Return to Massacre Mesa - Edge Series 5 (11 page)

He nodded. ‘I’ll send it to Rose Bigheart, Farm Trail, Lakewood, Territory of New Mexico. I reckon I can remember that address: in the event I get lucky and after I do I don’t ride by this way again.’

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She allowed ruefully: ‘I realise I have to accept your word for that.’

‘Mostly I keep the promises I make, lady.’

‘Good.’ She didn’t sound convinced. ‘Turn around, please.’

‘Uh?’ He peered quizzically at the impassive-faced Comanche squaw.

‘Turn around to look toward the Southwest, mister: short of where the mountains reach the highest.’

He did as she instructed and peered at the rugged, heat shimmered ridges in the far distance.

‘You are looking at the Cedar Mountains.’

‘I know that, lady.’

He glanced at her and saw she was staring fixedly toward where she pointed with a rock-steady extended arm, hand and index finger. And once again the way she squinted suggested she did not see too well. ‘Somewhere to this north side of the high ground, where Dead Man’s Desert cuts into the Cedar Mountains, is a place that is well named Mesa Desolado. It is the place where those soldiers from Washington and Fort Chance were massacred those many years ago.’

Edge looked from the distant mountains to the softly talking squaw as she lowered her arm. Her eyes were closed tightly and it looked like she was visualising something remembered or depicted on the backs of her eyelids as she pressed her shoulders hard against the adobe wall. And after long moments of staying like this, she shuddered and seemed on the point of being wracked with sobs. ‘So, lady?’ he encouraged.

‘It is where anyone who wants to find the government dollars must start to search.’

Edge scowled and spat to the side. ‘The way Devlin told the story, it was just a couple of crates of sand the army took to that meeting with the Indians: which was the 72

reason they were gunned down. The troopers who pulled the double cross and stole and money wouldn’t – ‘

’I know it is not so much but I will tell you more,’ Rose cut in and hooked a thumb point it over the threshold into the adobe. ‘All he knew from the deal he made with the man he met at some place called Omaha?’ She eyed Edge as if was important she received confirmation such a place existed.

‘It’s a railroad town in Nebraska,’ he supplied. ‘A whole lot of miles north of here: where Devlin was down on his luck and met up with an ex-con named Clyde Nagel in the same fix.

She nodded. ‘He explained this to me. This Nagel told Lyndon Andrews – Andrew Devlin I think I should call him now – said that if they could raise the train and stage fare or buy horses to come out to this part of the country, there was a good chance they could find the government money.’

‘Seems Devlin told us both the same story, more or less.’

‘He played cards again and cheated, which won the money they needed. This was a part of the confession he made to me – the way he cheated to get the money they needed.’

‘I don’t – ‘ Edge began without enthusiasm.

The squaw held up a hand, the silver bracelets around her wrist chinking. ‘Nagel had a map. Not much of one – just some lines scrawled on a dirty old scrap of paper. The name of Fort Chance was written on it and Mesa Desolado, too. Also a line, heavier than the others, that looked to be a trail of some kind through the mountains to where there was a cross. And beside this the figure of twenty five thousand dollars was written.’

‘Do you have the map, Rose?’

She shook her head, looking miserable. ‘No, he did not have it anymore. It was in his luggage that was stolen when Mountain Lion and his murdering braves held up 73

the stage and killed Clyde Nagel. But because it was such a simple map, he remembered everything on it. And he was able to draw it with his finger in the dust on the chair beside the bed. And I can draw it now: on the ground out here?’

She moved off to pick up one of a heap of several sticks that were used to stake crops when the high winds came. Returned and first inscribed a rectangle in the dust immediately out front of the doorway then made marks within the confines of this frame. ‘Right here is the mesa,’ she explained as she began to draw the crude map.

‘This is the trail that goes off to the west: and then the cross.’ She did not attempt to add the figures of the amount beside the final mark she made before she tossed the stick back on the pile. ‘Where the money is hidden, Clyde Nagel said.’

Edge watched and listened with increasing scepticism then after she spoke the final word he repeated scornfully: ‘
Where the money’s hidden, Nagel said?
Devlin and his ex-convict buddy came all the way from Omaha down here to Lakewood because of a tale like that - a map like that?

Rose’s face was impassive once more as she resumed leaning against the wall, nodded and peered into the heat hazed distance but did not attempt to see the mountains clearly this time. ‘I have no reason to lie to you, mister. And neither did he to me.
I should tell you that when he told me these things, he was certain he was on his deathbed. So he was in no frame of mind to make up stories and play tricks that’s for sure: even if it sounds like that. He was grateful that I was taking care of him and trying to ease his suffering. He wanted to repay me and it was all he had to do it with.’

Edge remained unconvinced and continued to express tacit doubt as he looked between the squaw and the mountains when she went on: ‘You claim he cheated you out of money and he told me that himself. So you deserve something for how he treated you so bad. Just as I should be rewarded for treating him well. But I am a woman – a Comanche woman - not able to ride into that kind of country . . . ‘ She gestured toward the distant mountains and shook her head: ‘ . . . that is more dangerous than ever when Mountain Lion is on the warpath, as he surely is now. He and I are both Comanche, but he knows I am an outcast for the wrong I did so long ago.’

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She shuddered. ‘So he would not treat me any differently from a White Eyes woman. But you can look for the money if you’ve a mind to ignore the dangers. And if you do and you find it, all I ask is that you remember me. See that I get something for my trouble. If you do not remember me . . . ‘She shrugged her scrawny shoulders while her dark eyes expressed resignation. ‘Well, it will not be the first time I have been betrayed by a man: white and red.’

Edge shook his head and moved off to unhitch the gelding’s reins from the post. Nodded toward the marks in the dust, then peered again toward the far off, ill-defined mountains.

‘That’s all there is? It seems one hell of a lot of country to cover with just that much to go on.’

‘If he knew anything more, he died before he was able to tell it to me. But I can say something more: something that a few Lakewood people would be able to tell you, maybe. Those who were in this part of the country at the time it happened, or were interested enough to have asked questions about the massacre at Mesa Desolado?’

Edge delayed swinging up into his saddle on the big chestnut gelding as Rose Bigheart went on:

‘One week after the boxes with the twenty five thousand dollars in them reached Fort Chance, two men deserted the post. And five days after this the officers died at Mesa Desolado. The deserters were never found.’

Edge asked tautly: ‘Clyde Nagel was one of them?’

The squaw was impassive. ‘The names of the deserters were Patrick Crabbe and Martin Farmer.’ She hooked her thumb to indicate the interior of the adobe again.

‘But, of course, the man who you called Andrew Devlin I knew as Lyndon Andrews. What is a name, mister?’

He asked: ‘What about Devlin, Rose?’

She had turned to go back inside and now halted at the doorway. ‘What about 75

him?’

‘He needs to be buried.’

‘He sure enough does. And I’ll attend to it, out here where he spent his final days. Being looked after by somebody he trusted. An Injun squaw he trusted. And an Injun squaw who was reminded by him of another man she used to know.’ Once more she closed her eyes tightly and obviously was remembering scenes from another time and another place. ‘If you want to tell people in Lakewood that he is dead at last, that will save me the trouble. But I’ll be obliged if you will let it be known I do not want the undertaker out here, asking money for a fancy funeral.’

Edge sat astride his horse and tipped his hat. ‘Whatever you say, Rose.’

‘Fine. I had most of my learning from a priest so I know the right words to say over his body when it is in the ground.’

‘No sweat.’

‘There are some good things the White Eyes have brought from the east,’ she said reflectively. ‘Some of the civilised ways that are being brought out west are good and fine. But here and now I prefer the old way that says a person should be buried on his own land: if that is what he wants. We talked it over and that man said he wanted to be buried here, on my land. Goodbye to you, mister.’

She raised a weary hand and stepped inside as Edge rode back along the track and on to the trail. Here he paused to glance a final time at the adobe then in the direction of the haze-enveloped mountains beyond the rolling hills. Shook his head and called himself a fool for coming this far in pursuit of two thousand dollars only to get for his trouble just a crazy story about ten and a half times that much. As he heeled his horse forward he tried to spit out the bad taste that events at Rose Bigheart’s place had left in his mouth but failed. So he rolled and lit a cigarette and found the hot tobacco smoke helped just a little but decided a shot of rye would do a much better job. There were two different troopers on guard at the gates of Fort Chance, but they eyed him with much the same brand of mistrust as the earlier sentries. Not many 76

civilians were out in the high heat of early afternoon as he rode into town where cooking aromas laced with wood smoke suggested that most citizens of Lakewood were inside eating. Now there were four old men seated in the shade of the cedar at the midway point of the street, two dozing with their chins tipped forward on their chests and the others playing a game of chequers.

‘Did you find what you were looking for out along Farm Trail, stranger?’ This from the oldster who had given Edge the information earlier.

‘Much obliged, I found who I was looking for, feller.’ He rode on by.

‘The guy with the rotting belly wound that lives with Rose Bigheart, I hear tell?’

one of the old men who had seemed to be sleeping said. ‘According to my nephew Frank.’

‘I hear tell he ain’t got so long left to live?’ the second chequers player muttered indifferently.

Edge was by then too far away to hear any more of the desultory exchange and a little later he dismounted out front of the livery and led his gelding into cooler shade of the stable’s interior. The vastly overweight Goodrich and the stoop shouldered, almost lightweight in comparison Sheriff Russell were at the back of the redolent with horses place, seated side by side at the table as they ate with spoons out of dishes of what smelled like red hot chilli.

‘I hear you took a ride out to Rose Bigheart’s place?’ the lawman said. As Edge led his horse toward his stall he said: ‘It seems I was given the wrong information about Lakewood.’

‘Wrong?’ Goodrich was intrigued and ready to be insulted.

‘The impression I got from you was that it was the kind of town where nobody gives much of a damn about what anyone else does.’

Russell confirmed: ‘Most of the time that’s the way it is, mister.’

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Goodrich seemed eager to qualify his opinions as he tugged at his small beard with a finger and thumb then augmented sourly: ‘On account of most of the time nothing ever happens that’s of any interest except to whoever it happens to.’

Russell went on: ‘But after the stage was held up and the way that stranger got shot and took bad and stayed with the squaw: then another stranger – you – came by asking questions and all . . . Hell, folks are puzzled. Which is only natural, you got to agree?’

His sharp blue eyes continued to watch with mild suspicion as Edge finished unsaddling his horse, put the animal in the stall and hung his tack on the peg at the front.

Goodrich prompted: ‘Frank Shaw came to the Wild Dog just now and he said in the course of conversation how you were asking about – ‘

‘The feller with a bullet in his belly owed me some money,’ Edge cut in. ‘But it turned out he was dead broke, so I never got the chance to collect. Now he’s just plain dead.’

‘What?’ Russell almost choked on a mouthful of food. Then jerked up straight in the chair with a grimace at the pain of the sudden movement that displaced incredulity in his wide eyes.

Edge shook his head. ‘Nobody killed him today, sheriff. He finally died from the bullet wound. Gangrene, I’d guess.’

Russell rattled his spoon down in the bowl and clung tightly with both hands to the cane as he struggled to his feet. ‘I reckon I’ll have to check that out for myself, mister. What about the squaw?’

‘She was about to bury him when I left. And she said she didn’t need any help. She sure doesn’t want the town undertaker out there trying to drum up business.’

Goodrich tugged at his small red beard and growled: ‘Billy, we all knew he was sure to die - sooner instead of later - after that wound of his festered. And if there was 78

some funny business this guy ain’t spoke of, Rose’ll let you know about it. Way she thought so highly of him. Ain’t no sense you going to all the pain and trouble of riding out – ‘

Determination drained out of the stoop shouldered, ache troubled lawman and he sank gingerly back on to the chair, a crestfallen frown on his weather beaten, time lined features below the white hair.

‘I guess you’re right, Brod.’ He picked up his spoon, stirred the chilli around in the bowl and directed a contrite frown at Edge. ‘And I guess I owe you an apology, mister. You’d have to be crazy to ride back to town if you’d just killed a man in my jurisdiction.’