John shot a quizzical glance towards his sister and Edge felt confident enough to let the mistake pass.
The woman hesitated a moment, but finally supplied the right answer. “That’s right, John. He just arrived out of nowhere and asked for some coffee. I didn’t see any harm.”
John’s expression did not soften, “What started the argument?”
Again the woman paused before replying and when Edge looked at her he saw she was suddenly wearing an expression of coyness. Then she looked down at the ground and began to finger the buttons on her jacket. “I think the gentleman misinterpreted something I said, John,” she replied contritely.
“I keep telling you about the way you talk to strange men, Elizabeth,” John said, then sighed and abruptly lowered the rifle, an amiable smile spreading across his face. “I must apologies for my sister, Mr...”
“Edge,” the half-breed supplied impassively as John approached him with an outstretched hand.
“Edge?” John tried tentatively, then shrugged. “She’s something of an innocent, I’m afraid. Led rather a sheltered life. Inclined to be over-trusting.”
“Runs in the family,” Edge said as he grasped the proffered hand, swung it to the side, then up.
John yelled in pain and whirled around, putting his back to Edge as his forearm was forced up into a painful hammer-lock.
“Drop the rifle, John,” Edge whispered in his ear, so close the helpless man could feel the warmth of the half-breed’s breath.
The rifle clattered to the hard ground and Edge pushed the man away from him with a violent shove before stooping to retrieve the weapon.
“Hold it right there, mister!” Elizabeth yelled, bringing a hand out of her jacket pocket. Her shaking fist was folded around the butt of a Ladies Companion six-shot pepperbox.
Edge sighed. “Innocent is right,” he said to John, who was rubbing his pained arm.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Elizabeth,” John chided his sister. “Even if you could hit him from that range you’d probably only bruise him.”
Elizabeth’s resolute determination suddenly evaporated, and she stared down at the tiny gun in her hand. “Oh my,” she exclaimed.
Edge picked up the Remington rifle and held it loosely at his side, pointed at the ground. He looked at the woman expectantly.
“Why did you give it to me then?” she demanded of John angrily. “What’s the use of a gun that’s no good.”
John glanced at Edge and swallowed hard. “It’s for self-defense at short range, Liz,” he said, slowly and distinctly, as if talking to a slow-witted child. “A man has to be more or less standing right beside you before it would do any good.”
“Oh my,” Elizabeth repeated and hurriedly thrust the tiny weapon back into her pocket. But suddenly she sought to reassert her anger. She glared at Edge. “That wasn’t very nice - what you did to John.”
“I’m not a very nice guy,” Edge told her, and squatted down to pour himself another cup of coffee. “I’m especially un-nice when a dame tries to scald me and a guy take potshots at me. But I’m a lot easier to get along with when I hold all the cards. That thing in your pocket is just a joker.”
He sipped the coffee, seeming to ignore the brother and sister. Elizabeth scratched her head and looked at John, who shrugged and winced as the gesture hurt his arm. Then the woman abruptly thudded a fist into an open palm.
“I know what you are!” she exclaimed. “You’re headed for Summer, right?”
Edge eyed her quizzically across the chipped rim of the mug. “I didn’t know you could head for it,” he replied. “Figured it just naturally followed spring.”
“Don’t pretend,” she rebuked him. “You know I mean the town of Summer.”
Edge turned up the collar of his jacket and nodded reflectively. “It has a nice warm sound to it. Maybe I’ll drop by.”
Elizabeth smiled triumphantly. “You can’t fool me, mister. You’ve got the look of the gunslinger about you. Hasn’t he got the look of the gunslinger, John?”
It was an idea that didn’t appeal to John. He tried to belittle it. “When did you ever see a gunslinger, Liz?” he asked with a laugh that lacked humor.
It halted the woman, but only momentarily. “He just looks like one, that’s all,” she pronounced with feminine logic.
“That where you’re heading?” Edge asked, addressing John.
He nodded and glared fleetingly at his sister. “And we certainly aren’t gunslingers.”
Elizabeth stamped her foot in irritation and swung her back towards the men.
Edge finished his coffee and stood up. “What makes Summer a centre of attraction?” he asked in a tone which suggested he was indifferent to whether or not he got an answer.
John realized that Edge really was ignorant of the significance of the town. “For you - and anybody else who’s interested - a chance to earn ten thousand dollars reward money,” he said.
Edge’s air of detachment left him. He saw the woman move and swung towards her. But she had merely crossed to her horse and was swinging the saddle across the animals’ back.
“I checked at the sheriff’s office in the last town I passed through,” Edge said, returning his cold gaze to John. “Ain’t no wanted men in this area worth that kind of bounty.”
John shook his head. “Private reward. It’s been put up-by a man named George P. Haven for the return of some property that was stolen from him.”
Edge spat into the fire. “You and your quick-draw sidekick figure to chance your luck against the kind of men a reward that big will bring in?” An expression that was a mixture of hatred and grief showed on John’s unhandsome face. “Elizabeth and I have private business in Summer.”
The woman swung up into the saddle and shot a haughty look at Edge. “Did you find the place, John?” she asked.
“I found it,” he replied. “A mile or so along the course of the river, then a couple of miles to the north.”
Sadness showed in the depths of her eyes and when she became aware that Edge was witnessing the emotion, she turned away. “Come on then. I’m anxious to see it.”
John waited for Edge to move away, crossing to his horse to tighten the cinch. Then he crouched down to smother the fire and gather up the coffee pot and mugs. He pushed them into his blanket roll and he and Edge mounted together.
“Here!” the half-breed called and tossed the man’s rifle back to him.
John caught the weapon and slid it into his saddle boot with smooth expertise.
“How extremely generous of you, Mr. Edge,” Elizabeth said with heavy sarcasm.
“I figure I can pick the right people to trust,” he told her. “And folks that ride together should trust each other.”
“You’re coming to Summer with us?” John asked, surprised.
“You told me ten thousand good reasons why I should,” Edge answered.
“A gunslinger, I told you,” the woman said with a smirk as she heeled her horse forward, leading the way along the course of the rushing river.
“Glad to have your company,” John said, as if he meant it
Edge showed him a gold grin. “Just look upon it as a birthday present,” he said.
Elizabeth looked sharply over her shoulder.
John furrowed his brow. “Both our birthdays are months off, Mr. Edge,” he said.
“Ma’am, you were just trying to confuse me with that pretty suit I saw,” Edge drawled to the woman,
Her features were suddenly suffused by a pink glow. “Oh my!” she shrieked and dug in her heels hard, spurring the horse into a gallop which shot her far ahead of the two men,
“Suit?” John asked in confusion.
“Cute little double-breasted number,” Edge replied, urging his own mount into a gallop.
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN the trio of riders rounded the western face of the butte they saw another panorama of undulating wasteland. A harsh wind from out of the far distant Black Hills, spotted with cold
drops of rain, gusted at them spitefully as they broke cover.
Edge stood in his stirrups and jammed his hat on hard against the tug of the wind as he surveyed the territory ahead. The river narrowed suddenly and cut forcefully through smooth-sided gullies bare of vegetation as it swung in from the north. The ground rose almost imperceptibly in solid waves in that direction while to the west and south it was featured with grotesque formations of ancient rock around which the wind made strange sounds likes the howls of many wounded animals.
“It’s eerie,” Elizabeth said with a shudder, peering out between the waves of her red hair which the wind tossed across her face. “It’s like the wailing of the ghosts of all the men who have died in this God-forsaken place.”
Edge settled back into his saddle and looked across at John, seeing the very deep and very private sorrow in the man’s eyes. “You scouted this area awhile back?”
John nodded absently.
“I don’t see any signs of a town,” Edge told him.
“Summer’s a long way from here,” the woman explained. “John was looking for the trail.”
Edge signaled for John to lead the way and he did so, keeping to the water course for over two miles, moving directly into the full angry force of the wind. They all rode with their heads down, hunched into the saddles, having to keep a tight rein on their horses as the animals showed their unwillingness to move against the elements.
“There it is,” John said suddenly, halting and pointing down at the ground.
They were at the side of a shallow basin in which the river formed a small pool, constantly filling at one side and emptying at another. It was not a point in a trail as such, but marked a resting stage for a wagon train that had broken in a new route of its own. There was a patch of blackened rock where a fire had burned; some decomposing horse droppings; ruts sunk by iron-rimmed wheels; even a few footprints baked by sun and hardened by frost and frozen snow.
Once the train - Edge figured three heavily laden wagons and any number of riders -. had left the watering place, angling towards the south-west, the signs of its passing became fewer.
“We have to follow the tracks to Summer?” the half-breed asked.
“No,” John replied. “I know where Summer is. But it’s necessary for Elizabeth and I to stop off somewhere else first.”
“But not for me,” Edge said. “With ten grand up for grabs at the end of the trip I can’t afford to make any detours.”
“The place we need to visit is on the way to Summer,” John said. “And we won’t be staying long.”
“So let’s not waste any more time here,” Edge said sourly and moved up out of the basin.
The others followed, content to let him do the tracking, perhaps recognizing that he was more skilled in the art than either of them. The going was easier now with the wind angling in at them from behind and to their right. The wagon train had swung first one way and then the other, taking the least difficult path through the broken tenant- But, Edge realized, the overall course it was steering lay to the southwest and, as the grey storm clouds scudded across to blanket the entire sky and blot out the sun, he began to cut corners.
As he took the horses through stretches of scattered boulders wagons would be unable to negotiate and up steep inclines which the train would have had to bypass, he often lost the sign he was following. But he always picked up the traces again and after calling a halt to survey what lay ahead, he no longer bothered to track. For the south-western horizon was marked by a high bluff guarded by outposts of monolithic buttes and pillars of rock. The bluff was cracked open by the mouth of a canyon and it was obvious that this was the point to which the tracks were leading them.
So he quickened the pace, gauging the strength of his horse, riding in an arrow-straight line across the rolling wasteland towards the canyon. The grayness of the sky deepened into an ominous black. The wind borne rain drops became larger and heavier. Far to the north they could see the thunderhead, turned to molten yellow by each lightning flash. But the claps were just a faint, inoffensive rumbling.
The storm centre stayed clear of them but its widening band of wind and rain steadily enclosed them in a tightening circle of reduced visibility that soon took the canyon mouth out of sight. They rode in single file, hunched ineffectually against the lashing weather that by turns pressed their sodden clothes against their bodies then billowed them out.
“I haven’t seen any tracks for a mile!” John shouted above the roar of the wind and hiss of the rain.
“First rain since the wagons went through,” Edge yelled over his shoulder. “It’s washing out the sign.”
“Then how do you know where you’re going?” Elizabeth shouted from the rear of the line.
“Instinct, ma’am!” Edge called in reply. “Kind of like female intuition, but more reliable.”
It was not a satisfactory answer, but the brother and sister accepted Edge’s cold tone and unhesitant progress as a token of the man’s confidence in himself. There was also the fact, of which both were anxiously aware, that without the impassive stranger they were undoubtedly lost. With him -it remained to be seen.
Although Edge knew that a storm - particular a freak winter thunderstorm - could zigzag across open country with perplexing speed, he maintained a course that kept the thunder and lightning on his right. But there was no way to judge the distance and when the trio came up against the towering, sheer face of the bluff he could not decide whether they were to the north or south of the canyon. He dismounted and lead his horse into a cleft in the rock. There was no room for the others and they watched him with dispirited resentment as he dug out the makings and wiped his hands in his pockets before rolling a cigarette. A match flared in the shelter of the natural windbreak.
“Why are we waiting here, for goodness sake?” the woman demanded, angrily impeding some strands of hair plastered to her cheek.
Edge blew smoke at her, but it was whipped away by the wind. “Used up all my instinct, ma’am,” he replied. “Now, I figure the train was heading for a canyon that cuts into this bluff—”
“Canyon?” John asked sharply, and exchanged a meaningful glance with his sister.
Edge nodded and fixed the man with a steady stare. “Mean something to you?”
“We’re looking for a canyon. It’s where Elizabeth and I have to go before we continue on to Summer.”
Edge spat out a leaf of tobacco. “This country’s full of them, feller. But one particular one is either north or south of here. Now we can either toss a coin and all ride together, or we can split up and check out both ways at once.”
Elizabeth was sitting high in the saddle, her head cocked to one side as if listening for something. The sadness in her eyes seemed to indicate she had little hope of picking up anything. But then she nodded her head emphatically. “It’s the one, John.”
Her brother eyed her without conviction. “How can you possibly know, Liz?” he asked.
“I just do.”
Edge flicked his cigarette out into the wind and watched it driven away. “Female intuition?” he suggested wryly.
“Something like that,” the woman defended.
“Does the little voice happen to point out which way we should go to find the place?”
She pointed a finger to the north. “That way. And not far.”
Edge sighed, led his horse out from the shelter of rock and mounted. “I got nothing to lose but time and ten thousand dollars,” he murmured.
“Liz could be right, Mr. Edge,” John said. “She and Byron were very close.”
“I’m a Walt Whitman fan but I don’t commune with him,” Edge said wryly. “Maybe that’s because he’s still alive?”
He nodded for Elizabeth to lead the way, but she held back to show him a hate filled glare.
“Byron Day,” she flung at him. “He was our brother until he was murdered.”
She spurred her horse forward and John fell in behind her, giving Edge a quizzical glanc
e as he passed. Edge trailed at the rear, still wearing the expression of melancholy despondency that pulled his cruel features into such an incongruous pattern and which had aroused John’s curiosity. But if the ugly young man thought Edge was suffering contrition because of his flippancy, he was wrong. For the half-breed’s sadness had come from out of the past, the woman’s announcement recalling another dead brother. A teenager named Jamie whose agonizing death had thrust Edge into a life as barren and dangerous as the Badlands through which they were riding.* (*See: Edge-The Loner.)
Edge was jerked back into the present by a sound that burst through the noise of the downpour and was much more ominous than that of wind and rain. John and Elizabeth Day heard it at the same time and reined their horses to a halt Terror took hold of their features and then exerted a vice-like grip as they stared at each other - then at Edge.
“Yeah, you’ve got it,” Edge murmured as the syncopated beat of a water drum rose to its maximum pitch and held it “Seems like some Sioux ghost cut in on Byron’s line and fed the lady a bum steer.”
“Perhaps they’re friendly?” Elizabeth suggested nervously, forcing herself not to look along the bluff in the direction from which the drumbeat was coming.
“Only one way to find out,” Edge said easily, wheeling his horse into a shuffling turn. “But it means getting close to them. I’m for racial harmony but that don’t sound like my song they’re playing.”
The Days began to wheel their horses.
“No! Please!” The words were screamed at the top of a man’s voice and punctuated by a high-pitched wail of mind-bending agony. The drumbeat finished abruptly and a dozen war cries split the rain-washed air.
“They ain’t friendly,” Edge muttered sourly.
“He’s an American!”Elizabeth gasped.
“So are they,” Edge answered as the drumming began again, masking another, weaker scream of pain. “But the line goes back further. That’s what it’s all about.”
“We can’t just go away,” Elizabeth insisted.
“We can do whatever the hell we want,” Edge told her. “It’s a free country - unless some of us get noble and try to join the party along the bluff.”
Bloody Summer Page 3