But he had no reason to suspect he had been drugged. He put down the second period of unconsciousness to the same cause as the first: and he was grateful for it. He had needed the rest and in this respect the cause which had forced it upon him was immaterial. The renewed strength he felt as he crossed to the door and opened it was no trick. The aroma of cooked food that came to him stimulated his gastric juices and he felt capable of eating everything in the house.
The main room was neat and tidy again, with the drape curtains drawn across the broken windows to keep in the light of the lamp. The glass from the windows and the old lamp had been swept up and all the crude furniture was in its correct place. There was a square of white linen on the table and Danny and Maria Oakley were eating stew. A third chair was drawn up to the table, before a place setting. The couple were as neat and clean as their surroundings.
‘You look better, mister,’ Danny added.
‘Then I look the way I feel,’ the half-breed answered as the woman gestured for him to take the vacant place at the table. ‘No more callers?’
As he sat down, Maria ladled out a portion of the meaty stew onto his plate.
‘We’re better than a day’s hard ride from Greenville,’ Danny answered. ‘And the Big R ranch-house is fifteen miles north of town.’
Maria cooked as well as she did most other things around the house. Edge’s ravenous hunger caused him to swallow the first few mouthfuls without bothering to taste the food. But then he slowed down. He stopped eating suddenly.
‘I can’t pay for the food right now,’ he said.
‘Don’t insult us in our own house,’ Maria answered grimly.
‘You’ve made your point, mister!’ Danny said earnestly. ‘You don’t take nothin’ for nothin’. So, by your rules, we’re even on everythin’ else.’
Edge resumed eating. ‘I’ll listen to a deal, feller,’ he offered. ‘But I ain’t leading no army of downtrodden dirt farmers against the Big R.’
‘It isn’t because you’re afraid, I know this,’ Maria said.
‘Then you ain’t so smart as you think you are,’ the half-breed told her. The reason I turned down those three fellers back up the valley was because they scared the hell out of me.’
Both the Oakleys expressed puzzlement.
‘I survived a war that went on better than five years,’ he augmented. ‘And the way I did it was by making professional soldiers out of the men assigned to me. They knew what to do, how to do it and when to do it. A lot of times without me having to open my mouth. Every one of them was either a born killer or had a natural bent for killing.’
He finished the plate of stew and waved away Maria’s offer of a second helping. He took out the makings and began to roll the paper around the tobacco.
‘It figures Ryan has some men like that. Not all of them, but some. And some is enough.’ He lit the cigarette and pushed his chair back from the table to stand up. ‘If I have to go up against them to get my money back, I’ll feel a hell of a lot safer knowing I only have me to rely on. But with a whole bunch of farmers carrying a load of resentment as well as guns they’ve never fired to kill before . . . well, I just never did have an ambition to die in Texas.’ He showed a quiet grin. ‘It’s too close to hell.’
He saw his hat hanging on one of a line of pegs on the wall beside the door. He put it on and looked back at the couple sitting on either side of the table. Maria was looking faintly amused.
‘For a man like you, I think that is a very long speech, senor,’ she said quietly.
He nodded. ‘But I figure I got breath enough left to get where I’m going.’
Danny stood up. ‘Would you object to company?’ He licked his lips. ‘That was what I intended to ask for if you insisted upon repaying us for the meal - to ride north with you.’
‘You scared of the dark, feller?’
Danny seemed on the point of blowing up into anger, but his more controlled wife cleared her throat loudly and the tension drained out of him. ‘I want to talk to Ryan,’ he said evenly. ‘Like I told you, he lives a long way from here. But his hands ride all over the valley. It could be those two surveyors ran into some gunmen and told them what happened here. And the gunmen could take it into their heads to do somethin’ without waitin’ to get the word from their boss.’ He shook his head. ‘It ain’t the dark I’m scared of, mister.’
‘And her?’ Edge asked, stabbing a finger towards Maria.
‘My wife will ride into El Paso and stay at the hotel until I come to fetch her.’
The half-breed pursed his thin lips and thought about the proposition for a few moments. Then he nodded. ‘Keep the goodbyes short, feller. Longer I’m without my bankroll, more chance it has of being smaller when I get it back.’
As he pulled open the door and stepped out into the cool night, Maria got to her feet and Danny moved around the table, arms stretching out for an embrace. They had unsaddled his horse again and, this time, it was a lot easier to get him ready for riding. The horses from the corral had been led into shelter for the night and, because the moonlight shafting in through the open doorway did not reach the stalls, the half-breed failed to notice that one of the animals was still wet with the sweat of a hard ride.
Oakley came into the stable as Edge led the black and white gelding outside. Maria stood in the open doorway of the house, her slender figure silhouetted against the rectangle of lamplight behind her. The half-breed swung into the saddle and held his horse to a walk as he approached the house.
He touched the brim of his hat. ‘Obliged for everything you did, ma’am,’ he told her softly. ‘And I hope everything works out for you here in the valley.’
‘We will just have to wait and see,’ she replied. ‘But you do not really care, I think?’
‘Just passing the time of day.’
‘It is night, senor. And you are like the night. You come and you go. Sometimes without trouble. Often with a storm. You ask for nothing and you make no apology for anything you do.’
‘And you’re a day person, ma’am?’
‘There are few who do not like the day better than the night.’
‘Guess I can’t argue with that,’ Edge told her, turning his horse in a slow wheel.
‘But you will take care of Danny for as long as he is with you? He is not a man of the gun.’
‘Go to El Paso, Mrs. Oakley,’ the half-breed told her. ‘And worry about him. That’s all you can do.’
‘But you can do more,’ she insisted. ‘If you want.’
‘You know what I want,’ he called over his shoulder, and heeled his horse towards the trail as Oakley led a tan mare from the stables and swung up into the saddle. The young homesteader had the Winchester slid into the boot and he was wearing a gun belt with the holster attached high on his right hip.
‘You are a hard man to like, senor!’ Maria called as she watched her husband close with Edge and match the jogging pace across the meadow.
Danny Oakley frowned at the battered profile of Edge’s face as he drew level with the half-breed. ‘Don’t think badly of Maria, mister,’ he said. ‘She’s not herself today. What with almost gettin’ raped by those two gunslingers.’
Edge avoided looking at his riding companion. Instead, he glanced back over his shoulder and caught a final glimpse of the silhouetted form in the house doorway before the trees intervened. What Oakley had said explained the strange conversation of a few moments ago. Maria had intended to warn Edge that she had lied to her husband about the assaults on her. But the half-breed had moved away before the woman could talk herself into making the admission.
‘Your wife’s all right, Oakley,’ Edge said, and curled back his lips to show a grin. The skin of his face did not hurt quite so much anymore when he altered the set of his expression. ‘But then Mexican women usually are.’
‘Maria reckoned as how she thought you had some Mexican in you someplace, mister,’ Oakley answered.
‘My Pa was from Mexico. Which give
s you and me something in common, I figure.’
‘How’s that?’ Oakley asked, confused.
Edge showed more of his teeth to brighten the grin. ‘We both got Mex better halves, feller.’
Chapter Eight
MIDNIGHT came and went and the weather remained pleasantly cool under a bright, clear sky. The two riders were on the main trail by then, having swung by the Clayton property and two other homesteads. All three houses and their immediate surroundings were basically similar to the Oakley place: small, but neat and tidy and well tended. At such an hour there were no lights burning, and the sound of hoof beats nearby did not spur the tenant farmers to fire lamps and check on the riders. There were no sounds of alarm from disturbed stock.
Edge and Oakley did not talk as they rode, even though the easy pace which the half-breed set would have made conversation unstrained. The varying speed between a trot and a canter had a twofold reason - to conserve the strength of the horses and to ease the pain which the ride was reawakening within Edge.
But the half-breed showed no signs of distress as he rode erect in the saddle, constantly swinging his head this way and that - surveying the valley to his left, his right and behind him as well as up ahead. Danny Oakley was equally as watchful, but his attitude was tense and rigid: his posture as stiff as the anxious lines of his freckled face.
Paradoxically, when galloping hoof beats sounded on the trail behind them and men’s voices were raised to shout, some of the tension went out of the young homesteader. Edge was aware of this as he reined the gelding to a halt and rested a hand loosely around the stock of the booted Winchester.
‘It’s okay, mister!’ Oakley said quickly, peering intently back along the trail, the hard-packed stretch of sun-baked dirt standing out white against the dark expanses of grassland spread on either side. ‘Looks like Jack Clayton and Dale Anson.’
Edge’s glittering eyes moved away from Oakley to stare down the trail. All he could make out of the riders were two patches of dark shadow against the paler color of dust rising from beneath the pumping hooves of their mounts. He spat ‘With eyesight good as you got, Oakley, you just got to have a daughter you’ll call Annie.’
The youngster’s relief became more expansive. He grinned happily at the half-breed. ‘Maria just plans for a boy, mister, Gonna call him after me.’
‘Little Danny Oakley,’ Edge mused pensively as the two newcomers neared, slowing their horses. ‘Don’t really have a musical ring to it.’
‘Thought that was you, Oakley,’ the skinny, middle-aged Clayton said. ‘Was over at Anson’s place and we saw you ride by. Mind if we stick with you? Headin’ for Greenville.’
Clayton and Anson both eyed Edge apprehensively. Anson was a few years older than the thin man. He was a paunchy, moon-faced man with wire-framed spectacles perched on his snub nose. One of the side pieces was missing but the glasses seemed firmly set. Both men carried six-guns in their holsters and had rifles in their saddle boots.
‘This here is . . . Hey, I never did get to know your name, mister.’ Oakley was the happiest Edge had seen him on a day when he had seen little and all of it bad.
‘Edge.’
Oakley blinked. ‘Just Edge?’
‘Been enough for me for a long time.’
‘You mind if my neighbors ride with us?’
Edge spat again. ‘It’s an open trail. But I ain’t in such an all-fire hurry as they were just now.’
‘Just tryin’ to catch you is all, Mr. Edge,’ Anson said. He had a high-pitched nervous sounding voice.
‘I been caught,’ Edge allowed, fixing Oakley with a hard, penetrating stare. ‘But you ain’t got a hook sunk into me.’
He clucked to the gelding and tapped lightly with his heels. He held the animal on a loose rein and the trio of farmers fell in behind him. If there was talk between the three, Edge did not hear it. But it probably wasn’t necessary, anyway. Tacit questions asked with inquiring looks could be answered by a nod or shake of the head. Oakley would only have had to ride to his nearest neighbor. That neighbor - Clayton or Anson? - would have agreed to pass the word on along the valley. And, even if somebody disagreed with the plan, there would have been no harm in carrying the message.
Then Edge cleared his mind of such a line of thought, for it could lead to a futile anger and there was a more important problem confronting him - the even chance possibility that Ryan men were already looking for him after hearing from the two surveyors. That any rise of ground, pile of boulders, dip or stand of timber could conceal a bunch of men eager to fulfill Ryan’s threat. If you show your battered features here again, you’ll be killed on sight. Edge raised a hand and his exploring fingers traced the bruises and lacerations marking the flesh of his face. Fair warnin’ from a fair man. The half-breed smiled grimly to himself. The way he looked now, maybe Ryan’s men wouldn’t recognize him on sight.
Edge halted his horse abruptly and the gelding vented a low whinny at the sudden interruption of the easy trek. ‘Greenville’s gonna be real busy come morning. If they’re some more of your neighbors,’ he said softly, without turning around.
The trail had been rising up a gentle slope, cutting between tall trees. The timber gave out at the crest of the incline and the downward slope was steeper and covered with low brush. Below, a narrow stream meandered from west to east, its shallow water trickling over rocks to join the main river of the valley which was hidden by intervening high ground. Some seven men had dismounted at the point where the trail forded the stream. Most of them were smoking as their horses sucked from the stream. They were about a hall: mile away from where the three farmers inched their mounts forward to join Edge at his vantage point.
‘My eyes ain’t what they used to be,’ Clayton said nervously.
‘And mine sure ain’t,’ Anson added, low but strangely shrill.
Oakley stared hard down the slope, but shook his head. ‘I ain’t been livin’ in the valley long enough to know too many folks.’
Had there been nothing abnormal about one of the men, Edge would have been unable to do more than hazard a guess about the group, for they were merely shadowy forms against the moon-silvered stream water. And he didn’t notice that one of the seven was bigger than all the others until the giant flicked away his cigarette and unfolded himself from the rock upon which he had been sitting. Then the half-breed massaged each of his upper arms in turn, unaware which of the two giants it was down at the stream.
If there was talk among the men at the ford, it was not loud enough to carry up the slope to the four on the crest of the rise. But the clop of hooves sounded as the six horses were mounted and rode up the start of the hill at an easy walk.
‘But I don’t like it, Mr. Edge,’ Oakley muttered, as anxious as his fellow farmers. They’re comin’ the wrong way.’
‘And they made a big mistake,’ the half-breed said softly, swinging from the saddle and taking up the reins of the gelding to lead the animal off the trail and into the trees.
The farmers were quick to follow his actions and they needed no warning to be quiet.
‘You recognize them?’ Oakley asked as the horses were being hitched to trees some twenty feet back from the trail and hidden from it by the intervening trunks.
‘I got some painful memories of one them,’ the half-breed allowed, sliding the Winchester from his saddle boot. He pumped the action.
Oakley, Clayton and Anson slid out their rifles. Two Winchesters and an old Henry repeater.
‘Thought you fellers had business in town?’ Edge asked.
The freckle-faced youngster managed to grin while his neighbors continued to express apprehension.
‘If you were a fool, Edge, I wouldn’t be here. And I wouldn’t have talked these men into joining us. Our business is wherever Ryan’s hands get in our way.’
Because they were back from the crest, the rise of land acted as a sound barrier against the clop of approaching hooves. But all four men in the trees knew that open cou
ntry could play tricks with acoustics. So their voices were low.
‘You’re lucky I can think straighter now, feller,’ Edge told Oakley. ‘If my brain was still addled I might not have remembered you did your Paul Revere’s ride stunt before I told you what I think about fighting with amateurs.’
The youngster tried to match the grimness of expression Edge showed. But he didn’t have such a long experience of hardship and suffering to call upon. All he had was determination and enthusiasm.
‘Amateur fighters, maybe!’ he rasped. ‘But professional farmers, mister. And Ryan’s tryin’ to take our livelihoods away from us. He’s got a map now. As well as the claim papers. That’s what the surveyors are all about.’
‘Yeah!’ Anson cut in, and the talk was giving him some spirit. I talked with one of them city fellers. Seems Ryan figures to put up fences around our property. And stop right-of-way across the open range he says is his. If we’re on our land when the fences go up, we won’t be able to get off. And if we’re off it, we won’t—’
‘So you got no reason to doubt we don’t mean business, mister!’ Clayton growled, pumping the action of his Henry. ‘We’re fightin’ for somethin’ closer to home than whether the White House is in Washington or Richmond. Get me?’
Edge pursed his lips and raked his hard-eyed gaze around the grim-set faces of the ill-matched men. ‘Looks like I got you,’ he allowed.
‘So what you gonna do with us?’ Anson asked, a note of urgency in his voice now that the clop of hooves against the hard trail could be heard.
Edge: Vengeance Valley (Edge series Book 17) Page 9
