Without waiting for responses, he pushed open the door and stepped across the threshold. His son glanced at Crystal and received a coy smile in return before he followed. Telly Attinger held back a few moments to say, ‘I ain’t thinkin’ you folks would, but if anyone had a mind to look for cash in the house, they wouldn’t find it.’
Then he went out and the door closed behind him.
Edge grinned coldly at the woman. ‘Figure you’re thinking you’ve already found what you’re looking for, lady?’
She rose from the bed and went to get her bedroll. ‘Except for that crack about hips passing in the night, it’s been a long time since you showed you wanted me,’ she answered in a tone as icy as his expression. She unfurled the roll. ‘I’m sleeping on the floor here. The bed stinks.’
She took off just her boots and kerchief before getting under the blanket. Edge put some cordwood into the stove, then turned down the lamp wick, dragged his gear across the floor, pushed the table away and stretched out on his back on the bed. He kept his boots on and tipped his hat forward over his face. His right hand rested only inches away from where the Winchester jutted from the boot on the saddle.
The stale smell of the bedding was as bad as the woman had implied, but the half-breed was able to endure it with indifference: as he had learned to endure so much that other - normal - people regarded as insufferably repugnant.
Death and destruction. Squalor and loneliness. Deprivation and hatred. Agony and anguish.
During the early years, when he had been Josiah C. Hedges, he experienced perhaps less than his fair share of the cruelties of life. In the days of his youth and young adulthood on the small farm in Iowa, shared with his happily married parents and his kid brother Jamie.
Just one memory of those far off times could today, if he allowed it, swamp his mind with bitter thoughts. That when, while playing with a gun which should not have been loaded, he fired a shot that made Jamie a cripple. But he chose never to voluntarily recall that summer afternoon in the yard of the farm on the prairie. And it came vividly and unbidden to mind only on those occasions when anyone leveled a gun at him.
By the time the War Between the States came, the brothers’ Mexican father and Scandinavian mother were peacefully dead and perhaps Josiah should not have left the farm to become a lieutenant and then a captain in the Union cavalry. But he felt compelled to answer President Lincoln’s call for volunteers and in the long years of fighting the Confederacy he experienced the very darkest side of life - the depths of inhumanity to which men could plunge in the treatment of their fellows. Experienced and learned the lessons of survival in such situations.
Then was ready and anxious to forget what he had been taught in this hard school when the war was finally over.
But this was not to be. For when he returned to Iowa it was to discover Jamie brutally murdered and the farmstead a burnt out ruin. And it was during his search for those responsible that he became Edge. Taking a new name for the different kind of man he was. Different because, in tracking down and killing Jamie’s murderers and during the grueling years that were to ensue, he was what he had been in the war. But without a uniform and a cause to place his actions and reactions within the law.
It was the killing of a man not involved in the carnage on the Iowa farm which placed him on the wanted list in Kansas. And a cruel fate which set him on an endless trail, with death his invisible companion and violence threatening to explode at every stopping place.
Over the years of riding the trail that criss-crossed the states and territories of his native country and sometimes took him south into Mexico, he had attempted from time to time to set down new roots and to cement relationships with others. But always he had failed -forced to admit defeat to the ruling fate which demanded he be not like other men.
From out of the violent years, two memories could be recalled as vividly as finding the buzzard-ravaged corpse of Jamie. The manner in which Beth, his wife, had died on another farmstead - this one up in the Dakotas. And more recently, the granting by a Government man in New York City of an amnesty on the old killing in Kansas so long ago.
The death of his wife had affected him deeply - forced him to finally realize that he was doomed to a life of a loner and a loser.
The pardon on the murder charge…? A temptation he willed himself to ignore.
4If you really want me, I’ll stay with you, Edge,’ Crystal Dickens said softly in the wake of the storm blowing itself into extinction.
‘I don’t want anything, lady,’ he said into the darkness of the crown of his hat. ‘Sometimes need things is all.’
‘And when you’re through needing it, it’s nothing but a burden to you!’ she answered bitterly.
‘Not food or drink or clothes or a horse or a bedroll or a gun, lady.’
‘But people are!’
‘No, lady. People don’t bother me unless they’re in the way of something I need. But if they stay around me, they have to be responsible for what happens to them.’
She was as silent as the now still night for long moments. Then said flatly: ‘You know what you are, Edge?’
‘Yeah, I know what I am.’
‘You only think you do. What you really are is two hundred odd pounds of self-pity stacked higher than six feet.’
He grimaced into the underside of his hat. ‘You’re wrong, lady. That’s what I used to be. Before I ran out of pity for other people. Now I’m just somebody trying to stay alive and not get hurt in the process.’
‘Staying alive for what?’ she challenged.
The secret grimace changed to an unseen grin. ‘Who the hell knows, lady? Maybe if the old timer’s flood had come tonight, we would all have known that answer.’
There was another stretched second of silence. Then the beat of galloping hooves - receding from the rear of the shack. A revolver shot cracked. Out front and above roof level. From the deck of the ark.
‘You bastard, you killed Pa!’ Vince Attinger shrieked in a hysterical tone.
And exploded another shot while Edge and the woman were ripping off their blankets and rising.
The hoofbeats continued to recede without any break in the regular galloping cadence.
Crystal reached the door first and threw it open. But came to a halt as a third gunshot sounded. Then grunted in pain as Edge shouldered her out of the way and crossed the threshold, working the lever action of the Winchester.
The youngest Attinger was skylined on the transom of the ark. Squatting on his haunches and holding the revolver in both hands, forearms resting on the big tiller to take useless aim at the distant rider.
He fired a third shot.
Edge yelled: ‘He’s out of range, kid!’
The series of clicks as the revolver hammer was thumbed back could be heard. The galloping hooves had faded from earshot. Vince Attinger looked as if he was about to send a fourth bullet cracking uselessly out into the night. But then he sobbed and his forehead fell forward to rest on his wrists. A moment later, he jerked upright and stared down at the half-breed.
‘We gotta get after him, mister!’ he cried. ‘He knifed his own son in the back, the rotten bastard!’
Edge ignored the young Attinger and went around to the rear of the shack. Where, as he checked on the horses in the corral, he heard Crystal Dickens ask if Vince was sure his father was dead. When he returned to the front of the building, the woman paused halfway up the ladder to look back and down at him.
‘Well, aren’t you going after him?’ she demanded.
Edge eased the hammer gently forward and canted the rifle to his shoulder as he replied: ‘He stole my horse.’
From below decks in the ark, Vince yelled: ‘He’s still alive! Pa’s still breathin’!’
The woman said, ‘Perhaps it’s best we see what we can do to help here?’
And clambered up the remaining rungs of the ladder.
Edge rasped through clenched teeth as he followed her: ‘No sweat, lady. I’ve
seen him and I’ve laid in his bed. And ain’t no way that old sonofabitch is going to get clean away.’
Chapter Three
AUGIE Attinger had located what was left of the money his father got for the family business. It had been hidden in a compartment beneath a section of decking in the galley of the ark.
But his father had found him only moments after the secret cache came to light. And now Augie lay face down across the deckboards he had removed, one hand hanging limply into the empty compartment, a carving knife buried almost to the hilt in his back. Low down and left of the spine. In the region of his kidneys.
A kerosene lamp was lit and Vince Attinger and Crystal Dickens were down on their hands and knees to either side of the knifed man: he peering anxiously into the bristled face and she exploring with fingertips for a pulse in his neck.
‘He’s barely alive, Edge,’ she reported.
‘What we gonna do?’ Vince asked helplessly.
Edge placed his Winchester on a table, stooped down, rested one hand in the small of Augie’s back and with the other drew the knife from the flesh. Blood spurted and the woman swung away, venting a sound of nausea but keeping the vomit trapped in her throat.
‘Easier for him now than if he comes out of it,’ the half-breed murmured, and abruptly was gentle in the way he eased the shirt and undershirt out from under the belt and top of the pants. Blood continued to flow, but had become an ooze rather than a surge, from the inch-long wound in the smooth white flesh.
‘Check if the old timer thought to have any medical supplies aboard,’ Edge instructed as he rose. ‘If he did, clean the wound and cover it. If he didn’t, do the best you can with what’s available.’
‘Where you goin’, mister?’ Vince asked.
‘Hitch the team to the wagon, feller.’
‘Moving him could kill him,’ Crystal warned, her features still contorted by the taste of bile in her mouth.
‘Figure with a wound that deep he’ll die where he is if we don’t move him. Chance that if he lives as far as Ventura and there’s a doctor there, he could make it. He’s your father, kid. What do you want to do?’
Vince, his eyes filled with desperation, switched his gaze several times between the impassive face of Edge and the unmoving features of his father. Then he rose to his feet and nodded.
‘I think we should try to get him to Ventura, mister. That’s gotta be better than just sittin’ around here watchin’ him die.’
The half-breed gave no acknowledgement. He simply retrieved his rifle and went out of the galley, up a stairway and through a hatch on to the deck of the ark. Then down the ladder and out to the corral at the rear of the shack.
Where he worked with methodical, practiced ease at putting the team in the traces of the flatbed wagon and then drove it around to the foot of the ladder. And before going aboard the ark again he carried the bed mattress and his own and the woman’s bedrolls out of the shack and arranged them crossways behind the wagon seat.
When he returned to the galley, Augie Attinger’s wound had been bound with lengths of clean rag which already showed an ugly crimson stain of seeping blood.
Then, after Edge had slumped the wounded man carefully over his shoulder and carried him gently out on to deck and down the ladder to the wagon, the white dressing across Augie’s back was completely soaked. Even dripping.
‘He’s bleeding like a stuck pig, Edge!’ Crystal said and looked again as if she were about to thrown up.
‘If he stops bleeding it’ll maybe mean he’s dead,’ the half-breed growled and signaled for the mournful-faced Vince to help him load the comatose Augie aboard the wagon. ‘Like for one of you to ride in the rear with him. Keep him from jolting around too much.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Vince volunteered.
‘And I’ll stay here,’ the woman added as Edge dropped from the tailgate to the ground. Adding quickly when the cold eyes of the half-breed glanced at her: ‘Maybe he’ll come back. Sure to if it starts to rain.’
‘Suit yourself, lady.’
He went into the shack again, came out with his saddle and tossed it up into the rear of the wagon.
‘You, too?’ Crystal asked when he had climbed on to the seat and taken up the reins.
‘What?’
‘You’ll come back?’
He took off the brake, growled a command to the team and jerked on the reins to turn the horses and wagon. Did not look over his shoulder as he headed his charges on to the clearly defined trail which had been made by many two-way trips between the shack and Ventura to bring the lumber out here.
After a few minutes, when Vince had rearranged the bedding to make his father as comfortable as possible, the youngest Attinger said, ‘How is it a man can stick a knife in his own son, mister?’
The team knew the way and Edge asked for no more than a gentle walk to keep the wounded Augie from jolting around too much. He had rolled a cigarette and now he struck a match on the seat to light it as Vince’s questions interrupted a line of thought concerned with Crystal Dickens.
‘Pointed end first, feller,’ he answered flatly.
Vince vented a choked, angry sound. Then groaned: ‘I ain’t in no mood to listen to smart talk!’
‘Nor me to answer dumb questions,’ Edge countered with no tone of rancor. ‘Way it looked, your Pa was fixing to rob your Grandpa who ain’t exactly right in the head. He should have figured the risk and taken more care to cover his back.’
‘You don’t know anythin’ about it!’ Vince snarled.
‘So tell me, kid.’
‘Why the hell should I?’
Edge shrugged. ‘We have a five mile ride ahead of us. You were the one who started to talk. I’ll be just as happy with my own thoughts.’
Which was a lie, he acknowledged to himself as he spat over the side of the seat.
For awhile, Vincent Attinger stayed quiet. And the half-breed attempted to block from his mind any reflections about Crystal Dickens, by paying more attention than usual to the brightly moonlit terrain spread out on all sides. While he sensed that the distraught youngster in back of him was engaged in an anguished battle to bear the silence.
‘Why you doin’ this, mister?’ came the words at length. ‘We’re nothin’ to you. Gramps stole your horse and has a pile of money. Why you takin’ the time to help me and Pa?’
‘My business.’
“For a longer period now, just the clop of hooves, roll of wheelrims and creak of timber broke the silence of the Utah night. Then Vince revealed he had spent the time in constructive thought.
‘I reckon that means you’re all right, mister.’
‘It does?’ He arced the cigarette butt out to the side of the trail.
‘You’re in this for money. But honest money. A finder’s fee. If you had wanted the whole lot, you’d - you and the lady - would have taken off after Gramps soon as he made a run for it.’
‘Uh, uh,’ Edge muttered. ‘And how do I stand to make my trouble worthwhile, feller?’
‘We can work out somethin’, mister. And if Pa pulls through, he’ll go along with it, you can be sure of that.’
‘Something else I have to be sure of first.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The money your grandfather has doesn’t rightfully belong to him, kid.’
‘No it don’t!’ Vince snapped.
‘I been to Omaha already. I don’t want to go again.’
‘Damnit, it’s the truth, mister!’ He paused to control his thoughts and his tone. ‘Look, I’ll tell you about it. Gramps started the steamboat business way back before the war. Him and Pa and Ma were headin’ for Oregon on a wagon train but I was born in Saint Jo. And while Ma was gettin’ over havin’ me, Gramps figured out the family would have a better chance of makin’ it big in the middle of the country instead of out west.
‘And the way it turned out, we did. They worked real hard to get things started and when I was old enough, I did my fair share. We never got r
ich in money in the bank because whenever we made any, it went toward buyin’ more boats or openin’ up depots in other cities. But we all lived pretty good. And it was always took for granted that when Gramps retired or died, Pa and me would get the business for ourselves. Damnit, mister, we done all the work after Gramps got bit by the religion bug. But we never took him serious, the way he sat around the house all day readin’ the Bible. Pa figured it was just he was gettin’ senile and ready to die. He never did even think about gettin’ somethin’ down on paper to prove him and me had legal right to a share in the business. Until he upped and sold the whole thing while we was away down river.
‘Mister, what I’m tellin’ you is the whole truth.’
‘Figure it has to be,’ Edge allowed.
‘Uh?’
‘You just told me your grandfather has legal right to every cent he was paid for the steamboat business.’
‘No!’ Vince blurted. Ta says no. He says there ain’t a proper court of law in the country that wouldn’t find we have a right to a share.’
‘He didn’t get stabbed in the back in any courtroom, feller,’ the half-breed pointed out.
‘Damnit, the crazy old bastard goaded Pa into searchin’ for the money, mister!’ Vince retorted. ‘Soon as we got aboard that lousy boat Gramps started in to cause trouble. Said how there was better than half the cash still left. But that we’d never get a red cent of it. Because it was too well hid and soon as the flood came, he was gonna burn it. That when everyone else in the world was drowned, there wouldn’t be any need of money.’
He sighed and calmed down. ‘l ain’t sure what happened then. I was beat and I bedded down. Heard Pa come in the cabin a little later. Then I woke up and saw he wasn’t there. Went lookin’ for him and found him like you saw. Then heard the horse. And went near as crazy as the old bastard is.’
EDGE: Vengeance at Ventura Page 3