Valley (Edge series Book 17) Page 5
