The final quarter inch of cigarette was taken from the corner of the mouth and flicked into the centre of the street. ‘For a week’s pay in advance, you’ve got yourself a troubleshooter, feller.’
The father smiled and the son grimaced,
‘You sure, Dad? Tait might not like it.’
‘Barney Tait’s only foreman of the Big-T,’ the older Taggart said, his face still tilted up towards the mounted man. ‘I own it. Consider yourself hired, mister!’
A brown-skinned hand released the reins and was extended, palm upwards.
‘Tait’s in charge of the payroll. Tell him I’ve agreed your terms.’ His sun-punished, over-indulged face showed the start of an anxious frown. Try to stay on good terms with him. I need him more than I ... Hey, where do you think you’re going?’
The man had withdrawn his hand and heeled his horse forward. Just a few yards, to the hitching rail outside the cantina, Taggart’s resentment rose to the surface and altered the lines of his frown into an angry snarl.
‘You just made a deal with a real hungry feller,’ came the soft-spoken reply as the rider swung down from his saddle and hitched the reins to the rail,
‘We heard you could only afford a tortilla for breakfast,’ Ezekiel taunted, relishing the tall man’s destitution as some kind of minor triumph.
‘It didn’t do much to fill a three day hole.’
‘All right,’ the elder man allowed, and chided his son with a brief glower. ‘Just keep in mind what I told you about Barney Tait. I need you, mister. But I don’t want you coming between me and my foreman just because...’
‘Don’t aim to cause no trouble between you and him, feller,’ the tall, lean man interrupted evenly. And smiled in the same way he had done in the cantina—drawing back his thin lips to display his very white teeth, without injecting even part of a degree of warmth into his gaze. ‘But if he don’t hand over some eating money soon, I could get to be the thin Edge of the wedge.’
Chapter Two
THE malodorous cantina was doing good business as the man called Edge retraced his steps among the scattered tableland sat down in the same chair he had used before. Only the boy—who came away from the kitchen doorway in response to the half-breed’s crooked forefinger—and Barney Tait paid him any attention.
‘Two more tortillas, bowl of chili and a whole pot of coffee.’
‘You have money now, señor,’ the boy asked, surprised. And shot an anxious glance over his shoulder towards the bartender.
The aproned man was busy pouring tequila for newly rich vaqueros, while the final few applicants for jobs on the cattle drive stood impatiently in line at a table where Tait sat, the battered valise open in front of him.
‘Will have by the time you give me the check,’ Edge answered, impassive in the face of irritably puzzled glances which Tait cast towards him.:
‘Si, señor. I trust you.’
The boy scuttled away, hurrying to reach the cover of the kitchen before the avariciously busy bartender saw him.
Edge watched the last man on the line do business with Tait. It was the old-timer, who did not gulp the dregs of his beer until he had scrawled his name on a sheet of paper and been rewarded with a stack of bills from the valise. Then, as the elderly Mexican moved with unsteady haste towards the bar, Tait rose from his chair, stuffed the much-signed contract into the valise and snapped closed the clasps. He looked long and hard at Edge, seemed about to swing towards the crowded bar, but abruptly changed his mind. The scowl on his face was firmly set when he halted at the half-breed’s table.
‘You just take some fast lessons in handlin’ beef on the hoof, mister?’ he growled.
Edge stretched out a long leg beneath the table to push a chair against the front of Tait’s legs. ‘It’s still all just raw meat to me, feller,’ he answered evenly.
Tait’s scowl began to expand towards a snarl of rage. But then he sighed, dropped into the offered chair and opened the valise. ‘How much the old man payin’ to hire your gun, mister?’
‘One fifty a week. Just the one week in advance.’
Fully resigned to the situation now, Tait pulled the contract from his valise and pushed it across the scarred tabletop. Then delved into a pocket of his shirt to produce a pencil stub. Tell you what I told the greasers, mister. The Big-T spread’s ten miles north-west of here. Five thousand head have been rounded up and penned ready to move. They’ll move at dawn tomorrow. And nobody’ll get another cent until them beeves reach Laramie.’
The boy emerged from the kitchen, the opening of the door wafting in a new aroma of freshly cooked food. The youngster carried a smoke blackened coffee pot and a mug. The bartender saw him and his greedy grin was suddenly gone: replaced by an angry glower as he realized the order was for Edge. But his gaze found the half-breed just as the previously broke man traded a sheet of paper for a stack of bills. The boy saw the grin return and was happy himself: like everybody else in the cantina except for the two seated Americans.
‘One other thing…’ Tait drawled, glancing at the crumpled and grease marked contract, ‘...Edge?’
‘That’s the right name, feller,’ was the quiet-voiced reply as the boy set down the coffee pot and mug. ‘Obliged, kid.’
‘The Taggarts will be ridin’ with us but I reckon they know less about cows than you do. The old man hired you and that’s his money in your hip pocket. But from the spread to Laramie, I’ll be boss. You’ll do what I tell you, when I tell you. And the way I tell you, if that’s the way it has to be.’
His soured eyes stared hard into Edge’s face, challenging him to contest this rule.
‘Always respect a man who knows more than I do, feller,’ the half-breed allowed, tilting the spout of the coffee pot over the mug.
Tait nodded curtly and reclosed the valise. And started to rise from the chair as two more Mexicans swung into the cantina from the street—their presence abruptly curtailing the excited talk and happy laughter of the group gathered at the bar. Intrigued by the sudden end to the din, Tait turned his head. He was half out of his chair, body canted forward. A grunt of alarm burst from his throat as a brown-skinned hand fisted around his kerchief and jerked him hard across the table.
He dropped the valise and gripped the table with one hand, the other clenching for a defensive blow as his flailing feet were dragged up off the floor. But then, when he was sprawled across the table top, one bristled cheek pressed hard to the back of Edge’s left wrist, he became terrified into stillness. For his dark eyes, the lids wide and the irises swiveled to their fullest extent, saw the half-breed’s capacity for evil was no longer latent. And that his right hand grasped a vicious instrument of torture and death.
Tait saw the other man’s eyes as the merest threads of glinting blueness, while the lips were compressed so tightly that they seemed not to exist. The skin of the face was pulled drum taut between the bones and yet the lines of harshly lived years appeared more deeply inscribed.
In the right hand, which swung in a blur of speed from out of the thick hair at the nape of his neck, Edge held an open straight razor, the point honed as sharply as the cutting side. And it was the point which rested against the exposed side of Tait’s pulsing throat.
The attack and capture had taken no more than two seconds: and in that brief segment of time the newcomers on the threshold had been forgotten. Every pair of Mexican eyes was focused on the two Americans.
‘No man knows everything, feller,’ Edge rasped into the hot, stinking silence. His lips moved only slightly, his teeth not at all. ‘So listen and learn. I hear you call Mexicans greasers again, I’ll cut out your lousy tongue and make you swallow it whole. You got that, boss?’
‘Let me up!’ Tait snarled. But he did not struggle, his eyes switching their terrified gaze from the grim face of Edge to the razor which pricked his skin without drawing blood.
‘You’ll remember?’ the half-breed insisted, his tone no longer so harsh.
‘Sure! Sure! I
didn’t figure you for such a touchy bastard!’
‘I ain’t, feller. Except in two ways. And you and the rest of these people might as well know about the other thing that upsets me.’ He continued to keep a tight grip on Tait’s kerchief and the razor against the skin as he raked his narrow-eyed gaze over the recently hired Big-T hands. The fear which the hard-set lines of his face had inspired in Barney Tait was now transmitted to the Mexicans. ‘Any man ever has cause to pull a gun on me better squeeze the trigger right away. If he’s lucky, he’ll kill me. If he don’t, he’ll have a long stopover someplace between here and Laramie. On account he’ll be dead. Always try to give folks a warning.’
He withdrew the razor from Tait’s neck and pushed it, still open, into a leather pouch at the nape of his own neck—the sheath for the awesome weapon held in place by a beaded thong encircling his throat. Then he released his grip on the kerchief and picked up the mug of coffee. He sipped the strong liquid with quiet relish and his face became impassive in repose. He adopted the easy attitude without effort and it was as if no threat of violence had ever arisen.
‘You men, we leave now!’ one of the two newcomers snapped in Spanish.
Both of them were in their early thirties. Tall and lean and possessing Latin good looks. They were well and expensively attired in trail herding outfits, complete with chaparejos and spurs. Each carried a bone handled Colt in a low, loose hanging holster.
The men who had just signed a contract to work for the Big-T looked sheepishly at each other. Some shuffled their feet.
Barney Tait, still disconcerted by the speed and icy coldness of Edge’s anger and actions, took several moments to adjust to the new atmosphere which pervaded the cantina.
‘You need me to teach you some Spanish, feller?’ the half-breed asked softly as the two men on the threshold sensed trouble that involved them.
The Texan had dropped back into his chair. ‘No, I friggin’ don’t!’ he snarled, springing erect and swinging around, rising anger jutting his jaw and setting light to his dark eyes. ‘What the hell’s goin’ on here?’ he demanded in English.
His head swung from the men at the bar to those at the doorway and back again.
The old-timer spoke, but not to Tait. ‘We no longer work for you,’ he told the newcomers. ‘We will get much more money to take American beef to Laramie.’
He looked less afraid than the men flanking him, perhaps because he was much older than all of them and therefore had less life left to lose. And his words certainly spread murderous looks across the faces of the men at the doorway. Some of the vaqueros nodded in shame-faced confirmation of what had been said. They were treated to scornful stares, which were then directed with deepening emotion towards Edge and Tait.
‘You are Taggart men?’ the taller of the two asked in English, making each word sound like an obscenity.
‘Ain’t no business of yours who we are, mister!’ Tait snarled.
Both well-dressed Mexicans nodded.
‘Si, that is what you are!’ the thicker-set one flung at the Americans. ‘The scum of Texas who no Americanos will work for!’ He snapped his head around to show the full measure of his contemptuous scowl to the vaqueros. ‘I hope they paid you well, you loco hombres! But whatever it was, it will not be enough! Even for your worthless lives!’
‘You finished, mister?’ Tait snarled.
‘No, we have not finished, señor,’ the taller Mexican answered, moderating his tone and bringing his impulsive rage under control. He waved an arm to encompass the men at the bar. ‘They have worked for my brother and I a long time. We owe it to them to warn them of what will happen if they...’
‘Ain’t no “if” about it,’ Tait cut in and dropped his right hand to drape the Colt in his holster. ‘They put their names to a contract and they got Taggart dollars in their pokes! So best you hombres leave. Before I maybe pay you out. For callin’ me Texas scum.’
Neither brother was perturbed by Tait’s threats. Instead, their resolve became firmer. Their stances became less rigid and all traces of any emotion drained from their faces.
‘Señor Tait!’ the old-timer called anxiously. ‘Don Camilo and Don Jorge are known as the...’
‘Best guns in the whole of Nuevo Leon state,’ Edge cut in, his tone commonplace in stark contrast to the old man’s dramatic whisper. ‘If they’re the Quinteros.’
‘Si, we are the Quinteros,’ the taller brother confirmed. He spoke the name with pride. ‘So I think we may be allowed to speak with our men …’ He paused. ‘Without need to force the issue?’
The implied threat was much stronger than the stocky Texan’s bluster had been. And its effect was much more dramatic. It excluded the vaqueros and the old-timer who became absorbed, natural spectators. And their blank faces turned towards Tait and heightened the Texan’s new fear of the situation he had triggered off.
‘You gonna start earnin’ what you been paid, Edge?’ Tait rasped from the corner of his mouth, his worried eyes moving only to flick between the faces of the Quinteros.
‘You ain’t got four feet and horns, feller,’ the half-breed countered evenly.
‘Do you think a gringo pistolero frightens Don Jorge and I?’ the taller brother taunted.
The door from the kitchen swung open, ushering in a stronger aroma of cooking as the boy emerged, a tray of steaming food balanced on one hand.
‘Your meal, señor,’ he called brightly. And vented a sound that was half gasp, half cry of alarm.
Both Quintero brothers were distracted by the youngster’s sudden and cheerful entrance. And Barney Tait grunted his pleasure at this as he drew and cocked his Colt. But the exclamation finished as a sound of fear. For the two men at the doorway saw the Texan’s move on the periphery of their vision. And combated it with the smooth skill of long experience. They drew their revolvers in perfect unison, at the same time side-stepping away from each other. It was inevitable that Tait, although he had the drop, should hesitate: torn between two targets.
‘Crazy bastard!’ Edge accused through clenched teeth. And jerked up both knees against the underside of the table.
The table tilted and went forward, slamming into Tait’s back. The Texan bellowed a roar of pain and crashed to the floor. His gun was triggered into a wild shot that buried the bullet into the ceiling. The reports of the Quinteros’ revolvers sounded simultaneously a part of a second later. Their shots were carefully aimed, but at a target which had abruptly fallen under the line of fire.
One bullet ricocheted off the flying, liquid-spilling coffee pot. The second exploded wood splinters from the table top as it became lodged in the tilted surface.
Edge had powered up from his chair and lunged to the side after overturning the table. The Remington—given to him by a Mexican boy much like the one now rooted to the threshold of the kitchen doorway—came clear of the holster as part of the same series of smooth movements.
Its first shot killed the brother named Don Camilo, drilling through his fancy vest to bore a hole in his heart. The impact of the bullet started him into a turn, but his legs went limp before it was half completed. And he crumpled to the floor like something wet and loosely packed. A final pumping action of his heart spurted liquid crimson across his chest.
Don Jorge had cocked his bone handled revolver by then. But he was not a cold-hearted, feelingless loner like the man in a half crouch across the cantina from him. He was used to drawing confidence from the knowledge that he had a brother at his side. And the fact that his brother was now just a dead thing on the floor aroused a turmoil of emotions in his mind. He felt grief and anger, a need to confirm his worst fear and a thirst for revenge when he was forced to accept the inevitable truth.
But he was a skilled gunfighter, aware that he was in a kill-or-be-killed conflict. And it took him just a split-second to push all other considerations aside and concentrate on the immediate necessity.
A split-second was too long.
Edge felt nothing: neith
er that he had just killed a man, nor that he might himself be blasted into death by a bullet tunneling through his flesh. If he was aware of anything in his mind at all, it was simply a fleeting notion that he had the advantage—one brother could not witness the violent end of another without experiencing some kind of hindering emotion.
He squeezed the trigger of the Remington a second time. And saw the Mexican’s gun buck as it echoed the shot. But Don Jorge was already starting his backward stagger and the recoil of the revolver in the hand of a dead man jerked it farther off target. The bullet burrowed into dirt at the angle of a side wall and floor. It was a corpse which banged into the doorframe and pitched forward. Killed by another shot in the heart, marked by a black hole at the center of a blossoming crimson stain. He fell face down and remained that way, hiding from shocked and indifferent onlookers the expression of injured pride that was his death mask. A rivulet of blood from his punctured heart wound out from beneath his body to be soaked up by the dirt of the cantina floor.
‘Dammit, I could’ve handled one of ’em!’ Tait snarled, pushing up on to all fours and then coming erect. He grimaced and massaged the small of his back where the table had hit him. But then, after a glance at the crumpled and sprawled corpses, he showed the half-breed his discolored teeth in a broad grin of relief. ‘Or maybe I couldn’t have.’
Edge upended the Remington to eject the two spent shell cases. He fed live rounds into the smoke-smelling chambers of the cylinder. ‘Every man to his trade, feller.’
‘Nino!’ the bartender yelled at the still frightened boy. ‘Go bring the Federales!’
The boy was startled out of his horrified study of the crumpled and sprawled corpses. He looked anxiously around for a place to set down the tray of food. And saw the half-breed’s outstretched hands.
‘Obliged,’ Edge told him, and sat down at the nearest table as the youngster ran out of the rear door.
EDGE: Death Drive (Edge series Book 27) Page 2
