Edge dropped his shirt on the bed and peeled the upper part of his red longjohns off his torso as he went to the bureau. The livid scar-tissue of old wound marked the dark, solidly packed flesh at his left shoulder, right hip and just below the elbow on the inside of his left arm. But Meyers found the most intriguing feature of naked-to-the-waist man to be the lower part of narrow leather pouch that showed below the ends of the black hair between the shoulder blades. And did a double take when, after the half-breed had poured water from a pitcher into a basin on the bureau, he pulled a straight razor from the pouch.
Edge saw this reflected in the mirror which rose from the rear of the bureau and he said, "I don't only use it for shaving, feller."
Then he put down the razor and began to wash his face, torso and arms—using a cake of soap which he found along with towels in a drawer of the bureau.
Meyers grimaced at some image this comment called to his mind. Then accused, "Seth Barrow tells me you came through town at dawn this mornin', mister."
"Guess he's the man who went to dig the graves."
"Right. And from what Cyrus Benteen said, it seemed to me you're the man that took off after the Mexicans. You should have stopped off at my place and—"
"Had a message for Kane Worthington, feller," Edge cut in as he began to towel his body dry. "Cortez didn't make mention of you."
Meyers frowned his anger, then sighed out of it. "All right, Edge. There ain't no point in us hasslin'. What's between Kane Worthington and me ain't no concern of yours and right now it ain't important. Main thing is that crimes have been committed in my jurisdiction and it's my job to bring in the people responsible." He paused. "And your duty to help me."
Edge lathered his face and began to shave, hardly needing to glance in the mirror as he stroked the honed blade of the razor over the flesh yet still able to preserve the even line of the underplayed Mexican-style moustache that curved down to either side of his thin lips.
"Sure, feller. Guess you know what happened when the stage was held up. After that I trailed the Mexicans and their prisoner across the border. Cortez has about twenty men and they're holed up at what looks to be an old Federale post in a canyon a few hours' ride from here. I got careless and I got caught. Talked my way out of it by offering to act as the go-between. The cost of getting the Worthington woman back is fifty grand, delivered the message and now I'm waiting to hear if Kane Worthington figures his daughter is worth that much."
He toweled surplus lather off his face, wiped the razor clean and replaced it in the pouch. Then pushed his arms back into the top portion of the longjohns.
"Where's the exchange scheduled to take place? And when?"
"Another canyon that almost runs into the one where the Mexicans are camped, Sheriff. Called La Hondonada. Mexican side of the border, I figure. Outside of your jurisdiction?"
Meyers scowled. "Right. But I can get cooperation from the Federales."
Two clocks in the house had been striking, confusing the number of chimes. But the short shadows in the courtyard below the window where Edge stood, buttoning his shirt, pointed up the time of noon.
"You've got twenty-four hours to fix it, Sheriff," the half-breed said. "And if you do, maybe that's as long a Grace Worthington has to live."
The hands of Chuck Meyers—the thumbs still hung over his belt—bunched into fists. But no tighter than his lips were compressed. Then, "She'll likely die anyway, mister. Kane Worthington won't hand over fifty thousand greenbacks without puttin' up a fight."
From the chair, where he sat to pull on his boots, Edge asked, "You care, feller?"
The lawman formed his lips into a line that suggested he was about to spit. But he swallowed the saliva. "About the Worthingtons, not a wooden nickel, mister. But I ain't gonna hold still and let the killin' of those two Wells Fargo men go by."
The half-breed nodded and went to the bed to put on his hat. "So we both got things to do, Sheriff. Right now I have to talk money with Worthington."
"He's already doin' that with somebody else, mister."
Edge eyed the lawman quizzically.
"At the bank in Indian Hill."
"Way I heard it, nobody in the valley ever deals with anybody in town."
"Puzzlin', ain't it?" Meyers said with a slight, mirthless smile on his lips and in his dark eyes.
The half-breed's features were impassive as he considered for a few seconds what Meyers had told him. Then, "He take all his deputies with him?"
"Deputies!" the sheriff growled and looked again as if he was ready to spit at the carpet. "Hired guns is all they are. Worthington ain't nothin' more than an honorary marshal. No, just Quine went with him. But Worthington knows better than to order his gunslingers to keep me outta the valley when I'm on law business. Understand you ran into some trouble getting into the valley, mister?"
"Seems you keep your ear to the ground," Edge said as he led the way out of the room.
"Try to. But on this occasion it was a couple of feet from Warren Hanson's mouth when he told me what happened to Larry Wylie."
They moved along the landing, across a corner of the balcony and down one of the arms of the curving staircase.
"And May Worthington wasn't exactly what you'd call whisperin' when she backed up what Hanson said."
"They make it out to be murder?" Edge asked as they reached the hallway.
"The cold-blooded shootin' down of a man as innocent as a baby just outta the womb."
The front door of the house was open and they passed over the threshold and paused on the sunlit porch, eyes narrowed against the glare off the whitened columns and step.
"Came on too strong, uh?"
"Right. Hanson I can understand. Him bein' in the same line of work and a buddy of Wylie. But May . . . well, I ain't never heard her say a bad word against anyone in pants—except for her pa, of course."
Edge parted his lips to show a wry smile. "Figure that was the trouble, Sheriff. I was in them and wouldn't get out of them."
There was plain-to-see mirth in the brief smile which came and went from Meyers' face. "Well, I sure enough understand her attitude now, mister." He stepped down from the porch, went to where his horse was hitched to the rail and swung up into the saddle. "I'm grateful for you telling me about everythin', Edge. New experience for me—gettin' co-operation from somebody on the Bar-W payroll."
"Just on Bar-W property, feller. Not the payroll."
Chuck Meyers leaned forward in the saddle to reach out and pull the reins free of the rail. And the move Probably saved his life. For the bullet rifled through thin air no more than an inch away from the curve of his stooped back. And part of a second later the crack of the gunshot sounded simultaneously with the shattering glass of a house window.
The lawman powered out of the saddle instinctively hit the gravel hard with a grunt of pain and lunged on all fours for the cover of the porch. This as his ho reared, turned and bolted. And Edge dropped into a crouch, drew and cocked his Colt, snapped his head the side to look in the direction from which the rifle had been fired.
He saw a smooth lawn encircling a sun-glinting pool and beyond—perhaps a hundred feet away—the impenetrable cover of thick timber.
"Sonofabitch!" Meyers said hoarsely as he scampered up the step to the porch. Then threw himself to the whitened cement when a second shot cracked.
The half-breed had already flung himself backwards across the threshold by then—having seen the white puff of muzzle smoke which signaled the approach the second bullet.
Dust and chips of carved stone flew away from of the porch pillars at a point which showed the sharp shooter was aiming at Edge.
Men shouted as Meyers bellied in through the doorway and Edge came up on his haunches to peer around the frame. But the voices were raised in back of the house. From the area of timber where the shots had been fired, there was just solid silence for extended seconds. Then a yell of encouragement and the thud of hooves on turf.
>
Edge powered upright and lunged forward, was aware of more shouts and the crunch of gravel under footfalls behind him as he pounded toward the spot where the sniper had been positioned.
"Not him, you damn fools!" Meyers snarled at the group of a half-dozen Bar-W men rounded the corner of the house and made to draw guns against the apparently retreating half-breed.
Then the lawman gave chase.
Edge plunged into the timber and then had to swerve to left and right around the tree trunks. Did not come clear on the other side of the encircling stand until the galloping hoofbeats had faded from earshot. And he came to a halt, aware that without a horse of his own, he had no chance of catching the man who had tried to kill Meyers and himself. For the broad valley had a convoluted bottom and now that the rifleman was out of sight, he could stay hidden for its entire length, provided he took his time and followed a tortuous course that kept high ground and rock outcrops, stands of timber and clumps of brush between himself and those who searched for him.
The half-breed had the Colt back in its holster and was breathing easily again when the breathless Meyers reached him, mopping sweat from his high forehead with a kerchief.
"The bushwhacker got away, uh?" the lawman gasped.
"Sure did," Edge answered tightly, almost concealing the anger he felt at having been shot at, as the glinting slits of his eyes continued to survey the lush terrain of the valley bottom. Realizing that the man was probably down off his horse now—leading the animal by the reins so that he would not make much noise and could hear more easily the sounds of pursuit.
The Bar-W men made plenty of noise as they came through the timber. Warren Hanson and two more men wearing deputy badges, plus a Negro who smelled of horses and two cowpunchers wearing chaps, gloves and spurs.
"What happened?" one of the men with a badge on his shirt asked.
"A guy took a couple of shots at us, Craven," Meyers answered sourly. And his expression matched his tone as he raked his eyes over the hard faces of the trio of deputies. "Seems like Worthington is throwin' good money after bad keepin' you men on the payroll. People ain't safe just walkin' in and outta the house."
"Go to hell, Meyers! Mr. Worthington pays us to protect him and what's his is all."
Out in the open, the sheriff did not hold back from spitting. "Seems your boss got just the badges from Tucson, Kahn. Must have forgot to order the book of rules that sets out the duties and responsibilities of a deputy marshal."
"You ain't got no room to talk, Sheriff!" Hanson countered, shifting his glowering eyes from Edge to Meyers. "Seein' as how you're so damn buddy-buddy with a murderer who oughta be locked up in the jail-house!"
"I better get back to makin' them horseshoes for you guys," the Negro muttered nervously, and retreated into the trees.
The two cowpunchers took their cue and followed him.
"You want to knock those words back through his teeth while I hold off Craven and Kahn, Edge?" Meyers asked.
The half-breed subdued the impulse to take up the invitation. One man—Wylie—had already died from being in the line of a backlash of anger which should have been directed at another target. And now Edge's subsiding wrath was caused by the unknown sharpshooter, not by Hanson. But while the tall, lean, impassive-faced man pondered this for long seconds Warren Hanson sweated. For Craven and Kahn spoke no word nor made any move to back him and he was again as afraid as during the immediate aftermath of Larry Wylie's death.
"You saw I just washed up, feller," Edge said. "Wouldn't want to get my hands dirty again this soon."
Meyers shrugged and dropped his hand away from his Remington butt. "Suit yourself, mister."
"Usually do," Edge answered.' And scratched his right earlobe as he stepped between Hanson on one side and Craven and Kahn on the other.
Then delved the hand into the hair at the nape of his neck, withdrew it and swung what at first looked like a punch toward the side of Warren Hanson's head.
But Meyers knew what it was and yelled, "Don't kill him, Edge!"
This as Craven and Kahn stared in shock and Hanson in horror as they saw the foliage-dappled sunlight-glint on the blade of the straight razor.
Then the honed razor slashed into the flesh of Hanson's right cheek, down from beneath the eye almost to the jawbone, a twist of the wrist and across—not pulled free until the lower stroke of the right angle came close to the ear. Not a deep cut, but bloody one, dark crimson oozing from the lips of the wound to cascade over the flesh and drip to the victim's shirtfront.
"Hot damn, mister!" Kahn gasped.
"You could've poked his eye out!" Craven snarled.
Hanson remained silent as he touched a hand to his face and stared with horrified eyes at the blood on his palm and fingers.
"It was nothing he saw that riled me, feller," Edge told Craven as he wiped the blood off the razor on his own pants before he slid it back into the pouch. "It's the lies he told. For a while, each time he looks in a mirror he'll see the L for liar."
He turned his back on all four men and retraced his path toward the house, as Warren Hanson found his voice and yelled shrilly, "You'll pay for this, you friggin' bastard! Sometime, somehow, I'll make you pay for what you done to me!"
"What the hell?" Kane Worthington snarled as he halted breathless in Edge's path, the scene on the fringe of the timber hidden to him. "What's Hanson whining about, mister?"
The rancher looked angry and worried. Behind him, Ralph Quine scowled his hatred for the half-breed.
"He ain't happy, feller. Guess you could say he just got some bad news."
"He's not the only one," Worthington muttered wearily.
Edge spat at the base of a tree trunk. "Got his in a letter."
CHAPTER EIGHT
EDGE bore down on where the two men stood and they stepped aside, aware from the hard-set face with its glittering slits of eyes that the half-breed's mind was concerned with matters far removed from the incident which had taken place on the other side of the timber.
"Mister, I need to talk to you!" Kane Worthington yelled in his wake.
"Later," came the rasped reply, as Chuck Meyers joined Worthington and Quine. And the raised voices of the rancher and the lawman were soon lost to Edge as he strode resolutely out of the trees, past the cut-under runabout parked on the gravel driveway and around to the courtyard at the rear of the house.
In the forge area of the large stable, the Negro had already shod one of the cowpunchers' horses but both waited while he worked on the second gelding.
"You gonna go after the guy that shot at you?" the shorter of the white men asked as Edge began to saddle his horse in a stall.
"Right, feller."
"Ain't easy, trackin' across Bar-W land," the other cowpuncher warned.
"Easier than sitting around waiting for him to try again."
"Reckon so."
"To my way of thinkin', best not to do nothin' that makes folks want to kill you," the Negro contributed as Edge led the gelding out of the stall and swung up into the saddle.
"Guess that sure is the truth," the short Bar-W hand muttered.
"That's part of his job as a blacksmith," Edge said, noting that May Worthington's stallion was not among the horses in the stalls of the neat stables.
"Tellin' the truth?"
All three were puzzled.
The half-breed hunched his shoulders and leaned forward to ride out of the stable doorway as he growled, "Hitting the nail on the head."
Out in front of the house, the runabout had been moved to the porch. Droplets of drying blood on the whitened step showed that Warren Hanson had been taken into the house. Chuck Meyers had recaptured his horse and was sitting astride it, allowing it to drink from the ornamental pool across which the sharpshooter had blasted two bullets.
"I meant for you to beat up on him a little is all," the sheriff said harshly, a scowl of contempt on his round face. "I ain't never seen a meaner move than that."
Meyers' horse had drunk its fill and the lawman tugged on the reins to head the animal toward the gravel driveway. "And I ain't got the time to go huntin' for that sniper, mister. But if I hear you find him and kill him and it ain't in self-defense, I'll come lookin' for you."
In the bright, glaring and hot sunlight of early afternoon the tension which held the narrowed eyes of the two men locked together had an almost palpable presence.
"I ain't in the business of killing, sheriff," the half-breed said after stretched seconds of silence. "Unless the other feller wants to trade that way."
Meyers held the scowl for a moment more, then nodded. "One more thing, mister. Wells Fargo have posted a thousand-dollar reward for the capture of Felipe Cortez. And a hundred dollars each for the five men who were with him when the stage driver and guard were murdered. So if you can get them as well as the Worthington girl, you'll be doin' real good business."
He heeled his horse in one direction as Edge moved the gelding forward in another, the half-breed riding slowly through the trees and out on the far side. Where he dismounted and walked back and forth for a while, until he found sign to show where the sharpshooter had emerged from the timber. Then he remounted and began the slow, painstaking chore of tracking the man who had attempted to kill him.
As he did so, riding across grazing land, through rocky gullies and timber stands, into hollows and around outcrops, splashing along irrigation ditches and just occasionally cresting a rise, he kept his mind clear of any stray thought that was not concerned with tracking the sniper and watching for a sign that the man expected pursuit and was hiding in ambush.
Except once.
When he rode around a hedge-enclosed burial ground and saw a mound of earth on a new grave at the head of which was a temporary wooden marker painted with just today's date and the name Lawrence Wylie. Older graves were marked with marble tombstones with the names and dates expertly chipped out. And as he glanced across the private cemetery, the half-breed reflected briefly upon what May Worthington had told him of her father's ambition to rule the world, wondering cynically if the rancher also ran a midwife service in his valley so that he could take care of Bar-W employees from the womb to the grave.
EDGE: Death Deal (Edge series Book 35) Page 7
