‘You came then,’ a rangy, red-headed man said. ‘We’d about given you up. Figured you run into that bunch of Ryan hands rode past here couple of hours ago.’
Like the others, the spokesman for the group glanced only fleetingly at the two mounted farmers. Edge was the centre of attention.
‘We run into ’em,’ Anson said with excitement. ‘Killed ’em all.’ His tone became somber. ‘But they put paid to Jack Clayton.’
The group formed a half-circle at the edge of the trail and greeted the news with a concerned shaking of heads. The half-breed splayed his legs so that each of his booted feet was atop a new grave.
‘Whose?’ he asked.
The spokesman continued with his responsibility. ‘The two gunslingers who were guarding the city survey fellers. Their horses brung ’em here and wouldn’t be spooked off. Wife made me bury ’em. Name’s Zane Wynne. Mighty glad to know you.’
He extended a gnarled hand.
Edge ignored it. ‘You don’t know me, feller. And if you did, it wouldn’t please you. You check what those fellers were carrying before you planted them?’
Wynne looked insulted by Edge’s response. But he glanced at Oakley and received a tacit sign to stay calm.
‘No, I didn’t!’ he snapped. They were smellin’ pretty damn bad and I just got them underground soon as I could.’
‘You got the gear off their horses?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You check that?’
‘No.’
Edge spat. ‘Be obliged if you’d bring their stuff to me, feller. And I’d like the loan of a spade.’
Wynne blinked and the others shuffled their feet. ‘You gonna dig ’em up, mister?’
Edge sighed. ‘It might just save me the trouble of making a few other fellers fit for burying.’
‘Do like the man asks, Mr. Wynne,’ Danny Oakley urged. ‘He’s lookin’ for some money was stole from him.’
Wynne, who was apparently the elected leader of the group as well as its spokesman, designated a man named Curran to do the half-breed’s bidding. Curran roped in another man, named Morrell, to help him. Edge took out the makings and rolled a cigarette as Oakley and Anson dismounted and swapped reports with the other valley farmers. Even after the gunmen’s gear had been delivered, and fruitlessly searched, and he started to open the new graves, Edge could not avoid overhearing the talk.
Oakley gave a fully detailed account of the events at his place and Anson amplified on the gunfight with the six Ryan hands. Wynne reciprocated with the news that only two homesteaders in this section of the valley had failed to answer the call to arms. But these two had agreed to take in the wives and children of the men assembled at the Wynne place.
The whole group backed hurriedly away as Edge got three feet down into the first grave and the moist earth began to give off a sickly-sweet stench of decomposed human flesh. The half-breed covered his mouth and nostrils with a kerchief before he exposed the corpse and saw it was Royd. The gunman had died with just seven dollars and a picture of a woman in his pocket. The woman was older and heavier than Maria Oakley. But just as naked as the gunman’s final view of the young Mexican bride. Edge, showing no facial reaction and making no sound of frustration, started to fill in the grave before turning his attention to that in which Doyle was buried.
‘I say we ride right now!’ Wynne said suddenly, his voice rising above and cutting off the rasp of low-toned conversation. ‘This guy Edge has served his purpose. He got us together in a mood to fight and the first blood’s been spilled.’
‘Calm down, Mr. Wynne!’ Oakley urged, a little nervously.
‘I got no objection to what the feller says,’ Edge put in, not interrupting his chore of shoveling earth back into the grave, ‘One thing I’d be obliged for, though.’
‘What’s that?’ the red-headed farmer asked curtly.
‘Don’t bury no Ryan dead until I get there and check them over.’ He showed his cold, mirthless grin as he used the back of a hand to wipe sweat from his brow. ‘Doing this kinda chore gets up my nose.’
Wynne gave an emphatic nod. ‘All right, mister. I guess we owe you that much.’
Edge finished filling in Royd’s grave and started to open that in which Doyle was buried. ‘All I’m owed is three grand,’ he said as the group moved towards the barn, leaving Oakley and Anson with their horses.
‘You care about anythin’ else ’ceptin’ money, Edge?’ Oakley asked in a tone of disgust.
‘It don’t buy no happiness,’ Anson added shrilly.
‘But it makes misery a little more comfortable, feller,’ the half-breed replied lightly.
The large group of men led their horses from the barn and swung up into the saddles. Most of them were in the mould of Clayton and Anson rather than Oakley. Which might be to their advantage in the fight to come, Edge mused as he continued to dig while the men streamed out northwards along the trail. It meant they had experience of living, if not fighting. And some of them might even have played a part in the War Between the States. On the Rebel side, probably, if they were Texans by birth or adoption. But Edge would not have held that against them if he had chosen to join in their war against Ryan. The war and all it meant was in the past and he had forgotten most things about it - like everything else in the past. It was only in bad dreams - and fantasies created by a pained mind in a beaten body - that memories he had elected to forget were thrust upon him.
And the memories he chose to recall? These were the hard-learned lessons on the art of survival. One such was not to get tied up with a bunch of wronged farmers hell-bent on an avenging crusade against hired guns.
The stench of Doyle emanated from the earth and he moved the final few shovelsful to uncover the putrefied corpse. Then he checked the pockets, boots and under the shirt of the dead man. In a Levi pocket was a token for a Dallas cat house. In a boot were twenty one dollar bills.
‘You can take it with you, feller,’ he muttered, allowing the bills to flutter down like confetti on the corpse before he started to refill the grave. ‘Guess the cost of being dead is about the same as living.’
Then he mounted the gelding and heeled him forward, in the wake of the eager homesteaders and about thirty minutes behind them. The group had set off at a gallop and maintained it until they rode out of sight. The half-breed held his horse to the same easy canter as before as he rode deep into the central, fertile stretch of the green valley.
The terrain far to the west and the east rose steadily to the valley’s flanking ridges, but the ground he rode over stayed flat. From the signs left by the group ahead of him, he seemed to be maintaining the gap. Then, after riding around a curve of the trail that inscribed a course between two small farms, he saw that the group had enlarged. And that two wagons, heavily-laden, had joined the trek northwards.
With the wagons, the pace had dropped but Edge continued to canter the gelding, apart from when he allowed the animal to halt for water if the trail forded a stream or swerved in towards the main river again.
The early hours of the new day were well advanced and there was just a trace of grey sky behind the eastern ridges when he reached Rivertrees Bend - where three farmers had paid the ultimate price for trying to engage his help: and where he had been given the beating which was taking him back to Greenville. He saw the ashes of his campfire and the dried bloodstains left by Kelsey, Selby, Yates and himself. The three dead men had been buried close to where they died. The carcass of the horse had been heaped with earth displaced by the corpses. But the clearing up had been done before the war party reached the spot. There was no sign that the riders had halted or that the wagons had been rolled to a halt. Anger would have been fuelled on the move.
Edge saw the town of Greenville before he saw the farmers. Dawn had broken and the sun was shafting the promise of a hot day over the valley’s eastern ridges. But the town on the western slope, and the floor of the valley, were still spread with the grey light of pre-sunrise. The half-br
eed had noticed the point at which the mounted men and their two wagons had swung off the trail to angle across uncultivated land that rose in the west. Thus, when he came in sight of Greenville and halted his horse, he knew the general direction in which to rake his eyes. And it didn’t take him long to spot the concentration of men. They were waiting, in token cover, on the high ground just below the ridge above the broad shelf upon which Greenville was sited.
‘You could stop a lot of people getting’ killed if you had a mind, Edge.’
The half-breed recognized the voice of Danny Oakley and he turned slowly in the saddle to watch the young homesteader lead his mare from around a miniature butte that nudged the western side of the trail.
‘Nobody ever won a war without loss of life, Danny boy,’ Edge replied. ‘That’s what it’s all about - killing the enemy.’
‘I mean innocent lives,’ Oakley insisted as he emerged on to the trail and swung into the saddle. He eased his horse forward a few feet to halt alongside the half-breed. ‘You want to know what they figure to do?’
‘Not unless it puts my three grand in danger, Danny boy.’
Edge was feeling good. There was no guarantee that he would retrieve his money in town, but he had a hunch he would. This whole mess of trouble had started in the neat, clean town and it seemed fitting it should end there. His demeanor revealed nothing of his mood, but there was an easy lightness in his tone. Until Oakley delivered a response.
‘Paper money, I guess?’
The half-breed had been surveying the town and the men on the high ground above it: watching the advance of brighter light down the slope as the sun inched higher.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ he asked as he snapped his gaze back to the freckled face of the youngster. His tone was now as sharp as the pouched razor.
Oakley was unconcerned by the change of mood: resigned to the fact that whatever was to be, was to be now that the revolt against Ryan had started. ‘Ned Crosby used to mine for silver across the border. He kept a whole stack of dynamite after he took up farming.’ Oakley glanced up at where the men on the high ground were now making efforts to conceal themselves. ‘He’s got a wagon up there loaded with six crates of the stuff. There’s another wagon stacked with bales of hay. They figure to roll them both down the hill at town.’
Edge joined the younger man in peering up at the western side of the valley, which was now totally bathed in early morning sunlight. He pursed his lips. ‘They can think of other things than the price of corn when they have to, can’t they?’
‘Just Zane Wynne,’ Oakley replied. ‘He’s done a lot of fightin’ down in South America.’
‘How’s he plan to get the Ryan men into town?’
‘Luke Curran’s been sent out to the Big R. Gonna get a message to Ryan that the valley farmers are sending a deputation to Greenville and wanna talk to him. On account of the three men that got blasted to bits at Rivertrees Bend.’
‘He’ll come?’ Edge asked absently. ‘With enough of his hands to make a hit worthwhile.’
Oakley nodded. ‘We reckon so, Edge. Ryan’s got the local law in his pocket and he’s never wanted the state marshals in the valley. So he’s always tried to talk before stirrin’ up anythin’ big.’
‘Yeah,’ Edge said, and there was still a vagueness about his side of the conversation. ‘He’s real anxious for folks to think he’s a fair man.’
The half-breed ran exploratory fingers over his battered face. Although aware of what high explosive could do - quite literally reduce his hopes of three thousand dollars to ashes - he could still admire Zane Wynne’s plan.
‘But there’s no way we can get the innocent people outta Greenville!’ Oakley said tightly. ‘If we emptied town, Ryan and his hands would be sure to smell a rat.’
‘Sure would,’ Edge agreed, watching the neat little town as it came awake to greet the new day with open doors, undrawn drapes and smoke from the chimneys. ‘But war don’t make much of a distinction between the guilty and the innocent.’
‘And it burns up money,’ Oakley insisted.
Edge spat. ‘Can see why you carry a Winchester, feller,’ he growled.
‘What?’ Oakley asked in confusion.
‘You and your rifle are both repeaters. And you hit the target where it hurts, Danny boy.’ He showed a cold grin. ‘Right in my empty pocket.’
‘Then you’ll do somethin’ about it?’ Oakley asked with controlled excitement.
The half-breed pursed his lips as he heeled the gelding forward and jerked on the reins to angle him off the trail. ‘Looks like you win, feller,’ he allowed.
‘But you’ll do it your way,’ Oakley pointed out as he moved to catch up with the other rider.
‘Yeah,’ Edge nodded. ‘Seems like old blue eyes is back in business.’
Chapter Ten
EDGE stood at the second storey window of his old room in the Lone Star Saloon and watched the neatly-attired Woodrow Ryan and his foreman lead a score of Big R hands on to the main street of Greenville. Riding between the bearded, pipe-smoking rancher and the foreman with a large pad of white dressing on his cheek, was a nervous-looking Luke Curran.
But he was the only man in the bunch to be apprehensive. Woodrow Ryan, Harv London, George Lincoln, Carver, Harding and the other men Edge could not put names to all appeared confidently relaxed. For there was nothing about the town to arouse suspicion in their minds.
Only the bespectacled desk clerk down in the lobby knew of the half-breed’s return to Greenville. And he had been warned into silence on the threat of a more disfiguring razor wound than Harv London had collected. For, after convincing Zane Wynne that his plan of attack was better, Edge had approached town on foot and unseen - avoiding the street and getting into the Lone Star by a side door.
Wynne might have been hard to persuade if he had had enthusiastic support for his idea. But the rest of the farmers shared the opinion of Danny Oakley - they didn’t relish killing men and women with as good reason to hate the Big R men as themselves, and had only agreed to go along with Wynne because they could think of no strategy themselves.
But, Edge thought, as he backed away from the window and let himself out of the familiar room, the red-headed Wynne could be trusted to play his part. He had listened to the half-breed’s words with ill-concealed reluctance at first. But then, his experience as a mercenary soldier in Latin America had swamped the initial resentment. He was forced to allow it was a better plan than his own. And the clincher for his cooperation was the fact that he would be in command of the primary attack. The tall stranger with such a wide knowledge of military tactics would simply engage in a diversionary action.
Treacling silently and with the cocked and fully loaded Winchester held across the front of his body, Edge moved along the landing to the head of the stairs. Outside, there were the sounds of the Big R men halting their horses and dismounting in front of the hotel.
‘Hey, feller!’ the half-breed called under cover of the noise.
Dust drifted in through the open doorway. The clerk snapped his head around. The beads of sweat on his forehead caught the sun from the window as glintingly as the lenses of his spectacles. He swayed when he saw Edge and had to hook his hands over the back of the desk to stay upright.
‘Just keep remembering that face you saw when you shaved this morning, uh?’
The clerk nodded vigorously and patted his brow with a spotted kerchief.
‘They set the meetin’ for here you say, Mr. Curran?’ Wood-row Ryan said as footfalls hit the stoop outside.
‘That’s right, sir,’ the farmer answered nervously as the half-breed backed away from the head of the stairs.
There was no fear of anybody surprising him from the second floor of the hotel for he was the only guest. The only members of the staff on duty at this early hour were the desk clerk and the two bartenders in the hotel’s saloon section. The bartenders didn’t know Edge was back and the clerk certainly wouldn’t have told
them.
‘Harv!’ Ryan called.
‘Yes, Mr. Ryan?’ the disfigured foreman responded at once.
‘Get three or four men out on the south side of town. Up on roofs, maybe. It’ll give us advanced warnin’ of when our visitors come callin’.’
‘You, you, you and you!’ London growled. ‘You heard what Mr. Ryan said. Do like it.’
‘Rest of you men, we’ll all wait in the saloon!’ the rancher announced. ‘But only beer. I Want everyone with clear heads in case this is some kind of trick.’
‘It ain’t no trick, Mr. Ryan!’ Curran said urgently.
‘You’ll be second to know if it is, sir,’ the rancher answered as he entered the hotel lobby. ‘Be able to tell them in hell to expect a rush.’
‘It’s all on the level, Mr. Ryan!’ Curran insisted.
‘So no sweat, Mr. Curran,’ the rancher countered lightly. ‘You and your neighbors will get a fair hearin’ from me, you know that. Good morning, Ernie. Everythin’ quiet?’
‘Yes, sir, Mr. Ryan,’ the clerk responded. Too bright.
But the rancher seemed not to attach anything important to the desk clerk’s attitude as he escorted Curran through into the saloon, trailed by his foreman, top hands and the other men from the Big R. Edge couldn’t see them, for he stayed back from the head of the stairs until they had cleared the lobby, anxious not to be glimpsed by anybody who happened to be glancing around.
There were batswing doors at the saloon entrance on the far side of the lobby from the stairway. After they had swung closed, noise continued to come out of the saloon. Voices raised to order beer and coffee, the jingle of coinage and the scrape of chair legs against the floor. As Edge stepped forward and found himself staring down at the terrified face of the desk clerk, many conversations started, counterpointed by the clink of glasses. Cigarette, cigar and pipe smoke wafted over and under the batswings, swirling light blue in the sunlight.
Edge put a finger to his lips, then lowered his hand and jerked with the thumb. The clerk swallowed hard, nodded and ducked out of sight through a doorway behind the desk. The half-breed rested the barrel of the Winchester on the handrail, canted downwards to aim it at the saloon entrance. The noise from beyond the doorway covered the sounds of the town outside the hotel. Which was the way it would continue to be unless something went wrong. Gunshots, or even shouts of alarm, would be the signals of failure.
Edge: Vengeance Valley (Edge series Book 17) Page 11
