Name On The Bullet - Edge Series 6 (3 page)

‘The children! My God, they’re gonna get run down by them murdering . . !’ The shrill-voiced warning came from a woman: her voice pitched high enough by the horror of what was happening so it cut across all else. Drew all eyes to look at the line of children: frozen where they stood in the path of the two horses that bore down upon them at breakneck speed.

Then the rider to the left jerked his mount into such a tight turn it seemed he was bound to spill out of the saddle and bring the struggling animal down with him. But somehow he righted himself, regained control of the whinnying gelding and galloped back along the street. The two children who stood directly in the path of the single horse now bearing down on them suddenly let go of each other’s hands and staggered to the side. And as the rider raced his mount through the gap the terrified boy and girl were enveloped in billowing dust from beneath the pumping hooves of the animal. Then the killer realised the other rider was no longer beside him and looked back: seemed gripped by a mixture of rage and desperation as he commanded his horse into a less dangerous arc – wide enough to swing behind the cemetery.

‘Wendell’s dead for sure!’

‘Got to be!’

‘Hey, you people! Stand clear so the Doc can tend to Wendell!’

The babble of shocked talk was constant as the elderly, distinguished-looking, melancholic faced Driscoll finally reached the shot bridegroom. Where he hunkered down and signalled for the distraught bride, her white dress stained by blood, to be taken away from where she struggled to defend Quaid from interference by anybody. Elsewhere, frantic parents raced along the street to ensure their wailing and trembling children were unharmed where they huddled together for mutual comfort.

It seemed that Edge alone watched the two riders: one who raced by him at a distance of no more than ten feet, the second angling in from around the rear of the churchyard. And saw them come together where the trail plunged into the timber: the point at which they first showed.

‘Damnit, Gene – how can something like this happen in Brogan Falls?’ Blake Anderson switched his shocked gaze rapidly between the head-shaking lawman and the trail beyond Edge, where by now the only trace of the killers was their settling dust.

‘He’s dead!’ a woman shrieked. ‘Wendell’s dead! Poor Julia! It’s so tragic! A widow on her wedding day!’

‘I got to do something,’ Hooper answered raggedly in delayed response to the glowering farmer’s rhetorical question. But seemed unable to wrench his splayed feet up off the ground, his mind in limbo as he swung his head from side to side. His blank eyed stare taking in the array of anguished faces as the sunlit chill air remained filled with the sobbing of women, the wailing of children and the cursing of men.

‘Marshal, get after those killers, why don’t you?’ Judith Nelson commanded. A tall, voluptuously built raven-haired woman of thirty plus, she held her statuesque form in an aggressive attitude and on her broad mouthed, large eyed features was a tacit warning she may fling the bouquet she still clutched in both gnarled hands into Hooper’s shocked face.

‘Sure enough, Miss Nelson: I’ll get right to it.’ Hooper remained perplexed as he peered rapidly around, a man struggling to collect his thoughts. And then he abruptly shook free of the mental and physical paralysis that had gripped him. And clambered up on the cemetery wall, cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled: ‘Earl, Mike, Arnie! Go get your horses and weapons! Consider yourselves sworn in as deputies! We’re going after those killers!’

The grocery store owner, the ranch hand and the blacksmith were galvanised into action: matched Hooper’s lumbering run as they headed for their work places.

‘What about you, Mr Edge?’ Judith Nelson pleaded. One hand was low at her side, still gripping the captured bouquet, while she used the back of the other to wipe tears away from her saucer eyes. ‘Oh, please excuse me for weeping.’

‘No sweat, lady,’ Edge muttered absently as he watched Elliot McGowan and Doc Driscoll lift the bullet-riddled corpse of Wendell Quaid up on to the buggy seat while the worse for liquor Robert McGowan fumbled to unhitch his horse from the rear of the rig. ‘I figure this is one wedding folks have got good reason to cry at.’

CHAPTER • 2

__________________________________________________________________________

AGAINST HIS better judgement, which during the recent past was how he had
taken a hand in much business that was none of his, Edge was persuaded by an entreaty from the distraught Martha McGowan to do what Judith Nelson had implied she thought he should. So, some fifteen minutes after the killers headed hell for leather into the belt of timber south east of town, he was numbered among the five-man posse that galloped out of Brogan Falls.

And not for the first time since he gave up all hope of ever turning over a new leaf and starting a fresh phase of his life – one in which drifting down violent trails had no part - he was required to call upon the skills developed during the long and harsh past. When he had seldom attempted to avoid the trouble his ruling fates seemed set upon thrusting at him from around every turn of the ways he travelled. Also not for the first time the fact that he possessed such hard-won experience was at the outset resented by men reluctant to concede they needed to learn anything from him.

But he understood this attitude in these circumstances. Brogan Falls was a small and isolated community in an area of northern California where serious trouble was invariable caused only by hash winter weather. Run-ins with murderous gunmen were unknown and the job of marshal, although a full time, paid appointment, was not an onerous one. And during Edge’s summer-long stay it had seemed to him the personable Gene Hooper filled no more than an honorary office.

But the community was, in the eyes and hearts of its citizens, a fully-fledged town and as such needed all the civic trimmings: including a peace officer. And Hooper, a former sergeant in the United States Cavalry who came to Stony River Valley to try farming and found he could not take to working the land, was the only candidate to stand for office. However, because his army service had ended fifteen years ago, whatever he learned in uniform that would be of use to him in the present circumstances was more than a little rusty. And Earl Mann, Arnie O’Brian and Mike Costigan had no kind of appropriate experience to call upon.

Edge did not know any of this as fact before he discovered it within a half mile of leaving town. When he yelled from the rear of the group for the others to slow the frantic pace at which they were pursuing the long gone quarry. And the horses were brought to a snorting halt at the start of a curving stretched of turnpike, midway up a gentle slope.

‘Damnit, them two murdering sonsofbitches are going like bats outta hell, mister!’ the squint-eyed, heavily side-whiskered, tobacco-chewing O’Brian complained in a deep-south accent that was unique in this part of the Stony River Valley. And anger led to exaggeration as he added: ‘If we don’t push on hard they’ll likely be way over the damn border and into Mexico while we’re still north of Sacramento!’

‘That’s surely right!’ Costigan made to take up his reins and command a further gallop from the sweat-lathered horse beneath him. The eager ranch hand was in the same midfifties age group as the rest and as powerfully built as O’Brian. He had short-cropped white hair, tiny brown eyes and thick lips with skin that was deeply lined and dark stained from spending his working days outdoors. When he scowled, as he did now, he looked as mean as any man Edge had ever come across. ‘Wendell Quaid was always real good to me in the matter of loans, mister. And I figure to make sure the two guys that gunned him down get all that’s coming to them!’

Edge said evenly: ‘You’ve got something wrong, feller.’

Costigan and the others held back from spurring their mounts into a restart of the headlong chase.

‘What’s that you say, Edge?’ Hooper demanded with a perplexed expression.

‘The one that didn’t shoot the banker – the one who held back from running down on the line of kids: that was a woman.’

‘A woman, for God’s sake!’ the squint-eyed O’Brian sneered. ‘They were both wrapped up in dusters and wearing kerchief masks. So how come you were paying such close attention that you noticed something like that?’

Edge replied evenly: ‘She rode close by me when everyone else was watching to see if the kids were going to get trampled. That’s when I saw she was a blue-eyed blonde. And if she wasn’t female there were sure a couple of womanly items bouncing around inside that coat she was wearing.’

After a few moments of disconcerted silence, Mann spluttered through his misshapen teeth: ‘Okay, so what the hell does that matter? Men, women or grizzly bears – them bastards are high tailing it along this trail and getting further away from justice every second we’re stopped here yakking!’

‘You’ve got good reason to know they plan to stay on the trail?’ Edge asked. The grocery store keeper blurted: ‘Look, I’m for – ‘

‘This guy is talking sense!’ Hooper cut in and swallowed hard. Then he swung out of his saddle and stooped with his hands on his knees to study the trail closely: raised a hand to scratch under his hat and screwed his head around to peer up at Edge. ‘There’s a whole lot of sign on this trail, mister. How do we know they didn’t cut off before now?’

Edge said: ‘If you look hard enough you ought to be able to see a hoof print that shows one of the animals has a nick in the outside of a shoe? Hind nearside?’

O’Brian, Costigan and Mann eyed Edge incredulously, then peered quizzically down at the crouching Hooper who was again paying close attention to the hard packed surface of the trail that had not been moistened by rain in many weeks and was heavily powdered with dust.

‘Hell, they must’ve . . . No, wait! Yeah! Here! And here!’ The lawman stabbed a long index finger at the ground immediately in front of him, then a few yards along the trail. And abruptly a grin spread across his square featured face as he peered up the trail to where it curved out of sight through the trees.

Edge said: ‘It’s the woman’s horse has that nick in the shoe.’

‘How the hell can you know that?’ the ill humoured O’Brian demanded, irritably unconvinced Edge knew what he was talking about.

Hooper swung up into his saddle and set his horse moving at a walking pace. And as Edge and the others fell in behind the lawman he replied:

‘I had time to look for sign on the street while you fellers were still getting ready to ride. And spotted the – ‘

‘Look, what does it matter?’ Mann broke in grimly. ‘We got us a guy here seems to know what he’s about in the matter of tracking. And none of us have got any experience of anything in that line. What’s important it seems to me is that now we got us something certain to look for. Instead of chasing around like scalded cats – maybe following tracks that don’t mean nothing.’

‘Damn right, so we’ve all got to keep looking at the trail.’ Hooper gestured with a hand. ‘Them killers can cut off any which way into these trees whenever they like. And if they do we better spot where it is they change direction or we’re gonna lose them.’

For a time after that, Costigan, Mann and Hooper each vented inarticulate grunts and pointed whenever a print of the damaged horseshoe was seen. While the disgruntled, tobacco-chewing O’Brian remained silent as he kept scowling watch ahead and to either side. Edge’s impassive face revealed nothing of his feelings for what engaged the posse that he felt was doomed to fail. For clearly the gunning down of the Brogan Falls’ banker had not been a spur of the moment killing. It was well planned and had been timed to take place where and when the men of the town would not have guns to hand for instant retaliation. Nor horses close by to start an immediate pursuit.

And the couple would surely have organised their escape with as much careful forethought. Mindful of being chased by a posse, albeit formed of men inexperienced at what they were doing. So the killer and his companion would not gallop for long down the turnpike. At some point they would angle off into the deep cover of the timber. Zigzag; maybe double back; or hide up every now and then to throw off pursuers. Edge was deep in this line of pessimistic thought when Hooper abruptly reined in his horse and growled with controlled excitement: