He tossed back his drink at a swallow.
"You figure I'll need it? Against the Murphies?"
"Well ..." He reached for the bottle, looked at Edge and did not pour himself a drink until he received a nod. "Well, like I told you, they're yellow. But I been around in this world seventy years I know about, mister. And on the whole, men that ain't got no spunk, they're apt to be real sneaky bastards. And I've heard tell that the Murphy brothers are two of the slyest little sonsofbitches that ever grew to be five feet tall." He vented another cackling laugh. "It's said they never grew full size on account it was so long before somebody lifted the rock so they could crawl out from under it!"
"Señor?"
Edge turned in his chair to look at the bartender. "Señora Cash, she wishes for my wife to cook her something to eat. It will be no trouble to cook extra."
"Obliged. You have rooms here?"
"Si señor."
"Fine."
"You wish for a single or a double room, señor?"
"A double, feller. But only because I like to stretch myself out."
"Very well. But if you should change your mind, señor, Maria, Juanita and Margarita are all guaranteed to satisfy."
"If your food's as good as your liquor, I'll be satisfied, feller."
The three whores scowled their disapproval of the outcome of the exchange. The American woman who shared their table showed a quiet smile.
"Do something for me, Howie?" Edge asked.
"What I can."
"In a while I'm going to eat. After that, do some drinking. If I start to act like I'm taking a fancy to any of those women over there, you take the bottle away from me, uh?"
"An old man like me take somethin' away from you?" Green answered incredulously.
"If you need to. I'll be real drunk, feller. Ain't been drunk often. Whenever it happened, I was never any trouble to anyone."
Green looked like he did not believe this. But he sighed and nodded. "All right if I take a drink every now and then."
"Sure thing."
"Somethin' else, mister."
"What's that?"
"Like to ride out to the old Federale post at Mesa del Huracan with you. Do this old body of mine a power of good to see the Murphies get what's comin' to them."
"It ain't exactly the Murphies I'm after, feller."
A shake of the head. "That don't matter, mister. Them pint-size bastards don't ever deal straight. They'll try to cheat you, some way or other. Can't help it. It's in their nature. And I figure you ain't the kinda man takes easy to gettin' cheated."
They had two more shots of whiskey each, then the food arrived; a plate heaped with enchiladas and a bowl of chili on the side. It was good, hot and filling and the bartender beamed at the obvious relish with which the stranger ate the meal and continued to show his appreciation of a free spending customer after the half-breed called for a fresh bottle of rye whiskey.
Edge had spoken the truth when he told Howie Green he did not often get drunk. The last time had been in San Francisco, a unique occasion since he had mixed heavy drinking with a high-stakes poker game. The time before that was when . . .
He closed his mind to memories of that other unique occasion. And he also refused to consider the reason why he had elected to get drunk tonight. Instead, he reflected upon the circumstances of his surroundings which made it safe for him to abandon his normal attitude of watchfulness.
These were surroundings in which no threat of danger lurked so long as a man could pay for what he had, which meant that the presence of the Federale sergeant was superfluous in the maintenance of law and order. For the requirements of travelers and the ability of the merchants of Pueblo San Luis to supply their needs was almost by itself a guarantee that the tiny village remained peaceful. And the seal was set on the guarantee by the nature of the men who needed what it supplied.
Desperate men or those with a singlemindedness of purpose, for no one rode lightly into the Sierra Madre. All of them hard because they had to be that to ride the harsh country which surrounded the village. Some of them brutal. Some downright evil. But in certain respects they were like all men.
They got hungry and they got a thirst for more than mere water. On occasions they needed somewhere safe to put their money, a haven to rest up without fear of attack, a place to have their horses shod, a place to get fresh supplies of food and shells, a place to buy a willing woman, and maybe sometimes, a man needed the church over the hill to pray at.
Whatever it was such men wanted, they were the kind who got it—or were vicious in their disappointment. So anyone who caused trouble in Pueblo San Luis—damaged its reputation as a safe area amid a petrified ocean of danger—would be a fool of the first order, living on borrowed time with countless guns seeking to call in the loan.
For a few moments, shortly after he entered the cantina, Edge might well have become such a fool—in his initial response to Howie Green's knowledge of his destination.
But he had got over that hurdle. He grinned at the red-bearded old-timer and then showed the expression to the rest of the music, talk and smoke-filled room. Howie, right across the table from him, was in sharp focus. But everyone else looked a little blurred. Including the tall, thin man who came in through the batwing doors.
Edge nodded and grunted and Green asked him what he had said. But the half-breed kept his thoughts to himself. He had got over one hell of a lot of hurdles in his life to survive as long as he had done, due largely to his habitual alertness. But he did not need to maintain a constant watch on his surroundings tonight and it was good to relax, good to know that the people of Pueblo San Luis meant him no harm. Any stranger who might ride out of the Sierra Madre into the village would know the rules—or quickly learn them.
A stranger had come in. He remembered seeing him push open the batwings. He turned on his chair to look for him. But could not see him.
He couldn't see Flo either. The three whores were still at the table beside that where the musicians were playing. But the American woman who was so insistent that she was not a whore had left.
Even in his liquor-sodden mind, he was surprised at his response to her absence. She was right. She wasn't a whore, just a woman who for some reason had found herself out on the frontier; a man's land. And she had survived with dignity, in her view, passing from one no-good drifter to the next but never selling herself the way Maria, Juanita and Margarita did. Marrying just one of her partners, but convinced that she was as good as other women who took and lost a string of husbands.
"Where she go?" Edge asked Green, aware of the slur in his voice.
"Who, mister?"
"The woman I came in with?"
Green's frown of anxiety deepened. "Out to one of the back rooms. With the guy that fetched her here in the first place. Then run out on her. He come back."
The half-breed felt himself plumb the depths of drunken depression. "She didn't deserve the way I treated her."
"What?"
"I was a real sonofabitch to her."
Green looked away from the bristled face of Edge. "Well, you got time to say you're sorry, mister. If you've a mind."
Edge, swaying on his chair and spilling rye from the glass in his hand, turned to gaze in the same direction as Green. And saw the woman coming along the bar. She wore a dress now. White, low at the neckline, tight to her torso and falling full from the waist. She had taken a bath-and washed and combed her hair, powdered and painted her face. With the skill of her sex, she had succeeded in emphasizing her most attractive features, and Edge had the presence of mind to wonder if, had he not been drank, she would still have look radiantly beautiful to him.
The tall, thin, handsome young man who had earlier entered the cantina, halted a couple of feet behind her when she stopped at the half-breed's table. He wore suit, shirt, string tie and vest and carried a Stetson.
"Vic came back for me, Mr. Edge," the woman said smiling. "He went all the way down
to Mazatlan look what he bought me."
She held out her arms to the side and half-turne one way and then the other.
"You look fine," Edge told her, uncomfortably aware that he was stirred by the sight of her, the smell of her and the way the skirts of her dress rustled as she moved.
"We're leavin' now. Right now. Tonight. Aimin' for San Francisco."
"That's fine," Edge said.
Vic moved up beside the woman. "Flo told me about what happened, mister. I want to thank you for takin care of her the way you did."
"I didn't do anything, son." He heard the slur in his voice, but guessed he had managed to keep the bitterness of disappointment hidden.
"I want to thank you, too." She bent down to him she spoke, and her perfume was strong in his nostrils her lips brushed his bristled cheek. "Goodbye, Mr. Edge."
Vic took hold of her arm and they headed for the batwings, responding to a chorus of goodbyes from the Mexicans. Edge watched them until they went from sight into the darkness of the plaza.
"Maybe he'll turn out to be one in ten."
"Uh?" Howard Green grunted.
"Nothing, feller." The half-breed grinned, drank what had not been spilled from his glass and poured another. Then pushed the bottle toward the old timer. "Here, you can start matching me drink for drink now."
"Appreciate it, mister," Green said, tipping the bottle above his glass.
Edge nodded. "Yeah, appreciation is what it's all about, feller." He raised his glass in a toast. To Vic. Who just relieved me of a Flo Cash problem.
The Drunk
At the close of Sioux Uprising, Edge discovers that his wife is dead, had died in such a way that he was compelled to share in the blame for the tragedy. In the opening chapter of the next book in the series—The Biggest Bounty—he rides through the emptiness of northern Wyoming Territory, attempting to come to terms with what has happened. There is a reference to him stopping off in only one town during his long and lonely ride, to replenish his supplies. "He had wasted little time in making the purchases and ridden out fast, veering away from the trail to ensure that he continued to suffer the bitter pangs of grief in isolation." Actually, he had time enough to get drunk enough to forget that what follows happened.
EDGE rode into town from the east at a time in the afternoon when it should still have been quite light. But the low cloud and the rain it poured down upon the foothills of the Wyoming Rockies created the conditions of late evening. So that he was not aware that a town was nearby until he was flanked by buildings instead of prairie as the trail became a street.
And for several moments he thought it was a ghost town. For there were no lights at any windows he could see and, as he angled his gray gelding into the lee of the buildings along the windward side of the street, he saw that few of the windows had glass in them.
The half-breed pursed his lips and vented a low sigh of resignation to adversity as he rode by the end of a row of houses and started across the front of some business premises. Stores, a bank, a newspaper, land and lawyer's office, the painted lettering on their shingles just discernible—the facades to which the shingles were fixed in as bad a state of repair as the houses back along the street.
When the gelding snorted, the rider misunderstood the reason for the equine response and ran a hand gently down the side of the animal's neck.
"Never does rain but it pours, does it feller," he said softly. "Look on the bright side, though. Plenty of water and lots of places to get in out of the wet. For free."
Nothing about the demeanor of the tall, lean, blue-eyed, black-haired stranger to town suggested he felt like looking on the bright side of anything. And the expression on his heavily bristled face did not alter when he reached a section of street where lights did gleam from some windows, he smelled smoke in the rain needled air, and the horse snorted again—scenting its own kind in the vicinity.
There was a livery stable here, a saloon, an office building with several shingles flanking the door, and a few sores supplying the basic necessities of frontier life. These occupied premises, frame-built and all two storeys high, were less neglected than those which had been abandoned—and those along the street west of the mid-town area which he could see in the lamplight were also derelict—but it was apparent that only the most essential repair chores had been done. No work had been undertaken for purely cosmetic purposes.
As he dismounted in front of the saloon, the sign above the door naming the community as Mayville, the half-breed realized that even in the best of circumstances the place would be unprepossessing. Under assault by heavy rain driven by a forceful norther this town huddled on the south-east bank of the rushing Greybull River looked forbiddingly grim.
Like Edge himself did to the three people already in the saloon, as he pushed open the one-piece door and stepped inside, rain dripping off the brim of his Stetson and the bottom of the slicker caped over his shoulders.
"Sure is filthy weather, ain't it mister?" the short, thin, crafty-eyed man behind the bar counter greeted. "Shot of somethin' to get the chill outta your bones?"
"Obliged."
The saloon was big, but most of it was in darkness. Just two of the many ceiling-hung kerosene lamps were lit, dropping cones of yellow on to the center section of the long counter at the rear of the room and a half dozen chair-ringed tables immediately in front of it. The place smelled of cigar smoke, damp, dust, decay and dereliction.
As Edge started into the patch of light and across it, the fifty-year-old bartender set down a glass and filled it with whiskey, grinning his pleasure at doing business. And a man and a woman sharing a table eyed the newcomer appraisingly—like they were trying to figure out if he was a suitable customer for whatever they had to sell.
"Which way are you headed, sir?" the man asked. He was about fifty. Five-foot-six tall and a lot of pounds overweight—the blubber evenly distributed over his thighs, belly, chest, shoulders and face. He was dressed in a threadbare suit that had once been stylish and rested one of his feet on a valise at the side of his chair.
"West," Edge answered as he placed a dollar on the countertop and swallowed the rye before the bartender made change.
"Shit," the man said.
The woman laughed. It was a pleasant sound, vented from a pleasant face. She was a dyed blonde in her late twenties, about five-foot-three-inches tall and with a good shape. The frill-trimmed red-and-white gown she wore was designed to show off her curves to the best advantage and she knew how to apply paint and powder to emphasize her most attractive features. There was no doubt about what she had to sell.
"My answer or your feelings about it, feller?" Edge asked coldly after he nodded to the bartender for a refill and turned to look at the fat, suit-attired man.
"Uh?" the man was suddenly nervous, frightened by the chill in the slitted blue eyes which gazed fixedly into his face. He shook his head vigorously, flabby cheeks quivering. "I assure you I wasn't implying anything about you, sir," he said quickly. "I intend to travel east. But I'm not exactly well-fitted for riding this country alone. I was hoping you would be—"
"West is the way I'm heading," Edge cut in and turned to the bar again, to raise the fresh drink. He sipped at it this time, intent on making it his last but reluctant to be done with the warmth which the liquor was spreading through his body. "After I've bought some supplies for the trail."
His stubbled, cold-pinched, rain-run face asked a tacit question of the bartender.
"Grocery store'll be open for another hour, mister. Or Fred'll open up any time if you got money to spend."
"Like you, George," the whore said, her good humor gone. "And any other business in this stinkin' town."
Now the fat man at her table laughed at her. "But there isn't a single enterprise in Mayville that is open longer than your legs, Belle."
"Or wider, Mr. Winters," George added, and showed just a few rotten teeth in otherwise puckered gums as he grinned.
"Ha, h
a," the whore said, and it announced a vocal silence in the saloon.
Rain beat at the roof and walls and the logs on a stove in a darkened area crackled and spat as droplets of water found their way down the smoke stack.
"You come far, mister?" Belle asked at length, her tone bored.
"I come from way back, lady," he replied.
"Not so long," she answered. "I reckon you're the youngest and the most man that's been in this lousy town since the anthrax hit."
Edge half-turned to lean a hip against the bar front. "Did you say anthrax, lady?"
"No problem to you or your mount, mister," George said dully, as unhappy as Winters and the whore now that it seemed the half-breed was not going to buy any more drinks. "It happened three years ago."
"But Mayville never recovered from it," Winters added, shaking his head. "Town had a population of two hundred and fifty in its heyday. Plus another hundred or so folk living out on the ranches around here. The disease wiped out every single animal those ranches ran. Few people bought new stock and started up again. Not enough to support a town the size of Mayville, though."
"Mr. Winters run the Mayville Advocate," George said. "Finally had to close down the paper."
"Circulation of fifty copies a week isn't exactly economic, sir," the newspaperman muttered.
"And ain't one of them fifty people who bought the paper ever did any damn thing worth writin' in the paper about," the whore growled.
Edge had been making a genuine effort to be interested in the story of the dying town. Knowing this aim was as doomed as Mayville. But the experiment was worthwhile. Anything which might conceivably help him overcome, even for a few minutes, his depthless grief about the death of his wife demanded to be tried.
When he turned his back on the couple at the table again and fisted a hand around the shot glass, he saw that it was empty.
"Another, mister?" George asked eagerly, reaching down the bottle from a shelf.
Anything? Liquor would do it. If he could get drunk enough, the mental image of Beth's dead face which he had carried away from the small Dakotas farmstead would certainly become blurred by alcohol and then blotted out completely by the merciful darkness of drunken stupor.
EDGE: A Ride In The Sun (Edge series Book 34) Page 12