Perhaps Jordan Krantz intended to fire a shot from his gun. Or maybe the twitch of his trigger finger was just a part of his nervous reaction as he swung his head and saw the heavy table tilting toward him. Whichever, he had no chance of hitting Josiah Hedges, who was already crouching in the cover of the overturning table, struggling to get the Little Dragoon out of his capacious pocket.
The report of the small .22 bullet leaving one of the four barrels was almost drowned by the excited barking of Patch as the dog lunged forward and began to skip around the struggling forms of Jamie and Dawn, tail wagging and tongue lolling out.
Krantz vented a bellow of pain as he fell backward over his chair, which was abruptly curtailed as the top of his head cracked against the floor. And thus he felt no more pain as the table, totally overturned, thudded into his knees which were folded across the toppled chair.
"Pa!" Dawn shrieked, as she ceased to struggle against Jamie and stared with horror on her face across the floor to where her father was sprawled out on his back. "He's bleedin'!"
Josiah came erect and moved around the disarrayed furniture to look down at the unconscious drummer.
It was not the exploded bullet which had harmed Krantz but the gun which had fired it. As he reeled back from the toppling table, the man had raised both hands to protect his florid face. Either he had brought his gun hand up too forcefully, or the impact of his skull against the floor had provided the necessary power. Whichever, the metal of barrels and hammer had shattered the lenses of his spectacles. And his eyelids and upper cheeks were sheened with blood which oozed from around the countless tiny shards of embedded glass.
"He'll live, miss," the elder Hedges announced levelly after watching the strong rise and fall of the broad chest for a few moments. "There's a gun under the skirts of her dress, Jamie. Girl like her won't have any call to complain if you look for it. Then let her up."
"Oh, what a mess," Dawn groaned as she submitted to having the boy raise her dress and draw the revolver from the holster.
Then she watched in horrified fascination as the elder brother searched among the money scattered on the floor for a particular crumpled bill, which he pushed into the top pocket of her father's suit jacket.
"I didn't win that one," Josiah explained evenly.
"What . . . what are you gonna do with us?" she asked as she got shakily to her feet. "Pa's got glass in his face. He needs a doctor."
"You came from town. So you know the way back there. Doc Patterson will take care of him."
"But how—?"
He pushed the small Colt back into his pocket, lifted the table off Krantz's legs and then, with an easy strength, stooped and raised the much bigger man up and over his shoulder. The glassless spectacles dropped to the floor.
Patch, disconsolate the game was over, ambled across, sniffed the frames, then went into the kitchen and began to lap water.
"Bring both guns outside, Jamie," Josiah instructed and nodded toward the door. "After you, miss."
She was on the point of asking for something, but received no encouragement from the face of the elder Hedges. And so silently did what he indicated.
Outside, in the pleasantly warm, brightly moonlit night, Josiah had to use every ounce of his strength to hoist the big, unconscious man up onto the wagon seat.
"I really did mean it, Joe," the girl blurted suddenly. "Most times I go along with Pa's cheatin' ways. But honestly, when I saw the way you and Jamie are, how fine things are here, the way you treated us so well . . . I—"
"Sure, Miss Krantz," Josiah interrupted after he had climbed down from the wagon. He took the two guns from Jamie, who looked almost as miserable as the girl, and tossed them through the front flap of the covered wagon. They clanged against the hardware stowed in the back and the sound roused Jordan Krantz to the first stage of recovering consciousness.
Then he went to stand in the gateway. Slowly, as the girl climbed wearily up on to the wagon seat, Jamie came to stand beside him. Then Patch emerged from the house, stopped to wet at the base of the live oak, and ran forward to sit between the brothers.
The sounds of the drummer's awakening were covered by the clop of hooves, creak of timbers and rumble of wheelrims as Dawn turned the wagon around.
"Ma always said no good ever came from gambling, Joe," Jamie muttered. "And I sure enough reckon Miss Dawn could be a nice lady if her pa wasn't such a—"
"Reckon we're the best part of eighty dollars to the good, young feller," his brother cut in brightly, eager to cheer up the boy.
"Dawn!" Jordan Krantz cried, shrill with terror. "Where are you Dawn? I can't see you daughter!"
"I'm here, Pa!" the girl shouted above his hysteria. "Right here with you, Pa."
"Joe, he might be blinded for life," Jamie gasped, deeply concerned.
"Something else Ma used to say," Josiah Hedges responded.
"Uh?"
"Always darkest before Dawn."
Chapter Two
THERE was a clearly defined marker at the side of the trail to show where New Mexico ended and old Mexico began. Whether it was in precisely the right territorial position—on the line agreed by the government of two countries—was not important. The pinnacle of rock with a splash of black paint at the base was accepted in good faith by all who passed it, and all who stopped at it to turn back, as proof they had reached the international boundary.
Three times a year, a man who had no official capacity, rode south from Paraiso with a pot of paint to throw at the base of the rock so that the sign was always easy to see.
The man called Edge rode past the marker at noon astride a well-rested gray mare, and the man himself looked in good shape, too. This not just because he had spent two weeks resting up in Paraiso's Oro Blanco Cantina after surviving the events which took place in a town called San Lucas built on a rise known as El Cerro de Muerto. For, prior to leaving the cantina, he had taken the time to soak in a bathtub and to shave, and he had not yet been in the saddle long enough for the passing of time, the furnace heat of the sun or the gray dust of the trail to make many inroads on his fresh cleanliness.
As he rode beyond the marker, he took the makings from a shirt pocket, rolled a cigarette, hung it at a corner of his wide mouth and lit it. He banished from his mind all thoughts of the long-ago past, which had been triggered by the contents of the letter rather than the fact of a card game leading to a man being blinded. For Travis, with or without pain and misery, meant nothing to him, whereas Jamie had meant a great deal. So had the farm, and his whole life before the start of the war.
Yet the short letter delivered by McCord referred to an event which had taken place in the much more recent past . . .
He shook his head, almost imperceptibly, and scowled briefly. Later, if the writer of the letter was truthful, it would be necessary to reflect on that aspect of what had gone by. Now, riding south on this Mexican stretch of an outlaw trail, it was imperative to concentrate his entire attention on the present and the potential dangers it might hold.
So, as he rode the mare on a light rein at an easy walking pace, he constantly shifted his eyes back and forth along their narrow sockets, every now and then glancing back over his shoulder, and listening intently for any sound that might signal hidden trouble.
Yet he rode in an apparently casual attitude, his lean face expressionless and his frame revealing no clue to the fact that he was poised to respond in just part of a second if his freedom or survival should be threatened.
He was dressed in a gray cotton shirt, black denim pants, black riding boots without spurs, gray kerchief knotted loosely at the throat and wide-brimmed, low-crowned Stetson which shaded his face. Since his shave in the cantina at Paraiso, the suggestion of a moustache along his top lip and curving low down to either side of his mouth was more pronounced. Around his waist was a scuffed leather gunbelt with a bullet slotted into every loop. The holster which hung from the right, tied down to his thigh, carried a virtual
ly brand-new Army Colt revolver. The Winchester rifle, its stock jutting from the boot slung from the forward right of the saddle, was a great deal older. The saddle itself was of the Western kind favored by cowpunchers, hung with two well-stocked bags and a pair of filled canteens. Lashed on behind was a bedroll with a knee-length black leather coat tied on top.
Thus was Edge as well supplied as any man could be; for a long ride through the barren, hostile, relentlessly cruel Sierra Madre country. A ride under the blistering sun which, as it sank behind the distant, jagged ridges would herald a cold and dangerous night for a man to rest.
As well supplied as any man could be . . . but more experienced than most in dealing with the rigors of such a ride. For cruelly few of the trails Edge had followed since he left the Iowa farmstead after the end of the war—with the mutilated body of Jamie buried beneath the live oak in the front yard—had been safe and easy.
He maintained the same easy pace and the same degree of vigilance for the greater part of the afternoon, staying on the hoof-pounded trail as it swung to left and right, taking the line of least resistance but constantly on an up-grade. Passing along arroyos, cutting through gullies, following the bases of escarpments and swinging around mesas. Beneath the vivid blueness of the cloudless sky the landscape was mostly colored gray by rock and dust. But here and there was an outcrop of red sandstone, and, less frequently, patches of tough green grass, brown brush and clumps of cacti and stunted trees.
Edge placed the time at about four o'clock when he reined the mare to a halt at a point where the trail reached the crest of a shallow slope and curved southwest into the mouth of what appeared to be a low-sided canyon. The western wall of the canyon mouth offered some shade in which the temperature was a few degrees lower than in the direct glare of the sun and some dusty grass sprouted up among the scattered rocks at the base of the cliff. When he had dismounted and while he took a mouthful of water from a canteen, the horse sidled away to check out the grass and then began to crop at it with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.
The half-breed hooked the canteen back over the saddlehorn and then squatted down on a smoothtoped boulder and leaned his back against the rock wall. He raised a hand to touch the shirt pocket in which the letter was stowed, but did not take out the envelope. Instead, he delved into the other pocket to take out the makings. While he smoked the cigarette, he kept watch over his back trail for as far as he could see it.
Travis was in no condition to seek revenge and it would take him a long time to raise the money to pay others to do the job. But Blackburn and Wogan? They had been riding south to reach Paraiso. Outlaws, bounty hunters or simply drifters? Unknown to each other until they met up in town. But they had been drinking together when Edge left the Oro Blanco Cantina, spending some of the small money they won in the poker game, and maybe eager for a bigger stake. Either individually or as a result of joint planning, they might consider it worthwhile to track the biggest winner, backshoot him and—
A rifle shot cracked. And a horse snorted in pain against the reverberating series of echoes from the report.
Edge powered to his feet, right hand dropping to and fisting around the butt of the holstered Colt. As his head snapped to the side, his eyes shifted from the empty terrain to the north and fixed on the deserted entrance to the canyon.
The mare had moved from sight between the thirty-feet-high rock walls, obviously tempted to search for lusher grass. Although unseen, the horse could be heard. There was a heavy thud as the animal crashed to the ground, followed by a more subdued snort, then a snicker and finally a venting of the last breath forced out between quivering lips.
Men shouted in unison with the sounds made by the dying mare, speaking Spanish from many yards beyond where the animal died.
"You idiot, Ramon! You have killed only a horse!" This man enraged.
"I did not know this, Pedro! I see something move and I fire! By instinct!" Ramon sounded frightened.
"That looks like a fine horse, too!" Regretful.
There was a chorus of exclamations that expressed agreement with this. "Be quiet, you sons of whores!" Pedro snarled and had the authority to ensure that the order was obeyed. "A fine horse with a saddle on the back does not run free and wild in the Sierra Madre!"
More exclamations of agreement, less strident this time and quickly fading into silence, as the Mexicans mused on the whereabouts of the rider of the dead horse and awaited an order from their leader.
Edge, his lean, deeply lined face impassive again after a momentary scowl at this new twist of harsh fate, had begun to move as soon as he heard that there were more than two men beyond the canyon mouth. Five or six at least, he guessed. Too many and too distant to be handled with just an Army Colt and the straight razor.
So he turned away from the gap between the rock faces and broke into a loping run when he was certain the intervening high ground would act as a barrier to the sounds he made. Dust rose from under his pumping feet and clung to the sweat which the exertion oozed from the pores on his face. The grade was downwards for a while, then across the slope and finally upwards, the increasing steepness forcing the half-breed to slow his pace. He was about four hundred yards west of the gap in the rock faces by then, unable to hear anything except his own labored breathing.
To reach his initial objective he had to locate hand-and foot-holds on an almost sheer climb of fifteen feet. And because there was no opportunity to brush them away, beads of salt sweat trickled into his eyes and made them sting. The hat fell off his head, but was held to his back by the neck thong. He realized the long dead cigarette stub was still adhered to his lower lip and he spat it out.
At the top of the climb, squatting on his haunches and sucking in the arid Mexican air, he took the time to rub the sweat from his eyes and peer northward. From this higher vantage point he could see further out along the trail. Neither Blackburn nor Wogan nor anything else was moving this side of the shimmering heat haze that foreshortened the horizon.
Then he looked in the other directions. Two buzzards were circling at the top of a high thermal far to the south. There were no other signs that anything except rugged plant life existed in the area of the Sierra Madre that came within his range of vision.
The ground sloped gently away from him in a series of long curving steps back toward what he thought had been a canyon. And rose in a similar geographical formation on the other side, but not a canyon, though. Instead, a convoluted valley snaking in broad sweeps toward the south-west entered from the north via a narrow, fifty-yard-long natural cutting.
There was plenty of cover in the valley, from timber, hollows and boulders which featured the slopes to either side of the trail. So he approached the rim of the cutting cautiously, aware that one or more of the Mexicans could have been posted to watch for a man who skylined himself on the high ground while the others advanced on the spot where the dead horse lay.
Then he achieved cover himself, on his side of the thirty-foot-wide cutting. For, spread back from and along the rim, was a liberal scattering of boulders similar to those at the base among which the mare had originally begun to crop.
Long ago—probably millions of years in the prehistoric past—this area of the Sierra Madre had been much higher. But there had been a geological fault through the rock strata which had eventually submitted to a build-up of enormous pressures. The seemingly immovable rock had split in two and the highest pinnacles had crumbled. Some great fragments had crashed down into the newly opened chasm. Other pieces remained on the rim and back from it. And it was these which Edge crawled among, sometimes having to pass over cracks of up to a foot wide, as he neared the rim.
"Hey, Pedro, I do not see anybody," Ramon reported. "Maybe the gringo was shot or just died, and the horse, he has been wandering loose."
"She, idiot. It was a mare," the leader of the groups growled.
"I did not notice."
"If you had the sense to see what is b
efore your eyes, we would have had one fine horse, Ramon!"
Edge heard the exchange, and the scornful sounds; which followed it before he was in a position to risk a glance down into the cutting.
"It is done and cannot be undone. Jesus, see what we have except for the saddle and bedroll. Ramon, keep watch to the north. Boy, you guard us from the south.'
Edge peered down into the cutting for no more than a second, his glinting, almost closed eyes recording all there was to be seen.
Five men, mostly hidden from above by their large sombreros since they were all close to the base of the cliff, gathered around the carcass of the dead mare. In compliance with the orders of the leader, Ramon ambled away to the left, to take up a sentry position at the mouth of the cutting; another member of the group moved faster in the other direction; a third stopped to check over the saddle and other accoutrements on the horse. While the leader watched this man, his arms akimbo, the fifth Mexican maintained a hold on the reins of a scrawny-looking, ill-equipped horse. All of them carried a rifle and as the two sentries moved to left and right, the half-breed was able to see they wore gunbelts with holsters and crossed bandoliers.
This seen, Edge withdrew his head from the rim, knowing from his own highly developed sixth sense for such things that a man did not actually have to see a watcher to realize he was being watched. He rolled onto his back and pushed his hat forward to shade his eyes from the suit which was more than halfway down the western dome of the sky, listening to the talk below him, allowing time and events to decide his course of action.
"It is a good saddle, Pedro," Jesus reported. "Better than the one you have. The Winchester is no better no worse than those we have. Fine blankets. One canteen, it is full. The other almost full. The food in the bags, it is not touched. The horse has not been ridden far."
"I do not like it," Pedro growled.
"That Ramon killed the fine horse?"
Pedro spat noisily. "That the rider of the horse has not been seen. A fresh horse. Plenty of food and water. From Paraiso it must have come. The man who rode her could well have been killed between there and here. By a very rich killer to allow such a fine horse and all that is upon her to escape."
EDGE: A Ride In The Sun (Edge series Book 34) Page 4