"Turns out you didn't take it, I'll stand you to a hot tub, feller," the half-breed rasped.
Figures loomed up out of the rain on either side of where one man held another helpless.
Rain beat down on Winters' fleshy face, washing off the mud. Tears welled in his eyes and spittle bubbled out over his quivering lips.
"Please," the fat man forced out.
"What's the friggin' idea, mister?" George snarled.
"Winters stole the stranger's bankroll," Belle said, breathless after a frantic dash down the stairs and out of the saloon.
"Wondered where he got the money to pay for what he bought off me," a man growled.
Winters was half-sunk in the mud but it was not this which prevented him from moving a muscle in his spreadeagled body and limbs as he stared up into the face of Edge.
"You gotta be crazy, Mr. Winters," George said. "Stealin' from a guy like this one."
The newspaperman tore his eyes away from the face of the half-breed and darted them back and forth along the sockets, searching for a sign of help. But if he was able to see anyone, no familiar features expressed anything that could hold his frantic gaze and he stared again into the impassive face of Edge.
"Please," he said again. "I needed the money bad. I could have rotted here in this town. I had to get away. You were drunk. I've never seen anyone drunker. I thought—"
"Where's the money, feller?"
"I spent twenty bucks, mister. At Fred's grocery store. The rest is in my inside jacket pocket."
Edge kept his right wrist on Winters' shoulder, the blade of the razor resting on the fleshy throat of the newspaperman, as he delved under the sodden jacket. He extracted a billfold, opened it one handed on Winters' chest and slid out the banknotes.
"You were flat broke before?"
"Yeah. Yes I was. If I hadn't been then I wouldn't—"
"Don't matter, feller. Just means that this is all mine. Lady?"
"Yeah, mister?"
"If you get his horse and switch his saddlebags for mine, you still earn the twenty."
"What . . . ? What you gonna do to Mr. Winters?"
"Make the punishment fit the crime."
"No!" the newspaperman gasped. Then made a gurgling sound as the razor was moved from his throat to slash a deep cut across the inside of his right wrist.
Blood bubbled up from the cut and flowed over its lips. Its dark color lightened as it became mixed with rain water.
Edge stood up, pushing the money into his hip pocket and holding out the razor, turning it this way and that, so the rain washed the blood off the blade. He raked his eyes over the shocked faces of the watchers.
"Couldn't let him get away with it," he said evenly. "I've lost too much lately."
Winters was silent now, his head craned to the side so that he could see the life-blood draining out of the artery.
"Sonofabitch, we better patch him up," George rasped. "He bleeds like that for too long, he'll be dead."
"Fitting way for a newspaperman to go, feller," the half-breed said, looking along the east stretch of the street to where the whore was leading Winters' horse back into the lighted area.
"What you say, mister?" a man asked.
"Like his paper. Died from a lousy circulation."
Chapter Five
"HEY, young feller, it looks like them comin' in now!"
Edge shifted the Stetson off his face and onto the top of his head, stood up and picked his way out of the roofless building that had once been a barrack. Halted with his Winchester canted to his left shoulder and looked across the littered former drill square. Squinted up at the point where the post's south wall met the cloudless blue sky. Saw the bearded Howie Green up there, the old-timer shielding his eyes from the noon sun as he peered toward the southwest.
The Federale post at Mesa del Huracan had not been used in a long time. The stone wall which enclosed it was as good as ever and looked like it could last forever. But the abode buildings were crumbling and every piece of timber used in the construction of the fort had suffered the decay of mouldering damp and bleaching sun.
So that the only way to get up on the wall was by climbing the rubble of the one time guardhouse to the right of the gateless entrance. Edge had taken that route several times since he and Green arrived at the post the previous evening, taking his turn at watching for riders out on the high plain surrounding the fort.
Now he remained on the ground, zigzagging at an unhurried pace among the rubble, to cross the square and halt in the south-facing gap.
"Off there to the right," Green called down. "I count three."
"Three's right," Edge confirmed after he had gazed into the distance and seen the riders and horses blurred on the fringe of the shimmering heat haze.
"You mind what I told you, young feller. Don't trust them Murphies. More dangerous than a barrelful of rattlers if they get a man in a corner."
"Has to be ten times you've said that."
Maybe more Edge thought absently as he fixed his gaze on the approaching riders. The bearded old-timer had done a great deal of talking during the long, hot ride under the Sonora sun between Pueblo San Luis and here. Mostly about his hatred for bounty hunters in general and the Murphy brothers in particular. He made a lot of money out of such men. But he did business with those the bounty hunters tracked down, too. And it was obvious where his sympathies lay.
It wasn't until they reached the derelict Federale post at sundown the previous day that Howie Green revealed he had a personal reason for his views. He had come down to Mexico himself, five years ago, on the trail of an outlaw. But not as a bounty hunter. The fugitive was his bastard son and he had hoped to get the boy to reform.
But the boy was dead when he found him a few miles south of San Luis. Shot and robbed by the Murphy brothers, it seemed. Although there was no proof.
Green buried his son close to the church in the hills and bought the store in the village to make money to keep himself and to wait for some solid evidence that the Murphies murdered his son. There was still no evidence, but the old man was convinced in his own mind of their guilt. And if there was an opportunity to see them pay—in any way for anything—he was determined to be a witness.
Green had admitted his motive for coming here last night, as he and Edge shared a pork-and-beans meal beside a flickering fire.
Now, as the half-breed saw the trio of riders become more clearly defined in the distance, he thought of that first time the old-timer had warned him about the Murphies back in San Luis before he got drunk. Maybe as drunk as he got in Mayville Wyoming while he was trying to live with the knowledge of the way Beth died.
Beth's eyes were green. So were those of Flo Cash. Belle, the Mayville whore? He had no idea. But that link was too tenuous anyway.
He touched the shirt pocket in which the letter rested. The letter that provided a much more concrete connection to trigger memories of Beth. But even in his drunken stupor at the cantina his mind had involuntarily rejected recollections of his wife as a living, vibrant person. Instead, he had recalled that other liquor sodden time when he took the first dangerous steps toward shedding the unbearable burden of all engulfing grief.
"Hey, ain't that . . . yeah, that's an Injun they got with them!" Green yelled down from the top of the wall.
Edge steadied the Winchester with his right hand as he worked the action to pump a shell into the breech. He left the hammer cocked.
His hooded eyes never shifted from the bare-to-the-waist man who rode between Pat and Sean Murphy as he raised a hand to his shirt pocket and took out the letter. He had discarded the envelope several days ago and the piece of paper he unfolded was patched with sweat stains which made the penciled wording difficult to read. But he didn't read it, anyway. Held the letter down at his side. He knew what was written on the paper.
Joe Hedges—you want the redskin that killed your wif you cum to the Mex army fort at Mesa del Huracan on Jun 12 and me and P
at'll give you him but you got to giv us 2 grand.
"You come all this way to kill an Apache, young feller?" Green asked in an incredulous tone as he came down over the guardhouse rubble. "A Sioux."
"A Sioux? In this part of the world?" "Guess he's not here from choice." Green halted beside the half-breed and peered out through the gateway. "Even with these old eyes of mine, that's plain to see."
The brave was obviously a prisoner. He rode bareback on a burro, with ropes lashing his arms to his sides. Two other lengths of rope were noosed around his neck, their ends tied to the saddlehorns of Pat and Sean Murphy.
Because of the constant danger that their captive might fall off his mount and be choked by the nooses, the brothers maintained an easy pace. Slow, but sure. And eventually all three riders were close enough to be seen in detail.
"Sure is one sick-lookin' Injun," the old-timer growled as the Murphies reined in their horses, turning them inwards to block the burro's path.
The brave had the mark of death on him. Seen in the pitiful thinness of his naked torso and the sparseness of his gaunt face. He probably stood more than five-and-a-half foot tall but weighed no more than eighty pounds. Once he had been well built. This showed in the size of his bones and the way his dark skin sagged between them. Whether he had ever been handsome, it was impossible to see. For the folds of skin on his face, like those on his torso, were covered with festering sores and the scabs of infections which were healing. A great deal of his long black hair had fallen out leaving patches of his skull naked. His dark eyes looked to be already dead. Maybe the mind in back of them already was.
The small-of-stature men who flanked the pathetically sick Sioux Indian looked to be in fine shape. That they were brothers, it was obvious, for they were similar enough in the makeup of features on their round faces to be twins. High foreheads, broad noses, pouted mouths, small blue eyes and bulging cheeks. It was an impression they made efforts to encourage by dressing alike—in black from their hats to their boots. They even rode identical black geldings.
"I'm Patrick Murphy," the small man on the right announced from twenty feet away from where Edge and Green stood in the fort entrance. "This here is me brother, Sean. And you'll be Josiah Hedges. Or Edge as they call you now."
There was a half-smile on his lips as he spoke, his voice featured with a lilting Irish accent. "You got that right, feller."
"What you doing here, old man?" Sean asked of Green. He did not smile.
"It's a free country, ain't it?" the red-bearded man countered.
Patrick Murphy laughed and gave a gentle tug on his length of rope noosed around the brave's neck. "Not for this fine fellow, it isn't." Then all humor was gone from his stubbled face and his voice. "Why is the storekeeper here?"
Edge spat into the dust, the globule of saliva soaking into the arid ground two feet in front of him.
"He's a stranger hereabouts," Green growled. "I showed him the way. A guide, you might say."
"Is that right, Mr. Hedges?" Pat asked.
"It matter to you, feller?"
"He doesn't like us."
"Who the frig does?" Green snorted.
"Take care, old man!" Sean snarled, and dropped a hand to drape the butt of his holstered Colt.
"Leave it, brother!" Pat said quickly, sharing a scowl between Sean and the old-timer. Then he returned his attention to Edge. "In your hand? Is that the letter Sean wrote to you?"
"Right again, feller."
A nod. "Sean is not much with the writing. I'll be thinking you'll want to hear about our prisoner? How we came by him and how we know he is responsible for the passing of your wife?"
"Hell, why brother?" Sean muttered. "What I wrote brought the man down here from Paraiso, Pat.
"We are asking two thousand dollars for the Indian, brother," Pat pointed out. "Mr. Hedges must be sure he is buying the right Indian."
Howie Green had lost interest in the Murphy brothers now, intrigued by the reason that was emerging for this meeting of ill-assorted men at the isolated fort. When he looked at the half-breed he saw the same lack of expression that stirred anxiety within the minds of the slightly built brothers.
"Am I right yet again, Mr. Hedges?" Pat asked.
"Figure I ought to know why I should be grateful for small Murphies," the half-breed drawled.
Green vented one of his cackling laughs, which was curtailed by the ugly scowls that suddenly appeared on the faces of the brothers.
"We can't help the way we're made, mister!" Pat snarled. "You going to listen or not?"
"I already told you, feller."
Sean continued to smart from the comment about his size but Pat became composed, while the Indian brave between them sat the burro like a wax model fashioned in not-quite-human shape.
"We bought him from a man in El Paso," Pat explained. "Fellow called Grainger. Did you ever hear of him?"
Edge shook his head, looking at the Indian to try to catch some spark of interest in the dark eyes. There was none, the brave staring into the middle-distance.
"This Grainger, he had heard of you. Of how you lost your wife in a Sioux uprising in the Dakotas. He was a cowpuncher up there when you and your wife worked the farm. Heard how you went after the Indian who killed her and came up empty. Few months ago he was up in the Dakotas again and heard this fellow bragging in a Deadwood saloon about the way he raped your wife and killed her. It seems you are something of a legend in that part of the country."
"Why did Grainger sell him to you, feller?" Edge asked.
"Got tired of tracking you, is the way he told it," Patrick Murphy answered. "Seems you move around a lot and he never could catch up with you. Perhaps because this Indian slowed him down all the time."
"Seems to me," the half-breed said, "that a man traveling with this brave would be traveling light."
Patrick Murphy glanced at the Indian and shrugged. "He was rather sickly when we bought him off Grainger. Sean and me, we tried to beef him up a little, but the sonofabitch won't eat."
Sean vented a snort of impatience. "Shit, we're wasting time, Pat." He fixed his stare on the face of Edge. "Grainger gave up on finding you, mister. So we bought the Indian. Took a chance because it didn't look as if he would live too long. We didn't know when you'd be next in this part of the country and we sure as hell never go far away from it. But we got lucky. Heard from a fellow that you were in Paraiso, so we fixed for that McCord kid to give you the message. That's it, mister. There's nothing more to say. You know the price. Give us two thousand and he's yours."
"What profit will that make for you fellers?"
"Our business," Sean answered shortly.
"My brother is correct, Mr. Hedges," Patrick added. "The profit will be high because the business was of a high-risk nature."
"Two thousand, uh?"
"Like the letter said."
Edge screwed the paper up into a tight ball and dropped it into the dust. "He ain't worth two cents to me."
"The hell you say!" Sean snarled and dropped a hand to drape the butt of his holstered Colt again.
The half-breed whipped the rifle down from his shoulder and streaked his right hand across the front of his belly to receive the sun-warmed barrel.
"Hold it!" Patrick yelled, scowled at his brother and then looked hard into the half-breed's lean and bristled face. "The way this Grainger fellow told the story, it sounded like the truth. And the letter brought you a lot of miles to get here. That was the reason we arranged for the meeting to be out in the middle of nowhere. Fact that you're here must mean—"
"I didn't have any appointments any place else," Edge put in evenly. "And riding down here there was as good a chance of Beth's killer getting what's coming to him as anywhere."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Patrick asked, his suspicion expanding.
"He's trying to outsmart us, Pat!" Sean growled.
From the brief flicker of interest which came and went in the dark eyes of the starv
ing Sioux brave, Edge knew the Indian understood English.
"I asked you a question, mister!" Patrick insisted.
"I killed her, feller."
"Then why the hell did you—" Patrick started as he and Howie Green stared at the half-breed with matching expressions of incredulity.
Sean's rage, which had been simmering below the surface for so long, abruptly exploded into violent action. "All the friggin' trouble we been to!" he roared, and snatched the Colt from his holster.
Maybe he intended to vent his spite against the Indian. Or perhaps Edge. Even Howie Green. Certainly his frustration demanded an outlet of lethal proportions. But his gun was not aimed at any living thing when the brave lunged to the side, thudding his shoulder into the crook of Sean Murphy's neck.
"Pat!" the man shrieked as he was knocked from the saddle.
"Look out!" Green yelled.
Instinctively, the half-breed tracked the rifle to follow the course of the brother with a gun in his hand.
Seeing this, Patrick Murphy suspected the worse, drew his own revolver and blasted a shot at Edge. But his aim was spoiled by a movement of his mount, the horse reacting to the jerking rope between saddlehorn and the neck of the Indian.
Edge felt the tug as a bullet tunneled into and out of the crown of his hat. He dropped into a crouch and tracked the rifle barrel back again, away from the falling Sean, across the Indian in process of toppling from the burro, and at Patrick.
Patrick thumbed back the hammer of his revolver.
Edge squeezed the trigger of the Winchester. His bullet took Patrick in the chest, left of center, blasted a hole through his heart and exited at the back in a splash of crimson. The bullet's victim did a backward somersault out of the saddle and crashed to the ground in a billow of dust.
Perhaps the Sioux brave was already dead by then, his neck broken by the sudden tautening of the rope. Certainly he was dead a moment later when Patrick's horse reared and turned to raise the bound Indian up off the ground and over the back of the burro. Then both horses and the burro bolted, the lifeless form of the brave looking like a bundle of old clothes as it was dragged along under the swirling dust erupted by pumping hooves.
EDGE: A Ride In The Sun (Edge series Book 34) Page 14