Name On The Bullet - Edge Series 6 (33 page)

‘We were wrong!’ a beanpole thin woman of middle years admitted with a toss of her head. ‘But two wrongs to do not a right, reverend. As you well know.’ She glared at Edge and rasped: ‘And you ought to be ashamed of yourself, mister! Acting against the opinions of so many respectable and God fearing people.’

Edge started to move among the group outside the gate and they parted to allow him passage as he replied flatly: ‘Right now I’m not so concerned by the opinions of anybody. Interested in just the one body. Ladies, feller.’

He tipped his hat and moved through the gateway and up the walk as the two gravediggers emerged from the church carrying spades and a sheet of burlap. Both were in the forties, thick set and with weather beaten features. One had an unkempt moustache and the other chewed tobacco. As Edge and the two men moved beyond the rear of the church the babble of voices from outside the cemetery gate swelled, then quickly faded after Haydon said something louder than anyone else did and the disgruntled group started to disperse.

‘I’m Reno,’ the moustached man introduced himself. ‘This is the place, as I recall?’

They halted beside a low, grass-covered mound with a warped and sun bleached small wooden cross at one end. Reno’s flat eyed gazed shifted between Edge and Proctor, who shrugged and wiped a runnel of tobacco juice from a corner of his constantly moving mouth. Edge hunkered low and saw that the lettering on the cross had long since faded into illegibility. But he had already taken his bearings as they moved toward the far corner of the cemetery and he nodded as he said:

‘Yeah, for sure this is where the Virginian is buried. Go to it.’

Proctor began work immediately, thrust his spade powerfully into the summer hardened turf and levered out a sod. Reno dropped the burlap sheet close by and warned in melancholy tones:

‘Mister, you ought to know that there won’t be too much of him left to see. So don’t you get up your hopes of recognising anything about the guy me and Hal buried all them years ago.’

‘No sweat, feller.’ Edge went to lean his rump against the top of the stone wall a few feet away, took out the makings and rolled a cigarette. And reflected just for a few moments on what had happened soon after the last time he smoked a cigarette beside a cemetery wall: back in Brogan Falls. He kept his expression impassive while he watched the two gravediggers reverse their customary chore. Reno and Proctor were equally taciturn as they toiled, using the spades skilfully and clearly used to working together at close proximity in a confined space.

Then a woman appeared from around the side of the church. Hannah Foster, who was obviously disconcerted as she moved with tentative steps toward the scene of the quiet activity. She called from some yards off: ‘Is it all right for me to be here Edge?

‘Hey, Hannie’s back in town, Josh,’ Proctor said with a broad grin of genuine pleasure to see the woman, spilling more dark tobacco juice down his chin. ‘How are you doing, Hannie, sweetheart?’

‘Be my guest, lady,’ Edge replied to the woman’s I inquiry.

‘I’m okay, Hal,’ she told the one gravedigger and smiled fleetingly at the other one.

‘Josh. I guess this ain’t the time and place to ask you two boys if you missed me while I’ve been gone?’

‘Be time enough in another place to show you later, uh?’ Proctor said, guffawed and then set the pace in starting to use the spade again.

The woman moved up to stand alongside Edge, watched the work for a few moments in pensive silence, then said: ‘I heard you got the go-ahead. And that nobody gave much of a damn except for the usual bunch of prims-and-propers.’

Edge dropped the cigarette butt into the grass and ground out the fire under a boot heel. ‘There can be times every now and again when things turn out to be easier than a feller has any right to expect.’

She rose up on to the toes of her high buttoned boots and leaned close toward him: like she was about to kiss him on the cheek. But instead she half turned her head and whispered quickly into his ear: ‘There could be some easy to make money for you, Edge. If you want to take a short walk along the street?’

He pitched his voice at a normal conversational level when he answered: ‘Not until the digging’s done, lady.’

‘I’m talking about what happened back in Brogan Falls,’ she pressed on, still whispering and clearly irritated by his lack of enthusiasm.

‘Yeah, I figured that, lady.’

Her annoyance with him expanded as she directed a glance at the two gravediggers. And struggled to find a form of words that would not convey vital information to the obviously eavesdropping Reno and Proctor.

‘The couple that those people from Brogan Falls thought were me and Vic?’

He sighed. ‘Yeah.’

‘The two Vic and me saw high tailing it away from that town?’

‘I know who you mean, lady.’

‘They’re staying here in town at the Junction Hotel. I know she is, anyway. And it’s just got be the guy who was riding with her that’s right now holed up in her room with a busted ankle. Which he broke when he got drunk in the Timberland, I heard. Celebrating after an old man who’s staying at the hotel gave him a wad of money, I’ve been told.’

‘Now you’ve told me, lady. And I’m much obliged.’

She did a double take at him and exclaimed bitterly: ‘You already knew all this, didn’t you, you sonofabitch?’

‘Not about the old feller who paid out Sheldon.’

She shook her head. ‘So if you already know so much what are you doing here? Why ain’t you at the hotel making sure that you earn the money Julia McGowan promised to pay you for doing what her and me want?’

Despite herself, she failed to keep her voice down to a rasping whisper any longer. And her mounting irritation with Edge caused it to carry clearly to the ears of the men who were now more than a foot down into the grave. They had noticeably slowed the pace at which they worked while they listened to what Hannah Foster was saying. Edge advised evenly: ‘Don’t you fellers get any fancy ideas for awhile. Just be content for now with the two bucks each I’m going to pay you to do what you’re doing real well here.’

Hannah snarled vehemently: ‘You really are some crazy thinking kind of man, mister!’

She spun around, took long strides toward the church and went out of sight around the side of the building.

Hal Proctor watched her with more interest than Edge and said: ‘You know, she’s the best whore there is at the hotel, ain’t that a fact, Josh?’

‘Yeah, it sure is good to know that Hannie’s back in town,’ Reno rasped through pursed lips as he swept the back of hand across his sweat-run brow.

Edge murmured: ‘You have to finish up what you’re doing for me here before you get the money to pay the lady for what she does for you at the cathouse.’

They went to work again, at a cadence that remained unhurried. But they made steady progress: two men doing a job they knew well at a pace they had developed over the years. And halted just once, maybe an hour later, when two gunshots sounded far off in the timber to the south of town.

Edge eyed them quizzically.

Reno supplied: ‘It’ll be that lame brain Fred Whitney, I guess. He ain’t never been the same since he got kicked in the head by a horse when the Guthrie farm burned down. Except at shooting. Fred’s still the best gunshot there is in these parts.’

‘Rabbits, deer, game birds,’ Proctor expanded. ‘Near all the meat his pa serves up at the Timberland is shot in the wild by his boy.’

‘His pa told me,’ Edge said and began to roll another cigarette.

‘Talking of shooting, mister?’ Proctor’s attitude was tentative.

‘Yeah?

‘I’ve got to allow I picked up some of the drift of what Hannie Foster was saying to you. No offence intended, but I’ve an idea of what kind of business you’re in when you ain’t having old bodies dug up?’

‘Me, too,’ Reno agreed. ‘And Hal and me don’t just dig graves for the dead, Mr Edge. We make caskets and such like. And if there’s gonna be a rush on for what we do, we’d like to be forewarned, if that’s possible?

‘Yeah, Josh and me like to plan ahead for the future,’ Proctor put in and shifted the well-chewed tobacco wad from one side of his constantly moving mouth to the other.

‘Forget about any head in the future,’ Edge countered with a mirthless grin. ‘For now, I’d like for you two fellers to give consideration to a whole body – you dig?’

CHAPTER • 19

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ADAM STEELE had not been a man of large build and so his bones did not weigh
much: formed just a small, neat package when the burlap sheet was folded twice around them and tied tightly with cord. An extra length of the same cord secured the Virginian’s remains to Edge’s bedroll as he rode his gelding slowly along the twisting street toward the west side of Pine River Junction. The community was strangely quiet for this late morning time of day and Edge guessed that his reason for being in town was widely known and most people were uneasily aware of what was in the bundle secured to the bedroll behind his saddle.

But few would know he had recently set himself a second chore to do today. For Reno and Proctor would not have had time to tell what they heard of the exchange between Hannah Foster and Edge. And he was certain the whore would not have said anything to anybody. Too, the conscientious local sheriff would surely have taken a hand in events if he suspected just what it was Edge had it in mind to do. Sarah Sheldon could have said something, maybe . . . But, he decided, it was probably the mere fact of knowing what gristly contents were in the burlap-wrapped package that kept people off the streets: although possibly watching with surreptitiously morbid interest from behind curtain draped windows and cracked open doors.

It was more than an hour since the opening of the grave had commenced and fortyfive minutes since Hannah had left the cemetery without getting a definite commitment from Edge. Then fifteen minutes since he paid what he owed to the two gravediggers and transferred Steele’s remains from the rotted pine casket. Carried the package to the cemetery gate and secured it to his bedroll. Mounted up to start the slow ride along the street and became indifferently aware of the eerie hush that was clamped upon the town. Just as earlier, there were a few saddle horses hitched to rails and here and some other horses stood in the traces of wagons parked outsides stores and disparate business premises along the curving lengths of the street. There was none out front of the Junction Hotel until he rode up to the rail of the place that contributed to the silence of the town. No chattering bunch of whores clustered at the entrance now and no kind of sounds came from between the fastened open front doors as he swung down from the saddle. And after he tied the reins his footfalls sounded obtrusively loud on the steps, across the porch and then were partially muffled by the carpet of the lobby.

Two flies buzzed noisily while Edge waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the low level of light within the big, high ceiling room, the heavy drapes drawn almost entirely across the windows. So that just a splayed bar of bright sunlight spilled from the doorway, pointing to where an elderly man sat in a rocking chair to one side of the alcove in which the reception desk was built. An untidily grey bearded, gaunt faced man of more than seventy who Edge had seen once before - at a time when the old timer had been almost falling down drunk in church. And now he was stone cold sober in a whorehouse as he demanded in a reedy voice:

‘I’d like for you to listen to me for awhile, Edge. That’s your name, ain’t it – Edge?’

‘It’s what I answer to, feller.’

Robert McGowan began to rock the chair and the ancient, dried out joints of the timber creaked. ‘You can save yourself some grief and make yourself some easy money if you’ve a mind to listen to what I’ve got to say?’

Edge had reached the ornately carved oak desk on which a brass bell stood and he turned and leaned his back against it. Eyed the old man expectantly, dug out the makings and began to roll a cigarette. McGowan continued to rock the chair, then sighed and it was clear he had been tenser than he looked while he waited for Edge to come to the hotel and watched him cross the lobby.

‘It was a wicked, terrible and unforgivable thing I did, Edge.’ Edge offered no response to the comment and the quizzical look the old man directed at him. McGowan went on:

‘Wicked and all the rest. And dumb as can be. And I know I’m gonna regret it for what’s left of the rest of my life.’