EDGE: Ashes And Dust (Edge series Book 19)
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‘Around someplace,’ Edge answered as he heaved himself up out of the hole and looked down at the putrefying corpse of Boyce Diamond.
Schabar’s eyes raked the empty land along the river’s north bank. Then he drew his Remington. Fast and smooth. The sweat stains on his shirt at the armpits expanded as the half-breed watched.
‘She got hardly anything right,’ Edge rasped, canting the shovel to his shoulder as if it were his Winchester. ‘She figured you were trailing us to protect her.’
‘If you killed her, it saves me the trouble, mister,’ Schabar said, not taking his small eyes off Edge’s nonchalantly-set features. ‘That saddlebag got the money in it?’
Before going up to the cave, Emma had unhooked a single bag from her saddle horn and dropped it near the graveside.
‘You want to take a look, feller?’
The lawman responded with a curt nod. ‘You open it!’
Edge squatted, rested the shovel and worked on the bag buckle with loose, easy-moving fingers.
‘Only you, me and the woman know about what that crazy old guy wanted done with his loot,’ Schabar said, a hint of excitement entering his tone. ‘Guess you must have figured that out for yourself - and reckoned why shouldn’t you keep the whole bundle?’
‘So why did I open the grave, feller?’ Edge asked evenly as the strap was unfastened and he rose to his full height. ‘For once, the lady listened to me.’ He upended the bag over the grave. ‘He ain’t quite it yet: but, ashes to dust. Close enough.’
Schabar shifted his gaze now, to stare in awe at the blackened remains of almost ninety thousand dollars pouring from the bag into the open casket.
Then the anger of frustration gripped him and he vented a bellow as he swung his eyes to match the direction of the gun barrel.
‘Sheriff!’ Emma Diamond shrieked, an instant before Schabar’s white-knuckled finger triggered the Remington.
The glance up the slope to the cave mouth might have been nothing more than that. But the sight on the hill forced the lawman into a fatal double-take. Edge’s Colt slid from the holster ready-cocked and the bullet it exploded crashed into the flesh of Schabar’s throat. The big man was hurled off his horse and slammed to the ground. The baked earth sucked thirstily at the gushing arterial blood, battling with a swarm of flies for the larger share.
Schabar had died instantaneously. He carried into death a startling image of Emma Diamond, totally naked: displaying every curve and indentation of her slender body - the brilliant sunlight giving her flesh an almost translucent quality against the dark shade of the cave mouth behind her.
She stood there for a moment, as Edge holstered his smoking revolver and looked up at her from beside the slumped body of Schabar. Then she shrieked, whirled and lunged back into the cave.
‘Don’t you dare come up here, Mr. Edge!’ she screamed, her voice echoing between the walls of the cave.
Edge picked up the shovel, reached down into the grave and nudged the lid back on the casket to hide the body and the black ashes. He showed a wry grin as he began to heap the earth back into the hole.
‘Fitting she sounds distracted, ain’t it, feller,’ he muttered to the fresher corpse above ground.
He had finished the chore when she called his name to draw his attention back to the cave in the hillside. Her riding clothes had been discarded and her nakedness of a few minutes ago was entirely covered. He looked at her in silence for long moments, recalling so many of the things she had said and done which had seemed strange at the time.
‘It was not a suitable attire for the work I had to do, Mr. Edge.’
‘Guess not, Sister,’ he answered.
Emma Diamond was a Sister of Mercy, her hair drawn severely back and trapped beneath a starched white wimple that contrasted starkly with the jet black of her cowl and the mantle that swept to the ground.
She smiled wanly as she started down the slope. ‘You see it all now, Mr. Edge?’ she suggested softly.
‘Not as much as I saw awhile back,’ the half-breed replied with a sigh. ‘But it sure explains why I didn’t get nun of it.’
Other titles in the EDGE series from Lobo Publications
#1 The Loner
#2 Ten Grand
#3 Apache Death
#4 Killer’s Breed
#5 Blood On Silver
#6 The Blue, The Grey And The Red
#7 California Kill
#8 Seven Out Of Hell
#9 Bloody Summer
#10 Vengeance Is Black
#11 Sioux Uprising
#12 The Biggest Bounty
#13 A Town Called Hate
#14 Blood Run
#15 The Big Gold
#16 The Final Shot
#17 Vengeance Valley
#18 Ten Tombstones to Texas
#19 Ashes and Dust
And More to Come…