He didn’t look into her harrowed face with fresh tears coursing down the dried runnels of old ones. He died without knowing it, lady. All I can say.’
The priest and two men he had designated were already at the body. Father Vega was demanding a blanket from the angry Alfaro.
‘Best they bury him without you seein’ him, ma’am,’ Hawkins drawled.
Edge was moving between the split crowd of villagers now, trying to force feeling into his arms, ignoring the pity in the faces of the Mexicans
‘Storekeeper!’ he called.
‘Here, Señor Edge!’ Cirilo Banales responded.
‘Need a shirt and pants. Pay you later,’
‘Si, señor.’
He ran ahead to his shop on the plaza. Julio Melendez was already at the doorway of the cantina, holding open one of the batswing doors.
‘Señor, you will drink on the house!’ he greeted.
‘I’ll drink on credit, feller,’ Edge contradicted, experiencing stabs of pain down each arm.
Every villager except the priest and two pallbearers had moved slowly in the wake of Edge and the bounty hunters. The half-breed saw them as he turned sideways to cross the threshold of the cantina. Shouted orders rang out from the Federale post as Alfaro put every man on guard.
‘It is good you were released without injury, Josiah,’ Isabella Montez said.
She was standing beside a table in the centre of the malodorous, smoky cantina. There was a bottle of rye in one of her hands and a glass in the other. She set down both on the table and then folded into a chair. She was dressed in a clean gown, white and simple. Her hair was mussed from sleeping.
Melendez held up a hand to prevent Jesus Vega from entering. Parker led his men inside and they went to the littered table they had been using since they first got to the cantina. The crowd gathered silently in the plaza outside.
‘Not good for them, Isabella,’ Edge said. It was painful to move his arms. The chair across the table from her seemed too heavy for him. But he moved it, without allowing the effort to show, and sat down.
She uncorked the bottle and poured the glass brimful.
‘Mark the rye down to me, feller,’ he told the cantina owner.
‘It is enough for this man that I have agreed to marry him,’ the woman announced.
Melendez, back behind his bar, grinned and made a move towards the doorway. But then he realized it was not a good time to broadcast the news.
Gibbon giggled, his fleshy cheeks trembling.
‘It’s funny?’ Edge asked. There was no way to raise the drink to his lips without cupping his free hand under the elbow. He sipped the harsh liquor slowly.
The fat man was drinking as if there was a fast approaching time limit.
‘Just had a thought,’ Gibbon replied happily as the elderly Banales entered the cantina, a bundle of clothing in his arms.
‘Tim’s warned you enough, Al,’ Hawkins drawled.
Burton and Tyree were also worried about the impassiveness of the half-dressed Edge.
Gibbon was unconcerned. ‘If you get the weddin’ done now, won’t take you long to strip off for what follows the celebratin’!’
The harshness of his laugh was reminiscent of the mirth of Gonzalez.
‘Señors,’ Banales said, and set the clothing down on the table. ‘I think they will fit.’
‘Obliged.’ He had finished the rye and set his glass down. He nodded for Isabella to refill it. Then got painfully to his feet. ‘Stick around, feller. You’re the mayor and ought to hear what Gonzalez has in mind.’
Banales halted on his way to the batswings. They flapped open and Alfaro—now fully dressed—and Romero and Riaz came in.
Wayne’s clothes should fit you, Edge,’ Parker offered.
Gibbon drank and scowled, resentful that his humor had been unappreciated.
‘I’m half Mexican,’ Edge said as he started to don the peon outfit of white cotton shirt and pants. ‘Good reason for me to do as the Mexicans do when I’m in Mexico.’
He was able to stoop and raise the second glass of rye one-handed.
‘How about his Remington and Winchester?’ Parker added, anxious to please.
‘My other half will be obliged for the loan of the guns.’ He finished the liquor at a single gulp and shuddered. The fire it started in his belly spread out to soothe the aches in every muscle.
Alfaro vented a snort of impatience, ‘You are ready to give me a report now, señor?’
‘Told you there were a couple of things I had to do first,’ the half-breed answered, and turned towards the table where the bounty hunters were sitting.
There was no sign of pain on his lean, bristled features now. Just glinting-eyed, bared-teeth hatred,
‘Al!’ Red Tyree warned.
The fat man snapped his head up from where he had been staring into his glass. His hand opened and the glass fell to the table. It toppled, spilled its contents and rolled. It smashed when it hit the floor. Gibbon was on his feet by then, his open hand having swung down, gripped the butt of his Remington and drawn it. The back of his chair thudded hard against the bar.
Edge did not halt his slow advance.
Gibbon was grinning again. He raised his left hand and beckoned. ‘Come on, tough guy,’ he invited, ‘Come an’ get paid out for what you done to Bruce. You ain’t got no gun now, though. And you ain’t in no shape to swat a stinkin’ fly.’
‘He must report to me!’ Alfaro shrieked, fumbling to unbutton the flap of his holster.
Parker’s move was fast and fluid. He was seated immediately beside where Gibbon sat. His left hand swung up, thumb and fingers pressed tight together. And hit Gibbon’s wrist with a sound like two pieces of stout timber cracking on impact,
Gibbon screamed as the revolver was hurled away from his pain-numbed fingers.
Edge kept coming.
Parker’s Remington appeared from beneath the table. Tyree, Burton and Hawkins drew and all four guns were trained on Edge,
‘We know your rule, mister!’ the Boston dude snapped. ‘But with Gonzalez and his band of killers set to attack, you and your blasted principles are the least of our worries,’
‘Josiah!’ Isabella pleaded.
But Edge had already halted, tearing his glinting eyes away from the agonized and terrified face of the fat man to look at the other bounty hunters,
Alfaro sighed, very loudly.
Jesus Vega, down on his hands and knees to peer in under the batswing doors, fisted tears from his eyes.
That’s fine,’ Parker said softly, ‘Forget about Gibbon, He’s just the worst kind of drunk. Because he has a yellow streak running right down the middle of his back. It’s only when his mind is besotted with alcohol that he gets brave,’
Edge pursed his lips. ‘Put the guns away and I’ll forget you drew against me twice. Or squeeze the triggers.’
‘You are crazy, señor,’ Romero rasped.
‘If we put them away?’ Parker asked,
‘Never did plan to kill him, feller.’
‘Tim!’ Gibbon screamed.
Edge was aware of somebody close to him. He glanced to his right and saw Isabella standing there.
‘The filth of his mind meant nothing to me, Josiah,’ she urged.
‘Get lost,’ Edge told her.
‘I believe you won’t kill him,’ Parker acknowledged, and holstered his gun.
The others did likewise.
‘Oh, my...’ Gibbon started.
Edge reached his right hand up to the side of his neck.
‘No!’ the woman shrieked, and fastened her hand over his wrist.
The half-breed was unable to suppress a grunt of pain as his left arm swung across the front of his body. Isabella’s venting of less pain was far shriller as the palm of his hand lashed across her cheek. Gasps of shock accompanied her backward stagger. She fell across a table and rolled to the floor. On hands and knees, she sobbed.
Edge had a grip on the terrifie
d Gibbon by then. And the razor was out of the pouch: honed blade gleaming in the lamp light.
‘I’ll kill you, Edge!’ Parker snarled.
The half-breed heard the threat but ignored it. He knew guns were covering him again and sensed the eyes of everyone in the saloon glaring at him. But in that instant he cared only about the trembling fat man who he had folded backwards across the bar top. The blade of the razor, hovering a fraction of an inch above Gibbon’s right eye, was enough to keep his victim at his mercy. Which was good. For Edge knew he would not have had the strength to struggle against a counter-move.
‘Don’t shoot him!’ Isabella pleaded.
In that instant when everyone else in the cantina had been relegated to his subconscious, Edge might have driven the shiny blade in through the eyeball to pierce the brain. But one of the few shreds of finer human values left to him prevented the act. He still considered his word of honor, given to a man who respected him, as sacrosanct. Thus, no matter what his feelings towards Parker, he had given the dude bounty hunter his word.
The razor moved away from the flickering eyelid. Gibbon was unaware of this and continued to keep his eyes screwed tight shut. His lips moved in a silent prayer, causing his fleshy cheeks to quiver so that the sweat beads on them sparkled in the lamp light.
The blade made two slashing strokes. Then Edge straightened, pausing only to wipe the razor on Gibbon’s shirtfront, He stepped away from the fat man, who seemed unaware that his attacker had retreated.
‘What’d you do to him, mister?’ Red Tyree asked anxiously.
‘He said a while back I looked more than a little cross,’ Edge answered as he replaced the razor in the pouch. That gave him a laugh.’
Gibbon eased upright and shook his head. Beads of sweat and blood flew to either side.
‘He’ll be marked for life,’ Burton growled, as he and everyone else saw the deep cuts in the form of a cross scored into the right cheek of the trembling Gibbon,
‘But he’s sure to remember me and maybe that’ll give him long life,’ the half-breed answered evenly. ‘And lots of happiness if he likes being reminded of old jokes.’
Parker handed the fat man a kerchief and Gibbon held it against his face to stem the flow of blood. Sweat dried on other faces as guns were slid back into their holsters.
‘There was no need, Josiah,’ Isabella murmured as she and Edge resumed their chairs at the same time.
‘There was need,’ he argued softly. ‘And you felt it.’
She raised a hand to finger the painful red area on her cheek. ‘I am not sure I can ever forgive you that.’
Edge poured himself a third drink, his face impassive. ‘It wasn’t what I planned to give you when I got back here.’
Parker thrust a drink at the suffering Gibbon. The injured man grabbed it gratefully.
‘Take it slow, Al,’ the dude advised.
‘Perhaps now we may discuss the matter of Ortiz Gonzalez, señor,’ Alfaro snapped, striding across the cantina with his two men hard on his heels.
Gibbon gulped at the liquor. It reacted violently with the terror which still cramped his belly. He gagged, whirled and ran for the rear door. But was vomiting before he got outside. The trail of mess on the floor was just one more evil stink in the cantina.
‘Seems I make a deeper impression on him than you do, feller,’ Edge told Parker.
‘Señor,’ the Federale comandante raged, and thudded the side of his fist on the table between the half-breed and the woman. ‘I insist upon hearing of Gonzalez immediately! If there is further delay, I will be forced to conclude the manner of your return was some form of chicanery!’
‘No sweat, major,’ Edge replied evenly. ‘The only double cross here was between the fat feller and me.’
Chapter Six
EDGE did not drink any more and allowed himself just one cigarette as he told those in the cantina about his unexpected meeting with Ortiz Gonzalez. He spoke in an unemotional tone using clipped sentences. Again in full control of his feelings behind the mask of impassiveness that was his face. As if the razor attack on Al Gibbon had expunged every evil effect of the torture and humiliation.
The fat man did not return from the latrine. Those who did hear of the bandit leader’s threat listened without any attempt at interruption. And the words of the half-breed expanded the anger and fear and disgust which had been present since the retching bounty-hunter left'.
‘Did Gonzalez say when tomorrow he will come, señor,’ Alfaro demanded. He was angry, Romero and Riaz were nervous.
‘No, major. But he’s got better than thirty men. With horses, I guess. A group that large can be seen a long way off.’
‘Comandante,’ Cirilo Banales called anxiously as Alfaro did a smart about face and started for the doorway. ‘The cabildo may assume you will not release the woman?’
‘What would that gain the Government of Mexico?’ the major snapped without halting.
Riaz scuttled ahead and Jesus Vega had to move hurriedly out of the way as the batswings were pushed wide to allow exit to the two officers and non-com.
‘We must have a meeting, Señorita,’ the stoop shouldered mayor of San Parral urged.
‘To what end, señor?’ Isabella asked with a sigh. ‘Control of this situation is not in our hands.’
Banales stared in horror at the expression of defeat carved on her features. ‘But the people must be told of this threat to their lives.’
‘That needs but one voice to do.’ A tired smile now, which stayed only a moment. ‘And you can shout very loud when one of the children steals fruit from your display.’
Her attitude further drained the mayor’s confidence. But then he drew up his shoulders and strode purposefully out of the cantina.
The pale-faced Burton called for another round of drinks. Melendez seemed glad to have something to do. Cirilo Banales began to prove that he was a good choice to broadcast the bad news. Standing under the live oak at the centre of the plaza, he retold the threats of Ortiz Gonzalez. Resignation and fear clamped silence over the crowd,
‘You’ve given up?’ Edge asked the woman.
‘I am a peasant,’ she replied. ‘Like the people on the square. We raise food from the soil and we work at our places of business. We know nothing of fighting bandits. And we have not the weapons to fight with. That is why the Government sent the Federales—to protect us.’
She finished on a harsh note of bitterness. And turned her head to direct some of it towards the four bounty-hunters across the cantina.
Hawkins, Burton and Tyree tried to outstare her with belligerence in their eyes. Parker was uncomfortable in the face of her contempt. He stood up and leaned his back against the plank bar top.
‘The people at Moreno are peasants, like you, ma’am,’ he countered, and now his dark eyes met her tacit challenge with one of his own. ‘Like many others in many other villages which bandits like Gonzalez have raided and looted and worse. Gonzalez and his kind have to be stamped out.’
‘Other villages are not my concern, bounty-hunter!’ Isabella said flatly.
‘She don’t like us bein’ bounty-hunters, Tim,’ the young Tyree snarled.
‘I do not like that you bring trouble to San Parral,’ she corrected.
‘Nobody gets to eat steak without killing the beef,’ Parker pointed out.
‘I do not wish to be told riddles at such a time as this, bounty-hunter.’ She stood up and only then did her anger become apparent, in the rigid set of her fine body, ‘It is the people my family died to save who are to be killed,’ She looked down at the still seated Edge. ‘Josiah. I have given up. Because I think we have used all the miracles due to us.’
There was none of the usual, natural grace in her movement as she went to the batswing doors. Her struggle to contain her fury kept her arms and her legs stiff, so that her gait was of a woman much older than her years.
Outside, the plaza was deserted, the villagers having returned to their houses to hi
de their fear behind closed doors and shutters. Even Jesus Vega had been ordered home by his father.
‘What the hell?’ Amos Hawkins snarled, glancing at Parker as the Boston dude sat down, and seeing the worried look on the handsome face. ‘I never figured that yellow streak of Gibbon was catchin’.’
Parker ignored him to look at the half-breed. “What have we got ourselves into, Edge?’ he asked. ‘We’re new to this business.’
‘What’d you do before?’
‘A great many things before we got together. I was regular army through the war and after. We met up last spring trailing beef from Texas to Kansas.’
‘And that wasn’t no picnic,’ Tyree growled. ‘We ain’t into nothin’ we can’t handle. Us and the Federales?’
‘You see plenty of action?’
Parker blinked. ‘In the army? Enough to give me a taste for it. We can all handle ourselves.’
Edge nodded. ‘Alfaro ain’t never seen any action. Don’t know anything about his men. Except that in the three months I’ve been here all I’ve seen them do is clean the post, guard it and look pretty on parade. Only time I’ve heard them use their weapons was tonight when I spooked them.’
‘You mean…?’ Burton started, his dough white face anxious.
‘That maybe the post at the end of the street is a box filled with tin soldiers, feller. Alfaro’s the cousin of some big shot politician in Mexico City. One time he was on the general staff but he made a foul up. There was big trouble. They had to bury him someplace. And his cousin had enough pull to get the San Parral post built for him.’
‘You and him sound real chummy,’ Hawkins drawled.
‘His men get drunk in here sometimes. The liquor is lousy. Talking up a storm against Alfaro is the most fun they have.’
‘Thanks for the information,’ Parker said. ‘One more piece?’
‘It won’t be anything good.’
‘How many men stationed at the post?’
‘Eighteen.’
Parker nodded as Edge got to his feet. ‘If we count you in. Along with Gibbon, that makes twenty-four guns. Against thirty-odd bandits. And I’d say some of the locals will fight when their lives are on the line.’
EDGE: Savage Dawn (Edge series Book 26) Page 7