‘Rough, uh?’ Aunt Matty asked, her tone sympathetic.
‘On him, lady. He died.’ His voice was as cold as his eyes.
Aunt Matty shivered and could not be certain it was entirely caused by a light, but biting breeze which sprang across the plateau. She huddled down deeper into her coat anyway, and turned up the collar.
‘Like I was sayin’, mister,’ she continued after a full minute had slipped by. ‘Muriel, she married my kid brother Barhaby. He wasn’t much of a catch. Not like my fifth, who died just six days after Muriel and Barnaby was wed. Hey, you listening?’
‘Does it matter?’ Edge asked, not looking at her.
‘It does. I’d like you to know Mu and me didn’t steal that bull - not really.’
‘Between you and Evans, ma’am. None of my business.’
Aunt Matty blew into her cupped hands. She sniffed again. ‘Well, I’m gonna tell you anyway. Even if it just means that Happing my mouth keeps my lips from freezing together.’
Edge sighed. ‘Sure, ma’am.’
Aunt Matty gave a grim-faced, triumphant nod. And continued with her story. ‘Barnaby got the family farm after our father died. Right up in the far north on the Canadian border. Let it go all to hell while he wasted his time gambling and crossbreeding beef. Only it turns out that the cross-breeding stuff wasn’t a waste of time after all.’
The stage trail snaked between a small mesa and a pinnacle of rock and the huddled buildings of a town showed in the distance. They were on a rise and the elevation enabled Edge and the woman to see the twin silver threads of a railroad arrowing away from the south side of the town. A few pinpricks of yellow light against the bulky blackness of the buildings competed with the stars sprinkled overhead.
‘Mu and me were closer than we thought,’ Aunt Matty said absently. Then she strengthened her tone. ‘Barnaby had this English cow and a French bull. He put them together and that beast you saw was the result. Put on more than five pounds a day while he was growing. Full-grown now and weighs better than three and a half thousand pounds. That’s a lot of bull, uh?’
‘Ain’t saying nothing,’ Edge answered evenly.
‘So to hell with you, mister. I’ll cut the story short in case I bore you into goin’ to sleep. There’s a rancher down in Texas named Woodrow Ryan. He’s been trying to breed that kinda bull for years, but he never got lucky. He heard about what Barnaby did and telegraphed an offer of fifty thousand dollars if the beast was all it was cracked up to be. But the offer come a little late. Barnaby got into a poker game with Evans and two of his hands. They took him for what little money he had and egged him into putting up the bull as collateral for a loan. Evans beat him and foreclosed.’
‘Man who invented poker’s got a lot to answer for,’ Edge answered flatly.
‘So’s the man who thought of marking cards,’ Aunt Matty growled.
‘Cold deck, uh?’
Aunt Matty shivered. ‘Colder than this damn night.’
They had rolled to within a mile of the town now, and the wagon rattled past a sign: Railton - Elevation 7000 ft.
‘Soon as Barnaby found out about it, he went to get his bull back. Evans ordered him off his spread. Barnaby was a no-account fool to the end. He said he wouldn’t leave without the animal. Evans and those nine hands of his you saw tonight - they all drew at once and the mortician had to dig ten bullets outta Barnaby before we buried the body in the yard of the family farm.’
‘All that lead,’ Edge said softly. ‘Pretty heavy argument that the bull belongs to Evans.’
‘Muriel didn’t go for it, mister, ‘specially after the judge reckoned Barnaby got what he deserved and he weren’t gonna single out any of the ten men to even slap a label of what he called justifiable homicide on.’
Railton had just the one street. Flanked by darkened houses at the north end where Edge angled the wagon to the side and reined the team to a halt. But a dozen lamps glowed at the other end, where the street broadened out into a Square in front of the railroad depot. A train was backed into the depot. Immediately behind a Mogul locomotive which was beginning to build up steam, were three passenger cars alongside a raised boardwalk. Behind these were two loaded flatcars and a boxcar with a brake wagon on the tail. The freight cars of the train were in the penned stockyard section of the depot.
Kerosene lamps hung on posts, clearly illuminated the scene as Evans’s men attempted to drive the reluctant white bull up a ramp and into the boxcar. Evans himself seemed to be having an argument with a slightly built man in a dark uniform and peaked cap. The hiss of escaping steam covered all the other sounds in the vicinity of the depot After the wagon had come to rest, the remainder of the town was silent save for the low howl of the strengthening wind between the buildings.
Muriel!’ Aunt Matty called tensely as Edge wound the reins around the brake lever.
There was movement in the rear of the wagon. ‘Where are we?’ the younger woman asked, with a yawn.
‘Where we were headed. Railton. And them skunks are put-tin’ the animal on the train just like we figured to do.’
There was a scuffling, a thud and a soft cry as Muriel Tree climbed out of the wagon and dropped to the ground, hurting herself in the process. Edge climbed down easily from the seat and saw Muriel limping towards him.
‘What are you contemplating on doing, mister?’ Aunt Matty demanded.
Muriel was staring along the street towards the lamp lit scene at the depot. Her pretty face was still recovering from the effects of interrupted sleep, but she had obviously done a great deal of thinking before she took her rest. For she was expressing the same kind of grim determination the older woman had shown back at the campsite. She in no way looked as if she intended to go home and forget what had happened now.
Edge was also surveying Railton, but was ignoring the depot. He had seen as much as he wanted of it. Instead, his hooded eyes sought a sign to indicate the location of the law office. He spotted it, with a low level of light filtering through a window beneath it.
‘Like my marriage, lady,’ he answered flatly and moved away from the wagon.
‘What does he mean, Aunt Matty?’ Muriel asked, watching the tall, lean figure move gracefully along the side of the resting team.
‘Means it’s none of our business,’ came the soft voiced reply.
Muriel looked at her sister-in-law now, anxiety replacing the former determination. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Keep our fingers crossed that tall hunk of meanness cuts down our opposition some, my dear,’ the older woman replied coldly.
Edge didn’t hear the exchange. The women had served their purpose by providing him with transport. Now they were behind him and immediately out of his mind. Nothing he saw during frequent glances at the depot caused him to quicken his pace. Three and a half thousand pounds worth of obstinate bull could not be hurried: and the more aggressive his handlers became, the less inclined the animal was to enter the boxcar. The locomotive had now attained the required steam pressure to roil, and the railroad man had become quite heated in his protests to Evans. He was doing a lot of arm waving and kept dangling a watch in front of Evans.
Railton had no sidewalks, even in front of the business premises. The whining wind and hiss of escaping steam covered the tread of Edge’s boots as he approached the law office. Everyone at the depot was too busy to look along the street, and so failed to see the lean half-breed as he halted in the pale wedge of light that penetrated the glass panel of the office doorway. The sign angled out from the facade of the building read: Abraham Barlow - Sheriff and Funeral Director.
Edge rattled the handle as he opened the door but the bald-headed man continued to sleep deeply in the leather armchair behind the desk. When Edge released the handle, the wind snatched the door away from him and banged it hard against the inside wall. The sheriff came awake with a snort as Edge stepped across the threshold. Dust from the street blew in around him. The dust made the lawman cough and the drau
ght lifted the papers off his desk and scattered them.
‘Shut the lousy door!’ the sheriff yelled angrily, fisting the grit from his eyes with one hand while he tried to hold down papers with the other.
‘Sure,’ Edge answered, and did as he was asked.
The low-wicked lamp, hung from a hook in a ceiling beam, stopped swinging. The two men surveyed each other in its dim light. Barlow was about forty and looked like a man who had led a soft life. Pudgy, rather than out-and-out fat, with a round face the color of dirty slush. He was dressed in pants and a long-sleeved, high-necked vest. A pot-bellied stove began to build up the temperature in the spartanly furnished office again. His dark eyes looked hard at Edge and his mouth adopted a line which suggested the man did not like what he saw.
‘I sure as hell hope you’re a guy called Edge,’ he growled.
‘Ain’t such a bad night for you after all,’ the half-breed told him, moving over to the stove and extending his hands towards it. He flexed his fingers, stiff from holding the reins in the cold air.
‘What’s left of it,’ the lawman answered sourly. He reached behind him and took a Winchester from where it leaned against the wall. He rested it across the desk. Then he opened a drawer in the desk, took out a gun belt with holstered Colt and put this atop the rifle. ‘This ain’t no lousy left luggage office, you know.’
‘Take it up with the guy who left the stuff,’ Edge told him, crossing to the desk.
Barlow shrugged his flabby shoulders. ‘Ain’t sayin’ he didn’t make it worth my while. But I’m a man who likes to sleep in a bed. Which is what I hope I can do soon as you leave.’
Edge had buckled the belt and tied the holster cord around his thigh. He took his time checking the load and action on the Colt. Even more time was used up in inspecting the Winchester. Then he nodded to the stony-faced lawman. ‘Go to bed, sheriff,’ he invited.
Barlow stood up. He wasn’t very tall. About five feet six. He wasn’t wearing a gun belt. ‘First like to be sure there’s not goin’ to be any trouble in my town.’
Edge pursed his lips. ‘Going to be a killing, feller,’ he said, turning to go to the door.
‘Now, see here, mister!’ Barlow snarled, whirling to reach behind him again.
But .Edge had pivoted, too. And the Winchester was leveled and cocked before the lawman had curled his hand around his own rifle. ‘Wear your sheriff’s hat and there’ll be two killings, feller,’ the half-breed warned softly. ‘Best you dust off the black stovepipe job, uh?’
Barlow gulped. ‘I can’t allow—’
‘You were asleep. Won’t be no one but the two of us know you woke up before they came to tell you there’s a hole to dig.’
Edge lowered the Winchester and opened the door. Wind and dust blew in, but Barlow did not move. Not to hold down the skittering papers or to grab his rifle. The door closed and the shadowy form moved away from the glass panel. Then the sheriff dropped back into his chair and gulped again.
The self-willed bull had almost lost. His head and shoulders were inside the boxcar and a couple of long poles jabbed into his rump forced him all the way. Two men waiting at the sliding door shoved it across the gap. The railroad man glowered at Evans and ran across to the brake wagon to speak hurriedly with the brakeman. Evans waved to his men, who were moving away from the side of the train to head for their horses which waited in one of the cattle pens. Evans walked fast towards the passenger car section of the train. The uniformed railroad man stepped back and the brakeman sounded a bell and leaned out of the side of the wagon to swing a lamp. The locomotive whistle blasted and the train jerked forward.
A rifle shot cracked across the thud of pistons thrusting into cylinders.
The engineer and his fireman were intent upon moving their train. The brakeman also decided that this was his prime concern. Everyone else stared in the direction from which the sound of the rifle shot came. Their shocked eyes saw the tall figure of Edge. He stood, with dust swirling around his legs and feet, at the point where the street opened up into the stockyard. The Winchester was held in his left hand, still aimed straight up into the night sky where the bullet had been fired. His right arm hung loosely at his side, hand level with the jutting butt of the holstered Colt.
The sound of the shot and the sight of the half-breed halted Evans in mid-stride. But the train was gaining speed.
‘Take care of him!’ he yelled, and lunged into a run, angling towards the rattling train. He only made it as far as the brake wagon. And he got no help from the brakeman as he hauled himself up over the turning wheels. ‘Kill the bum!’ he screamed, his voice high and thin above the noise of the clattering train.
‘Oh, my God!’ the railroad man wailed, and turned to run towards the safety of the passenger depot.
Evans’s nine men remained still, staring at the darkly clad man who only now lowered the Winchester, arcing it slightly to had left their rifles in their saddle-boots. But, in the lamplight, Edge could see the butts of their revolvers jutting out from under the warm coats of the men on the fringe of the group.
‘Ain’t none of us gunfighters!’ the rotund George Frimley whined.
It was easy to hear his words above the diminishing sound of the departing train and low wail of wind.
‘Ain’t but one of you I’m interested in,’ Edge answered evenly. ‘Unless you all figure I’m the same kind of easy pickings as Barnaby Tree.’
‘Mr. Evans ordered us to do that, mister!’ the other fat man - Jeb - excused.
‘And he ordered us to kill this guy!’
Edge recognized the voice of Brad, a mixture of anger and fear, coming from the centre of the cluster of men.
‘I didn’t hear him!’ This from George Frimley, who scuttled away towards the horses in the pen.
‘Me neither!’ Clint agreed, and his skinny form moved fast after the fat one.
‘I got no quarrel with you, mister!’ Jeb said, as he hurried to make it a trio at the horses.
The other six remained where they were, looking across the low, moving dust at the lone figure of Edge. The half-breed stood immobile. But he was as ready to lunge into fast movement as he had been from the moment he squeezed the trigger to fire the warning shot. His hooded eyes were fixed upon the group. His right hand was poised to draw the Colt. Every muscle in his lean frame was coiled for the instant when he knew he would have to dive out of the way of a hail of bullets. The violent life that had aged his face beyond his years had keyed his reflexes to such a high pitch. First during the long years of the bloody War Between the States. Then in the harsh aftermath of that war. He had learned to respond instinctively to danger in order to survive. And to kill without compunction to preserve what was his. Yet he had lost everything but his life. Perhaps he had lost this, too, in the sense that violence had forged a different man from the ruin it had made of the former Josiah C. Hedges. A man with the new name of Edge. But that was just a label. Many other changes had fashioned the tall figure who now stood at the dusty end of the single street in the railhead town - prepared to gun down as many men as it needed to settle a grudge.
‘One thing I need to know?’ This from Hollis Millard, the man with the harelip.
Edge said nothing: waited and watched.
‘You figure to get that bull?’
‘Figure to get me a horse and the feller who took my guns is all.’
‘I’m with them!’ Millard growled, and made it four at the horses.
There was a short pause, and then a sudden burst of action as four men moved.
‘Then there was one,’ Edge muttered, but did not fix his attention rigidly on the lone figure of Brad standing in the open between the stock pens. He shot frequent glances towards the eight men formed into the new group.
Brad seemed not to trust himself to speak for long moments. Then he felt certain he could yell at the others without revealing his fear. ‘You yellow bastards!’ he accused.
‘They made their move, feller,’ Edge told h
im. ‘Your turn to make yours.’
Brad swung his stare back towards Edge. ‘A cowhand against a gunslinger?’ he accused. His voice had a crack in it now. ‘What kind of a fight is that, for God’s sake?’
Edge did not reassess his opinion of the men who rode for Vic Evans. They were cowboys, not killers. The story Mathilda Tree had told him about the death of her brother simply meant that the men were cowboys who would kill if they had to. To keep their jobs - and maybe to help one of their number. He shook his head, glimpsing the huddle of men and looking longer at Brad’s gun hand. ‘For my sake, feller - one I aim to win.’
‘First you gotta move it outside town limits, Edge!’
The voice of Sheriff Barlow snapped the order from behind and to the right of where the half-breed stood. All eyes except lawman. They saw no one. Edge kept looking forward and knew precisely where Barlow was standing. In the recessed doorway of the stage depot which was the last building on that side of the street.
‘Something wake you up?’ Edge called.
‘My lousy conscience, I figure. Or maybe my lousy sense of duty. Anyways, I ain’t gonna have no gunfight in Railton.’
‘You get a higher funeral fee for hauling a body across the town limits?’ Edge taunted.
‘You can’t rile me,’ Barlow growled. ‘I got you covered, so don’t make no lousy move unless it be outta town.’
Brad had been as surprised as the rest of Evans’s men at the intervention of the sheriff. But, because it was his life that was on the line, he had recovered first. His stance had become tense and a certain eagerness had entered his steady eyes, pushing his fear into the background. Edge knew the man was set to make his move at the first clear chance he got. The half-breed offered him the chance.
‘Object to having guns pointed at me, feller,’ he said evenly, and started to turn. But only from the waist and, as his head swung, his eyes maintained their forward focus.
EDGE: Ten Tombstones to Texas (Edge series Book 18) Page 4