Name On The Bullet - Edge Series 6 (2 page)

‘You are fortunate, Mr Edge.’ The clerically collared preacher mouthed the words to be lip-read against the mournful music that was obtrusively loud within the confines of the brightly sunlit building. ‘There are a few places left for the tardy.’

Edge had not had much contact with Beck but he had noticed before how the preacher possessed an ability to change expression with facile speed yet continue to give the impression he felt deeply whatever emotion showed on his fleshy, rubicund features. Now as he pointed toward the far end of the rear pew on the left he switched from a broad smile of pleasure at the fullness of his church to a critical frown for a man of whom he did not approve. Next came a look that was a mixture of earnest reverence for the occasion of a marriage service and cheerful goodwill at greeting the McGowan father and daughter as they advanced along the gravel walk from the buggy halted at the cemetery gate. The intense faced Judith Nelson who was the organist took Beck’s cue and the musical tempo abruptly altered from the dirge to something more joyful as the congregation rose to its feet. Thus Edge was able to move more easily along the line of people to the far end of the pew: drawing a gamut of disapproving frowns, strained smiles, winks and sympathetic shrugs from those he brushed by. And a number of other similar fleeting looks were directed toward him from elsewhere in the church as heads were turned to catch a first glimpse of the bride in her wedding gown and her father in a brand new suit.

Edge did not enjoy weddings and had attended few: and when he reached his place for this one as Beck set off up the aisle ahead of the McGowans, he asked himself again just why he had accepted the invitation to be here. And promised to stay for the wedding breakfast in the meeting hall afterwards,
damnit!

‘Julia certainly does look quite lovely, don’t you think?’ Jane Albertson asked in a hushed whisper. The sixty years old, grey haired, dark eyed, hollow cheeked wife of an out of town farmer beamed as she tugged on Edge’s coat sleeve to guide him into following the actions of everyone else in the congregation. Then they all sat down as the preacher and the McGowans reached the head of the aisle where just the groom and the best man remained standing.

‘Can’t tell nothing from this side of the veil, woman,’ Blake Albertson growled to his wife. The slightly older, strong featured, solidly built farmer with a heavy grey moustache and a nose that looked to have been broken often was one of the men who had envied Edge his freedom to smoke outside the church. And now expressed sympathy about the taciturn criticism directed at him inside.

‘I got to admit I didn’t look at her, ma’am,’ Edge murmured and the sound of his voice drew more frowns of disapproval along with some hushing sounds as Beck reached the altar. There did a slow about face and cast another glance of pleasurable satisfaction over the throng of people before he began to intone the opening words of the marriage ceremony. Edge’s response to Jane Albertson was a white lie that allowed him to avoid an impulse to speak a harsh truth: that in his opinion Julia McGowan could never be called lovely. Sexually alluring, sure: with the kind of face and body that men – certainly this man – found stirring. A woman whose appearance had more to offer in the way of getting a man hot under the collar and inside his pants than a score of conventionally pretty, even beautiful females. All summer long working in her father’s fields while she toiled nearby in full sight, or was in the house helping her mother with the domestic chores and during some restless nights in a room just a few feet from where Julia slept, Edge had every now and then sure been conscious of the woman’s attractions.

He could not be so sure, as he by turns sat down and rose to his feet to the dictates of the service of matrimony while he half listened to the preacher and failed to join in the hymns that were being sung with such gusto by most of the congregation, if Julia was one reason he had elected to help her father at first tend to and then harvest the crops in his fields. Certainly she had never encouraged his attention, nor been more than courteously amiable toward him: as was right and proper for a twenty-eight years old woman in the company of a man approaching twice her age. And, too boot, a woman being courted strongly by a suitor of her own age. The couple with a long term understanding that was reaching its expected culmination here in the church today.

But wasn’t an ageing man entitled to as many fanciful dreams as a young one with a better chance of getting wishful thoughts fulfilled: and if he was building a financial stake and living in comfort into the bargain, so much the better?

‘Ageing man, be damned!’
He peered around at his immediate neighbours aligned in the pew: concerned he may have spoken the mild curse aloud. And saw that if he did so it had gone unnoticed while everyone was enthusiastically diverted by a hymn. Then the music was finished and Beck’s voice rang out above the shuffling of feet and a bout of communal coughing and throat clearing.

‘Brethren, let us pray!’

The body of sound created by people following the preacher’s instructions and lowering themselves to kneel in the confines of the close packed pews was suddenly silenced: this when the church door swung violently open and heads swivelled to peer toward the latecomer. A sibilant buzz of whispered talk started and ended abruptly when the man half stumbled inside, raised his hands and moved them to signal a tacit apology for the clumsy interruption. The preacher intoned icily:

‘I say
again:
brethren, let us pray!’

An elderly woman in the right rear of the church rasped: ‘Kindly close the door on the cold, man!’

‘Profuse apologies, ma’am.’ The voice of the latecomer on the threshold was slurred. He closed the door and leaned gratefully against it as most in the congregation dropped to its knees or lowered heads in token genuflection. While here and there throughout the church heads were raised and turned. And whispered words were hissed as Beck shared his glowering attention between the open prayer book in his hands, the drunk at the bottom end of the aisle and those in the congregation craning necks to satisfy their curiosity about the intruder. A moment later Beck commenced the marriage litany in the manner of a martinet army officer addressing a troop of incompetent recruits and Edge overheard a smattering of disjointed words from nearby people and formed them into a hybrid sentence:
That’s her grandpa and he’s drunk as a skunk!

During the time he had worked and lived so closely with the McGowan family, he had never heard of a grandfather. But this man did bear a certain family resemblance to Elliot: albeit twenty years older, with a dissipated look to his short, squat frame and heavily bearded face. The unkempt beard and what remained of the hair on his head was grey rather than the blond of the farmer but they shared the same green eye colour, a faint hook to the hose and thrust of the jaw.

But Edge had never seen Elliot express the degree of embittered contempt that showed frequently on the face of the long coated man at the door as the wedding ceremony progressed. All the time shaking his head and often swallowing hard, like he wanted to shout his bad feelings aloud but managed to check the compulsion.

‘ . . . pour upon you the riches of his grace, sanctify and bless you. That you may please him both in body and soul, and live together in holy love
UNTIL YOUR LIVES’ END
,
AMEN!
Beck spoke the concluding word in a tone of unquestionable finality. Then raised his voice higher to be heard above the shuffling and creaking, sighing and coughing as the people straightened up from attitudes of prayer: ‘Miss Nelson, if you please!’

The spinster daughter of the local rancher was clearly startled by the tone of the command. And there was another low-keyed chorus of surprised whispering before the familiar chords of the wedding march filled the church and everyone stood.

‘Hank hasn’t given us a sermon,’ Jane Albertson complained.

‘Reckon there’s more here pleased by that than ain’t,’ her husband countered sardonically and stroked his heavy moustache to disguise a grin.

For a few moments the man in the doorway was confused by instructions rasped at him from many quarters then realised he was being told to open the door. Did so and stepped out into the cold sunlight of afternoon to leave the way clear for the newly wed couple to cross the threshold.

Julia was better at hiding her perplexity with a wan smile than her disconcerted new husband. Wendell Quaid, who ran the local bank, was of an age with his wife but looked a great deal younger. A little shorter than her and much paler because of his line of business that kept him inside during the working day, he had a vaguely good looking face, any strength of character marred by his need to wear thick lens spectacles to correct extreme short-sightedness. And as he moved down the aisle he seemed to be struggling to see clearly the cause of the earlier interruption and the reason for the abrupt end to the wedding service: oblivious to the smiling good wishes expressed by his fellow townspeople on either side.

Because those at the front of the church were first to follow the newlyweds, Edge was among the last to leave the crowd-warmed building and step out into the chill fall air. Where excited women showered rice upon the Quaids while many men now felt able to step beyond the cemetery wall and strike matches to light pipes, cigars and cigarettes. And a bunch of yelling children raced along the street toward the meeting hall where they knew food for the wedding breakfast was ready and waiting to be eaten.

The formal duty of ritualistically giving his daughter to Quaid done, Elliot McGowan was taking no interest in the animated celebration near the church doorway. Instead, watched by his wife with overt trepidation and a few other people with unconcealed curiosity, he was engaged in a low-toned, scowling-faced conversation with his father. Gesticulating angrily with both hands toward the older man who held up one of his hands in a defensive attitude while the other was thrust deep into a pocket of his well-tailored and well-worn overcoat.

‘What d’you think of it, Edge?’ Gene Hooper asked as he finally got his pipe to draw well and breathed out a cloud of aromatic smoke. ‘Old Bob McGowan ain’t been near or by these parts in God knows how many years. And now he shows up large as life in the middle of his granddaughter’s wedding. Pretty damn drunk, it looks like.’

‘It’s been a long time since I was a part of a family so I’m a little rusty about family matters these days, feller.’ Edge and the town marshal moved away from the buggy with a travel stained saddled piebald hitched to the rear and went toward the angle of the cemetery wall from where one of them had earlier watched the wedding guests assemble at the church. Now he and Hooper studied two riders astride bay geldings as they emerged at an easy pace from the timber at the end of the Sacramento Turnpike some three hundred yards away. They were of matching heights and builds, tall and sparsely fleshed: dressed identically in black topcoats with the collars turned up, grey Stetsons with the brims pulled down and kerchiefs wrapped around their lower faces, keeping as warm as possible in the increasing cold of the afternoon.

‘It seems like it’s the day for strangers to show up, Mr Edge.’ The broadly built, ruggedly handsome, forty years old lawman adjusted the upturned collar of his worse-forwear topcoat and rubbed his hands together. And shifted his attention away from the approaching riders to the chattering people grouped around the newlyweds as they moved down the gravel walk from the church to the buggy. A louder burst of shrill shouts and laughter signalled the tossing of the bride’s bouquet that was caught by Judith Nelson - who happened to be the only single woman of marriageable age left in Brogan Falls now Julia had a husband.

Edge, too, looked away from the approaching riders, his narrow-eyed attention drawn by the same increase of noise and activity at the churchyard gate. Then like everyone else he swung around to peer toward the end of the trail. This as the thudding of galloping hooves became the dominant sound in a sudden silence from everywhere else. On many faces, foreboding displaced perplexed surprise at this second interruption to the wedding proceedings. For the sudden burst of speed allied with the all-enveloping garb of the riders was abruptly seen as menacing.

Hooper unclenched his teeth and snatched the pipe from his mouth to yell: ‘Hey, what’s your damn hurry?’

‘The kids! Watch the kids!’ The warning was roared by Mike Costigan, who was one of Owen Nelson’s ranch hands: and his words immediately diverted attention from the galloping riders to the street between the church and the meeting hall.

Where a half dozen small children were engaged in a game that required them to link hands and form a line that stretched from one side of the street to the other.

‘This is crazy!’ Hooper reached instinctively for where his holstered revolver would have come to hand in normal circumstances. But like every other man here, he had not brought his gun to church.

The riders reached the corner of the churchyard wall with no easing of pace and the one crouched low in the saddle on the horse to the right snatched a long barrelled revolver out of a deep pocket of his dark hued duster. There was nothing Edge or Hooper could do except watch as the riders raced by them, one taking deliberate aim with the sixgun. Then as they drew level the buggy three shots rang out. The first aimed behind the rig, the second across its roof and the third over the back of the rearing horse in the traces. Screams and shouts filled the gunsmoke-laced air as all but two of the throng of people at the gateway scattered. One who remained was Wendell Quaid: blood spurting from three wounds in his inert chest as he lay where he had been blasted to the ground by the volley. While his bride dropped to her knees, tipped forward and swept up the shot man’s limp head and shoulders to press him against her sob-wracked body. Just for a moment the diminishing sounds of the galloping horses were lost amid the melee of shrieking voices.