"It was the only way for a man with just the one arm, mister," the Indian Hill lawman growled. "Short of blastin' the kid and bringin' Cortez and his whole bunch runnin'."
Edge crossed to the boulder and saw that Nino and then Meyers had chosen a perfect vantage point—-to watch the narrow end of La Hondonada and with a good view of the wooded crest of the rise beyond which was the canyon with the old Federale post in it.
"The people in town did like you told them," the half-breed said after he had seen as much as he needed
Meyers seemed to require a lot of his diminished reserve of energy to suck saliva into his mouth and spit it|
at the boulder. "I didn't expect nothin' else. They're decent folks with respect for law and order."
"Even that kind can be pushed too far."
"Everyone has their breakin' point, mister."
"Right, feller. And you're pretty close to yours, I figure."
"Close enough. And I know myself well enough to recognize the signs, mister. If I'd stayed in town I'd have tried to enforce the law. Ridin' out here seemed a little less crazy."
"You didn't come the way I did."
The lips under the bushy moustache curled back to show an embittered grin. "Only God Almighty knows everythin', Edge. And you ain't Him. I've been a lawman hereabouts for a lot of years. Know the country real well. Hunted all over it in the old days when folks had the time and inclination for sport. With some others includin' young Dibble along. Came down here the same way he and the Worthington woman did. Must cut five miles or more off the swing you made."
They had withdrawn from the boulder as they spoke and now Edge dropped to his haunches, unburdened himself of the saddlebags, canteens and rifle and began to roll a cigarette.
"You take a look at where the Mexicans are camped, feller?"
"Yeah. Got there about sunup. In time to see the kid climb up out of the canyon and come here. Watched for an hour or so, but there wasn't any sign of life. So I came to take care of him." He gestured with the Remington toward the corpse. "And to wait for you to show up."
"You figure it was his own idea to come, feller?"
A shrug which caused him to wince as the movement of his right shoulder triggered pain. "He don't seem to live with the others. Came out of some kind of cave in the canyon wall."
"Yeah, I know about the cave," Edge muttered sourly and lit the cigarette. "Figure the kid was still trying to impress Cortez. Looks like he was beating his head against a brick wall."
"Don't keep rubbin' it in, mister!" Meyers snarled. "I reckon I'll have lots of bad nights recallin' that I caved in the skull of a boy no older—"
"If it helps, feller," the half-breed interrupted, "the last time I was around here the kid was begging Cortez to let him kill me."
The lawman ran his shirt sleeve across his sweat greasy forehead and glanced up at the sky where the sun was inching toward its highest point.
"What do you have in mind?" he asked.
"Make the exchange is all."
"And if you do."
Edge rasped a hand over his jaw. "My job for Worthington is finished. Then maybe I'll consider the Wells Fargo reward. You, feller?"
"What?"
"What do you have in mind?"
Meyers scowled as he leaned against the rock outcrop around which Edge had come and from where he first saw the corpse of Nino. "My first consideration is human life, mister. And there's more than just the one at stake now. Because Dibble and May Worthington are prisoners of Cortez. And I'm here to see that you don't endanger any of those three people in your eagerness to earn that two thousand. Once they're safe, I'm goin' after Cortez. Alone, or with you. And as a duly elected lawman I'm not in line to collect any reward money."
The implied question in what he said was emphasized by the quizzical look in his eyes as he fixed his gaze on the profile of the squatting half-breed.
"Seems you ain't like me, feller," Edge responded.
"I sure ain't." He spat again. "If folks need help, I don't have to be paid money to help them."
Edge shook his head. "I meant you don't like to work single-handed."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THERE was a silence of several minutes duration between the two men. Broken by Sheriff Chuck Meyers when he growled,
"You know somethin', mister?"
"What?" Edge answered as he ground out his cigarette in the dust.
"I don't think you got any plan in mind. I think you're gonna play it as it comes. And if it goes wrong, you won't give a shit who gets hurt. Long as you save your own skin."
The half-breed glanced momentarily up at the glaring orb of the sun and sighed as he unfolded to his full height. "Why don't you just wait and see, feller?"
He stooped to pick up a canteen, took a drink and handed it toward Meyers, who shook his head and wiped more sweat from his forehead.
"Just make sure none of the Mexicans see you, uh? Because if they do, the prisoners are dead. Cortez said for me to come alone."
Glowering anger brought patches of color to the lawman's wan cheeks. "You really have the knack of put-tin' a man over a barrel, don't you mister?"
Edge dropped the canteen and picked up the Winchester and the saddlebags. "Last time I was here, Sheriff, I wasn't in any position to make the rules. Hoping to break some on this visit." He grinned. "And it wouldn't be fair for me to ask an honest and upright man of the law to help me do that."
He started toward the boulder where the stiffening corpse of the Mexican youngster leaned.
"You make one slip up, Edge, and I'm in. No matter what you say."
The half-breed dropped to his haunches again, concealed from the hill below by the boulder. He placed the saddlebags on the ground by his feet and jacked a shell into the breech of the Winchester.
"If I make a mistake, feller," he drawled, "I figure I won't be in any position to say anything." He straightened up and glanced back at the lawman. "I'll be dead and you can do whatever the hell you want."
Then he stepped around the boulder and climbed down to where the canyon wall met the rising ground, keeping a constant watch on the jagged crest of the hill beyond which was the other canyon with the Mexicans' camp in its bottom.
There was no sign of life up there. Not even smoke from a cooking fire to smudge the clear blueness of the sky above. He also checked from time to time on the area where he had left Meyers and saw that the lawman remained hidden.
He made no attempt to conceal himself and when he reached his objective—the twenty-foot-wide entrance to the narrow end of La Hondonada—he remained in full view of anybody on the ridge. And there he stood, feet apart and body held in a relaxed attitude, the saddlebags draped over his right shoulder and the Winchester canted to his left—thumb resting on the uncocked hammer. He sweated.
Meyers was right. He had no plan—beyond keeping his side of the bargain with Felipe Cortez. And surviving if the Mexican tried to double-cross him. There could be no other way to play it in view of the rules Cortez had made and the number of men in the Mexican's band.
Once Grace Worthington was safe … Or even if this was not to be…
The half-breed licked droplets of sweat off his top lip.
Then he would go after Cortez and his actions would be dictated only by his own rules. One of which insisted that no man be allowed to cross him and go unpunished.
"Hey, gringo! You come, uh?"
The erstwhile cantina-owner-become-a-bandit shouted the greeting and rhetorical question from hiding at the top of the rise. And Edge allowed the breath to whistle softly out between his clenched teeth and compressed lips. Better words than a bullet.
"I don't have a twin brother, feller!" he yelled back, concentrating his slit-eyed gaze on the hump of grotesquely eroded rock where he knew Cortez was hiding.
"You alone, gringo?"
"You see anybody else here?"
The Mexican vented his harsh laugh. "You see nobody
! But I and all my men are here!"
"I didn't bring anybody else, feller!" Edge answered truthfully, but very conscious of the presence of Chuck Meyers up on the canyon rim almost directly above him on the right. "Just the money!"
"In the saddlebags, uh?"
"Right."
"You bring the saddlebags up to me, gringo!'' The ice-blue eyes of the half-breed moved constantly in their sockets, raking the length of the ridge and back again, seeking the tell-tale spurt of muzzle smoke that would tell him before the crack of a report that a rifle had been fired. And his muscles remained almost painfully tensed, ready to power him sideways into the cover of a niche at the base of the canyon's wall on the right. From there, the twists and turns of the narrowest stretch of La Hondonada would place solid rock between himself and the bandits. It was a long way back to where he had left the gelding but it would take the Mexicans a long time to return to their camp, get their horses and ride them up the narrow pathway out of the canyon.
"You said here, not there!"
"Now I change my mind, gringo!"
There was a faint echo of each shouted word, but not strong enough to distort what was being said. Edge raised a hand to touch one of the saddlebags and yelled,
"This ain't change in here, feller! Fifty thousand dollars! You won't get it if you don't do like I say!"
"What?" The Mexican's thunderous tone revealed how dangerously close he was to losing his murderous temper.
"You heard!" the half-breed countered and now there was ice-cold anger in his voice. "We made a deal and I've kept my part! You send your prisoners down here and you'll get the money!"
"Prisoners? What you mean, gringo?"
"Figure you've got both Worthington women and Dibble, feller!"
There was a silence in the hot stillness of the noon hour. Maybe not up on the ridge. Perhaps up there, Cortez and his men rasped angry words to each other. Then,
"Okay, gringo! You're smart! Comes from the Mexican part of you, I guess! The ugly sister and my old amigo Roy Dibble, they come here in the night! They ain't smart to figure I am still as I used to be when I run cantina!" The harsh laugh. "The fools, they think they can talk me into being as I used to be!"
"How smart are you, feller?"
"Uh?"
"Send them down here!" He shrugged a shoulder and leaned to the side, so that the bulging saddlebags dropped to the ground, and raised a billow of gray dust. "You can cover all four of us until we move back into the canyon! The money'll stay where it is!"
Another short laugh. "I can kill all four of you now, gringo!"
Silence again, while Cortez waited for Edge to respond. And the half-breed said nothing and did not move, except for his eyes in their narrowed lids as he watched for the puff of muzzle-smoke.
"Hey, I'm talking to you!" Getting angry again. "Why should I not kill you all now?"
"Because you don't know if there is any money in the saddlebags, feller! And I'm not going to open them and show you until Dibble and the two women are down here!"
"There is money! The great Kane Worthington had to rob the bank at Indian Hill to get it! I know this!"
"He gave me the money sure enough!"
A shorter silence now, while Cortez waited for Edge to continue. Then a roar of rage as the lack of explanation planted the seeds of doubt in the Mexican's mind.
"I kill you and look for myself!"
"And if it ain't there, where else you going to look?"
A string of curses in the Mexican's native tongue. Then,
"Okay, you gringo bastard! I show you how smart I am!" A figure appeared at the side of the rock where Cortez was hiding. And Edge tensed to move. Then saw it was the tall Grace Worthington, her statuesque figure attired in the man's shirt and Levis. Something was said to her and she came to a rigid halt. "This one, she come down. When she is with you, you will open the bags and show the money! If it is there, I send down the others! If it is not, you will bring it! Or I will kill the others! That a deal, gringo?"
"Sure!"
Another instruction was given to the beautiful redheaded woman and she moved away from the rock and started down the slope. Slowly and nervously—eyes down at the ground as if afraid she might trip and fall.
"You remember to bring something for my headaches, gringo?"
"I've had a few headaches of my own, feller!"
A laugh. "Si, the ugly sister, she told me about some of them!"
Grace Worthington covered two hundred feet of the six hundred between the crest of the slope and where Edge waited.
"No matter! When I am rich I will be able to buy the best medicines in the world, uh?"
"Sure!"
All the Mexicans were still up on the ridge. Because of the formation of the terrain, there was no way they could have spread out to flank him without being seen. This was why he had stayed up on the canyon's rim until almost noon—to make sure Cortez did not deploy any men on the flanks. Meyers' presence was immaterial in this respect for Edge could see as much as the sheriff to the front.
"Edge!" the lawman rasped in an urgent whisper.
The half-breed acknowledged he had heard by an almost imperceptible nod.
"Men comin' along the canyon behind you!"
Another slight inclination of the head. Then, shouting louder than before, "Cortez?"
"Satanas! My name is Satanas!" The Mexican's rage made his voice even louder—shortened the odds that the men in La Hondonada could hear.
"I'm going to show you the money as soon as the woman reaches me! When I do, you send down the other two right away!"
"We agreed that, gringo!"
Grace Worthington was halfway down the slope now.
"They heard, but they ain't stopped!" Meyers rasped. "It's Worthington and his hired guns!"
Edge shouted, "Hurry it up, lady!"
"Roy, please save Roy," she pleaded. And she brought up her head now, to show him her haggard, tear-run face.
"Move it!" he barked.
She lengthened her stride.
Sweat trickled down the half-breed's stubbled face and pasted his clothes to his body at his chest and the small of his back. The frame of the Winchester felt greasy with the salt moisture where he gripped it tightly in his left hand.
The woman broke into a run to close the final few feet to him. Then skidded to a swaying halt, legs splayed and hands coming up to press to her cheeks. Her eyes were enormously wide with horror, the stare directed to something behind Edge. To his right.
"They'll kill—" she began. And hatred clouded her pale green eyes, which moved to stare at the impassive face of Edge.
"You're okay now, Miss Grace," Ralph Quine rasped.
"Hey, gringo, what's—"
An animalistic grunt of rage vented from the half-breed's gritted teeth. And he lunged forward, free arm curled to encircle the woman's waist as she whirled around and screamed,
"Felipe, it's a trick!"
Then she cried a shrill sound of alarm as Edge swept her bodily off the ground, half-turned and powered for the niche in the canyon wall.
A fusillade of rifle shots exploded sounding like a hundred as the reports echoed across the hillside.
Edge felt the tug and movement of hot air as bullets snagged his clothes and cracked past his flesh. Heard the impact of the lead against rock and saw the sprays of dislodged chips.
"You cheating son of a whore!" Cortez shrieked in his native language.
Grace Worthington continued to scream shrilly, the sound changing now to that of pain when Edge slammed her viciously against the rock face.
"Not my idea, lady," the half-breed rasped, and punched her on the jaw to silence her noise and drop her into a heap on the ground. "That was."
The barrage of rifle fire was kept up for perhaps fifteen seconds, forcing Edge to crouch in the niche with the unconscious woman—and Worthington's men to remain in the cover of the canyon's first turn.
Then, after a hard, tense, s
weating silence that lasted for just a heartbeat, Chuck Meyers yelled, "Cortez!"
"Satanas!" the Mexican screamed. "And now you double-crossing bastards find out why I have taken this new name!"
"Wait, it wasn't—"
The lawman's protest was curtailed by the sight of May Worthington and Roy Dibble, the two staggering awkwardly out from either side of the rock which hid the Mexican bandit chief. It was obvious they had been shoved into view and equally obvious that their wrists were tied at their backs. Both of them were close to exhaustion and were drained further by the effort it took to keep from falling as they came to a halt on the sloping ground. Dibble's face was bruised and spattered with congealed blood from a beating. The woman was naked and it was her thin body that had suffered from the cruel attentions of the Mexicans.
"Holy cow!" Meyers rasped as Edge peered around his rocky cover and saw the scratches, bite marks and discoloration all over the woman's body that evidenced the viciousness of the lusting assaults against her.
"You see them both!" Cortez yelled. "Roy, he is my amigo and he came here because of his love for the beautiful Worthington woman! I have not harmed him! The ugly sister, she tries to tell Satanas what to do! To give him orders! So I allow my men to have their way with her! But I do not soil my hands on her!"
"Figure on account that you always have a headache," Edge growled softly.
"What do you want, Cortez?" Meyers yelled.
"Satanas, you gringo sonofabitch! My demand is still the same! The money! If it is not delivered to me, the ugly sister dies!"
He showed his good-looking face for just a moment. To fire a single shot. Which kicked up dirt and dust a few inches away from May Worthington's bare feet.
Another report cracked out a split second later. Not an echo of the first. Instead, fired from the mouth of La Hondonada.
The naked woman was flinching from the effect of the first bullet impacting so close to her. Then she became rigid and fell backwards like a toppled tree—a gout of dark crimson gushing from a hole under the small mound of her left breast.
EDGE: Death Deal (Edge series Book 35) Page 13