The entire train roared past the stand of pines in less than a minute. The ground ceased to shake, the clamor faded, then the caboose went from sight into the distant west. The smell of wood smoke remained in the air for almost as long as the wispy blackness against the blue sky.
Martin was morosely silent for several minutes after Edge had set the wagon rolling. Then offered, ‘I’m sorry, son.’
‘For what?’
‘Criticizing you for what you are - the way you get things done.’
‘I got a thick skin, feller. Except for the part that covers an old grief.’
‘If you weren’t the way you are, I guess we wouldn’t have made it this far. While there’s people like me, there’ll always be people like you. I should be grateful to you, instead of keep putting you down.’
‘I’ll accept gratitude from somebody who doesn’t have the money, feller,’ the half-breed told him. ‘So far you owe me twenty dollars.’
‘If I die before you get paid, there’s money in my hip pocket,’ Martin said, resentful of Edge’s response to his apology.
‘Obliged.’
‘But I don’t plan on cashing in my chips until we get to where we’re going.’
‘I believe you.’
The water tower at Olsen Creek showed first, the big tank crouched above the curvature of the seemingly limitless prairie of the Colorado-Kansas border country. Then the topmost layer of cordwood stacked on the other side of the track from the tower. The only other feature of the halt was a small shack at the side of the tower supports.
The creek for which the place was named was just a dried up bed but there was obviously a water course beneath it, for a metal pipe came up from the cracked ground, entered the shack and then rose to the tank at the top of the tower. The shack apparently housed a steam pump. The telegraph wire ran across the roof of the shack and between the tower support timbers without interruption.
‘How does it look, son?’ Silas Martin asked, his hands out from under the blankets and trembling as they gripped the half-breed’s Winchester.
‘We’re two hundred feet away and it looks as quiet as it sounds,’ Edge told him, driving with the reins in one hand, his right palm draped over the butt of the holstered Remington.
Both men were sweating, more heavily than was merited by the heat of the sun. Dust from beneath the rolling wheels of the wagon rose and clung to the beads of perspiration suspended in their bristles.
Silas Martin was hurting inside.
Edge’s belly was ice cold with the fear of sudden death. But there had been no other way to handle the approach to Olsen Creek. The small shack, the twenty-feet high pile of logs and the water tower which rose skywards at least another ten feet provided the only cover of any consequence for as far as the eye could see. Short of making an immensely wide detour to north or south, there had been no alternative to a direct and open advance on the fuel halt.
A hundred feet from the log pile, the two horses in the traces pricked their ears and raised their heads, nostrils quivering. Another horse whinnied.
‘Trouble,’ Edge rasped.
‘Hell,’ Martin groaned.
‘Don’t wanna kill no one!’ a man shouted.
The half-breed had hauled on the reins to halt the team and drawn the Remington halfway out of the holster. His glinting eyes were focused on the woodpile, for it was behind this that the horse had sounded the warning.
The short, fat man who stepped into view on the track side of the logs had a Winchester leveled from his shoulder. But he was not the one who made the claim. This man was halfway up the tower, leaning into sight from behind one of the stout timber struts. He had a matching repeater rifle. He was also short, but far less heavy than the man on the ground. Both were in their mid-forties, with faces burnished by weather and dressed western style in dark hued clothing that showed many signs of hard wear. Each wore a bushy black moustache that drooped to either side of the mouth.
‘Feller on the seat ease the gun outta the holster slow and toss it to the side. One in the back heave the rifle over the side.’
While the spokesman, who had a deep south accent, held his position, his partner advanced along the side of the log pile.
‘What’s the situation, Edge?’ Martin rasped.
‘Bad. Do what he tells you.’
The old man was reluctant to surrender the Winchester. But did so after he heard the Remington clunk against the ground. The revolver had gone to the left. The rifle went right.
‘Fine, Rubin,’ the man from behind the logs drawled. ‘You can come on down now. I got him covered.’
‘Be careful of the one in the back, Ralph. He might have a handgun under them blankets.’
‘He won’t do nothin’, Rubin. Not if he wants his partner to keep on livin’. Get down outta the back, mister.’
‘I can’t.’
Rubin began to climb down from the tower, with frequent anxious glances to where Ralph stood aiming the rifle at Edge over a range of twenty feet.
Ralph scowled. ‘Don’t you tell me can’t, mister. You do like I say.’
‘Goddamnit, I have a bullet inside me!’ Silas Martin snapped.
‘That right?’ Ralph asked Edge.
‘Take a look,’ the half-breed invited. ‘Though I guess you’ll smell what it’s doing to him before you get close enough to see.’
Ralph was suspicious. ‘Reckon I’ll wait for Rubin to get over here first.’
‘What do you want, feller?’
Ralph had a weak grin which made him look younger. ‘What do you think? Money. Valuables. Me and Rubin, we’re the have-nots. Hopin’ you and your partner are a couple of haves.’
‘Just that?’ Martin asked, surprised. ‘You’re not working for anybody?’
‘For us,’ Ralph supplied as Rubin drew level with him. ‘Keep the big one covered.’
He moved wide round the team and wagon to reach the rear.
‘Silas has a small caliber gun under the blankets,’ Edge supplied.
‘Damn you, Edge!’ the old man snarled as Ralph, who had been about to delve under the blankets covering him, abruptly stabbed the muzzle of the rifle into his chin.
‘If it’s my money or my life, I’d rather be poor,’ the half-breed rasped, his hooded eyes focused upon the knuckle of Rubin’s right forefinger curled to the rifle trigger.
‘It ain’t true what’s said,’ Rubin drawled while Ralph held his Winchester one handed and reached under the blankets to take the My Friend revolver from Martin’s reluctant grasp.
‘What?’Edge asked.
‘That a fool and his money are soon parted. You’re a wise man. Dig deep and toss out your dollars.’
The balance of what the half-breed had been paid for the Big-T cattle drive was in the hip pocket of his pants. He delved his hand in and drew it out slowly, fisted around the roll of bills. His slitted eyes never shifted from the curled finger and the ugly black hole of the rifle muzzle above.
Behind him, Ralph said, ‘Rest easy, old timer. I’ll get yours. Man in your condition shouldn’t do nothin’ ’ceptin’ lay still.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Rubin asked, his attention not wandering from Edge for a moment as the hefty roll of dollars sailed through the air to hit the ground at his feet with a rich-sounding thud.
‘Been shot. He smells real bad.’
‘Tough.’
‘What’s in the box?’
‘Something that smells worse than Silas,’ Edge supplied. ‘Corpse of his wife. She’s been dead a few weeks.’
‘What the hell are you doing…’
‘Forget it, Ralph,’ Rubin cut in. ‘You through back there?’
‘Yeah. Five hundred maybe. And a gold watch. The big guy got any watch, rings, stuff like that?’
‘He ain’t the type,’ Rubin answered, abruptly more nervous than he had been as he climbed down from the water tower.
The utter coldness in the half-breed’s glinting blue eyes and the tot
al lack of expression in the lines of his other features were starting to get to Rubin.
‘We better take their guns, uh?’
‘Of course we take their friggin’ guns. Then pick up this money over here. Hurry it up.’
‘You figure to hold up a train?’ Edge asked as Ralph scuttled around the wagon, collecting the two revolvers and the Winchester.
‘Nah. Just came by here to get fresh water. Saw you headin’ this way. Glad we waited.’ Talking seemed to ease his jangling nerves.
‘You see anybody else around here, feller?’
‘Why would anybody hang around this asshole of nowhere?’
‘Expected to met up with a couple of Orientals is all.’
‘You’re too late or too early. Ain’t been nobody here for three hours.’
‘Obliged.’
‘Jesus, Rubin!’ Ralph gasped as he stopped to pick up the half-breed’s bankroll. ‘Did we get lucky! We ain’t never had this much before.’
‘Two thousand, feller,’ Edge said. ‘Hard come by. Easy gone.’
‘Too damn easy for my likin’,’ Ralph growled, suddenly as anxiously suspicious of the half-breed’s manner as was his partner.
‘Figure I’m worth more than that is all.’
‘Keep figurin’ that, mister,’ Rubin muttered, and began to back away along the side of the track.
He halted at the corner of the pile of logs and said something to Ralph, who nodded and quickened his pace. Stretched seconds dragged through time while Ralph was out of sight. Then hooves hit the ground and the fat man appeared astride a horse, with Rubin’s mount on a lead line.
Rubin continued to level his rifle from the shoulder at Edge, ignoring Silas Martin who had struggled to sit up and turn around to see what was happening. So the fat man had no trouble in drawing his Colt - and blasting a bullet into the nape of his thin partner’s neck.
‘God in heaven!’ Martin gasped.
‘And there’s a lot wrong with the world,’ Edge muttered.
‘We never stole this much before!’ Ralph exclaimed. ‘Too much to share.’
He never took his gaze away from Edge as he slid from his saddle and stooped over the corpse of his partner. He holstered his own Colt and used Rubin’s revolver to keep his confidence high while he pushed the dead man’s rifle into the boot on the now spare horse. Then he remounted and wheeled both horses - to lunge them into an immediate gallop.
Dust from beneath the pumping hooves drifted lazily to settle on the covering of sheened crimson that was spread over the back of Rubin’s head, and dulled it, changing its color to black.
‘I’ve never seen anything so cold blooded as that in my whole life,’ Silas Martin gasped, having to grip the top of the wagon side to keep sitting up, staring after the dust cloud that marked the eastward progress of Ralph.
‘If you’ve got enough life left, I aim to top it, Silas,’ Edge rasped, taking up the reins to drive the team to the water tower.
‘No, son! Forget him. I haven’t got the time to...’
The half-breed dropped to the ground and a cold stare from the slits of his eyes was enough to drive the pale, thin faced old man into silence.
Then, as Edge turned his broad back and moved across the track to the water hose, Martin said, ‘If that’s the way you feel, I’m in no position to argue.’
‘It’s what I don’t feel bothers me, feller.’
‘What you don’t?’ came the puzzled response.
Edge placed the palm of a hand on his empty his pocket. ‘I don’t feel any two grand.’
CHAPTER NINE
EVEN after the team had been watered and Edge had seen that Silas Martin was tightly wrapped in the blankets and wedged securely on the back of the wagon again, Ralph was still in sight - he and the two horses a composite dark dot far to the south east.
Then, shortly after the wagon had started to roll, the old man crying aloud his pain as the wheels jolted over the track, the quarry went from sight, swallowed up by mere distance across the vast mid-western plain.
‘Let him go, son,’ Martin said as the impassive-faced half-breed took a fix on a low rise that gave him an approximate bearing on the point at which Ralph had disappeared. ‘Let him go and I’ll make good your loss.’
His voice was weak, the words having to be forced out of a private world of agony. But the man who heard them was able to detect the misery of defeat in the strained whisper.
‘You’re as broke as I am, Silas,’ he replied.
‘When we get to where we’re going there’ll be money. Lots of it.’
Edge looked back and down at the fatally wounded man. The strong, warm sunlight fell on a face with screwed shut eyes and teeth bared in a tight grimace of agony.
‘Syracuse, New York state, feller?’
‘Right. Like I said.’ The words, forced through the clenched teeth, were almost inaudible through the hiss of expelled breath that drove them out. ‘And I’m going to make it.’
‘Not aboard this wagon, feller. It’s too rough and too slow.’
‘You’re making it slower. Going the wrong way.’
‘Anything you can do about it, feller?’
‘Regret I ever hired you!’ He managed to inject a harsh tone of anger into the response.
‘So you do that, Silas.’
‘You’re hard and mean, Edge! Just like that farmer told you!’
‘Hard up for sure,’ the half-breed answered. ‘So I can’t afford to be generous.’
Martin was silent for a long time, while Edge concentrated upon keeping the wagon on a course that would take it about two miles right of the rise. The half-breed did not forget about his suffering employer, to the extent that he held the team to an easy walk and steered to avoid the worst of the humps and hollows that would have juddered the flatbed and ignited new fires of agony in the old man’s punished body. But his main concern was now a personal one.
A twist of cruel fate might rob him and he had come to accept such a loss with equanimity. For there was no way he could gain revenge against an abstract concept. But a living, breathing man like the fat little Ralph, that was a different proposition. Unless the hold-up man paid the price for robbing Edge, the half-breed would feel he had lost far more than mere money and guns. He would be stripped of his pride. Another abstract concept, but one he would risk his life to protect. For if he lost this, he would be forced to regard himself as no better than the man he was tracking.
When he reached the point on the prairie upon which he had taken the fix, he had to look for signs left by the two horses. A chore he welcomed, for once again it was necessary to make an effort to close his mind against unwelcome thoughts - that his selfish pursuit of a personal principle which sidetracked him from the job he had been hired to do, by a man who was close to death, maybe placed him as low down on the human scale as Ralph.
‘Edge,’ Martin croaked as the half-breed peered far ahead to where a line of low hills showed faintly in the shimmering heat haze.
‘Yeah, Silas?’
‘He could have killed us. The way he did his partner.’
‘People make mistakes all the time, feller.’
‘You included, son.’
‘Was just thinking I’m a long way from being perfect.’
‘Everybody is. Think some more. Even if you find him in this wide open country, he’s armed and you aren’t. He won’t leave you alive to follow him a second time. And you told him and his partner you reckoned your life was worth more than two thousand dollars.’
‘I told the truth, Silas. Figure that right now my life is worth living.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That if I don’t kill the bastard I won’t be able to live with myself.’
‘Vanity!’ Martin rasped, then moderated his tone, perhaps because he could not sustain high emotion. ‘Take care, son. You know what comes before a fall?’
‘Yeah,’ Edge growled, and spat off the side of the wagon. ‘A su
mmer.’
‘I’m in no mood for jokes,’ the old man retorted, and groaned as a wheel bounced over a rock.
‘And I’m in no mood to take a fall, feller,’ the half-breed growled. ‘I’m down as far as I can go.’
‘No you’re not, son. A grave goes deeper. And it could be you’re digging your own.’
‘You got anything to say I don’t already know?’
The old man did not reply for long moments. Then he sighed. ‘I guess not, by your reckoning. A man like you thinks he knows it all.’
‘So save your breath, Silas. You haven’t got enough left to waste it.’
Martin groaned again, but with misery rather than pain. Edge sensed the brown eyes staring up at his back, emanating hatred and frustration and he allowed himself a brief, tight grin. The old man would keep quiet now, silently nursing his resentment and willing himself to stay alive. Which might give him a few more minutes, hours or even days. Which was maybe more than the contents of any doctor’s bag could have given him.
As the sun rose higher and got hotter, the heat haze thickened. But the wagon had rolled far enough into the south east for the line of low hills to stay in sight. The sign left by Ralph’s mount and the horse on a lead line marked a course toward a fold between the two highest rises.
At about midday, Silas Martin vented an odd sounding growl. But it was only a vocal reaction to some image that flickered through his mind as he lay wedged on the back of the wagon, resting on the line between sleep and unconsciousness. When the growl was curtailed, the old man resumed his shallow breathing. The recent thinning of his face was clear to see, but the paleness of his complexion was hidden by the trail dust that adhered to the sweat which constantly pumped from his pores - the saline beads like drops of his diminishing strength being squeezed out by the pain.
After snapping his head around in response to the strange sound, Edge avoided looking at Martin again. Only in this way was he able to suppress the guilt he felt.
Nearing the hills and then entering them under a sky growing dark with evening, the half-breed was conscious of two nagging concerns. Most urgent of these was that Ralph undoubtedly knew he was being trailed. For if Edge had been able to see him during the first few hours, then he had certainly been aware of the wagon rolling in his wake. On the open prairie there had been nothing he could do about his pursuers. And he had not tried, even by demanding more speed from his mount - the sign on the short grass and dusty bald patches revealed a constant, even pace. But here in the hollows and rises of the hilly area, with night falling fast, there was ample opportunity for the hold-up man to prepare and spring a trap.
EDGE: THE LIVING, THE DYING AND THE DEAD (Edge series Book 29) Page 9