EDGE: Ashes And Dust (Edge series Book 19)

by George G. Gilman

  ‘Saw somebody,’ he allowed, capping the canteen.

  She could not conceal the anger from her movements as she snatched up her own canteen. She tried the impossible - to give the act a ladylike air as she sucked thirstily from the canteen’s neck.

  ‘So why didn’t you wait?’ she asked when she had drank her fill. Her breathing was less noisy and more even.

  He heeled his horse forward. Emma hurried to cap her canteen and get up alongside Edge again.

  ‘Couldn’t be sure it was you,’ he told her. ‘Knew if it was, you’d catch up.’

  She made a low sound deep in her throat. ‘You are an insufferable man, Mr. Edge!’

  ‘Don’t claim to be anything, ma’am,’ he answered. ‘You get the horse for twenty?’

  ‘Plus the saddle and bridle,’ she replied after a lengthy pause during which Edge showed no intention of pursuing the matter.

  ‘Mr. Florin said that if I chose to ride with you, I deserved kindness from other directions.’

  The half-breed eyed the sweat-lathered horse and the well-worn gear. He spat on to the trail ahead. ‘Guess the horse was only worth fifteen bucks,’ he commented sardonically. ‘Insufferable!’ Emma hissed.

  Edge rode in silence. The woman spent five minutes recovering her breath completely, as she did some more cleaning work on her clothes and face. Then:

  ‘Horseback riding in the West is outside my experience, Mr. Edge. I took the advice of the storekeepers concerning clothes and supplies.’

  Now that most of the dust was removed, her garb showed its newness. High-sided riding boots, tight pants that were tucked into them, a matching jacket with shiny buttons, and a wide-brimmed hat that were all black. A white blouse under the jacket, unfastened to a modest extent two inches below the base of her throat. The clothing pointed up the shabbiness of the saddle and bedroll lashed on behind.

  ‘The Dream Creek tailor knows his job,’ Edge acknowledged.

  ‘Do you know your job, Mr. Edge?’ Emma countered at once.

  He showed her a cold grin. ‘I have a knack of locating money, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘And sometimes it even turns up where I happen to be. Like yesterday morning.’

  Emma Diamond was not beautiful. Even the handsomeness of her face had more to do with the visible strength of character rather than feminine fairness. When her facial muscles grew tense - as now - she became almost homely.

  ‘I’d prefer to forget about the events of yesterday morning, Mr. Edge,’ she said firmly.

  Edge shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t do that, if I were you. Not until you get the money back where you figure it belongs. That could take a long time and the going could get rough.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘And so you might want to give up on the idea - you being a woman liable to change her mind. But if you keep thinking how rough it was when you lost the money...’

  ‘Is that what keeps you acting so hard, Mr. Edge?’ Emma cut in. ‘Thinking about the past?’

  ‘Ain’t no act, ma’am.’

  ‘You know what I mean!’

  ‘Nothing else to think about. Future hasn’t happened and the present is happening right now.’

  The woman realized that this was the closest she had ever come to opening a normal conversation with the impassive and taciturn tall man.

  ‘Was the past all bad?’ she asked, and anger was absent from her voice now. It held a tone of sympathy.

  Edge mistook it for pity. ‘The parts I think about!’ he rasped.

  She snatched a look at his profile and the lean flesh seemed as hard and immobile as the face of the bluff they were passing. She allowed several seconds to slide back into an unharsh past, then:

  ‘Have you seen anything to prove the men came this way?’ Her voice was neutral, businesslike.

  ‘Not until now,’ he replied, nodding almost imperceptibly to indicate a point two hundred yards along the trail.

  An unsaddled horse had wandered out on to the trail from around the end of the bluff. The sun was high enough now to generate a promise of the searing heat it was holding in reserve for the rest of the day. But there was no shimmer yet and the near-empty land and its features showed up in stark clarity.

  ‘A horse?’ Emma said. Without scorn, for her dislike of the dark-skinned half-breed did not cloud her respect for his judgment. ‘It could be a mustang.’

  ‘Shod,’ Edge answered. ‘A mare. Old and owned by somebody who doesn’t give a damn about horseflesh.’

  A look of fear clouded Emma’s green eyes. She recalled a phrase Florin had spoken under the threat of the razor: Tom had his broken down old mare saddled and ready to ride.

  ‘Shouldn’t you get your gun ready, Mr. Edge?’ she asked, lowering her voice to a whisper as they narrowed the gap on the mare.

  ‘Horse ain’t in that bad a shape,’ the half-breed replied evenly.

  The whisper took on a hissing note. ‘You know what I mean! In case they’re hiding up there.’

  ‘If they’re hiding, I figure they can do better than that, ma’am.’

  The mare had remained stationary after rounding the angle of the bluff and seeing the newcomers. As Edge and Emma rode closer, they saw just how badly the animal had been treated. Underfeeding caused the ribs to show in relief against the dappled gray coat. The coat was dull from lack of grooming. The scabs of old sores and the crusted blood of more recent ones showed where the saddle had been cinched too tight, spurs had been dug in and a quirt had been misused.

  ‘Such people have no right to own animals!’ Emma accused, forsaking her previous low tones, incensed by the mare’s distressed state and gaining confidence from Edge’s easy manner.

  ‘This one won’t be riding anything else unless it’s got wings,’ the half-breed responded evenly as he reined his gelding at the end of the bluff.

  The mare continued to stand in motionless dejection across the centre of the trail. Emma had to steer her mount around the animal in order to see what lay at the base of the bluff’s west-facing cliff.

  She started a scream, which faded into a moan. Her body went rigid, and then became limp. As Edge slid from his saddle, she slumped and almost toppled to the ground. But she clung frantically to the saddle horn, eyes wide and staring. Her mouth flapped several times before she was able to voice the words in her throat.

  ‘Holy Mother of God,’ she croaked, but with deep reverence.

  ‘Doubtful a feller like him will get to meet the lady,’ Edge muttered, ambling across to the man who was the object of Emma Diamond’s horror.

  ‘It’s Tom!’ she gasped. She made to dismount, swayed, and held her seat in the saddle.

  ‘The bum arm points to it,’ Edge growled.

  Tom was in his early twenties and would not get to be many hours older.

  Crusted blood on the untidy heap of his discarded clothing showed he had been shot before he was stripped. Twice. Once in each ankle to disable him. Then, naked as the day he was born, he had been lashed to a large slab of rock canted to the base of the cliff. Four lengths of rope had been used - below the knees, across the belly, around the chest and upper arms and at the throat. Then they had done something with a knife and ridden off, leaving him exposed to the brutal harshness of the sun on its afternoon crawl down the western dome of the sky.

  ‘His mouth!’ Emma gasped. ‘What have they done to Tom’s mouth?’

  The dying youngster had managed to raise his head once when he became aware of people close to him. But then his chin had thudded back down on to the rope around his throat before the half-breed or the woman could see what had caused the broad run of now dry blood which reached from his chest to his genitals.

  Edge halted immediately in front of the trapped and tortured man and dropped on to his haunches. Tom’s eyelids flickered to show pale green eyes that failed to get a focus on his appraiser before they closed again. Edge glanced into the gaping, blood-blackened mouth and a dozen bloated flies swarmed out. He swatted them lazily away fr
om his stubbled face as he rose and drew the razor.

  ‘Cut out his tongue,’ he reported as he leaned towards the mutilated man and began to saw at the restraining ropes.

  ‘How…!’ Emma started to shriek as she turned her drained face up towards the sky.

  The strength went from her hands as she swayed again. She tilted far out to the side and was unable to hold herself in the saddle. She hit the ground hard, the groan of pain revealing that she did not lose consciousness. But she remained limply paralyzed with horror as she watched the tall, lean, dark-skinned half-breed complete his chore.

  And, despite the muscle-freezing horror that gripped her, she was able to feel surprise at a new facet of the man called Edge which was revealed. A totally unselfconscious gentleness that seemed as natural to him as breathing.

  He cut through the lower ropes first. Then, before he put the razor to the bonds at throat and chest, he took the weight of Tom. When the final strand parted, he tossed away the razor so that he had both hands free to lift the injured man and then lower him, full-length, to the dusty ground. Then, almost with the same degree of tenderness of a devoted father taking care of a much-loved child, he gathered up Tom’s clothing and formed it into a pillow. But no father in such circumstances would ever wear such an expression of utter impassiveness.

  ‘He’s alive?’ Emma gasped. She clawed at the ground, trying to get up. But her strength refused to return.

  ‘For a while,’ Edge answered, glancing around at the immediate area beneath the bluff, then dropping into a squat at the side of Tom’s head. ‘Tougher than he looks, but nobody’s that tough.’

  There had been a camp here. The night wind had scattered a lot of the sign: but a few dark embers of a former fire still showed and there was a crushed cigar butt and two piles of horse droppings close by. A midday stopover, the half-breed guessed. Because Tom’s face, chest, belly and thighs were blistered and flaked by long exposure to sun. Perhaps the bitter cold of night had come as a relief - at first.

  He had not opened his eyes again, but now he did. There was pain in them, leaving no room to express anything else if he was aware of his helper. His chest had hardly moved at all as he breathed. But abruptly he sucked in deeply through his mucus-blocked nostrils. The sound of it was louder than the croak that caught in his throat. The congealed blood in his mouth made brittle cracking noises as he moved his lips.

  ‘Can’t you help him?’ Emma begged.

  ‘Beyond it,’ Edge muttered. ‘But maybe he can do us some good.’ He reached for his razor and leaned close to put his mouth close to Tom’s ear.

  ‘No!’ Emma said shrilly, and tried again to get up on to all fours. She made it, but fell flat when she tried to rise further.

  ‘Where they heading, feller?’ Edge asked, pronouncing the words distinctly.

  Tom smelled bad, and not only with the odors of congealed blood and approaching death. His mop of curly blond hair was rancid with months-old dirt. He was dehydrated now, but the sweat drawn from him by the merciless sun had dislodged a long build-up of grime from every pore in his lanky body. His bowels and bladder had emptied.

  Edge lifted the youngster’s right hand and folded the nail-bitten fingers around the razor’s wooden handle. It had to be the right. Tom’s left hand and arm were a bloodless, skin-puckered, fleshless parody of a human limb. The scaly scar tissue of an old wound just above the elbow showed where the life-giving nerves and blood vessels had been irreparably severed.

  ‘I thought you were going to...! Emma started.

  Edge continued to ignore her as he reached out and, with extreme gentleness again, tipped Tom on to his left side. The razor slipped from his fingers and Edge replaced it and repeated his question. Over on the trail, Emma hauled herself to her feet and took faltering steps out of the sun’s glare into the shade cast by the bluff.

  ‘For you and me both, feller,’ Edge urged as the mutilated man opened his eyes once more. ‘If you can write, they won’t get to spend your share.’

  Emma came to stand over Tom and Edge as the injured boy started to use the razor’s point to make marks in the dust. She was behind Tom now that he was held on his side by Edge and he was probably unaware of her. Edge ignored her, craning his head around to try to decipher the shaky lines which the razor was inscribing in the dry dust. The writer and the reader both had their eyes cracked to narrow slits of intense concentration.

  Emma’s new boots creaked as she moved around the two men, to look down in harrowing pity at the blistered and blood-crusted face of Tom.

  ‘E-L-P-A,’ Edge muttered, and then the razor fell from the hand which had begun to tremble.

  Tom made a sound in his throat like that of a trapped wild animal - but not loud. Edge glanced at his face, which was upturned towards the woman. The pain in his green eyes was more intense than before. And it was not entirely physical, for his punished features showed lines of recognition.

  Then he made another low sound deep in his throat; his body was abruptly rigid; his eyes snapped closed and then wide open again. When Edge released him, he became limp and rolled on to his face, covering the four letters he had scrawled. There was no further movement.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Emma whispered as she crossed herself.

  Edge raised the body a little to retrieve the razor and return it to the neck pouch. He stood up.

  ‘He looked at me and he died,’ the woman said

  ‘Maybe it’s the new clothes,’ the half-breed growled as he went to his horse.

  ‘What?’ Emma asked absently, continuing to stare down at the dead body.

  Edge raked his hooded eyes over the tight-fitting riding habit that contoured the slender curves of her body. ‘You sure look dressed to kill,’ he muttered.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘TOM was my brother,’ Emma said out of the depth of her sadness as she stirred a skillet of frying beans.

  It was the first time she had spoken since she glared contemptuously at Edge in the shadow of the bluff when he told her the buzzards would take care of the youngster’s remains. She had refused to allow this to happen and had gathered enough scattered rocks to stack into a funeral pile atop the body. It took a long time and Edge did nothing except wait for her until the work was finished and she had knelt in prayer beside the rocks.

  They had ridden in silence until early afternoon, when the half-breed called a halt at an abandoned stage line shack with a well outside. She had shaken her head at his tacit offer of food, then walked off into a cypress grove while he made a meal of canned meat and tepid water.

  When she returned from the grove, her face was puffy from tears. In such distress, she was at her most attractive. But then she washed up and, when they remounted to ride for the junction with the main east-west trail, she wore the familiar facade of strong determination and self-reliance. Then, as the heat built up and the surrounding horizons shimmered in closer, her physical discomfort acted to trigger her true emotions into penetrating the false front.

  It was as if she needed all her strength of character to match the slow but unrelenting pace of the man: to an extent that she was unable to spare any for a false front. The beads of sweat standing out on her sun-reddened cheeks encouraged the held-back tears to squeeze from the corners of her screwed-up eyes.

  And for the first time, she welcomed the utterly cold lack of compassion in Edge. For, had he offered to halt awhile, or even showed her a sympathetic glance, such a gesture would have opened the floodgates on the full weight of her feelings. And Tom did not deserve such grief.

  ‘It showed in the eyes,’ the half-breed said as he sat down beside the fire after hobbling the two geldings. ‘Not just the color. And the bone structures of the faces were alike.’

  The campsite was at the side of the main trail, half-a-dozen miles towards El Paso from where they had joined it in a narrow ravine with a clear stream running down one side. There was sweet grass to feed the horses, and a tangle of brush between the trunks of som
e stunted pine trees which would provide a windbreak if the norther came again tonight. It was after sundown and almost completely dark when Edge decided to stop in the ravine. And still the woman failed to open a conversation. While Edge had built a fire and then attended to the horses, she had unpacked her saddlebags and started to prepare a meal.

  ‘You didn’t know until you saw him?’ Her misery was great, but it was now deeply buried inside her. In the cool of evening after a long day’s ride under a hot sun, her face looked glowing and healthy in the dancing firelight. Her eyes gleamed in reflection and her teeth showed very white between the full lips.

  ‘I figured you recognized the bum arm bit when you heard about him,’ Edge answered, rasping the back of a hand over his stubbled jaw.

  She acknowledged this with a nod as she continued to stir the cooking food. ‘My father was quite mad, of course,’ she said in her flat, emotionless voice. ‘It was Tom who drove him into insanity. He was always the favorite child, even though our mother died giving birth to him.’ She shrugged. ‘Or perhaps because of that. But Tom was wild, Mr. Edge. He led a wild life.’

  ‘He died pretty wild, too,’ the half-breed muttered, testing the extent of the woman’s changed mood.

  But she ignored the comment, and belied her apparent vagueness. She removed the beans to the side of the fire before they could burn, and then attended to the meat.

  ‘He became an outlaw. Alone at first, robbing stages and stores. But then he got shot in the arm while he was trying to rob an elderly couple of their life savings. It was a bad wound that made his left arm and hand useless. And he was left-handed.

  ‘But it didn’t change his ways. He could not work alone anymore, so he joined a gang. Then another and another. He wasn’t very old, Mr. Edge. Twenty-three, but he’d done a lot of wicked things.’

  ‘Younger fellers work faster,’ Edge commented, and was again ignored - except as a captive listener.

  ‘Our father grew gradually more disenchanted with Tom and his ways. And, when he heard Tom had been sent to the penitentiary for murder, he withdrew into insanity. Then Tom escaped with some other men and he came to Chicago to ask for money. He had never done that before. Father refused and there was a fight. Tom ran and Father lived just long enough for me to get to him and hear his last requests.’