‘Caught ’em stealin’ grub from our saddlebags, Jim,’ Reece reported. ‘What with the wind and all they didn’t hear me comin’ until I opened the stable doors.’ He leered ‘And I saw them white titties of the broad shinin’ up at me like two full moons.’
‘We weren’t stealin’, sir!’ the priest pleaded, his frightened and watery eyes fixed upon Denby who he had rightly assumed was the dominant partner. ‘We would have paid. Will still pay. But we were so hungry that it was essential we—’
‘He don’t mean with money, mister,’ the woman cut in, and divided her attention between Denby and Reece. Tossing her head to keep the long, yellow hair off her face and turning her body slightly this way and that to give both men a profile and frontal view of her fine breasts. ‘We don’t believe in money.’
If she was still suffering from the fear which had triggered her scream, she did not show it. There was confidence based upon long experience of men in the way she spoke and posed for the Lassiter hands. And, in back of this, a trace of honed intelligence in the way she surveyed her surroundings and the other four men while pretending that Reece and Denby commanded her entire attention.
‘Daughter is quite right,’ the priest said quickly, gaining confidence from the woman’s attitude and the way in which it had intrigued the Lassiter men.
‘You sayin’ your daughter is peddlin’ her ass for a mess of beef jerky and sourdough bread, mister?’ Reece demanded incredulously.
‘I don’t friggin’ believe it,’ Bassett whispered hoarsely.
‘Precisely, sir,’ the priest replied eagerly. ‘Such a thing does not offend God and therefore how can it offend such a humble servant as I am?’
‘Every last one of you, if you’re so inclined, gentlemen,’ the woman offered brightly. And now had the opportunity to look longer and more closely at the quartet lying uncomfortably on the blanketless bunks.
‘Obliged, ma’am,’ Edge responded as the woman’s gaze met his and became locked on it for an uncomprehending part of a second. ‘But we’re already in a pretty deep hole.’
‘Their kind only screw sheep, lady,’ Reece snapped, the lascivious grin firmly pasted to his bristled face now. ‘But me, I’m a woman’s man first and last. And the last one was a real long time ago. How about this, Jim?’
The grin took on a sick quality, then altered into the lines of a silent but vicious snarl as his partner said:
‘It’s too easy, Al. It’s crazy. I don’t trust them.’
‘Shall I show him, Father?’ the woman asked.
‘Show them, Daughter,’ the priest agreed.
She took one step away from him and started again to swing her head and body in half turns from the waist to display her blatant sexuality to Denby and Reece. But this time she raised her hands, clawing the fingers toward the palms.
‘Never expect a man to make a deal unless he’s seen the merchandise out of the wrappin’,’ she said softly and seductively. The hooks of her fingers fixed over the neckline of her gown at the side of each full breast. Her teeth, perfectly formed and very white, gleamed in the lamplight between her tongue moistened lips.
As the priest took off his hat and lowered it in front of his expansive belly, Edge recalled a hot, sun bright day on the bank of the Rio Grande. Not that stretch where the Mexican village was and where he hired out as a guard to the Big-T herd of Oscar Taggart. But further upstream, in the Big Bend country of Texas. There had been a woman, a world removed from the one who was the wanton centre of attention now. A woman who had meant a lot to him and who could have meant more. Except that she was destined to be lost to him. To leave him as irrecoverably as if death had claimed her.
The woman the priest called Daughter wrenched her clawed hands downward. The entire fullness of her breasts were exposed, sagging under the weight of flesh.
Emma Diamond had been totally naked. And had remained unmoving on the hillside.
This woman cupped her breasts and thrust them upward, her fingers moving on the dark brown nipples to distend them.
Emma’s shame had been anguished. This woman smiled her triumph of female flesh over the minds of men.
On the Texas hillside, Edge had fired the shot which sent a man to his death with the naked form of a woman his final sight in life.
In the line shack it was the priest who performed this act. Twice.
He shot Jim Denby first, with the reasoning of a skilled gunfighter. For this man, although fascinated by the lewdness of the woman’s hands fondling her own flesh, was still suspicious of the newcomers. And his rifle continued to be aimed from the hip.
The gun was in the crown of the priest’s hat and the fat little man fired it through the fabric. The bullet took its victim in the belly and sent him staggering backwards until he hit the wall.
Before the impact of man against timber, the priest had flung his arms wide—the hat in his left hand and the Frontier Colt in his right.
Reece’s rifle had been angled down at the floor. He did not even have time to level it before a second gunshot sounded to discharge a bullet into his chest, left of centre. There was room for him to take only one step backwards before he hit the door. His heart had made its final beat by then. The strength drained out of him and his booted feet slid in the pool of melted snow beneath them. His legs splayed wide to allow his body to the floor.
‘You ain’t no priest!’ Denby accused bitterly, struggling to bring the rifle to the aim as his energy drained out through the hole in his belly.
‘Trained and ordained, sir,’ came the dispassionate response as the gun hand swung to menace the wounded man. ‘I doubt if you will go to the place where this can be confirmed.’
The Colt bucked in his hand and expelled more acrid smoke into the already tainted atmosphere. It was another heart shot and Denby died with less commotion than his partner. He was already sitting at the angle of floor and wall. He simply tipped forward to fold his body to his legs, the Winchester trapped between.
The woman was as decently dressed as before by then—had simply jerked the bodice of the gown back into place and pushed her breasts into its restraint. Every trace of her recent wantonness had vanished from her face and she now stood submissively beside the priest. Her entire attention was devoted to him while his weak and watery eyes ranged over the men in the bunks.
‘I’m right in assuming you will not cause trouble for Daughter and I?’ he asked.
‘We got our hands tied at our backs, son,’ Owen Craig revealed, his tone of voice a sign of the shock he was still suffering. ‘But we won’t cause none even after you set us free.’
The priest pushed his gun back inside his hat and there was a metallic sound as it was clipped into some holding device. Then he put the hat on his head and curled an arm around the narrow waist of the woman.
‘Later, perhaps,’ he said absently as he and she turned toward the door. ‘For a while Daughter and I must commune with and give thanks to God. This is something we prefer to do in private.’
Before they could leave, they had to remove the corpse of Al Reece from the doorway. Each of them stooped to clasp an ankle of the dead man and then dragged him unceremoniously clear of their path. As they went out into the storm, the woman pulling the door closed behind them, the man splayed the fingers of his left hand and moved it forward to grasp the lower curve of her left buttock. The tremor which moved the flesh of her bare shoulders seemed to have little connection with the snowflakes which hit them and melted there.
‘Well, I never did!’ Doug Smith gasped.
‘Figure they have,’ Edge responded, swinging his feet to the floor and standing up. ‘Lots of times.’
‘Denby was right,’ Craig exclaimed. ‘This is crazy. And gettin’ crazier. They are out there someplace doin’ what I think they are, ain’t they?’
‘Don’t give a shit, feller,’ Edge growled, squatting down beside the old man’s bunk. ‘Just want to be able to do more than just think myself when they get back. There
’s a razor inside my shirt at the back.’
‘What?’
‘Through my hair and under my collar, feller,’ Edge said with a note of impatience. ‘If it’s screwing instead of praying they’re doing, I don’t figure it’ll take them long. Just the main event. They went through the preliminaries in here.’
Craig had difficulty, working with tied hands behind his back. But he finally managed to draw the razor out from the pouch. Then to hold it firmly while Edge rocked back and forth, running his bonds along the honed sharp blade. Smith and Bassett looked anxiously down from their upper bunks, the prospect of imminent freedom wrenching their minds away from the weird couple who had provided the opportunity.
‘That’s a strange place to carry a razor, mister,’ Smith called down as the rope finally parted and the half-breed stood up.
‘You ever think I had it there, feller?’ Edge countered as he took the razor and sliced through Craig’s bonds.
‘How the hell could he?’ Bassett defended his partner.
Edge nodded as he rose to free Smith, ‘like Denby and Reece and the copulating cleric, feller.’
‘Oh, it ain’t just for shavin’,’ the man with the too large moustache gasped as the razor severed the rope around his wrists.
‘Bassett’s always been a little slow on the uptake,’ Smith explained, grinning his happiness to be free.
Edge nodded again as he crossed the room to retrieve his Remington. ‘Takes all sorts to make a world.’
The sheepmen picked up their own revolvers and pushed them into their holsters. Then took out the briar pipes and began to tamp aromatic tobacco into the bowls. Edge wiped the mist of condensation off one of the windows and tried to peer out. But he could see no further than the frenetically moving veil of snowflakes which continued to rush out of the sky.
‘He wasn’t such a bad guy,’ Owen Craig muttered sadly as the half-breed turned away from the window.
All three men were sitting on the bunk that had been Edge’s, hunched forward and sucking the strong smoke of comfort from their pipes. After the initial euphoria of rescue, the overweight Smith and the mustached Bassett seemed to be suffering from delayed shock which detached their minds from their surroundings and painted their eyes with a blurring glaze. Craig’s melancholic face was turned toward the folded over corpse of Jim Denby.
‘Yeah, he was something else,’ Edge growled sardonically, not holstering the Remington as he retrieved his hat from the bunk behind Craig and crossed to put his back to the diminishing heat of the stove.
‘I meant up until today, son,’ the older man augmented. ‘Of all the Bar-M hands who used to give us a hard time he was the best. If it hadn’t been for him, that trigger happy Reece would have ... well, I don’t know what would have happened.’ Craig shook his head, the sadness deepening in his bright blue eyes. ‘And you know, son, I don’t reckon Jim Denby would have ridden off and left us with Reece. He’d have figured out somethin’ else.’
‘His figuring days are over, old man,’ the half-breed said flatly. ‘He just didn’t count on his number coming up.’
Craig sighed and then shook his head, needing the physical gesture to rid his mind of futile reflections on the past and what might have been for the future. Just for a moment, as he became fully aware of the present, he was afraid. But then he looked at the tall, impassive faced half-breed and saw the gun in the brown skinned hand: and that the unblinking, glittering slits of his eyes were watching the closed door.
‘Never did get through tellin’ you about last night, did I, son?’ he said through the drifting blue tobacco smoke, the aroma of which had neutralized the taint of recent gunfire.
‘Enough for me to know why Van Dorn and his partners happened to be in my way,’ Edge answered.
Craig ignored the implication of disinterest as he cupped the bowl of his pipe in both gnarled hands and stared down into the fading glow of the tobacco. ‘It was mighty tirin’ work, shiftin’ the shack in that storm. And after we’d done it we couldn’t do nothin’ else except hit the sack in the cave we’d been livin’ in since the Bar-M boundary moved south.
‘Sheep were corralled up real tight then. But come sun up they weren’t there no more. And neither was our shack, son. They’d taken off the tarps that were over all the stuff we’d moved and put a torch to it. That storm was finished by then. Which was how me and my buddies was able to track our flock and the men that was herdin’ them.’
There was no longer anger in Craig’s tone and his expression was as lacking in emotion as his voice. Perhaps killings, old and new, had expunged his burning resentment. Or maybe it was just that the energy-sapping rigors of recent events had drained him of the capacity to experience deep feelings of any kind. Only rest and time would tell.
‘Been thinkin’ about that, son. Reason they didn’t slaughter our animals right there and then. And left a trail a near blind man could follow. Can only be they figured to kill me and Lonny and Doug as well as the sheep. And wanted to have us and our animals a long ways into Bar-M range so they’d have some kind of excuse to give the law.’
‘Make any kinda sense, son?’
‘Some,’ Edge allowed, listening hard to the wild sounds of the blizzard and trying to decide if they were diminishing.
‘Might have done it, too. If Van Dorn and them other guys hadn’t spotted you headin’ toward them.’ He sighed. ‘Like Doug said, we been havin’ a hell of a lot of good luck.’
Silence intruded in the line shack then and without the distraction of Craig’s voice the half-breed was able to concentrate on the mournful moaning of the wind, which was definitely losing force. And, by the same slow degree of change, the hurricane lamp became increasingly unnecessary as the daylight pressing through the windows got brighter.
The atmosphere in the shack grew colder as the fire in the stove died to embers that then disintegrated into ashes. The sheepmen turned up their collars and buttoned their coats.
There was no noticeable change in temperature when the door opened and the woman stepped inside ahead of the man. The snow was floating down now and the only flakes which came into the shack were on the boots of the couple. And on their hats and the blankets which were draped over their shoulders.
The woman was not surprised by the changes which had taken place since she was last in the shack: seemed to be withdrawn into some kind of trance that had a pleasantly calming effect on her.
The man looked at Edge and the unaimed Remington with alarm and muttered: ‘Oh dear.’
‘Come on in,’ the half-breed invited. ‘You’ve already seen we don’t go in much for good manners. No need to take off your hat.’
The wryly spoken words, punctuated by the closing of the door, acted to bring the woman back into the real world.
The opening of the door had awakened the trio of sheepmen to the possible dangers that might still make this their last Christmas Eve.
‘Daughter and I intend no harm to any of God’s creatures,’ the priest said hurriedly. He clasped his pudgy hands together at his chest as his tiny green, flesh-squeezed eyes emanated sincerity. ‘Unless they mean to harm us,’ he added, even faster, after his gaze had fallen fleetingly on the pair of corpses.
‘Father speaks the truth,’ the woman confirmed eagerly. For that is his mission. To bring the truth to the people.’
‘I never did see no priest like him before,’ Bassett growled, but looked at the woman.
‘Ain’t that the truth,’ Smith countered, his voice a whisper of awe as he, too, gawked at her.
‘I am an itinerant preacher of the word of God, gentlemen,’ the priest explained, unconcerned that the woman commanded most of the attention. ‘Who must by force of circumstances conform with the mores of my parish, which I consider to be the whole world.’
Craig, always the most practical of the sheepmen, was able to shift his gaze away from the woman and perhaps wipe from his mind the memory of her naked torso. ‘People ain’t supposed to kill people
, are they?’ he asked. ‘Ain’t that God’s word?’
‘Then why did he allow man to invent instruments of death such as the gun?’ the priest replied easily.
‘Reckon he didn’t, son,’ Craig argued, addressing a middle aged man who was probably less than ten years his junior. ‘That was the work of the devil.’ He glanced pointedly at the dyed blonde again. ‘Same as the sins of the flesh.’
The priest pouted his lips even further than their natural set. ‘Nonsense, sir. If we are to believe God created all things in the universe, can we also think Him so stupid as to make such an adversary for himself. No, sir! God instilled both good and evil in His creatures. And those who would hear and understand His word use evil to sustain goodness.’
‘Amen,’ the woman agreed with great fervor.
‘How’s the evil you just committed with your daughter do any good, son?’ Craig insisted earnestly.
The priest smiled and shook his head. The expression gave his fleshy features a quality of gentleness that, for the first time, gave him a priestly look that went beyond the mere fact of his clerical garb.
‘I fear you have misconstrued our use of the terms “father and daughter”, sir,’ he explained. ‘I am, of course, a Father to all who respect the cloth. Father Sean O’Keefe in full. And to me, all my converts are sons and daughters. My travelling companion, gentlemen, is Sara North. Known in the Virginia City establishment from which I rescued her as Angel North.’
‘She’s a whore?’ Bassett exclaimed.
The priest’s gentle smile retained possession of his florid face. And, since he had spoken his name, the Irish brogue seemed to be thicker in his speech. ‘Was, sir. Until a few short weeks ago, Angel was indeed a member of the oldest profession.’
‘What is she now, son?’ Craig asked as he and his partners looked again at the once beautiful woman who was as serenely composed as the priest.
EDGE: Eve of Evil (Edge series Book 28) Page 6