Name On The Bullet - Edge Series 6 (22 page)

‘Get that damn lamp lit, Fred!’ The triumphant man now had a nervous tremor in his voice.

Then a match was struck and the acrid taint of sulphur masked the aromas of the pine forest for a few moments before the smell of burning oil became pungently predominant. Edge groaned with miserable pain and sour dejection as he allowed his right hand to drop away from where it had instinctively moved toward the holstered Colt in a token attempt to protect himself from yet another new danger.

‘Yeah, that was one of them sure enough!’

Edge recognised the voice a moment before he looked up and saw the faces of three men in the bright light of a kerosene lamp held aloft.

‘You’re the one called Edge, ain’t that so?’ There was a shrill tone of triumph in George Guthrie’s voice. ‘So where’s the little squirt? The one that’s called Steele, right?’

Edge did not know the skinny young man holding the lamp. But he recognised the bearded local sheriff, who shared a scowl between Guthrie and Edge as he urged:

‘Calm down, George. It looks to me like he’s been hurt. And he ain’t thinking so clear, I figure.’ He took the lamp from Fred who was no more than seventeen of so and the youngster surrendered it without protest, his callow, acne-scarred face fixed with a nervous frown. The tall and just as slightly built lawman asked: ‘What happened to you, mister?’

‘I made the mistake of thinking I could trust a feller,’ Edge replied bitterly, touched fingertips to the more pained side of his head and felt the crusting of congealed blood at his temple.

‘Well, I’m damn glad you got hit on the damn head the same way as I did!’ Guthrie growled, his gloating almost childish.

‘I’ll take this.’ The lanky sheriff stooped and snatched the Colt out of Edge’s holster. Then he slid the walnut butted revolver under his own gun belt and stooped lower with the lamp to better see the damage done to Edge by the Colt Hartford rifle used as a club. He pulled a face and offered the opinion: ‘So your buddy hit you real hard before he took off, it looks like?’

‘But he didn’t steal your horse,’ the youthful Fred announced flatly, like he felt he needed to say something to play some kind of part in the capture. He was thin of face with straw coloured hair and just the suspicion of a moustache.

Edge spoke aloud the thought that referred to his first encounter with the Virginian a long time ago in Mexico. ‘This time he had one of his own.’

‘What?’ Haydon asked in response to the cryptic comment, then shrugged as he straightened up. ‘Can you make it to your feet without help, mister?

Edge murmured: ‘A feller never knows what he can do until he tries.’ He pushed both hands against the ground and rolled on to his side to make it halfway upright, grimacing and silently cursing. And would have toppled back down had not the lawman hooked an arm around his middle and showed a greater degree of strength than he looked to possess as he hefted the taller and heavier man to his feet. Then Haydon stepped away and Edge swayed as his pine forest surroundings lurched out of focus. But moments later they cleared, tilted and returned to normal. He looked at the trio of men standing in a line: Haydon with the lamp, Fred holding the reins of Edge’s gelding and Guthrie with a Winchester rifle held horizontally across his belly. ‘Obliged to you,’ he said after he had taken several deep breaths and decided he could handle the pain in silence and stand unaided for awhile.

‘And Fred and me are sure obliged to you for yelling out the way you did,’ Guthrie crowed, a half smile in his blue eyes glinting out of a face that was recently scrubbed and shaved. ‘Which let us know just where you were hid in the timber right here.’

Haydon scowled impatiently at the gloating farmer and asked of Edge: ‘Are you thinking straight now, mister?’

‘Uh?’

‘Slim means after you took that crack on the head, I guess.’ Guthrie’s enjoyment of the situation was expanding by the moment. ‘I sure as hell know how it can be. From having something similar happen to me – like you can maybe recall?’

‘Yeah,’ Edge said, ignoring Guthrie to look at Haydon.

‘So you understand why I’m arresting you?’ The lawman scratched in his beard much like Steele used to.

Edge spat to the side, ran the back of a hand along his bristled jaw line and said flatly:

‘Straight enough anyway to know I can’t give you a legal argument against that right now, sheriff.’

‘And you ain’t in any shape to do any resisting arrest, I figure?’ Guthrie punctuated the taunt with a short laugh.

‘Why would I want to, feller? If the local jailhouse has got a nice quiet cell I can rest up in?’

‘Pine River Junction is a nice quiet town altogether.’ The lawman thrust the lamp at Guthrie then drew his own Colt and gestured with it for Edge to move. ‘Fred, you bring his horse. But take that rifle of his out of the bucket first.’

‘Hey, there’s another one in the bedroll, damnit!’ Fred exclaimed.

‘So get that one as well, you dumb cluck!’ Guthrie snarled.

The anxious young man did as he was instructed, responded to a nod from Haydon and took the lead in moving back toward the turnpike. Guthrie was next, carrying the lamp in one hand and his Winchester in the other, and the lawman with the levelled revolver brought up the rear behind Edge.

Out on the trail, the moon shone brightly and Guthrie doused the lamp and set it down for the chimney to cool close to where the men’s three horses were hitched to a clump of brush.

‘Okay, let’s get mounted and head on back,’ Haydon said. ‘Now I ain’t gonna tie you up, Edge. But you better know that if you try to make a run for it, each of us will be firing a weapon at you. And young Whitney here has won the first prize for skeet shooting at the county fair for three years in a row.’

‘No sweat.’ Edge signalled that it was his intention to attempt to mount his gelding without help and the lawman nodded his understanding and watched him carefully for a few moments.

Then Haydon swung up into his saddle and the other two did likewise, Fred taking charge of the cold and darkened lamp after passing Edge’s Winchester and the Colt Hartford that was not Steele’s to Guthrie. Edge found that getting mounted was not so difficult or as painful as struggling to his feet had been a few minutes earlier. But the pounding in his head made the prospect of resting up appealing: albeit on a cot in a jailhouse cell.

‘Ride on, mister,’ the lawman ordered.

‘And don’t you make the mistake of thinking we country bumpkins won’t shoot if we have to,’ Guthrie growled. ‘The reward posted for you and your buddy is gonna get paid whether you’re dead or alive.’

‘Somebody didn’t waste any time,’ Edge muttered, delved into a shirt pocket for the makings and found a five-dollar bill was wrapped around his tobacco poke. He recalled that Steele had taken a share of the recently purchased supplies and rasped bitterly: ‘No amount of cash, feller.’

‘It’ll be enough for Fred and me!’ Guthrie challenged.

‘It wasn’t the reward money I was meaning,’ Edge muttered and added cryptically:

‘And I wasn’t talking to anybody here.’

‘That guy you and your buddy killed outside of Broadwater was a federal marshal, mister,’ Haydon said. ‘Now if somebody put a fatal hole in me, there’s not too many folks would give a shit. But the government of these United States don’t take lightly to the murder of that kind of peace officer.’

‘Five thousand apiece is what Washington has posted for you and your partner,’ the youngster said tensely. ‘Dead or alive, like George told you.’

‘I ain’t been worth that much in a long time,’ Edge murmured ruefully as he pushed the five spot back into his pocket and began to roll a cigarette.

‘You’ve been a wanted man with a price on your head before, Mr Edge?’ Fred Whitney asked, the tension in his voice suggesting he was even more nervous that before while his sparsely fleshed, pitted face expressed earnest interest.

Edge growled: ‘I really meant that I haven’t had that much money to my name for a long time, kid.’

‘Hey, that’s something we never thought of!’ Guthrie exclaimed with rising excitement.

‘If you and me send some telegraphs, maybe we’ll find out there’s a whole lot more cash riding on this guy’s head. What do you think, Slim? As sheriff you can make them kind of inquiries and – ‘

‘Go to hell!’ Haydon cut in sourly. ‘I’m doing my sworn duty by taking him into custody while he’s still in my jurisdiction. And I won’t be able to claim a cent over and above my regular pay for doing it.’

‘But – ‘ Guthrie started.

Haydon interrupted him: ‘If you bounty hunters want to get richer than you already figure to be, you send your own damn wires and pay Ross Pope out of your own pockets for the service.’

Guthrie vented a growl of disgust and asked: ‘What do you think, Fred? You figure we ought to stump up a few bucks and have Ross send a couple of telegraphs? See if this guy is worth more to us than what Washington’s putting up for him?’

‘I don’t know, George,’ the nervous young man answered in a worried tone. ‘Slim said we’re bounty hunters and I never did set out to be one of that kind. I just came to give the sheriff a hand if he needed it. The one time for just the one job. Bounty hunting ain’t a line of work that appeals to me and I surely wouldn’t want it to be known I – ‘

‘Aw, forget it!’ Guthrie cut in sourly. ‘I reckon this guy probably ain’t never done nothing much more criminal than getting drunk in public or spitting on the sidewalk until him and his buddy plugged that federal marshal.’

Edge only half listened to the exchange and never felt any impulse to contribute to it. Nor was he irritated by how the men discussed him like he was not within earshot. But he liked it better when the talk ended. Because the silence outside of the sounds made by the slow moving horses helped to ease the throbbing ache in his head. And he was better able to think constructively: turn his mind to issues other than what a crazy fool he had been to get suckered by Adam Steele. And how he would surely make the sonofabitch pay if he ever got the opportunity.

‘You got the time, sheriff?’ he asked.

Haydon dug into his vest pocket for a fob watch and tilted the face to catch the moonlight. ‘It’s a little after nine, mister.’

‘Why in tarnation does the time matter to you?’ Guthrie challenged sneeringly. Edge ignored the embittered farmer as he turned his easier mind to events since he and Steele made to leave the area of timber where he had rested up so peacefully – before Steele enforced a second, unwelcome period of sleep. The light had been failing when the sonofabitch showed up and he was able to make a rough estimate of the time he and the Virginian were together. And he took into account the degree of pain when he awoke and the time it took him to regain some degree of composure. Figured he was unconscious for less than an hour: but not much less. Which meant that the bushwhacking Johnnie Reb was long gone heading for Sacramento when the three men from Pine River Junction rode down the turnpike and found him. So even if Steele would have been prepared to help him cut loose from his present bind he was now no place nearby to witness the situation.

‘What’s that you say, mister?’

Edge emerged from his reverie and saw that the youthful Fred Whitney eyed him quizzically while Haydon remained stoically indifferent to him and Guthrie continued to scowl at the world in general.

‘I said something?’

The kid shrugged and suggested: ‘You were just thinking aloud, maybe?’

‘You called somebody a dirty name, it sounded like,’ the lawman offered. ‘I guess that partner of yours who ran out on you?’

Edge faced front and murmured pensively: ‘Yeah. So it’s right what people say: talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity because I’m sure good and mad at Adam Steele.’

‘He take anything from you?’ Haydon asked.

Edge’s tone was sardonic. ‘You mean outside of my good nature, feller?’

Guthrie gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Yeah, Rachel said as how she thought you and the squirt were real nice fellers. Easy going, it seemed to her. And she was real shocked when the Broadwater posse came by and told her you were wanted for murder.’

‘Killed a lawman named Al Strachen, who had Steele in custody, taking him back east,’

Haydon put in evenly. ‘Before you jumped him?

‘Did the fellers from Broadwater say that’s what I did?’ Edge turned to look at the Pine River sheriff.

‘Hell, will you listen to me?’ Haydon shook his head and showed a half smile of embarrassment. ‘Tying to be what I sure as hell ain’t! No mister, as far as anyone else knows, Steele got free himself and killed Strachen while he was doing it. Then he met up with you later. It’s just how the pair of you was riding together that made it look like you had a hand in the killing. And it ain’t my crime to solve, anyhow. Not with Washington involved.’

‘But if you confess to Slim that’s how it happened, it’d make him look good to them smart asses back east, uh?’ Guthrie suggested eagerly.

‘Forget it, George,’ Haydon rasped.

‘And it could make your stay in the Pine River jailhouse more comfortable,’ the farmer went on insistently. ‘And Fred and me could make it even better for you if we had a mind to. Provide you with some home comforts – if you’ll own up to being wanted for more than that killing over near Broadwater, right?’

‘What kind of home comforts would they be, feller?’ Edge asked evenly as he squeezed out the fire from the cigarette and dropped the dead butt to the trail.