Edge snapped his head around and saw the grim and ashen-faced Kane Worthington in a crouch, a Winchester with a smoking muzzle aimed from his shoulder. Because of the canyon mouth's formation, the rancher had only to lean to the side to be out of sight of the Mexicans on the ridge.
"You never did have anything except a couple of whorish sluts to bargain with, Cortez!" Worthington shrieked. "Now you've got nothing!"
Against a stream of Spanish invective from the top of the hill, the rancher said grimly to Edge, "You did your job, mister. I left your two thousand with Cyrus Benteen back in Indian Hill."
"Obliged, feller."
"Edge watch—" Chuck Meyers yelled from the canyon rim.
But the warning came too late. Grace Worthington had recovered consciousness without a movement or a sound to signal the fact. And now, while Edge whirled away from her father, she lunged out of cover.
"Wait, Felipe!" she called shrilly as she threw herself to the ground and gathered the saddlebags to her. "Don't harm Roy! I'll bring the money to you!"
She attempted to get to her feet, stumbled, righted herself and began to run up the slope.
"Leave it, Edge!" Kane Worthington snapped. "If she prefers a penniless dirt farmer to all that I've given and offered her, I don't care a shit about her anymore."
"But you care about money, feller," the half-breed muttered as he gazed up the slope to where the woman staggered and zig-zagged in her haste to buy the life of the helpless Roy Dibble.
"You figure there ain't any in them saddlebags?" Meyers asked croakily from above. Against the sound of heavy footfalls in the mouth of La Hondonada—receding as Kane Worthington and his men withdrew’. The woman ran beyond Dibble, ignoring whatever he cried out to her. And went from sight behind the rock. After which, movement could be seen up on the ridge. Dust rose, brush quivered and here and there a man was briefly visible as the Mexicans gathered to look at the contents of the saddlebags.
"Cortez, don't—" Sheriff Meyers roared.
"Satanas!" the Mexican screamed.
And went to meet his namesake. Blown into eternity by a shattering explosion that cleaved a deep chasm across the ridge. Flame and smoke leapt into the air. And debris showered upwards and rained down.| Chunks of rock and clods of earth. Bodies and parts of if bodies—as black as the billowing smoke.
For stretched seconds, dust and smoke veiled the scene at the top of the slope. Then, as the ears of Edge and Meyers still rang with the after-effects of the massive explosion, the scene became still and clear.
May Worthington and Roy Dibble had been blasted a hundred feet down the slope, the man as dead as the woman now. And he almost as naked as she. Around these whole corpses were scattered arms and legs and heads and hands and feet. And unrecognizable parts of human bodies. Here and there rifles and revolvers and the twisted sections of shattered guns.
"Holy Mother of God!" Meyers groaned. "The sonofabitch must've rigged dynamite to blow soon as the bags were opened."
Edge experienced an ice-cold ball of anger in his belly as he recalled Kane Worthington's comment on handing over the saddlebags—exactly what the Mexicans asked for. And reflected upon the many miles he had carried the booby-trapped burden. But as he spat into the dust between his feet, he brought it under control. And his tone was even when he said, "By Cortez or me, he didn't give much of a damn which."
"If you'd opened the bags, he'd have figured you were crossin' him, mister," Meyers said bitterly. "And nobody crosses Kane Worthington. Not even his flesh and blood. It takes a man like you to understand a man like that, I guess. What's that?"
Edge had taken something from his pants pocket. Now he opened his hand and allowed the hank of red hair given him by Cortez to fall and scatter to the ground.
"I figure the Mexican would have kept his end of the deal, feller. Never did do much more than harm the hair of her head."
Meyers sighed. "What I can't get is why Worthington robbed the bank if he planned to handle it this way."
"Guess he changed his plans, feller. Whatever, he asked for something and he wasn't given it. So he took it."
The half-breed turned to start back along La Honodana.
"Just be sure you don't take anythin' away from Worthington except his money, mister," the Indian Hill lawman warned.
"No sweat, feller," Edge answered. "Like I told his daughter, some people are worse off living."
Now Chuck Meyers spat and the globule of saliva hissed on the sun-heated boulder at the canyon's rim. "Crazy part of this is, that mean-hearted sonofabitch Worthington could be in line for the Wells Fargo reward money."
Edge shot a final glance back over the slope with its scattering of ripped apart corpses. "Yeah, feller," he drawled. "Tough world, ain't it. All you get is to pick up the pieces."
EDGE: Death Deal (Edge series Book 35) Page 14