EDGE: Death Drive (Edge series Book 27)

by George G. Gilman

  The cattle also looked in prime condition as they grazed contentedly on a square mile of pasture, unperturbed by the restrictive barbed wire, stranded between posts, which had been erected just for the round-up.

  Five men were standing guard on the herd—one more than Tait had said there was. Four of them patrolled the perimeter fence astride horses while the fifth stood beside his mount in the shade of a large oak growing in a corner of the ranch house yard.

  ‘Thank God they’re still where we left them,’ Zeke Taggart rasped.

  ‘I told you, son,’ his father reminded acidly. ‘Saxby wouldn’t dare start that kind of trouble with the Laredo sheriff’s office taking care of our interests.’

  ‘Who’s the extra man, feller?’ Edge asked.

  It was obvious that the group of men angling across the south western curve of the basin had been seen by all the guards. But no hand was raised in greeting. Those on horseback continued to patrol the barbed wire fence while the one beneath the tree watched the approach of the riders crossing the slope.

  ‘Sheriff O’Brian,’ Tait supplied, and seemed to have difficulty in tearing his attention away from the quiet cattle. ‘Not a bad guy, for a lawman.’

  ‘From my dealings with him, he’s a good man as long as you stay on the right side of him, Edge,’ Oscar Taggart added, his tone cautionary.

  ‘Which side is that, feller?’ the half-breed asked, as the Laredo sheriff raised an arm in a signal and then wearily mounted his horse.

  ‘The inside of the law,’ Tait answered absently on behalf of his boss. For the closer he rode to the herd the less attention he paid to anything else.

  ‘Something you know very little about, I’d say,’ Zeke Taggart growled sullenly, as the four deputies responded to the sheriff’s sign, heeling their horses into a canter to close on him as he rode out from under the shade of the oak.

  ‘Quit needling, Ezekiel!’ Taggart scolded his son grimly.

  Edge looked back over his shoulder to show the slits of his glinting eyes to the younger Taggart. ‘Always figure laws to be like men, feller,’ he said evenly. ‘Some you just have to respect. Others are made to be broken.’

  Zeke grimaced, electing not to hold the half-breed’s level gaze. Instead, he transferred his distaste to the quiet cattle, wrinkling his nostrils at the stink of them.

  ‘I’ll check ’em out, Mr. Taggart,’ Tait said.

  ‘And post guards,’ the owner of the herd snapped. ‘My son will take his turn.’

  Zeke seemed about to protest, but was held in sullen silence by his father’s angry scowl. Tait snapped his fingers and pointed at three of the vaqueros. The Mexicans veered away from the column in the wake of the Big-T foreman, less tense now that they had to deal with a job they knew, instead of having to combat fears of the unknown. Zeke followed them with glowering ill-humor as his father moved his horse up alongside Edge’s gelding.

  ‘I’d ask you not to take too much notice of Ezekiel, Mr. Edge. He was born and bred in the city and has been rather insulated from the harsher sides of life by my wealth. His mother spoiled him and I…’ He broke off as he realized the half-breed was not interested in what he was saying. He gazed after his son with forlorn sadness in his dull green eyes. ‘Well, I worry about him,’ he concluded morosely.

  Edge merely glanced towards the younger Taggart, growing smaller as he reached the foot of the slope to take up a position on the fence indicated by Tait. ‘I’d say you got nothing much to worry about,’ he murmured, then spat dusty saliva to the side. ‘On account that nothing much bothers me.’

  Chapter Five

  OSCAR TAGGART briefly showed his anger. Then he sighed,

  ‘I’ve a fond hope that bringing him out West will make something of him,’ he said quietly, then pushed the problem of his son to the back of his mind.: He raised a hand and his voice, ‘Good afternoon, sheriff! There’s been no trouble?’

  The Laredo lawman was in his early fifties. Short and thickset, running to fat about his middle. His sun-darkened face was fleshy with features which in repose, suggested a mind concerned only with the distasteful things of life. He responded to the greeting with a slight nod, then ignored Taggart for several moments as he surveyed Edge and the Mexicans. When he had made his appraisal, completing it as the body of riders halted horses a few feet in front of him and his deputies, his expression remained pointedly displeased. The four younger men aligned behind him were relieved that their cow guarding duty was finished, and impatient to leave the Big-T range.

  ‘Ain’t been none around here,’ O’Brian drawled,

  The owner of the Big-T started a smile, but interrupted it to concentrate on awkwardly dismounting from his horse. The expression showed signs of strain as he stood on the ground and squinted up at the lawman. ‘I was just passing the time of day,’ he said. ‘You said Saxby wouldn’t move against me while we’re in your jurisdiction and I had faith in that.’

  ‘But trouble’s brewin’ in town,’ the sheriff went on as if there had been no intervention from Taggart. ‘Word of what you hired in Mexico came ahead of you and ain’t no one raised a cheer about it, that’s for sure.’

  ‘So they ain’t come to welcome us then?’ Edge asked wryly, nodding up towards the rim of the basin above the ranch house,

  All attention switched hurriedly away from the soft-spoken half-breed towards the point on the high ground he had indicated. What they saw was a group of perhaps twenty horsemen, riding close together at a canter: making dust on a wheel-rutted trail that curved down the slope to finish in front of the ranch house where the watchers were waiting.

  Taggart’s smile was transformed into an anxious grimace, until O’Brian drawled: ‘I’ll handle it.’

  He shifted his gaze away from Taggart to linger on the impassive face of Edge, and he altered his expression to give the words he spoke more force: Two men dead in one day better be enough for you, mister.’

  ‘More than enough, feller,’ the half-breed replied evenly. ‘But sometimes it works out I can’t live without killing...’

  ‘You’re off duty, Edge!’ Taggart cut in. ‘The sheriff is charged with our protection in this county.’

  The smile was completely gone from Taggart’s ruddy face now, and the sounds of cantering hooves beat through the hot, cow-tainted air of the Texas afternoon.

  ‘If you’re happy, I’m happy,’ Edge allowed easily as the vaqueros toyed nervously with their reins.

  O’Brian and his deputies wheeled their horses to form a defensive line across the end of the trail, facing the group of riders who slowed their advance as they made a final turn around a large barn at the corner of the yard. Then the larger group came to a halt in response to a hand signal from a man who had always been a few feet out in front of the rest.

  They were aged between twenty and forty: hard looking men with work-roughened hands and complexions stained by climatic extremes. They were molded in all shapes and sizes but each appeared to possess an equal share of physical strength, whatever his individual build. They were dressed in workaday cowhand garb with few frills or affectations. Each wore a gun-belt with a revolver in the holster. Most included a booted rifle among the accoutrements slung from their saddles.

  ‘You ain’t come out here to listen to me read the riot act again, Saxby,’ the sheriff drawled.

  The man at the head of the newly arrived group was about thirty. He was lean, six feet tall, with a lazy, loose-limbed way of sitting his horse. His face was classically handsome, his good looks enhanced by blond hair which poked untidily out from under the brim of his hat and yet was neatly trimmed in long sideburns. There was a grim intensity in his brown eyes and a broad hint of hard-to-shake resolution in the thrust of his jaw.

  ‘I came to talk to the Big-T’s new outfit, sheriff,’ Matt Saxby answered. There was a drawl in his voice, but his origins were further east than Texas.

  O’Brian’s head swung from side to side, showing his displeasure to all the men behind Saxb
y. ‘Seems you got somethin’ real interestin’ to say. Seein’ as how those boys rode all the way out from Laredo to hear it.’

  ‘They didn’t come here to start anything, sheriff. But I’m no hero. Especially when I’m up against some high priced, sharp shooting pro gunman.’

  He moved his intense gaze towards Edge, who nodded and smiled a wry greeting. ‘North of the border it seems I come cheaper, feller.’

  Saxby furrowed his brow as Edge swung down from the saddle. ‘How’s that, mister?’

  There was an open five-bar gate in the fence around the yard and the half-breed led his gelding through it. ‘Seems one of the customs hereabouts is for the law to handle differences of opinion. Makes me duty free.’

  ‘Speak your piece!’ O’Brian barked at Saxby as Edge hitched the gelding’s reins to a low hanging bough of the oak and then squatted on an exposed root in the dappled shade of the foliage. ‘And make it fast. Me and my boys are sick of smellin’ cows.’

  Saxby jerked a thumb towards the herd grazing quietly inside the fence at the base of the big hollow below the ranch house. ‘Them men down there oughta hear it as well.’

  The three vaqueros and Zeke Taggart, who rode slowly around the perimeter fence, were paying scant attention to the cattle they were assigned to watch. Instead, they tilted back their heads to gaze anxiously up the grassy slope. While Barney Tait appeared to be unaware of the existence of any living thing apart from himself and a steer he was examining at the far side of the herd.

  ‘Reckon you’re not the only man who likes to hear the sound of his own voice, mister,’ the sheriff drawled, ‘They’ll get to hear what you have to say.’

  Saxby was ready to press his objection, but the strength of determination visible on O’Brian’s fleshy face warned him it would be a waste of time. So the good looking blond cowhand stood up in his stirrups to look over the heads of the quartet of deputies and the sheriff, and stare intently at the nervous Mexicans behind them.

  ‘Listen, you men. Listen well, so you can tell your buddies about this. You don’t know what you’re getting into, working for the Big-T outfit.’ He waved an arm to indicate the grim-faced men on their horses behind him. These boys know what it was like before. I know that, too. We’ve all worked for the Big-T. For that slave-driving Tait, throwing his weight around on behalf of the rich living owner of the spread. Low pay and long hours are nothing new to men in our business. But the Big-T’s always paid its hands the lowest and wanted the most out of them. We aim to change that...’

  ‘And you have, Saxby!’ Oscar Taggart cut in harshly. Then grinned as he half turned to sweep an arm towards the nervously confused vaqueros. ‘These men are being paid better than any hands that ever herded cattle before.’

  Saxby’s brown eyes expressed blatant contempt. ‘For two reasons, Taggart! If you ever do pay them more than the come-on money! You knew you had to pay high to get hands, out of necessity! And out of spite you took your big money offer across the border!’

  ‘Ranching’s a business, mister!’ Taggart snarled, provoked by the other man’s low-voiced bitterness. ‘And when someone does all he can to ruin a business, the owner has to...’

  The handsome blond standing in his stirrups was abruptly infected by the older man’s fury, and his tone became as harsh as Taggart’s as he interrupted.

  ‘I’m through trading words with the Big-T bosses!’ he flung at the man on the ground, and then ignored him to direct his words at the Mexicans. ‘All right, you men have got a hundred dollars each in your pockets! And maybe when you get to Laramie the Big-T will pay you the rest of what’s promised! You’ll need every lousy cent of it, because you won’t ever work again in the cattle business! On either side of the Rio Grande!’

  Taggart snorted and suddenly stooped to grab a handful of dust. ‘You’re built big, mister!’ he snapped, and opened his hand so that the dust motes could float back down to the ground. ‘But in the cattle business you’re smaller than one grain of that!’

  Saxby nodded, but still refused to look at the man. ‘Twenty hands rode out here with me,’ he told the vaqueros, moderating his tone. ‘But every ranch and trail hand between Laredo and Brownsville is with us in spirit. And the word about the Big-T is being spread west to El Paso and north to the railheads in Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming. No man will work with you in an American outfit if you lift a finger to move the Big-T herd. And no man will touch a single cow that comes across the border if he knows you men helped raise or drive it. But that don’t have to happen. Not if you pay back right now the money you’ve been given and ride off the Big-T spread.’

  The doubts which the Mexicans had experienced during the long ride from the river crossing were now broadened and deepened. They considered their anxieties in isolation, or traded perplexed frowns with each other.

  Saxby and the American cowhands saw this and began to smile. Oscar Taggart’s rage built as he sensed imminent defeat. The five lawmen remained neutrally grim-faced between the two factions. Edge, smoking a cigarette in the pleasant shade of the oak tree, continued to look at the ravages of neglect and decay which had taken their toll of the expensively built ranch house and out-buildings. When he had first seen the place from a distance it had been shrouded by heat haze. In close up, the bright sunlight emphasized the signs of dilapidation.

  ‘You men signed contracts!’ Taggart raged.

  ‘But, señor,’ a Mexican with two front teeth missing countered. ‘We did not realize what we were...’

  ‘You were told you were not getting paid a fortune for a routine cattle drive!’ Taggart snarled.

  Saxby had reseated himself in his saddle. Now he rose erect in his stirrups again. ‘Without you vaqueros the Big-T is finished! A contract with an outfit that doesn’t exist is no contract at all!’

  The Mexicans considered this, then nodded. Some even showed faint smiles of relief—honest, law-abiding men out of their depth, grateful to be tossed a lifeline.

  And there was a trace of desperation on Taggart’s sun-reddened face as he swung his enraged eyes between the complacent Saxby and the eager Mexicans. And in his voice as he snapped, ‘Edge!’

  The half-breed curtailed his indifferent survey of the house, with its cracked window panes and peeling paintwork, and the out-buildings, with their carelessly patched shingles and leaning doors. And interrupted the time-killing comparisons he had been making between the neglected state of the buildings and the fine condition of the steers.

  ‘Sheriff’s the legal expert, feller,’ he said. ‘But the way I see it, the contract’s good as long as you’ve got the money to back it.’

  Now Taggart nodded, with greater enthusiasm than the Mexicans. ‘That’s damn right!’ He flung out an arm to point at the herd below. ‘And you’ve only to look down there to see there’s money enough to back the contract a hundred times over!’

  O’Brian snorted. ‘You all through talkin’, mister?’ he asked Saxby.

  ‘No, I’m not! Not until I’m sure these men are absolutely certain of where they stand. I want to repeat...’

  ‘If all you got to say is what you’ve already said, you’re all through,’ the lawman drawled. ‘So turn your horses around and ride outta here.’

  His glowering eyes shifted to left and right to ensure that all the men behind Saxby saw his determination to end the confrontation. When he fixed his gaze back on Saxby’s face he was met with a stare of equal resolution.

  ‘Sure, sheriff,’ Saxby allowed. ‘We’ll turn around and ride off this lousy spread. Just as soon as the Mexicans do.’

  O’Brian sighed wearily and turned his head to look at the vaqueros. ‘You boys hear him. You gonna leave?’

  The dark skinned faces in the shade of broad brimmed sombreros expressed dismay that although the line they had been thrown was still there, they had to make some effort to use it as a way out of their dilemma. Then the man with two teeth missing nodded. And eyed Taggart miserably.

  ‘We are sor
ry, señor. We made a mistake. There was much drinking in the cantina before you came.’

  ‘Edge!’ Taggart snarled as the rest of the Mexicans acknowledged their agreement with what one of their number had said. ‘Shoot the first Big-T hand that makes a move to leave.’

  The half-breed became the centre of fearful and angry attention as he rose from the tree root and slid the Winchester rifle from its boot.

  ‘No, feller,’ he replied as he canted the rifle to his shoulder and the sheriff and deputies draped hands over their holstered Colts,

  ‘You’ll do what you’re told, damnit!’ Taggart blustered.

  ‘What I am doing,’ Edge countered in the same easy tone as before, moving up to the warped and leaning yard fence and resting the Winchester barrel across the top bar—aimed at the sky above Saxby’s head. ‘My job is to see your herd gets to Laramie. And dead men ride no trails.’

  ‘So what’s with the rifle?’ Saxby growled, unafraid.

  Edge pumped the lever action to jack a shell into the breech. O’Brian snorted as he and his deputies drew their revolvers half out of the holsters. Several of the men behind Saxby gripped the butts of holstered handguns or reached for the stocks of rifles jutting from boots. But the half-breed’s Winchester remained angled towards the harsh blueness of the sky and nobody drew a weapon against him.

  ‘On a point of principle, it’ll kill the first man who aims a gun at me,’ the tall, lean, dark-skinned man at the fence replied. ‘On a point of law, it’ll kill up to a dozen trespassers on Big-T property. More if I get the time to reload.’

  ‘I warned you, mister!’ O’Brian snarled.

  ‘And Edge has warned you, sheriff!’ Taggart countered. ‘You have my thanks for taking care of things while Tait and my son and I were engaged elsewhere. But that job’s over. We’re back now. And well able to handle the Big-T without the help of the law.’

  The half-breed’s reaction to Taggart’s backing was just a slight parting of his lips to show the merest hint of a smile.