"What was that, Sergeant?"
A shake of the head. "It don't matter, sir. Me and the rest of the guys got took in bad by this dame. You did okay. Now you rest up some more and we'll take care of what's left to do."
Hedges nodded and crawled across to the pile of straw, stretched out gratefully on his back.
"In the creek with her, Frank?" Douglas asked.
"No. We got the razor. Handle it right, we can cut her up in bits and bury her all over this stinkin' pigpen. Maybe get a charge some time seein' what the Rebs'll do if a chunk of her gets dug up."
"Hell, that's a lot of friggin' trouble to go to," Billy Seward complained. "I'm for Hal's idea. Dump her in the creek. What do you say, sir?"
"Goodnight to you fellers," Hedges murmured. "To the lady, rest in pieces."
Chapter Four
EDGE and the widow of Jack Cash reached Pueblo San Luis at nightfall. They had seen the cluster of white adobe buildings from a long way off in the late afternoon, then lost sight of them behind a series of rises in the Sierra Madre foothills. They heard guitar and harmonica music from the village as the sun slid to a red death behind the western ridges. And when full night came to the mountains, lights gleamed a perhaps false welcome from windows a half mile distant.
The woman, whose only similarity to Rose Walters was that she had been ill-used by men, had told the half-breed the name of the village when it first came in sight.
"We got married there, Mr. Edge," she added, anxious to start a conversation Which the man had constantly refused to do since they rode away from Flecha Mesa, leaving the corpses where they lay but taking the spare mounts on lead lines.
"Uh uh," he answered. "If it was in haste, you didn't have too much leisure to repent."
"Too long," she rapped. Then, hurrying to keep the exchange going, "Not just this morning. Couple of weeks ago, give or take a day. When Jack and Clyde stopped over on their way south. I'd been stuck there three weeks already after the sonofabitch who brought me to Mexico run out on me. I was outta money and patience and them two was a long time without female company. Jack kinda staked a claim on me while Clyde made time with the Mex whores."
"Mexican, lady."
"What?"
"Mexican whores. I'm half Mexican. You don't say the whole word, it sounds near as bad as greaser."
"Sorry."
"No need, long as you remember."
She expressed a grimace he did not see. Then continued, "Jack got drunk. I mean real, stinkin', blind drunk. On account of he was sick and tired of chasin' this fugative from San Antone for so long. But he acted like a gentleman, far as a gentleman can be that in this kinda back-of-beyond country. Didn't lay a finger on me. I figured him for an easy touch but when I asked him to stake me he turned me down flat. But said if I married him, I wouldn't ever have money worries again."
She shrugged. "So I figured, what the hell? Whoever heard of a bounty hunter that lived to a ripe old age? He didn't seem no worse than any other guy who'd got me with big promises. So I let him wake up the preacher in San Luis and we tied the knot. Mister, was that a mistake."
"You ain't the first that's made one of that kind," Edge offered as he lit a freshly rolled cigarette.
"First thing I find out, Jack was . . . what do you call it? He couldn't screw. He wanted to, but he couldn't. Sounds like important, but it sure ain't that."
"Impotent," Edge told her.
"Yeah, that's it. Real touchy about it, he was. Said he'd kill me if I ever let on. Until me, only Clyde Bodelle and Jack himself knew about it. I wasn't too damn happy about it at first, I can tell you. I get natural urges like normal folks and I ain't . . . im-pot-ent. But then I figured, what the hell? If Jack didn't get blasted by some outlaw him and Clyde was after, then I'd just up and leave the sonofabitch soon as I was some place back in the good old US of A."
"He got blasted, lady," Edge pointed out. "And you're headed in the wrong direction. Back to where it started."
"I got my reasons for comin' back to San Luis, Mr. Edge."
She eyed the half-breed as if she expected him to query this, but he said nothing and continued to smoke and survey his surroundings.
She shrugged and grimaced both. "Maybe it was on account of he couldn't get it up for a woman. Whatever, he liked slappin' them around. He sure lammed into me a few times while we tried to catch up on this guy from San Antone. And Clyde told me there had been other women. Whores, mostly. He used to pay big money to them if they let him beat up on them."
"It happens."
"But it seems I was special. You heard and saw the way he was back at Flecha Mesa. I was his lousy property and he didn't have to pay me a cent to knock me around. All he needed was an excuse. And he always got a bigger charge outta it when he figured I was makin' up to a man or let a man make up to me."
She laughed suddenly, throwing her head back and directing the harsh sound toward the darkening skies. "Brother, did I get that to backfire on the bastard today.
"They catch him?" Edge asked after a long silence which followed her joyful boast.
"What?"
"The feller from San Antone?"
"Hell, no. Guess that's what made Jack Cash more touchy than usual. They lost his trail down near Mesa del Huracan. Reason I know where that is. The place you're headed for."
The half-breed made to touch the shirt pocket with the letter in it, an unconscious gesture which he suddenly became aware of, and chose to scratch the lobe of an ear instead.
There was another long silence between them, until they heard the distant strains of Mexican music as the sun began to set. A mournful melody, like the musicians were regretting that the day was at an end.
"I guess you think of me as not much better than a whore, mister?" she said, her tone a match for the melancholic music drifting through the barren hills.
"I don't think of you at all, lady."
Her green eyes flared with anger but when she peered through the twilight at his impassive profile she realized that the venting of such an emotion would merely relieve her of some pent-up tension—and not touch him at all.
"I think you're as hard as they come, mister," she accused, her tone emphatic but not loud.
"I am what I am. You're what you are. We just happen to be riding the same trail at the same time."
"Brother, did I read you wrong."
"I ain't changed since Flecha Mesa."
"And neither have I. I wasn't a whore then and I ain't one now. I never have been. I'm just a girl who never had any breaks. Make a habit of pickin' the wrong men. I try, believe me, I try. But it always happens they use me and leave me high and dry or they turn out to be sonsofbitches I have to get rid of."
Edge looked at her now, bristled face expressionless but curiosity in the way his head was cocked slightly to one side.
She showed him a brief smile, then shrugged her shoulders. "Yeah, mister. I figured that with you, my luck might change."
He looked away from her and spat a globule of saliva into the dust on the other side of the stallion. As they rounded a curve where the trail snaked through a fold in the hills and the lights of Pueblo San Luis showed through the darkness of full night.
"Yeah, real crazy, wasn't I?" Flo Cash admitted as the music, briefly curtailed, began again. Something lively now. "But what else was I to do? If you hadn't been around back there, I wouldn't have stirred up Jack. I liked your looks and the way you handled Jack. Figured you wouldn't let me down and you didn't. Far is it goes."
"It ain't gone anywhere, lady."
Another shrug of her shoulders. "So the hell with it. Least you ain't done me no harm. I figure nine outta ten of the kinda men who ride this country wouldn't have let me keep my horse and ride with them. Not unless I paid them. In the only kinda way a destitute woman got to pay."
"You ain't just talking because you don't like the music," he said.
"Least I read you right there. But the best kinda man needs a woman f
rom time to time. I ain't no ravin' beauty, don't I know that. I ain't so hard to look at, though. And I figured that after you'd allowed me to ride with you, well . . . maybe it wouldn't matter that we got off on the wrong foot."
"And now you've got no reasons for coming back here," Edge answered as they started up the gentle slope of a rise on the flat top of which the village was sited.
She showed another smile and through it vented a low sigh of resignation. "I tried and I lost out again, mister. Least this time I ain't got any scars to show for it. Except for a little damage to my pride. But if I hang around the cantina long enough, some guy is sure to come by to heal that."
The cantina, which was labeled by a sign for what it was without any distinctive name,' was the largest of the single storey buildings in San Luis. It stretched the length of one side of the plaza which the trail entered from the north and left at the south-east corner.
Across from the cantina was a bank and a gunsmith store. The newcomers rode onto the plaza between a small Federale post and a blacksmith forge. Opposite these was a livery stable and a grocery store. There was a wooden stoop in front of each building except the livery. At the center of the plaza was a clump of mesquite with some barrels encircling it to serve as seats.
Like Paraiso across the border to the north, Pueblo San Luis obviously existed for no other purpose than to serve the needs of transient outlaws and bounty hunters. But unlike in the American town, law and order was established here, the presence of the Federale post signaling that whatever greeds and animosities existed out in the Sierra Madres, the village was a truce area.
"Just need my own horse and what's on him." Edge said as he dismounted in front of the livery which, like all the buildings except for the cantina and the Federale post, was in darkness. "Maybe you can sell what's left."
"Appreciate that," she answered. "No good bangin' on the door, mister. Paco'll be in the cantina. We leave them here, he'll come take care of them."
She slid wearily out of her saddle and looked around the plaza with distaste as they headed for the cantina.
"Paco'll buy the horses and saddles and stuff. Get enough for them to stake me for a long time in this hick town. Long enough maybe for ten men to ride through. You think that if I keep count and pick the tenth one, I could get it right this time?"
She laughed.
And he showed a smile with a hint of warmth along the mouthline. "Maybe. If you don't get tired of single-bed sleeping before your money runs out."
"Right, mister, right."
"No, lady. For you, I ain't Mr. Right."
She scowled, but only for a moment. Then, eagerly, "That proves I ain't a whore, though, don't it? For that kind, it's a job of work just for money. For me, it's fun."
He held open one of the batwing doors and she swept into the cantina, a hand raised in greeting and a broad smile on her flesh-thickening features.
"Hi, fellers! Like the bad penny, here I am turned up again!"
There were a dozen men and three women already in the cantina. All of them responded with matching warmth to her greeting, then eyed the tall, lean stranger with curiosity as he surveyed them and their surroundings.
One of the men was an American. A bald-headed old-timer of about seventy with a curly red beard arched along the line of his jaw. He sat alone at a table sipping beer from a near empty glass and playing solitaire.
The musicians sat at a table at the far end of the bar which ran along the rear wall of the place. The bartender was behind his counter and the other eight men were split into two groups, playing cards for no stakes unless they took the form of drinks.
Except for the Federale sergeant, who was in his thirties, all the Mexican men were of late middle-age. The three thirty-or-so-year-old whores shared a table and bottle of tequila next to where the guitar and harmonica players were seated.
This left a lot of seating capacity free, which showed that business was slow in the cantina, and explained the eager smiles which were directed at Edge by the whores and the bartender as he crossed to a midway point in the counter. As Flo Cash engaged in earnest conversation with a paunchy player in the same card game as the Federale.
"Señor, your pleasure?" the beaming, fleshy-faced, thickly moustached bartender offered. "Beer to start, feller."
"And what to follow, hombre?" the slimmest and most attractive whore called and clicked her fingers.
The musicians received the signal and switched to soft and romantic tune.
"No chance, Maria," the American woman put in as she sat down at the whores' table, the man she had spoken to rose from his and the bartender placed a glass of foaming beer in front of the half-breed. "Mr. Edge has somethin' on his mind that don't allow no room for women."
The whore muttered low words in Spanish, which cast doubt on the newcomer's manhood—attributing his condition to the fact that he was a gringo.
"I speak Spanish better than my Mexican father, lady," he answered in her language as the man who had left the card game halted beside him.
Maria poured and quickly drank two fingers of tequila.
"Señor, I am Paco," the paunchy Mexican announced, in English. "My livery, it is good. Flo, she say you can pay? I can believe her?"
Edge was careful not to reveal the size of his bankroll as he drew a ten-dollar bill from his pocket. "Can you believe this, feller?"
Paco grinned. "Your horse, I take good care of him, señor. How much time you stay here?"
"Tonight, tomorrow and tomorrow night," the old-timer with the red beard put in, and nodded, blank-faced, when the half-breed looked at him. "Only take you three days to reach Mesa del Huracan crossin' the kind of country in the kind of weather that's between here and there. And you'll be more comfortable stayin' here in San Luis than killin' time down there."
"Tonight, at least, feller," Edge told Paco, as he picked up his beer, carried it to where the old man sat and dropped into the chair opposite him.
"Name's Howie Green, Mr. Edge. I heard that Flo gal call you that. Reason I knew you were headed for Mesa del Huracan."
The shadow of a man, cast by the two kerosene lamps hung from the ceiling, fell across the table. Edge looked up into the bristled, good-looking face of the Federale sergeant. The half-breed was aware that the man had gone to peer out over the tops of the batwing doors while Paco was talking to him.
"Sergeant?" he asked.
"It seems to me, señor, that the horses in front of Paco's place—two of them had other riders this morning."
"That's right."
"It happened far from this place, señor?"
"A man can ride a lot of miles from noon until now. Even through an afternoon as hot as this one was."
"Si señor," He touched the peak of his cap. "But if I receive a complaint, I must act upon it."
Edge nodded, and Howie Green grinned as the Federale turned and went back to his card game.
"Reckon there won't be no complaints unless they be from the woman and she ain't about to whine, eh?" the old-timer said in a rasping whisper. "On account of Cash and Bodelle wouldn't lose their horses unless they lost somethin' else first. Reckon they're dead out there someplace, eh? Buzzard meat. Corpses."
The half-breed took a first sip at his beer. "Remains to be seen, feller."
The grin expanded to a cackling laugh. And one booted foot thudded up and down against the floor. "Hey, I like that, mister. Remains to be seen. I like that."
"I don't like you haven't explained how you know about me and where I'm headed, feller," Edge said evenly as the smoke-layered, liquor-smelling cantina became as settled as it was before the newcomers entered.
It was a place where troublemakers came, and were welcome if they did not make trouble here. The kind of place where questions were never asked of strangers, who came only to be served with what San Luis supplied. There were the rules and if everyone complied with them, peace reigned. In the music-filled peace tonight, only Howie Green
was close enough to this stranger to recognize that he was the kind to break every rule there was, if that was what it took to get what he wanted.
The old-timer took a swallow at his beer to empty the glass, licked his thin lips and blinked his dark eyes several times. "Now, Mr. Edge, you got no call to talk tough to me. I'm the gunsmith around here. I don't need no dollar handouts to deliver messages."
"So deliver it for free, feller."
"Intend to, mister. It was one of the Murphy brothers give me the buck. Give that to the priest that runs the church over the hill. To put in the poor box. You wanna donate, I'll be happy—"
"Make me happy, feller."
"Eh? Oh, yeah. Last night Pat Murphy come to San Luis. To buy groceries and some shells. Said a feller name of Edge would likely ride through here. Said to tell you him and his brother Sean still got what you want. And the time and the day ain't changed."
"That all?"
"Sure enough is."
"Who are the Murphy brothers?"
The wrinkle-skinned face was contorted by a grimace and Green spat at the floor. "A couple of no-account bounty hunters. Been ridin' up and down this trail for these past five years at least. Pickin' up the leavin's of other men. The poor bastards that are only worth twenty-five or maybe fifty bucks to the law north of the border. Yellow-backed little bastards who ain't got the spunk to go after killers and bank robbers and the real mean hold-up men."
"Obliged," Edge said. "You want another dollar for the poor box? Or a drink?"
There was relish in the way the old man licked his lips this time. "I'll take the drink, mister. I got my suspicions that money is apt to drop outta the priest's poor box and into his pocket."
Edge nodded, turned to locate the bartender and called, "Bottle of rye and two shot glasses, feller."
The order was delivered to the table just as Paco returned to the cantina and announced:
"Horses all bedded down fine, señor."
"Obliged." He filled both glasses to the brim and said as he lifted one to his lips, "Three-day ride, uh?"
Green nodded. "That's right, mister. Gives you two nights and a day in hand. Luck to you."
EDGE: A Ride In The Sun (Edge series Book 34) Page 11