Name On The Bullet - Edge Series 6 (20 page)

Because of his low vantage point Edge was unable to see a river among the sprawl of buildings. But he guessed both the valleys probably spilled creek water to join at the fork and form a broader river flowing ultimately into the Pacific Ocean far off across California. It was not a large town in terms of population but it was spread across a broad tract of land. Like the builder of each house and business establishment over the years had been determined to have his home or enterprise surrounded by sufficient space to avoid living cheek by jowl with his neighbours: which into the bargain allowed for future expansion that had yet to happen.

There was no clearly defined main street and no obvious mid-town area that Edge could see as he moved off the base of the slope and came first up to what seemed to be the largest building in town. Like most, it was of clapboard construction, but had two stories whereas all the others were of just one. Built directly on to the trail to the left side, it had a faded sign hung on the balcony rail at second story level that proclaimed it was the
JUNCTION HOTEL.
The double doors at the once grand entrance were securely fastened with planks nailed across them and all the windows were boarded up. So, inevitably, the dilapidated hotel was not one of the many buildings with chimneys that leaked smoke into the pall hanging like a dirty grey mist above the widely spread town that clearly had not lived up to the hopes of its earliest settlers.

There was a stone church without a steeple in the centre of a neglected cemetery down the trail on the others side from the hotel and maybe it was put to its intended use by devout citizens each Sunday. Then came a stage line depot that was still in active business the man attending to a half dozen horses in the corral out back showing no overt interest in Edge as he rode by. On the other side, beyond a broad area of untended scrub and brush was a meeting hall that was as derelict as the hotel. Next a straggle of houses on both sides of the trail, none of them large, all with signs of current use and some in better condition than others.

Occasionally a woman in an age group from the middle years to elderly glanced indifferently out at him from an open doorway or back yard. And once a wizen man looked up from lethargically digging a vegetable plot to acknowledge with a weary wave of an arthritic hand the arrival of the stranger. Then he reached the point where the trail forded a thirty feet wide watercourse a half mile downstream from where the two tributaries joined. Nearby were some large rocks and various lengths of bleached timber that suggested a bridge had once spanned the shallow, slow running water of what was presumably the Pine River.

Beyond the ford the community showed greater signs of small town activity in and close to the buildings that were scattered far and wide on both sides of the trail, the more distant ones reached by hard packed tracks. Directly fronting the trail on the right was the telegraph office, diagonally across from the schoolhouse at the rear of a play yard. Then around a curve the law office stood opposite a laundry. From the school came a chorus of youthful voices reciting a mathematical table and from the laundry the smell of steam. Along from this was the Timberland Saloon which was surely where George Guthrie had lost money and then gotten drunk enough to almost lose his reason.

The red bearded, lanky and beanpole thin lawman was in the telegraph office and looked at Edge longer and harder than anybody else had done so far. And some children peered out at him with that wishful gaze that is invariably seen on the faces of youngsters when they are enclosed in a musty schoolroom on a fine day.

He finally reined in his horse and swung out from the saddle before a rambling, falling down but still serviceable L-shaped building with a crudely painted sign hung above the open doorway: SMITH’S
EMPORIUM - If we ain’t got it you’ve got to go a long way to get it.
In the smeared, dust encrusted window of the longer section of the L was a display of cooking pots and crockery and some untidy piles of labelled cans, jars, bottles and sacks. By the time Edge had hitched his gelding to the rail set crosswise to the angle of the building a short, fat, blond headed man of forty of so had appeared on the threshold of the store. He wore a grubby waist apron and sweat stained shirt and on his fleshy face was a broad smile that showed no more than a half dozen badly discoloured teeth.

He greeted cheerfully: ‘Good to see you, stranger. The name’s John Smith, which I know is kind of common. But I provide uncommonly good service to local folks and them that are passing through. And I sure do hope I can supply your needs at a price you can afford to pay?’

Edge advanced on the doorway as he answered: ‘And if you can’t, it’s a long way to go to find someone who can, the sign says?’

Smith’s smile became a raucous laugh of genuine good humour. ‘To Sacramento if you plan on still riding the way you were when you hit town, mister. The sign is just a kind of joke I painted one time after drinking too much liquor at the Timberland. If you don’t want nothing that’s too far out of the ordinary then I reckon I’ll be able to fill your requirements.’

He remained in the doorway of his establishment so that Edge needed to stop short or collide with the storekeeper’s bulky form.

‘Trail supplies for myself and my horse. Good enough and cheap. I’m saving myself for the luxuries when I strike it rich.’

John Smith’s big frame shook with laughter again. Then, like he had proved something by barring his customer entrance until he chose to admit him, he stepped back and made an exaggerated ushering gesture as he assured: ‘Then you’ve found the right place. And you won’t be disappointed, because a man with modest expectations hardly ever is, right?’

‘Much obliged.’ Edge entered the store that was well stocked with a comprehensive array of the goods that could be seen as examples in the display window. Like the man who ran the place, his premises were far from being neat and tidy – so maybe lacked a woman’s touch? But the store had about it a quality of comforting disorder for a dishevelled traveller. There was a ten feet length of counter set slantwise into a far corner: on it a stack of wrapping paper, a ball of string and a pair of scissors. Smith went behind this counter, reached beneath it to find a pencil and suggested it would be best for Edge to list his needs.

‘That way I don’t have to keep covering the same piece of floor time and time again, mister . . ?’

Edge did not supply his name in response to the implied query but Smith showed no sign of pique as he went on: ‘When a man gets to be my age and carries the extra quantity of weight I do it helps to keep the hard labour down as much as possible, uh?’

Edge recited his needs and the storekeeper listed them on the corner of a sheet of wrapping paper, tore it off and came out from behind the counter. Began to move to and fro about the store to collect the necessary provisions. He attended to his business efficiently and silently for awhile, then posed the question:

‘You rode in from the west, it seemed to me?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Did you come from as far away as the town of Broadwater, do you mind me asking?’

There was a footfall on the threshold and Edge turned to look at the newcomer while Smith merely glanced toward the doorway then continued with his chore.

‘Or me, stranger. I’d like to know that, too.’ He was the local lawman who Edge had glimpsed briefly studying him from out of the telegraph office a few minutes ago. About fifty, a tall, skinny and somehow sickly-looking man with a red straggly beard: wearing a tarnished badge pinned to his vest. When he stepped inside the store and fixed Edge with a weak eyed gaze a nervous tic showed for a few moments at the centre of his left cheek as he announced: ‘The name’s Haydon. And I’m the Pine County sheriff.’

Edge replied: ‘I’ve ridden through a lot of towns. Never did get to take note of the names of some of them.’

Haydon sighed, dug a half smoked cheroot from his shirt pocket, angled it into the side of his mouth and struck a match on the doorframe.

‘I figured you for that kind, mister,’ he said without rancour. ‘Made mentioned to Ross Pope when we both saw you ride by his telegraph office that you was surely one of the drifting kind that don’t like to have his past pried into.’

‘And you’re a man of sound judgement, sheriff,’ Edge said evenly. Haydon blew out a stream of smoke. ‘The thing is, I wouldn’t usually give two cents to know where you’ve been and what you’ve been up to from the time I first saw you just now way back to the time when you was old enough to do nothing more than mess your pants for yourself, mister.’ He flicked the dead match to the ground outside. ‘But it would be useful for me to know why the telegraph’s not working between here and Broadwater. So I thought maybe you saw where the lightning hit the line or a tree toppled over and snapped it? Means there ain’t no communication between here and Broadwater. Which in truth ain’t no great hardship unless there’s some kind of emergency, though I can’t think what. So, if you can’t help me, you can’t help me. It ain’t no skin off my nose.’

‘I can’t help you, sheriff,’ Edge lied evenly.

‘But there was no harm in asking?’

‘Not to me, feller.’

The lawman made to swing around and leave, but only half turned then took the cheroot from between his teeth to ask: ‘Did you by any chance stop off at the Guthrie place, mister? That’s the farm on the other side of the hill?’ He gestured with his free hand toward the wooded slope to the west.

‘I ate some breakfast there.’

Edge was aware that Smith, who had been indifferent to the exchange before, was suddenly interested as he continued his back and forth shambling to collect supplies and heap them on the counter.

‘Rachel Guthrie’s a fine cook and a real hospitable woman,’ Haydon said. ‘Was George there? That’s her husband?’

‘He showed up a little before I left.’

‘Did you see anything of him behind you when you headed from the Guthrie place into town?’ the bearded lawman asked.

‘You’re one of them he owes money to from the card game last night, I guess?’ Edge suggested.

Haydon smiled bleakly and Smith glowered as he shuffled behind the counter to begin the wrapping chore and explained: ‘Slim and me and a couple of others, mister. George Guthrie ain’t never not paid his gambling debts before, but he ain’t never lost that much nor got to be so falling down drunk before either.’

‘Nor been so long in coming back to town with the money owed before,’ Haydon put in grimly.

‘There’s a good reason for that,’ Edge said.

‘Uh?’ they asked in anxious unison.

‘When I left his place he was sleeping off what ailed him,’ Edge replied, aware but not caring that he was not quite telling the whole truth.

‘Yeah, I reckon he’d need to do that sure enough,’ Haydon allowed. ‘Considering the amount of Jack Whitney’s whiskey he put away.’

Smith, who was as overweight as the lawman was sparsely built, sighed and growled:

‘Gee, that’s fair enough, I’d say.’

He picked up a pencil and began to write figures alongside each item, on the list of provisions.

‘Obliged to you, mister,’ Haydon said. ‘Seems we’ll just have to wait for the people over in Broadwater to fix the telegraph and then wire Ross that the line’s working again. I’ll see you later, John.’

The storekeeper raised his free hand while he continued to use the pencil to total the column of figures then did a double check and announced: ‘That’ll be ten bucks even by knocking off a couple of cents, mister. Ain’t no bargains in there, but I can assure you it don’t include no overcharging, neither.’

‘No sweat.’ Edge dug a slim roll of bills out of his hip pocket, peeled off two fives and handed them to the storekeeper. ‘I hope you get what’s owed by George Guthrie as easy as this some time soon.’ He picked up as many of the packages as he could manage and Smith gathered what was left then trailed his customer out into the warm morning where shadows were inexorably shortening toward noon.

While he waited for Edge to stow his armful of supplies into a saddlebag, the fat man looked around, squinting in the bright sunlight and said: ‘George will be back here just as soon as he can is my guess. Pine River is kind of a spread out community but it’s close knit enough so nobody ever gets to cheat on his neighbours nor do anything bad to any of them without . . .’ He paused then went on as he began to pass his load of groceries to Edge:

‘Well, it wouldn’t be a good place to live if a lot of folks had reason not to like you, you know what I mean, mister?’

‘I guess I do, feller.’ As Edge swung up astride his horse he glanced around in the same way as the storekeeper had done earlier and from his elevated vantage point he saw a cluster of fast moving riders that Smith had failed to spot from where he stood. There were a half dozen or so of them, recently emerged at a gallop from the trees at the base of the slope to the west of Pine River Junction. They remained in sight for just a few seconds: dark figures against the lighter coloured backdrop of a billowing dust cloud raised by the pumping hooves of their mounts. Then they rode down on to level ground and were hidden behind the derelict hotel. He showed the storekeeper a brief sardonic smile and added: ‘Though not from personal experience, feller. Because I always try to make myself well liked by everyone wherever I go.’

Smith exploded into one of his frame shuddering gusts of laughter then lifted a big hand in farewell. ‘If you say so, I’ll believe you do that, mister. Me, I take an instant liking to everyone who pays me what I’m owed me so right now I think you’re a real fine guy.’