‘‘Can see that plain enough, feller,” Edge allowed, and struck a match to light tha cigarette he had been toying with for a minute or so.
“So you can see why I’m keen to lend you a hand to clear yourself? If at the same time Donovan and Mag—”
“What I can’t see from your point of view,” the half-breed interrupted again, “is why Crowell was still alive and free to go gunning for Austin Henry Loring. And why his three wartime raider buddies are maybe in the same state of health and liberty if the preacher should happen to come by? When a peace officer had a strong notion—”
“That’s easy enough for a man like you to say!” Sheriff Milton Rose snapped, and came suddenly erect; in his anger of injured pride forgetting he was still suffering the effects of the tumble down the stairway. But he was able to hold back a cry of pain behind a grimace of anguish as his punished body protested the abrupt movement. And he almost stumbled, but was able to call upon a great strength of willpower to stay upright on widely splayed legs. “You’re a free agent that don’t have to pay any attention to the laws of the land if you don’t want to! Nor even to what your friends and neighbors are likely to say and do about what you do! And what you can do is just about anythin’ you damn well want! And if you get away with it, all you gotta do then is move on out to whatever business you got someplace else! Am I right, or am I wrong, mister?”
“Depends on a feller’s point of view, i guess,” Edge allowed, and there was perhaps just a flicker of warmth amid the glitter in the slits of his eyes as he showed an otherwise wry smile.
Rose remained at a high level of anger that acted to numb his pain for several stretched seconds. Then the fire in his dark eyes died and for a few more seconds he teetered on the brink of giving in to the demands that his ill-treated body made upon him. But he fought back the impulse to collapse into a heap amid the tree stumps and began to move slowly about the clearing. And he used talking to augment walking as therapy to dull the pain.
“All right, mister. A lot of what I been sayin’ is crap. When I was younger and stronger and had a whole lot more pride than I got now, I was one of the best Texas Rangers in the entire state. Did most jobs the way the book said and when that wasn’t possible, did them my way. Rangers never have been angels, mister. But I done my stint of livin’ like you. When I left the San Angelo post and got to be the peace officer at Prospect, I planned for it to be a kinda semiretirement. I wasn't so sick back then at the start as I am now, but what's been eatin’ away at my insides for so long was already startin' in to feed.
“Can take that, mister. Got myself on terms with it on account of knowin’ there ain’t a damn thing I can do to stop it chompin’ away at me until it bites into somethin’ real vital and I have to go meet my maker. What I can’t come to terms with is not doin’ nothin’ about that old massacre. Sometimes figured I was gettin’ to live with it easy on my mind. But that was only when I never come across Frank Crowell for days at a time. Soon as I spotted him again ...”
“You sure Donovan will be coming to Prospect tomor—”
“Appreciate it if you’d let me finish, mister,” Rose cut in, moving in a freer gait and not grimacing now. He did not look at Edge for an acknowledgement and spoke quickly before the half-breed had an opportunity to voice a negative response. “When I heard about the preacher and Croweli . . . well, even though Lorin' didn’t say so, 1 figured he was the one that was buildin' the church when the killin' . . . But I couldn’t figure out how a man like you fitted in. And I had to go along with what the folks that pay me wanted. Raise a posse and take off after you. Did my damnedest to locate you, mister. Was real eager to find out about you and Lorin’ and Crowell all bein’ mixed in together. But you lost me and good. And when me and the posse got back to Prospect the preacherman was gone, too. So there wasn’t a thing I could do except try to content myself with knowin’ that Frank Crowell had paid at last for what I was sure he done out along the railroad all them years ago.” “I'd say, sheriff,” Edge growled as the tall, stringbean-skinny lawman halted a few feet in front of where he sat and looked down at him, “that there’s something else you have to say?”
Milton Rose’s grin of self-satisfaction was briefly gone from his haggard face while he stooped to pick up his crushed Stetson. Then it came back and was brighter while he reshaped the hat and set it on his head, before he gave a slight nod and replied: “Wasn’t a thing I was able to do except try to content myself—and get off a wire to Barry Donovan sayin’ that his old buddy Frank Crowell was dead and askin’ him if he wanted to come to see the remains buried.”
Edge crushed the fire from his cigarette on the tree stump where he was seated and said: “Obliged, sheriff,” as he came erect.
“That all?” Rose countered, surprised and vexed. “You’ve already told me what time his train is due in at the Prospect depot tomorrow,” the halfbreed reminded as he moved toward his gelding.
“But I was gonna tell you about him, mister!” Milton Rose blurted. “How he’s gone up in the world. Got to be bigger and richer than Frank Crowell. Runs the Donovan Freight Line Company outta Santa Fe. One of the biggest operations of that kind in the whole of the southwest.”
“Here,” Edge said, and drew the man’s Army Colt from the front of his pants waistband. “And remember what I told you to do if you have cause to aim it at me again. Either here, or when I bring Donovan to you and the rest of the townspeople and have him get me out from under the three and a half grand that’s on my head.”
He tossed the revolver at the lawman, who made no attempt to catch it as he again spoke rapidly into the pause left by Edge.
“Was gonna tell you about the reward, mister. And about how I figured somehow to get Donovan to tell me where Maguire and Tremayne are these days. And then there’s Marsha Onslow you oughta know more about. And ...”
His voice faltered and then faded as he watched Edge swing up astride the gelding after unhitching the reins from the branch of the pine tree.
“Guess you’ll be able to walk back into town okay?” the half-breed asked, after backing the horse off the tree and bringing him around in a tight wheel.
“I ain’t helpless!” Rose snapped sullenly with a scowl. But then he moderated his tone and showed a crestfallen expression when he added: “Exceptin’ when it comes to doin’ the chores Prospect folks hired me for.”
“Something, feller,” Edge said, reining his mount to a halt after the gelding had picked his way among the stumps to the trail.
“Yeah, mister?” the sheriff asked, ready to be cheered, as he straightened from retrieving his gun which he now thrust back into the holster.
“Have it in mind to do this just for myself.” Now there was a mournful mixture of self-pity and bitterness on the gaunt face of the old and sick and in pain man. The five-pointed tin star pinned to the left pocket of his dark-colored shirt gleamed brightly in the moonlight as it moved with the rise and fall of his narrow chest in a sigh.
“But the way it’s shaping up,” Edge went on . . . “It looks like I could be striking a blow for law and holy orders.”
Chapter Ten
THE train that was scheduled to reach the depot in Prospect at three-thirty was running late and, as he sat astride his chestnut gelding in the afternoon shade of the Rock of Jesus, Edge idly wondered if the funeral of Frank Crowell would be delayed to await the arrival of the train. He also pondered in the same indifferent manner upon the whereabouts of Austin Henry Loring, who had not been waiting where he was told when Edge returned to the clump of brush at the foot of the shallow incline after he parted company with Milton Rose in the ravine last night. He did not reflect at all on the Prospect lawman. He did, though, more than once consider with regret his missed opportunity to have Rose explain Marsha Onslow’s seemingly inexplicable actions after he treated her so badly in the newspaper pressroom.
But none of these spontaneous lines of thought engrossed him very deeply. And the possibility that not one of
the questions posed might ever be resolved did not perturb him in the least. He was merely filling time with any trivial notion that entered his mind while he kept effortless watch along the railroad track that swept away to his left and his right in gentle curves. Looking for the train in one direction and for whatever or whoever might appear in the other, he also did not ignore the vast area of apparent emptiness spread out on the other, eastern side of the railroad. The outcrop with the distinctively eroded face that threw a gradually lengthening shadow across the unfinished chapel and the mounted half-breed blocked to his view much of the country to the west.
Edge had reached the scene of the seven-year-old massacre a little before dawn and had bedded himself and his mount down in the section of the chapel which still had a roof—in need of this cover to protect himself and the horse from the direct heat and glare of the soon-to-rise sun rather than to keep out the chill of what was left of the night. He slept until noon and then laid and lit a fire on the dead ashes in the circle of stones. He cooked some bacon and beans and boiled up some coffee.
He was through eating by one-thirty and did nothing except sit on a block of adobe in the shade and maintain a casual surveillance over his surroundings for the next ninety minutes. Since he was judging the time by the position of the sun as it moved across the cloudless afternoon sky, he knew his estimates could be only approximate; and so he was prepared to be several minutes wide of accuracy as he saddled and then mounted his horse when he calculated the train should appear at any moment through the heat haze that shimmered on the northern horizon.
He knew he was not almost thirty minutes fast, though, and as this amount of time drifted into history he gradually devoted an increasing amount of attention to the country which the railroad bisected to the south: looking for the first sign of a double cross—or maybe the second such sign if the failure of the train to show was part of a three-and-a-half-thousand-dollar sellout.
But then a smudge of blackish smoke appeared above the northern horizon where the blue of the sky shaded into the gray of the haze. And less than half a minute later the shimmer-blurred shape of the smoke-belching locomotive came into view. In back of the engine were two passenger cars, two boxcars, a flatbed and a caboose; Edge was able to see the makeup of the train as it came clear of the haze on the curve of the track. Just a few seconds after this, as the entire length of the train appeared in perspective to merge into a single unit, he realized the locomotive was being fired to hurtle south at great speed, which caused him to heel the gelding out of the shade and steer the reluctant and nervous animal over the closest rail and onto the ties earlier than he had planned—so that the engineer on the locomotive footplate had more than two miles in which to spot the man on horseback in his path.
The gelding did not like the feel of the crushed rock of the railbed under his hooves and was happier when he was standing comfortably on two ties, facing north. But shortly after this the flanking rails began to hum with the vibration from the speeding weight of the approaching train. Edge stroked the animal’s neck gently and spoke soft-toned nonsense into the pricked ears. The engineer sounded the steam whistle in a long blast of warning without making any change to his speed. When the shrill whistling sound was abruptly ended the hiss of high pressure steam, the thud of pistons, the rattle of speeding wheels and the clatter of metal on metal could be heard, initially muted by distance but swelling in volume by the moment.
Edge maintained the unhurried cadence of the stroking motion of his hand down the left side of the neck of the perturbed horse, but would have needed to shout to make himself heard above the noise of the advancing train which was now far enough around the shallow curve for just the cowcatcher, circular front of the tank, headlight and smoke-streaming stack to be seen by the composed half-breed and the nervous horse. And to yell would have defeated the object.
The whistle shrilled again. But for a shorter warning burst, before the screech of locked wheels along the rails was added to and became dominant among the cacophony of other sounds from the train. Showers of glowing red and yellow sparks sprayed outwards and died in the steam and smoke-tainted air to either side of the locomotive with the number two-oh-seven painted in gold on its green tank.
About five hundred yards separated the locomotive and the horse and rider. The horse’s head came up and his lips drew back as he vented a snort of fear that could not be heard through the din. Edge knew his mount was intent on a rear and maybe a wheel on hindlegs to precede a bolt as the vibration from the rails was conducted along the ties and felt through the shod hooves of the animal. He had expected as much without being able to estimate when the horse would panic: could only hope it was after man and mount together had been spotted by the engineer, whose vision was surely impaired by smoke and steam and dust and sun glare—and who maybe only glanced out every now and then along the path his train was taking. This hope realized, Edge tensed to make a move of his own in relation to that of the gelding, but was icily calm in contrast to the equine panic. He withdrew his right foot from the stirrup as he ceased to stroke the animal’s neck with his left hand. He clutched the saddle horn with the left hand at the same time as he let go of the reins with his right when he shot forward to fist around the frame of the booted Winchester. The horse was starting to go up into a rear then. Edge slid the rifle smoothly out of the boot as part of the same move that brought him upright on his left foot in the stirrup as his right leg swung up and over the saddle and bedroll. The horse wheeled to the right. Edge came off him to the left, powering himself clear with a push against the stirrup and the saddle horn that served also to urge the horse into a greater commitment to wheel and bolt—going clear of the man who half jumped, half fell to the railbed, his body and limbs held in a crouched attitude to absorb the impact that was painful but not bone-cracking. His toes came down on crushed rock and his heels on a tie. He tipped forward between the rails and his hands, the right one clutching the rifle, hit another tie. The screeching of locked, spark-spraying wheels along shuddering rails continued to dominate the whole discordant din of sounds from the rapidly slowing locomotive and the line of cars behind it, and to mask the thudding hooves of the gelding, which was a fading sound anyway as the spooked horse bolted in headlong panic away from the track on the opposite side from the outcrop and the chapel, while Edge was deaf to the obscenity he rasped through teeth gritted in a grimace as the jarring pain of his landing was more intense than he had expected.
But he fought against the debilitating effect of the searing sensation at his ankles, knees and left wrist, and gave an impression of being just a little stiff as he rose to his full height, with his legs slightly splayed, his left thumb hooked over the buckle of his gunbelt while his right hand held the Winchester canted casually to his shoulder. What this cost him in terms of willpower could be seen for stretched seconds in the strain that showed on his unwashed and unshaven face where every line seemed to be gouged suddenly deeper into the dark-hued flesh and every pore squeezed out an overlarge bead of salt moisture that coursed down the lines and got entangled in the bristles. But for as long as it took him, as a matter of pride, to rid his features of the distorting grimace and to stem the sweat of tension there was no one close enough to see him as he did not wish to be seen. Then, as the train came to a snorting, hissing, clanking, shuddering halt with the leading point of the cowcatcher less than twenty feet from where he stood, the half-breed could not be seen at all. For he was enveloped in a rolling cloud of steam from the escape valves and a billowing cloud of more opaque smoke from the stack of the locomotive.
The engine itself was also partially hidden within its own outpourings, which began to lessen at much the same rate as the sounds it emitted diminished. And Edge was able to hear what the two men up on the footplate were yelling at the same time as he emerged from the swirl of steam and smoke and saw them.
“—some crazy man on a friggin’ nag, Larry!” “—ain’t doubtin’ you, Orin! Yeah, I see the horse out th
ere . . . shit, and there’s the guy!” “Stranger, you coulda been killed!”
“Sure coulda, mister! If Orin wasn’t the best damn engineer in these parts! And he hadn’ta stopped this train better than I ever seen a train stopped before in an emergency!”
Orin was fat and angry. His much smaller fireman was a kid less than half his age who was agog with admiration.
“Man that can’t stop a train ought never to be allowed to start one, feller,” Edge said as he moved by the footplate on the opposite side of the stalled train from the Rock of Jesus. “Passengers’ll be glad to know the railroad only hires on skilled men to—”
“Sonofabitph!” the engineer snarled across the even-toned voice of Edge. “Where the hell you get off, blockin’ the permanent way on this rail—”
Edge halted at the foot of the steps at the front of the day car coupled immediately behind the tender. He was aware of three faces with puzzled expressions on them pressed up against window panes to get a restricted view of what was happening outside and below. He also saw the uniformed brakeman climbing down from the caboose, with the movements of an old man suffering from stiffened joints.
“You’d have stopped if I’d just made a hand signal, feller?” Edge cut in on Orin, and dragged a forearm across his face: saw the blackness of soot as well as the dampness of sweat on his shirt sleeve.
“Damn right I wouldn’t, stranger! I’m only supposed to stop a train at officially designated depots or when ordered to do so by a duly appointed official—’ ’
“Rules are made to be broken,” the half-breed growled as he climbed aboard the car, trying not to look as arthritic as the brakeman who was now hurrying with a limping gait alongside the train.
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