EDGE: Death Drive (Edge series Book 27)
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‘You want to hog all the glory for yourself, Edge?’
‘Ain’t no glory in killing people, feller,’ the half-breed replied. ‘Was earning my pay, is all.’
‘It is not a part of your job to almost kill Ezekiel,’ Oscar Taggart croaked.
‘No sweat,’ Edge answered. ‘I won’t make an extra charge for that.’
Zeke stoked his hatred for the half-breed as his father attempted but failed to generate anger in response to the cynicism. He jerked a thumb down towards the sprawled dead and grimaced as he asked: The man who led you here is among them?’
‘No.’
‘You turned him loose?’ Zeke snarled.
‘We owed him.’
‘But he was one of Ash’s men, frig it!’ Zeke snapped his head around to survey the moon shadowed country. ‘He could…’
‘He’s gone, feller,’ Edge assured evenly, and grinned bitterly with his mouth. ‘Kinda like the sun at the end of a bright day.’
‘What?’ Zeke growled absently, still afraid of the night shrouded Texas terrain on all sides.
‘Heading for El Paso with a bottle of rye whiskey for company. By now I figure he’s stinking in the west.’
Chapter Ten
THERE was no more rain as the Big-T drive pushed on, swinging north-west after crossing the Pecos to pass over the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains. And no hint of further trouble paid for with Saxby’s donated money.
Barney Tait continued to set a cracking pace due north through the Territory of New Mexico, crossing the trickling stream that was the upper reaches of the Pecos, the Cimarron Cut-Off and the Santa Fe Trail to reach Colorado Territory.
The closer the herd moved to Laramie, the less disgruntled with their lot the Mexicans became. Their doubts of the past were forgotten as they relished the prospect of journey’s end and the high reward that would be theirs when it was achieved. And with the danger of a surprise attack by hired guns apparently gone, they were able to concentrate wholeheartedly on their job.
There was even a quality of pride about them as they worked, or when they rested at the end of each exhausting day. For they were skilled trail-herders aware they were doing a fine job against high odds. Tait never let up on bad-mouthing the vaqueros but his cursing demands for better than best no longer angered them, for they had come to accept that his ill-humor was a deep-rooted trait of the man’s character. He was a cattleman who liked cows better than people, which was bad for the people working for him. But he knew his trade and the Mexicans who were in the same business could respect him for this.
Zeke also earned a degree of respect as, day by day, he shed some of his rich-man’s-son ways to learn and develop skills which made him useful on the drive. But those who had the perception to see below the surface of the younger Taggart recognized that a complete transformation was impossible. For there was always an underlying superiority in Zeke’s attitude, no matter what he was doing. He was in a situation for the first time in his life when material possessions and abstract status provided no support: where, if a man wanted to impose his will on others he had to be stronger, smarter and more skilled than the rest. So Zeke learned his lessons sullenly, resentful of the need to be taught. And with an ulterior motive.
Edge saw more of Oscar Taggart than of anyone else concerned with the drive, for the old man no longer pretended he was anything but a hindrance when he rode as drag behind the stinking, dust raising, fly-infested herd. And he had taken to sharing the seat of the chuck wagon alongside Pancho, or accompanying the half-breed during his constant circling of the moving longhorns.
He seemed to physically shrink with each passing day, his face always pale behind the newly acquired tan, his green eyes dull, his sparse shoulders sprinkled with falling hair as well as dandruff. He looked sick and yet, the half-breed guessed, the man’s constant expression of distress had less to do with his physical suffering than his mental misery.
He spoke little for many of the long, hot days he rode beside Edge, and this was not simply because the half-breed failed to encourage conversation—if that had been what he wanted Taggart would have chosen to spend more time aboard the chuck wagon. For Pancho’s mood had improved ahead of the vaqueros as the drive progressed and the fat, mustached cook allied happiness with garrulousness.
But Oscar Taggart was comfortable with the taciturn Edge.
They were north of Pueblo in central Colorado in the lee of the Continental Divide, towards the end of another hot, trouble-free day when the broken old man made a comment that required more than a simple word or gesture of accord or disagreement from the half-breed.
‘Ezekiel’s going to turn out a harder man than I ever thought I was, Edge.’
‘Seem to recall you saying the idea of this trip was to shake him out of whatever he was, feller.’
Taggart sighed, gazing vacantly into the north distance while Edge continued to maintain an easy surveillance in every direction.
‘It was, and when we came West I couldn’t have hoped for anything better than what he’s become. But all the mistakes a man makes start out as thoughts in his head.’
‘You’ve changed, too, uh?’
‘You know it.’ He sighed. ‘I’ve made a great deal of money in my life. Without once getting my hands dirty, having my back ache or feeling the need to vomit from looking at a dead man spilling his life’s blood.’
‘I ain’t no expert on cattle drives,’ Edge answered. ‘But I figure they can’t all be like this one.’
Taggart waved a hand in front of his face, as if swatting a fly. ‘Only thing I’m an expert at is reading reports and balance sheets and giving orders. But I’ve always known there’s nothing easy about ranching in the cattle business. On the range or the trail it’s hard and it’s dirty and it’s dangerous. The same with coal mining and railroad building.’
‘For every man who dies in those businesses, a lot more make a living out of them,’ Edge contributed flatly.
‘I’m not looking for excuses!’ Taggart said sharply.
‘You’re talking to the wrong man if you are, feller. Stating a fact, is all,’
The old man was silent for a long time. Then, unconcerned by Edge’s disinterest in the conversation, he continued to promote it. ‘I’m an expert on facts, Edge. The kind that are supplied to me on clean, crisp sheets of paper. Which I read sitting in a comfortable chair behind a polished desk in a safe office. Bald facts concerned with men working their butts off long hours for low pay to swell the Taggart fortune. Almost every week there’s one fact concerned with the death of a worker. Sometimes a group of workers: a mine cave-in, a boiler explosion or a ranch accident. Most of them avoidable if more money had been spent on renewing worn out equipment or there was a larger payroll to stop men from working so long and so hard they become potential victims of fatal mistakes.’
‘I fought a war that had something to do with abolishing slavery,’ Edge growled and drew a sidelong glance from Taggart as the old man realized he had ignited a spark of angry interest deep inside the half-breed.
‘What does that have to do wit...’
‘Nobody’s forced to work for you, feller,’ Edge answered, his voice still taut.
‘You are wrong,’ Taggart countered. ‘You saw the situation in south Texas where there are more men than jobs. It’s the same in Kentucky where the Taggart coal mines are sunk. And in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia where another Taggart enterprise is building railroads. Men are glad to have a job, however low the pay.’
‘Nobody’s forced to work for you,’ the half-breed repeated, his tone even again. ‘A free man can always leave and go someplace else.’
‘Not if he has roots! Not if he has just the one skill which is of no use to an employer elsewhere! Not if he has the responsibilities of a wife and family!’ It was Taggart who was moved to anger now.
‘A man ain’t a tree, feller—he can cut his roots without dying. If he learned one trade he can learn another. And if he wasn
’t sure he could provide for them, he ought never to have raised a family.’
The old man seemed about to snarl an enraged contradiction to the half-breed’s placidly spoken argument. But then he lost the tense rigidity and returned to his vacant contemplation of the rugged terrain spread northwards. His tone became as miserable as his appearance.
‘You’re a man of fixed ideas, Edge. And the strength to live by them. So was I until this trip, but it’s changed me. I’m convinced for the better. Whereas Ezekiel is being changed for the worse. And he’ll be a far more dangerous man than you are. Because the Taggart Corporation is vast and he’ll ride herd on its interests far harder than I ever have. Even though he’ll know the kind of suffering this will inflict on his fellow men.’
‘What are you trying to say, Mr. Taggart?’ the half-breed asked evenly, ‘That you wished I’d killed him instead of grazing him?’
The old man was shocked, his strangely wan but tanned face twisting into a distorted replica of human features. ‘You’re not making a sick joke are you?’ he gasped.
‘I’m not doing anything except filling in my end of a conversation you started,’ Edge answered.
The dusk was gathering and Edge had veered his gelding to the side and slowed the pace, allowing the herd and drovers to pass so that he could make a final circle before Tait called halt at a suitable bedding ground.
‘I don’t like what he’s turning out to be,’ Taggart rasped. ‘But he’s my son and he’s shaping into what I was before I came west. And if you harm him again I’ll spend every cent of Taggart money, if that’s what it takes, to make you pay.’
‘No sweat, feller,’ Edge responded to the threat. ‘Only way he’ll bother me is if he tries to stop this herd getting to Laramie. And I guess he’s got a better reason than anyone else to get the Big-T cows to the stockyard.’
Taggart was still angry. But he brought himself under control. ‘If we reach Laramie before the deadline we’ll get a much better than market price for the cattle. If we don’t, there’ll still be a profit. That extra margin looked fine on paper. Right now it seems I’m the only man who doesn’t think it’s worth it.’
‘Right now you’re still the boss,’ the half-breed pointed out but his tone and a brief expression interrupting his impassive face revealed his lack of conviction.
‘In theory only, as you well know,’ Taggart accused. ‘It was my plan to hand over control to Ezekiel when we reached Laramie. But for all practical purposes he has that now. And this worries me considerably.’
Edge had been rolling a cigarette. He struck a match to light the tobacco and drawled, ‘We’re finally getting to the point?’
The old man chewed on his lower lip for a few moments. ‘There’s going to be more trouble from Saxby. I don’t have to tell you that, I guess?’
Edge spat a flake of tobacco off his tongue. ‘That do-gooder’s two and a half grand into Laredo cowpunchers. And he’s already spent more than half of it. If he ain’t gonna be more unpopular than you in south Texas he has to make good or make it known he tried everything.’
Taggart nodded. ‘That is my view exactly. And it is my intention to see that nobody else suffers from whatever Matt Saxby plans as his next move. In short, I intend to accede to whatever demands he makes.’
He eyed Edge as if he expected surprise or even shock to be registered on the lean, hawk-like face of the half-breed. They were in back of the herd now, covered with dust pasted to their features by the afternoon’s sweat not yet dried by the cooling air of evening.
Edge spat some dirty saliva from his mouth. ‘And you figure that even if Saxby sits still to listen, Zeke won’t talk your new language?’
‘Would you back down if this beef was yours?’
They had swung around behind the men riding drag and the chuck wagon and started forward again, alongside the strung-out herd of longhorns,
‘Mine, yours or your son’s, feller,’ Edge answered, rasping between teeth clenched on his cigarette, ‘the cows don’t make any difference. Way I figure it, reformers who ain’t willing to stand up and fight for what they want changed are shit on the asshole of the lousy world.’
Taggart grimaced. ‘Like Ezekiel, you regard Saxby and the men who support him with contempt. I should have known it was futile to talk to you.’
‘I had a lot more respect for the men who started the stampede and for the Ash bunch, Mr. Taggart,’
‘Highly paid gunslingers like yourself!’ The old man’s voice was vicious with a bitter scorn of his own.
‘On account of the law of supply and demand,’ Edge answered as, far ahead, Barney Tait moved into the path of the lead steer and the herd began to bunch and halt. ‘If there were too many men like me around, I’d move on or I’d do something else.’
‘What if there was nothing or nowhere else?’ Taggart rasped. ‘Human rights is not a matter so simple as you try to make out.’
Edge flicked away his cigarette, ‘Ain’t no such thing as human rights, feller. Just human privileges. And if I figured I wasn’t getting as much as I’d earned, I’d do my own fighting.’
‘You think I’m like Saxby? Well, I’m not,’
The half-breed showed his teeth in a cold grin as the final light of day was swallowed up by the western horizon. ‘That’s your privilege, bought and paid for. And that’s why it ain’t a waste of time you talking to me, Mr. Taggart. You hired me and I figure you’re still the boss. You want to give in to Saxby and the rest of them fellers waiting for paid guns to win for them, it ain’t no skin off my hide.’
‘A hundred and fifty dollars a week is a cheap price to pay for a man’s principles, Mr. Edge,’ Taggart muttered, still scornful.
The half-breed shook his head. ‘Now the ownership of the herd makes a difference, feller,’ he said quietly. ‘If this beef was mine, I’d kill any man who even stepped in their way on the trail to Laramie, Mostly when a man dies, he fills his pants with crap. I’d scoop that all up and take it back to Texas. Then I’d tip it over those cowhands. So folks could see what they are. No, Mr. Taggart, it ain’t my principles you bought. Just my loyalty.’
The old man considered this in silence for perhaps a full minute. Then nodded, perhaps in acknowledgement of the half-breed’s reply, or to signal a personal conclusion he was sure about. ‘Then you would not obey an order by Zeke which you knew countermanded my wish?’ He cleared his throat. ‘Even though you might agree with what he tells you?’
‘One of my privileges I got is to pick who I work for, feller. And right now I’m working for the man who owns the Big-T herd.’
‘Thank you. I’ll give Pancho a hand with getting dinner ready.’
Both men had halted their mounts beside the herd. As he spoke, Taggart wheeled his horse and clucked him into movement, back to where the Mexican cook was unhitching the chuck wagon team from the traces. Edge heeled his gelding in the opposite direction, to complete his watchful circuit, and met up with Zeke Taggart who was one of the drovers assigned the first watch of herd riding.
‘For a man who doesn’t talk a lot, you’ve sure been having a lot to say to Dad,’ the man on the white stallion said, a quizzical look in his red-rimmed, green eyes. The bandage had been off his head for several days now and the healing scar of the bullet’s furrow served to emphasize his recently acquired toughness. ‘He’s got a problem.’ Zeke sneered. ‘And you care?’
Edge shrugged. ‘He’s bought my time at a high price. He didn’t say anything to make me want to quit.’
The younger Taggart was irritated by the half-breed’s close-mouthed attitude, and made another attempt to needle him. ‘Since the slaughter at the Pecos River you haven’t earned a cent of what you’re getting paid.’
Edge sighed. ‘You could be right, feller. But that’s your Pa’s fault.’
Zeke scowled his confusion. ‘What?’
‘My job’s to keep trouble away from the Big-T herd. Yet he’s just told me I ain’t allowed to kill you.’
‘Yeah, we talked a lot of crap,’ the half-breed allowed.
Zeke snapped his head around, his anger rising at the taunt. But he knew Edge well enough to distrust the dead-pan expression and nonchalant attitude of the man astride the gelding. And frustration caused by fear triggered another childish response from the younger Taggart.
‘You think you’re such a big shot, don’t you, mister?’
‘No, feller. Straight and fast is all.’
Zeke jerked on his reins to turn the white stallion away from Edge. ‘One day you’ll meet your match!’ he sneered.
The half-breed nodded. ‘I guess Lucifer’s ready and waiting for somebody to strike lucky.’
Chapter Eleven
‘You want to kill me now?’ Edge asked evenly. ‘Or take a chance on not being fast enough later?’
The tall, blond and handsome Matt Saxby sat his horse with a Winchester at his shoulder aimed at the quiet-spoken, un-moving half-breed. There were more than twenty cowhands stretched out on one side of him. As many on the other. They also had their repeating rifles out of the boots but held them angled across their chests, not threatening the lone rider who had come to a halt thirty feet in front of them.
It was early morning in south-east Wyoming Territory, just a day away from Laramie. The clear air was still cool from the night, the sun a weak and watery yellow disc filtering its light and warmth through thin cloud.
The men aligned across the trail and flanking pasture land had been in sight for many miles as Edge rode towards them, his gelding moving at an easy pace on a loose rein. For this section of the Wyoming plains was as flat as a well laid floor, its only prominent features widely scattered stands of cottonwood trees. It was as he followed the trail’s curve around the most extensive clump of timber for many miles that he first saw them—like a line of dark stakes driven into the verdant land.