Name On The Bullet - Edge Series 6 (29 page)

Edge murmured: ‘Oh, shit!’

‘Yeah, it seems you handed me the wrong rifle, Yank,’ Steele rasped. Then he shrugged and winced at the intense pain the minor movement erupted from where the bullet was lodged deep in his chest as more blood seeped from the wound. ‘But it doesn’t matter, uh? The kind of life Guthrie has, maybe it’s better he’s left alive to wallow in his lousy luck than for me to end it for him?’

‘Sure, Reb,’ Edge allowed and gave a rueful shake of his head. ‘It seemed to me that other rifle I gave you pulled high and to the right of the target, uh?’

Steele grimaced, swallowed hard and nodded.

Guthrie began to snarl something but spoke no more than a half dozen words before somebody, maybe the Whitney boy or perhaps it was the sheriff, told him to shut up. All other sounds from beyond the immediate area where Edge hunkered down beside Steele reached the two men as if from a vast distance away.

‘Guns are like people, I reckon,’ the Virginian murmured. ‘No matter how alike they can seem to be sometimes no two of them are ever exactly the same.’

He started to gently ease his back down toward the ground. And Edge reached out to support him, to soften the impact of his spine against the hard packed ground. But the movement caused the Virginian further pain that was vividly seen when his bristled, dirt ingrained face formed into a more permanent grimace. His teeth remained gritted against the need to cry out and he rasped between them:

‘There aren’t too many straight shooters around, I reckon.’

Then just for a second the grimace looked more like a grin and Edge matched the expression when he answered: ‘You wouldn’t want me to say that I think there’s going to be one less in the world now?’

Steele gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head, squeezed his coal black eyes tightly closed and murmured: ‘I wouldn’t want you to lie to a dying man, Yank.’

Edge nodded and said: ‘We’re two of a kind, Reb. And always will be wherever we are.’

The death rattle sounded dryly in Steele’s throat then his eyes snapped open and stayed that way as his bloodied chest ceased to rise and fall.

Edge gently closed the unfeeling lids down over the unseeing eyes and growled: ‘Okay, feller. I’ll be seeing you sometime later. Go to hell.’

CHAPTER • 17

__________________________________________________________________________

THE HANDSOME rather than beautiful green eyed, blonde haired and provocatively
built Hannah Foster asked with little apparent expectation of getting a response: ‘There are a couple of things I ain’t clear about on what you told me last night, mister?’

‘Is that so?’

‘Just how did Slim Haydon and that bunch of guys manage to get so close to you and the others on the kind of quiet night you said it was?’

It was the next coldly sunlit Monday morning after a night during which Edge had slept fitfully while the manner of Steele’s dying long ago remained disturbingly fresh in his mind from telling this woman about it. She, if her deep breathing interspersed with snores was anything to go by, had slept like a log. And certainly she had been cheerfully bright eyed while she made breakfast and they ate it. Then saddled their horses and re-started the trek toward Pine River Junction.

She was intelligent enough, or possessed the necessary quota of feminine intuition, to realise that he was not yet ready to share in her level of contentment with life: and she did not try to coax him out of his taciturn mood. And spoke only when it was necessary until they had ridden maybe a mile from their night camp. Then, vexed by the long silence, decided the subject she wanted to raise was a safe one: unlikely to trigger the violent anger that seemed only a wrong word away from his brooding state of mind. He had just lit a freshly rolled cigarette and left it angled from the side of his mouth when he answered evenly: ‘Haydon’s posse met up with the California State Marshal out along the Sacramento Turnpike. That was a feller named Hawkes who told how he hadn’t run into Steele and me on the trail. And anyway, he didn’t consider that we’d head down to Sacramento since we’d know the State Justice Department’s men were looking for us.’ Edge sighed: ‘So they turned around and headed back for town. Reached it in time to see Smith and Loretta get the drop on us and start to herd us from the old sawmill back to the law office.’

‘And they managed to move up on you in secret?’

‘It seems that George Guthrie wanted to charge in like the Seventh Cavalry: anxious to register a claim for a big piece of the bounty money because of how he and the Whitney kid were there when I was first captured. But the rest were worried the storekeeper might panic and give us the chance to high tail it out of there: or kill us.’

‘After your friend died, how come Slim Haydon and that marshal from Sacramento let you ride away free from Pine River Junction? Did they just take Steele’s word for it that you didn’t have a hand in killing that Strachen guy?’

‘I ain’t got any idea if they believed him or not,’ Edge answered grimly with a shrug.

‘But most lawmen are just like most people. When they wind up with something close to what they want they ain’t about to go to a whole lot more trouble just to make sure everything is perfect.’

‘There ain’t nothing perfect in this world, mister.’

‘I’m not going to give you an argument about that, lady,’ Edge said ruefully. ‘So, as far as Hawkes was concerned, he had Strachen’s killer who he figured was his main suspect for the murder. And he knew for certain Steele was the one who killed Jim Bishop way back just after the Civil War.’

‘And Slim Haydon?’

‘The only crime committed in his jurisdiction was when Steele broke me out of his jail. And the way he figured it, if he accepted I was innocent of killing Strachen, then I ought never to have been locked up in there anyway.’

‘Yeah, and you know something?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘Haydon’s still the kind of guy who won’t take two steps when one will do it.’

‘Plus they were both riled at Guthrie: the way he was only interested in getting the bounty and how he was ready to kill in cold blood for it if that was what it took. And back then I figured that doing that farmer out of a piece of the five thousand bucks on my head was maybe what tipped the balance.’

‘But I suppose him and John Smith and Fred Whitney shared the bounty money Washington paid out on Steele?’

‘I wouldn’t know, lady.’

‘Because you just rode right away from there?’

‘Not right away. I stayed around for long enough to make sure that Steele had a decent burial in the church cemetery. Nothing fancy, but it was decent.’

‘But now you figure he’s buried in the wrong place?’

‘I’ve thought that for a long time,’ he corrected and made no offer to expand on the point.

And she did not press him: seemed content with the new silence between them as they rode on down the trail through the tall timber country of northern California. For his part Edge felt easier by the moment as they neared Pine River Junction while he allowed his mind to drift back over the years to the period immediately after the killing of Adam Steele. When he rode away from this part of the country where he had expected to discover how a man so much like himself in the entirely different guise of Adam Steele could settle down to a quiet life and make a success of it. But he discovered instead that this was not possible: found out that anything that seemed to offer such a tantalising hope was just a sham. Another malevolent trick played by an evil ruling fate that refused such men as they were any worthwhile long-term reward on this earth.

Not for the first time since the end of the Civil War he rode across a wide expanse of the continent. And seemed to be drifting in a kind of limbo through the rugged terrain of the Rockies then across the blistering deserts of the southwest and over the featureless prairie flatlands. And while he did not consciously seek to avoid violent trouble somehow he managed to stay clear of it as he undertook a series of undemanding jobs that earned him enough money to keep body and soul together. As a hired hand on small farms and bigger ranches, or tending a couple of bars, then running a printing press and next barbering in his own parlour.

Finally he accepted work as a teamster to drive a wagonload of what he was told consisted of farm implements from Tucson to a small town in Texas . . . That job had started out much like all the rest, taken simply because he had become bored with what he was doing and with scant expectation of it turning out to be any more demanding than all the others. But his ruling fates ordained he had by lucky chance steered clear of trouble for too long. And the wagon ride to Dalton Springs became the opening of yet another violent chapter in his life.*

A chapter that was still running the same kind of course as so many had done before the hiatus following the death of Adam Steele as he moved from one brush with death to the next: just like it had been in the bad old days. But during those distant times he had been a lot younger. Swifter to recognise the signs of danger and faster to react with a shot or a fist, or a telling slash with the razor when all else had failed.

Quicker, also, to recover from the blows he took – both emotional and physical – he allowed as his mind again returned to the events surrounding the senseless death of the Virginian: the erstwhile friend he was once more taking a long ride to visit with. So that he could square the account he knew was balanced against him.

‘Yesterday, the way you spoke about riding this trail into Pine River Junction all those years ago, I guess that could well be what was once the Guthrie place, mister?’

There was a time when Edge would have been irritated with himself for allowing his mind to drift to such an extent he was only vaguely aware of his immediate surroundings. But because of what had concerned him since he rode out of Brogan Falls to complete the chore he felt he must finish, he made allowances for this once unforgivable lapse. A sidelong glance at Hannah Foster as they started down a slope beyond the timber fringe showed she was not aware that she had broken in on a train of deep thought when she spoke. He shifted his gaze in the direction to which she pointed and grimaced at what he saw as he reined in his mount.

She was looking quizzically back at him by then as she halted her horse to ask: ‘It ain’t too much like you remember it, I guess, mister? From what you said?’

‘It’s a goddamn mess now.’

‘I’ve only seen it once before,’ she said. ‘When I rode out of town along with Vic Munro the other day. Back when I was working at the hotel I never heard any talk about what used to be around here. Or maybe it was just that I never listened?’

She shrugged and since what she said required no response he heeled his horse forward at the same walking pace as before. She scowled her disinterest and followed him.

*
See: The Quiet Gun.

The valley slopes to the east and west and the timber that bounded the old Guthrie place to the north and south were much as he remembered: save for the different season of the year. Back then it had been early summer and now it was fall. But apart from this obvious difference, long gone were the once neat crop fields and pastures: inexorably reclaimed by encroaching nature after they were abandoned by the couple who had so carefully tended their fertile land for so many years. Gone too, were the neat farmhouse and its outbuildings: where once they had stood now marked only by lines of crumbled stones and some piles of timber. The dark coloration of what remained among the high weeds showed clearly that the Guthrie home had burned to the ground a long time ago.

‘I’m sorry I can’t tell you what happened here.’ Hannah sounded like she truly meant the apology and when he looked briefly at her she frowned, as if anxious to emphasise to him that her feelings were genuine.

‘Should that matter to me, lady?’ he asked evenly.

‘How should I know if it ought to but I think it does,’ she answered sourly. ‘Not that I know anything about any damn thing - according to most men I was ever with for more than a quick tumble. But you care what happened here, I bet. On account of your life was a whole lot different back when this place was in fine shape. And your friend, likewise.’

‘That’s too deep for me just now,’ he murmured and dug out the makings: knowing he did not really want a smoke but feeling the need to occupy himself with something. ‘But maybe I’m just a little concerned that if I run into George Guthrie, it could be I won’t be able to stop myself from killing the sonofabitch.’