EDGE: A Ride In The Sun (Edge series Book 34)

by George G. Gilman

  "That's fine, young feller," Krantz acknowledged, and ignored the younger Hedges. "Say hello to the head of the house, Dawn."

  The girl did not quite succeed in holding back a sigh before she greeted Josiah dully with, "It's nice to meet you, sir."

  She sounded as weary as they both looked, while her father—after a brief scowl at her lack of enthusiasm—strove to maintain his ebullient mood.

  "Krantz is my name and sellin's my game," he an­nounced, hand brushing trail dust from his suit before accepting Josiah's gestured invitation to enter the house. "Pots, pans, eatin' utensils, tools for the house and farm. Hello, little dog. My, you boys have a nice place here. Metal parts for wagon repairs. Oil lamps. Some toys for the younger members of the family. And a special line in the latest patent medicines from the East and even Europe."

  "We don't need any of that," Josiah said evenly, as he gestured for the Krantzes to sit down in the two most comfortable chairs which faced each other across the front of the empty fireplace. "Go get coffee for our company, Jamie. Anyway, Mr. Krantz, we always buy what we need from the stores in town."

  Dawn sank gratefully into one of the upholstered armchairs while her father moved about the room, touching furniture with the tips of his stubby fingers and glancing through doorways into the kitchen and two bedrooms.

  "Then you've probably got some of my lines around," Krantz countered. "Mostly my business is trans­acted with storekeepers. But when folks live way out in the country like you do, and they're on the route my daughter and I are takin', we like to stop by. Service to them. Convenient. And cheaper. Sellin' direct, you get what you want at the wholesale price."

  "Lots of things we want, Mr. Krantz," Josiah said as he sat down at the table. "Nothing we need right now." Jamie emerged from the kitchen, using his stick now so that he could carry two tin mugs of steaming, aromatic coffee in his free hand. Patch was at his heels, but the dog chose to sit down close to Dawn after the boy had set the mugs into the hearth.

  The girl smiled for the first time, showing crooked teeth. And she thanked the boy and made him blush as she picked up the coffee and sipped at it. The hot drink was obviously as welcome to her as the comfort of the chair.

  "You have any objection, sir?" Krantz asked, taking! a leather-covered liquor flask from a side pocket of his jacket. "I find coffee unpalatable without a little somethin' extra to flavor it."

  "No," Josiah allowed as Jamie returned to the kitchen, still embarrassed by the girl's words and smile. "This house isn't on the route to anywhere."

  Krantz brought his mug from the hearth to the table, sat down opposite the elder Hedges and nodded as he poured at least three fingers of rye into the coffee.

  "Figured that out soon as I learned you were the Hedges boys. Realized then I must have taken the: wrong fork west of town." He shrugged his broad, fleshy shoulders. "But it's an ill wind, like they say. And a travelin' man must try to do business wherever he happens to travel to."

  "He's said he don't want nothin', Pa," Dawn put in wearily, as Jamie set down a mug of coffee in front of his brother, hesitated, and went to sit in the chair facing the girl.

  The drummer's green eyes, magnified by the lenses of his spectacles, were momentarily clouded by anger at his daughter's words. But he controlled the emotion as he took a swig at the whiskey-laced coffee. Then he gave one of his vigorous nods. And shared a smile between the girl and Josiah.

  "Dawn's a fine influence on me, sir. Sometimes I get too wrapped up in my work and the products I sell. Talk too much to listen to what other folks are sayin'. Already I've seen you and your brother are runnin' a fine place and have just about everythin' I sell."

  His smile seemed to Josiah to be as forced and false as everything else about the man's attitude. Which per­haps was an indication that much of what he had said lacked truth. Certainly the west fork outside of town, which the Krantz wagon would have reached in full daylight, was clearly signposted. And the drummer had reached the Hedges farmstead armed at least with the names of the man and boy who ran the place situated at the dead end of an eight-mile trail across otherwise unsettled prairie.

  What other information about the Hedges had Krantz picked up in town? Perhaps a particular detail which had encouraged him to come.

  "Yes, sir, a really fine place," the drummer went on. "Heard in town how you boys took over after your poor ma and pa died. It seems folks have a lot of admi­ration for you and young James . . . Jamie."

  "You'll stay for supper?" Josiah asked, his suspicion of the man's motives becoming mixed with irritation at the condescending tenor of his talk. "It's just cold cuts and salad."

  "We don't like to impose, Mr. Hedges," Dawn said, and Josiah saw his brother's face cloud with disappoint­ment. Then brighten again when the girl's father count­ered:

  'You are as highly thought of by your neighbors for your hospitality as for your hard work, sir. Dawn is cor­rect. We have no wish to trouble you, but if you insist, we would be most happy and grateful to join you in your evenin’ meal. And since there is now a female in your use, at least you will be relieved of the chores of preparin’ supper. If young Jamie will show my daughter where things are kept?"

  Josiah did not protest and the boy, obviously moon­struck by the girl, went eagerly with her into the kitchen. Patch went with them and stayed close by Dawn through every move she made in setting out the table for four people and then preparing and serving the meal. During this process and then over the meal itself and while Dawn and Jamie cleared and washed the dirty dishes, Jordan Krantz talked constantly.

  About himself and his daughter, his dead wife, his travels from his native New Orleans and of the wide variety of jobs he held before he became a hardware salesman. Throughout this monologue, Jamie kept glancing at Dawn and blushing when she saw him and smiled. The girl was for the most part wearily bored, and Josiah did his best to conceal the nagging doubt he felt about Krantz's presence at the house.

  "How about a little cards, sir?" the drummer an­nounced as he lit a cheroot and Josiah fired a cigarette, and water began to run on dirty dishes in the kitchen.

  "No, Pa!" Dawn shouted anxiously.

  "Remember what Ma used to say!" Jamie called, even more concerned than the girl.

  The elder brother remembered a great deal of what his mother had told him, which was why he had offered hospitality to the Krantz father and daughter—not trusting the drummer and yet having no specific reason to feel the way he did.

  As for Jamie's stridently voiced objection . . . Jose Aviles had been a gambling man long ago and was only partially reformed by the love of Ingrid Ohlson. Before they married, the beautiful Swedish woman succeeded in persuading Jose that he should not take so many risks, whether at a gaming table or in his attitude to life in general. She succeeded to such an extent that gambling friends of Jose began to call him "Bet-Hedging Aviles." Which suggested to the mixed nation­ality couple a suitable American name under which they could marry and raise their children in their new country of which they were so proud to be a part. Jose Hedges never gambled for money after the birth of his first son. But often, as Josiah and later Jamie grew up, he played cards with the boys. With the reluc­tant approval of his wife who acknowledged that a friendly card game was a pleasant enough way to pass a long winter evening when the prairie norther was lash­ing rain at the isolated Iowa farmstead.

  "Oh, come now, just a friendly game to while away the time while the excellent supper slips down," Krantz said, causing Josiah to start. "If there is any criticism of you at all in town it is that you work too hard and too long. Take too little time off for your amusements."

  "Please don't, Joe," Jamie whined. Had the boy not said this, in the tone he used, his brother might well have declined Krantz's invitation. But the irritation Josiah had earlier felt toward the drummer was briefly directed at Jamie.

  "Finish the dishes and then get to your books!" he snapped, using his authority as a man to expunge his. resentment toward a me
re boy who was seeking to in­fluence him.

  Krantz grinned and nodded as he took a deck of cards from an inside pocket of his suit jacket. And leaned forward to whisper: "Our younger kin mean well, sir. But one day they'll be old enough to appre­ciate a few mild vices of their own. Five-card stud, jacks or higher to open suit you?"

  Josiah nodded and experienced a surge of excitement as Krantz shuffled the deck, gave them across the table to be cut and then dealt them. Not since he had played for matchsticks with his father had he felt this. And when, after dealing two cards face down and one face up, Krantz dug a handful of loose change from his Pocket, the fire of anticipation burned fiercely in the younger man's belly.

  He continued to be his mother's son by distrusting the drummer. But knew he was most definitely his father's offspring in the way his long dormant penchant or gambling was reawakened.

  "You'll have to wait a while, Mr. Krantz," he said, and rose from the table to go into Jamie's bedroom.

  There, in the angle of the north and west walls, he dropped to his haunches and pried up a floorboard. Beneath was a box containing every cent which he and his brother possessed. Ninety-five dollars, mostly in bills but a few dollars in coins. First he took just the dimes, nickels and cents. Then, with a grimace of guilt, he withdrew ten one-dollar bills.

  While he was in the bedroom, he heard the Krantzes talking, and a door close. On returning to the parlor he saw that Jamie was hunched in an armchair, head hung over an open book. The boy made an obvious point of not looking up at his elder brother.

  Krantz capped his flask and said, "Hope you don' mind, sir. I've asked Dawn to see that the horses are watered."

  Josiah merely nodded as he took his seat at the table and let the handful of change drop to the top. Although; he tried to tell himself the resentment he felt was di­rected toward Jamie, he knew it was in vain. Rather, the drummer and a weakness in his own character com­bined to attack his peace of mind.

  They played several quiet hands, betting and raising in pennies. Then Jamie, making no secret of his lack of concentration on the English primer, slapped the book closed.

  "I'll go see how Miss Dawn is doing," he said.

  "An hour," Josiah reminded firmly. "Take it into your room if it'll be better."

  Jamie looked petulantly at Josiah, but saw from the way his brother's eyes narrowed to glinting slits that it would serve no purpose to argue or even plead. Then, as he always did on the infrequent occasions when there was friction between them, the boy over-emphasized his limp. He made to slam his bedroom door, but caught another glimpse of the hard, cold, ice-blue eyes. And shut himself in his room quietly.

  "Damn shame about the accident that crippled the boy," Krantz said with a shake of his head.

  Josiah curled back his thin lips from his teeth. "Any­thing the folks in town didn't tell you about us, mister?" he growled.

  The scowl and rasping tone brought a deeper frown to the drummer's face. "Sorry, sir, I can understand why you don't like the matter raised."

  Still not his usual calm self, Josiah looked at his hole cards, took a dollar bill from his dungarees pocket and pushed it into the center of the table.

  "Ah," Krantz said, and dug into a pocket of his own to cover the bet.

  There was no further talk until the younger man won a ten-dollar pot. Then he said, as Dawn re-entered the house, "Just so you know the true story, Mr. Krantz. I was just a kid myself when it happened. We were play­ing around with that rifle you see hanging over the mantelshelf. It shouldn't have been loaded, but it was. It fired and Jamie'll have a lame leg for the rest of his life."

  Krantz nodded mournfully as the cards were dealt. "There is tragedy in the life of everyone, sir. Why, when my dear wife died soon after givin' birth to Dawn there—"

  "Forget it, Pa," the girl said from the chair to the right of the hearth, Patch squatting beside her again. "Finish your game and let's get movin'. The horses are all watered and rested well enough now."

  Josiah was not so intently interested in his cards that he failed to see the frown of puzzlement which the fa­ther directed toward the daughter.

  The betting was all in dollars now and in less than an hour, as Dawn stared directly ahead and absently ruf­fled Patch's fur, Josiah took more than fifty off Krantz, who won occasionally but never so much as he had lost in the previous hand.

  Then, with twenty-seven dollars in a pot and Jordan Krantz needing six to call upon Josiah Hedges to show, the drummer took a crumpled bill from his pocket and gazed at it with miserable surprise.

  "I could have sworn it was a five spot," he groaned.

  In those games long ago with his father, Josiah had learned more than the mere techniques of playing cards, and living life. One such tenet which had been impressed upon him—out of earshot of his mother—was that, unless the circumstances were special, a man should neither give nor ask any quarter.

  "Means you're going to have to fold then?"

  "I guess so . . . unless . . . ?"

  "We don't need anything off your wagon, M| Krantz."

  The fires of anger burned briefly in the green eyes behind the spectacle lenses. And there was a note am irritation in the drummer's tone when he retorted, "You've already made that plain." Then he moderated his voice as he nodded toward his daughter. "I have somethin' else to trade, Mr. Hedges. Earlier you asked if there was anythin' about you your neighbors did not tell me. I don't know. But certainly there is much talk about the lack of a female out here. Seems quite a few of the local girls would like to set their caps at you, given half a chance."

  Josiah's face was impassive as he shifted his gaze from the father to the daughter. She showed that, although her thoughts might have been on matters beyond the room, she was aware of what was being said at the table. She turned her head and her dark eyes met the blue ones of the young man and held his gaze, responding to it with the same lack of expression.

  "You understand what Pa is sayin', Mr. Hedges? It's happened before when he gets into a tight money spot, so you won't be spoilin' nothin' for me. Win or lose the hand, you get the best I can give. And there ain't never 1 been no complaints."

  "That there hasn't, sir," Krantz augmented, enthusiastic in stark contrast to the girl's even tempered resignation.

  Josiah pursed his lips and, still looking at Dawn, said, "Tell you what I'd like, Mr. Krantz."

  "Name it, sir."

  The inherited traits and the teachings of both his parents came together now, as he shifted his gaze from the girl to the man and looked at him with an expression of depthless malevolence. The words he spoke were as frigid as the glint in his eyes.

  "Like for you to get up from this table, take your daughter outside, climb aboard your wagon and roll it away from this farm."

  Krantz had straightened on his chair as if from some palpable power emanated by the younger man's expres­sion, and seemed to come more erect with each word directed at him.

  He licked his lips before he countered, "An honora­ble man would give another the opportunity to get even, sir!"

  "I don't see another honorable man here," came the response. "Do like I told you."

  "And if I refuse?"

  Josiah hooked his palms over the rim of the table and began to push himself to his feet. "Then I'll have to throw you out, mister."

  "Stay where you are, Joe!"

  He froze his frame in a half upright attitude and turned his head to look at Dawn. There was a small revolver in her right hand, one side of her dress hem still rucked up after she had drawn the gun from a holster strapped to her calf. She remained in the chair with only her expression changed. She was at once sad and anxious.

  "I'm truly sorry, Joe," she said less shrilly. "You and your kid brother don't deserve to have callers like us."

  "He's already said he doesn't need anythin' from us, girl!" her father snarled, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet. "That includes sympathy. The boy's bedroom is where he got the money from. Go get the
rest of it."

  Krantz had drawn a gun now. A small Sharps four-barrel derringer which he aimed at Josiah with his left hand while he scooped up all the paper money from the table with his right. Most of it was his own.

  "This is nothin' to what you have hid away in there, is it?" he rasped with an evil grin of triumph. "Hard workin' young man like you who doesn't live in the lap of luxury and won't even spring the price of a church social ticket for a local girl. You're a fool, you know-that, Mr. Josiah Hedges? You could have been beddin'-my daughter while I got your pile. That offer was on the level. Reckon it would have made the loss a little easier to take. Well, girl? Go get the money!"

  Dawn had put her gun away, headed for the door to Jamie's room, then halted.

  Patch, who had never been more than a pet and ro­dent catcher around the farm, continued to sit by her vacated chair, head on one side and ears pricked.

  "What about the boy, Pa?"

  "He's a kid and a cripple! He's not about to give you any trouble!"

  "Like hell I ain't!"

  The retort was roared by Jamie as he flung open the door of his room and hurled himself across the thresh­old. It was obvious he had been listening at the door and his timing was perfect. A match for his positioning. His flying tackle caught the girl completely off guard. The top of his head cracked hard into the side of her thigh and his arms encircled her below the knees.

  She screamed in shock, then cried out in pain as she was sent to the floor, Jamie's arms still fastened se­curely around her legs.

  With amazement and then rage deepening the un­healthy color of his face, Jordan Krantz snapped his head around to look toward the melee in the doorway.

  He was distracted for just part of a second. But this was long enough for Josiah, who did not have to turn his head to see his brother's spectacular entry into the parlor. His hands were still hooked over the rim of the table and he had not moved from the stance into which the girl's gun had frozen him. Thus, he was ideally poised to jerk erect, this action adding power to the ac­tion of lifting and pushing the table.