“Sheriff Milton Rose had two hundred and fifty of those printed,” Loring continued as Edge took out the makings and began to roll a cigarette. “And put up all over the county. I think he halfway believed what I told him about how the victim was killed. But he’s a servant of the people who elected him to his office. And the dead man was very highly regarded locally.”
Edge peered out across the rolling, low hill country scorching under the hot Texas sun, his mind given free rein to dwell on another time, far in the past, when wanted-for-murder flyers had been posted on him. But this memory and a myriad others it used to trigger remained locked up in a back, dark recess of his mind. And then, as he lit the cigarette with a match struck on the pole beneath the new flyer, he experienced a stab of ice-cold anger at the pit of his stomach. That threatened to expand and trigger a physical response when Loring added:
"The way you left town did not allow the sheriff to put his case for moderation very forcefully, Edge.”
Between that old Kansas flyer and this one, he had killed more men than he was inclined to ever count, and rode away from the scenes of fatal violence without the law posting wanted notices on him. Maybe a desire for vengeance was even today still eating like acid on the insides of countless men and women who had lost loved ones at the killing hand of Edge. That knowledge he could live with. But being wanted by the law in a capacity that went beyond the jurisdiction of a here-today-gone-tomorrow posse was something entirely different.
But he confined the outlet of his ill humor to the way in which he arced the dead match into the air as he turned away from the vast vista east of the railroad. Then he did a double take at a portion of the outcrop close to the top, his eyes cracked to the narrowest of glinting slivers at the contrast between shadow and the brilliantly blue sky above.
“Ah, you have seen Him!” Loring exclaimed in almost frenzied excitement. “You have seen from the most perfect of viewpoints the face hewn into the solid rock by God’s natural elements! The face of His son which I saw from that same spot so long ago! And felt called upon to commence building the Chapel of the Rock of Jesus!”
There was most certainly a similarity to a human face in the way the limestone had been eroded a little below the highest point, the eyes and the nose and the long beard of a man plain to see, just the suggestion of flowing hair where the rock was shaded darker than the surrounding area, and a misshapen and too large ear.
“Of course, in God’s world—in His universe— nothing remains unchanging except for His abiding love!” Loring proclaimed as Edge moved back to where he had set down his saddle and other gear over the ledge of a glassless window in the chapel wall. “The wind and the rain or the dust it carries had done much damage to the image during the years between when I was first drawn here to the rock and when I had amassed sufficient funds to commence the building of the chapel! Fifteen long years, friend! And now seven more years of His weather have ravaged ...”
He had come down from the high plane of zealous excitement as he watched Edge get a tin mug from the center of his bedroll and then come to squat on a block of crumbling adobe at the non-smoking side of the fire under the coffeepot: and knew his words were falling upon inattentive, if not deaf, ears.
“I’m sorry, Edge,” he went on after the pause. “I vowed I would not speak of my convictions, did I not? But it was just the way in which you appeared to be drawn to look up at—”
“Weather does ali kinds of strange things to all kinds of country, feller,” the half-breed cut in. “Rock and sand, rivers and trees, mud and dust. Flames and clouds, too. I ain’t normally in a frame of mind to pay much attention to that kind of thing. Was thinking of something else just then and seeing that face-shape up there gave me a jolt.”
Neither was Edge normally so forthcoming about his thought processes or so quick to volunteer the reason for an action he took. And now it was as if he was equally uncharacteristically perturbed by the way he had allowed his defense to drop: gave more attention than was necessary to the simple chore of pouring himself a mug of coffee, then offering to fill the old man’s cup. Then the two of them, the half-breed seated on the adobe block and Loring on his feet, drank in silence for perhaps a full minute, each of them lost to the other in deep, brooding thought, until the preacher broke the morose silence.
“The man you killed was one of the four who did the killing here, Edge.”
“Yeah?”
“Ten converted-to-Christianity Indians and Norah. My wife of thirty months.”
The half-breed came out of his reverie and glanced back over his shoulder at the burial place, then looked at Loring, who nodded absently and sank stiffly into a cross-legged posture on the ground. He set down his chipped china cup at his side and seemed to withdraw again into a realm of melancholic private thought as he peered fixedly into the heart of the fire. While with one hand he held steady the fabric of his ragged frock coat the fingertips of the other one ran back and forth over an area where a tear had been darned long ago.
“Seven years in the past,” he went on in a monotone voice. “On a day not unlike this. Earlier in the afternoon. The man you killed and three others. Red, Barr and Ben. We knew Crowell only by his given name. They were offered the hospitality of our camp. But they shot the Indians. Drew their weapons and shot them down in cold blood. Laughing as they did so. Then they intended to have their lusting way with my wife. But Norah denied them. By killing herself. But they were to blame. They forced her into such an act. She was young and very beautiful. Near a lifetime younger than me. I was left alive. Stunned by a blow to the head, but more than this.”
He had abandoned his almost erotic fingering of the repaired rent in his coat. And now, as his tone began to get harsher and his gaunt, heavily-bristled, dirt-grimed face started to display a scowl of vicious hatred, he drew the battered Bible from a pocket; grew calm again as he clutched it tightly to his chest.
“When I recovered my senses, it was to find myself stripped naked and lashed by ropes to the naked body of my dead wife. Just a matter of feet away from me, vultures were tearing the mortifying flesh off the bones of the Indians.”
He shrugged his skinny shoulders and shifted his gaze from the fire to Edge; showed no reaction to the cold impassivity with which his story of brutality and horror was being received by the half-breed who by infrequent turns sucked smoke from his cigarette and sipped coffee from the mug.
“The human mind is sometimes beyond the understanding of its host,” Loring went on. And this produced an almost imperceptible nod of agreement from Edge. “Had the four men merely rendered me senseless before they rode away, I am sure my first impulse when I recovered would have led me to do as Norah had done. I would have found a weapon in one of the wickiups and ended my life. But the longer I was forced to endure my predicament, the stronger became my resolve: that if I survived, I would set aside my faith and seek vengeance.”
“You want me to apologize for stealing your thunder back in Prospect, feller?” Edge asked, in the pause, while the preacher put away his Bible and took up his cup of coffee.
Now Austin Henry Loring’s wasted face displayed a remarkably gentle smile as he shook his head very slowly. “Oh, no, Mr. Edge. I denied my faith for two nights and a day while the carrion vultures and the coyotes fed off the Indians, and the flesh of Norah decomposed beneath me. Before a train came by and my situation was seen. And relieved. My rescuers wanted to do more than merely release me, but I thank God I had sufficient strength to send them on their interrupted journey. For while I took the time to be restored to full health and then laid to rest by Christian burial my wife and my Indian brothers, my faith was returned to me. And was stronger than ever it was. I
knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was not my perogative to exact vengeance for the atrocity committed here. ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’ This was the text of so much of what I contemplated in the aftermath of what happened here beneath the Rock of Jesus, Mr. Edge.�
� Again he exchanged his cup for the Bible. But merely for the sense of security which he derived from holding the book now, as the smile that had faded from his shriveled face returned. ‘‘Had I gone with my rescuers and allowed others to attend to what was needed here, I am certain I would have attempted to usurp the Lord God’s right to vengeance. And had the faith of a lifetime irreparably shattered. Whereas I saw the true light and was able to see that I must change direction. The Rock of Jesus needed no man-made shrine, for it is sufficient unto itself. I had to do as I did before I came here. To travel far and wide and preach the Gospel to those following the paths of sin. Without need of worldly money to—”
“You’re starting to sound like a preacherman again, preacherman,” Edge cut in on Loring. First he tossed his cigarette butt into the fire, then the dregs from his mug and unfolded to his feet as he said: “Obliged for the chance to rest up awhile. And for a lever I can maybe use to help me get out from under a murder rap.”
“Whatever I can do, you have only to request of me!” the old man offered eagerly, thrusting the Bible back into his pocket and grimacing with the pain from stiffened joints as he struggled to rise.
“You told the town sheriff all that you just told me?” Edge asked, taking the hobble off the gelding’s forelegs.
' “Oh, no.”
“You didn’t?” He took the saddle off the window ledge and settled it over the back of the horse.
A rapid shake of the head, accompanied by an earnest expression. “It’s none of his business, Mr. Edge. You plan to return to Prospect now?” “Sometimes I go where I'm wanted,” the halfbreed answered with a wry, fleeting grin, as he straightened up from fastening the cinch beneath the belly of the horse.
The smile that spread across the filthy and withered face of Austin Henry Loring was toothless but shining-eyed, expressing joy held on a tight rein. “I must come with you!”
“You’re wanted there, too.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Edge. It was accepted by Sheriff Rose and everybody else that I was an innocent party in the death of—”
“Wanted there by me, preacherman. As a material witness.”
“Oh, yes, I see . . .” The smile that had begun to slide from the gaunt features was now firmly back in place again. “You may rest assured that I am fully aware of my duty toward you. From the moment I looked out from the Chapel of the Rock of Jesus and recognized who you were, I knew our lives were to become inextricably entwined, for as long as it will take you to complete the mission you have been called upon by Almighty God to undertake.”
“If He called on me, feller, I must have been out at the time,” Edge growled, moving to douse the fire with dirt after Loring had taken off the coffeepot.
“Mock if you must,” the old man allowed, and showed just a mildly rebuking expression in the wake of the smile and just before he displayed a quiet brand of self-satisfied confidence. “But what the Lord God has ordained must surely come to pass.” He hauled himself up onto the driving seat of the buggy and concluded: “When He demands a service, His will be done.”
Edge swung up astride the gelding and eyed the preacher bleakly as he replied: “It’s your kind who perform the service after my kind have been by, feller. Funeral.”
Loring released the brake lever and clucked the sorry-looking gray geldings into motion, nodded and appeared even more composed than ever as the buggy drew level with where the half-breed sat on his stationary mount and Said: “I have four of those in mind. Now that the Lord’s instrument of vengeance has been shown to me.”
“You’re crazy, preacherman!” Edge rasped, cold anger threatening to erupt to the surface again as he heeled the gelding forward and spat a globule of saliva sideways into the once-more-dead ashes in the circle of stones.
“You’ll see. I’ve never been shown a clearer-to-read sign.”
The rider drew level with the buggy and drawled with no hint of irritation: “You haven’t got a prayer, feller.”
“I have an endless supply of those, Mr. Edge,” Austin Henry Loring countered evenly, and perhaps with a trace of a smile.
The half-breed took a few more seconds to suppress the impulse to what he was then able to regard as groundless anger, as he glanced at the oldtimer driving the buggy, then said: “Instrument of vengeance, uh?”
“I am sure of it.”
“And all you have to do is pray?”
“The wise are content to do what they are best at, don’t you agree?”
“I’ve sometimes been known to bring other people to their knees.”
“I’m sure that you do what you are best at most meticulously, Mr. Edge.”
The half-breed vented a short sigh and growled: “Yeah, you might even say religiously.”
Chapter Six
THEY followed the railroad track and prints left by buggy and team on the outward trip from Prospect, and in the unstrained silence of private they thought for several minutes, until Austin Henry Loring said in a tone of indifference:
“He was going to kill me. We each knew who the other was the moment we saw each other in his establishment. I was stunned. In a daze. I know I kept my wits about me sufficiently to leave and wander away from that . . . that place. But I have no recollection of doing it, Edge. My mind is a blank until I felt the man take hold of me and thrust me into the darkness of the alley. Where he demanded to know what I wanted of him,”
The old man in the shade of the buggy roof glanced at the younger one astride the gelding a few feet to the side, saw that he seemed to have a greater degree of interest in the empty country all around than on what was being told him.
But the half-breed revealed he was listening when he said into the pause:
“And what was that, feller? Before your guardian angel of death happened by?”
A frown took a hold on the gaunt face for a few moments as Loring considered taking issue with the choice of words. But then the skinny shoulders beneath the threadbare frock coat were shrugged when one pair of ice-cold blue eyes met the rebuke expressed by another pair of similar color and overpowered it.
“As God is my witness, since I recovered from the evil that possessed me in the immediate aftermath of the savage violence at the Rock of Jesus, i never once contemplated revenge, Edge. Perhaps it was made easier for me to sustain such a tolerant attitude toward the wrongdoers because I never anticipated that I would ever see any of them again. When I did take a path that led me . . . well, as I said, I might just as well have been as senseless as when the man Frank Crowell and his partners in infamy left me to die. Then, when I was shocked back into a state of comprehension, I swear I experienced only pity for the man whose burden of guilt was compelling him to commit cold-blooded murder yet again. Only pity for him. Fear for my own life, I freely admit. And I pleaded with him and prayed to Almighty God to spare me. That my prayer was answered is without doubt a sign.
“I did not recognize it at once: was too filled with joy that my wretched life had been saved.
And I scuttled off into the darkness like a craven coward. But then I saw you making preparations to escape the unjust consequences of your act in coming to my assistance, Edge. Heard, too, the vengeful talk of those who were ignorant of the true character of the man Frank Crowell and would have perhaps punished you there and then if they had been able. So I sought to help you in some small measure by attracting the attention of—” “Said I owe you, feller.”
“You owe mel After you took a hand to save my—”
“Maybe he took the shot at you,” Edge cut in again, rolling a cigarette as he continued to maintain an effortless vigil on the rolling hill country that spread to the heat-hazed horizons on all sides. “But he was talking to me. And the bullet was fired in my direction. I figure it was my skin I was protecting.”
“I think—”
“I don’t give a shit what you think about it, preacherman.”
“I intend to do what I can to have you exonerated of the crime of which you are accused, Edg
e,” Loring said with rasping determination.
“You sure are.”
“And you will then consider yourself more deeply in debt to me, no doubt?”
The half-breed struck a match on his Winchester stock and lit the freshly made cigarette. He answered on a trickle of tobacco smoke: “I ain’t figuring on the people of Prospect setting much store by two strangers telling the same tale, feller. Even if the local lawman did halfway believe it when you told it. Going to have to flush out one of Crowell’s old buddies, I guess.”
A smile began to displace the quizzical look on the sunken and wasted features of the grizzled old man and became even more firmly set there when the half-breed cautioned:
“But I don’t kill people for other people, preacherman. Not for money and not to repay a debt. Plan to bring in one of the other three to tell what Frank Crowell was a part of back there seven years ago.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the distant outcrop with the unfinished chapel in its afternoon shadow. “Far as I’m ready to go for you.”
“I am content,” Loring responded, and seemed to have trouble in keeping his happiness within the bounds of the smile. “The Lord’s will be done.” Another lengthy silence intruded between the two men as the hooves of the horses clopped, the wheels rattled and the timbers of the buggy creaked, while Austin Henry Loring continued to smile his satisfaction with the arrangement, and Edge maintained his effortless surveillance over this piece of Texas in which they were the sole human inhabitants, his impassive expression offering no clue to how he felt about the situation. And it was the older man who once more curtailed the agreeably undemanding peace, as the half-breed arced the cigarette butt into the dust. He said:
“I believe Sheriff Milton Rose to be a fine and fairminded lawman.”
“If he’s that, he’ll be ready to take a hand in an old crime. When I make it his business.” * Loring remained unperturbed by the implied reproof. He allowed: “Yes, I did say that, didn’t I? But when I was still in Prospect following the death of the man Crowell, I could see no further than you as the instrument chosen by Almighty God. As that instrument, you will be guided by Him and—”
The Godforsaken Page 6
