Return to Massacre Mesa - Edge Series 5 (14 page)

Edge took no time to consider if the distraught Russell had fired simply as a release for his high emotions or whether the man had missed an intended target because of blind rage. He whirled to face the man in the doorway and drew the walnut butted Colt. Thumbed back the hammer then froze his finger around the trigger when the muzzle of Tree’s shotgun thudded hard between his shoulder blades. And a moment later the obese Broderick Goodrich stepped between the batwings, wrapped his thick arms around the sheriff in a powerful bear hug and trapped Russell’s arms to his sides so the smoking Colt clutched in his right hand dipped down to aim at the floor.

Sam Tree growled grimly: ‘Billy’s clear off his head for love of that daughter of his, mister! And your head could be clear off your shoulders on account of my high regard for my good friend.’

After the gunshot some of the saloon’s customers had hunched low in their chairs and others slid fully down to the floor. Now everyone straightened up or started to rise with the hissing sound of a mass outlet of pent-up breath.

‘Billy, take it easy!’ Goodrich pleaded through clenched teeth and needed to struggle to keep tight hold of the man who was in an even stronger grip of bitter rage. Until the fight suddenly drained out of Russell and his eyes ceased to glitter with fire. And he swept his gaze over the saloon and seemed to see it in a new light. His expression changed from anger to incredulity, then remorse as he twisted his head to look into the fleshy face of Goodrich at close quarters. Next he surveyed the occupants of the saloon again and seemed totally bemused as he pleaded:

‘What happened? Brod . . ? Sam . . ?’ He shuddered and the involuntary muscular spasm travelled to his right hand. Then his trigger finger twitched and the Colt exploded a second shot. He groaned and lurched to the side, dragging Goodrich with him. Both men crashed into a table, knocked it over and dropped hard to the

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floor. Blood oozed out through the bullet-holed leather where Russell had shot himself in the right foot.

Tree asked rhetorically as he continued to press the shotgun muzzle into the centre of Edge’s back: ‘I’d like for you to agree with me that there’s been enough gunplay tonight, mister. Way I see it, Billy’s suffered enough: one way or another?’

Edge slid his Colt back into the tied down holster and replied evenly: ‘No sweat: that feller’s got a lot of pain both physical and emotional. And some extra damage to boot.’

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CHAPTER • 9

______________________________________________________________________________________

IT WAS a moot point whether Edge was run out of the town of Lakewood the
next morning or whether he left of his own accord. Certainly no physical force was used against him. And as he rode west along the length of Cedar Street in the early morning sunlight, a pack horse laden with supplies on a lead line behind him, the few other people who were also out and about at this hour paid him no more than indifferent passing attention. And if malevolent gazes followed his progress covertly from behind curtained windows he did not sense the surveillance. After the gunshots of the previous night, Tree and Goodrich carried the lamer than ever lawman to his house where his self-inflicted wound was attended to by the army surgeon from the fort. Then the saloonkeeper returned to his almost empty but still open for business premises and helped the irritable Abigail Cross to clean away the broken glass while Edge ate a bowl of warmed over lamb stew. The chore complete the six feet tall and solidly built Tree approached his table with a bottle of high-grade bourbon and two glasses, sat down without a word and poured. He pushed one filled-to-the-brim glass toward Edge who was implacably rolling a cigarette and said the whiskey was on the house: as a token of regret to a customer for getting shot at in the Wild Dog. In a reasoning tone and with his square featured, dark eyed face showing a neutral expression, he held that although no explanation was strictly necessary for what he had in mind to do he felt Edge was owed one. The hotel was fully owned by him and he had the right to serve or not to serve anybody he pleased. And because they had struck a deal on a room for the night, Edge was entitled to bed down there. But the accommodation would not be available for tomorrow or any other night. And neither would Edge be able to get drink, to eat or to buy the services of a whore in the Wild Dog. He was to be barred from the place because Billy Russell was Tree’s oldest and best friend and the way events had turned out - how the sheriff had been beside himself with blind rage - he and Tree might well have killed each other last night. And the sheriff’s rage was occasioned by how Russell 96

was convinced Edge had sullied his daughter and turned Lucy against her father. The quietly spoken, placid faced Tree was not going to ask for Edge’s version of events and allowed he did not give a damn what happened between him and the forty years old woman in the room. It was her father he cared about and although Russell was injured, he was well used to walking with a cane. So after he had brooded and maybe took a few drinks for the pain of his injury, it could be he would work himself up into another bout of wild anger. And try again to kill Edge, who could not be expected not to retaliate.

So, to make sure Billy Russell stayed safe to live out his allotted natural span, Tree had to do whatever he could and this was to ask Edge to leave. Just ask him: even though as a duly appointed deputy sheriff he had the right and the legal muscle to order him not only from the hotel but out of town, too. Then Tree knocked back his bourbon at a single swallow and Edge lit his cigarette, removed it and began to savour his own drink without hurry, enjoying the taste of the fine liquor. The saloonkeeper made to refill Edge’s glass but was prevented from doing so by a hand cupped over it. Tree accepted the refusal with the same brand of equanimity as throughout the exchange and asked if they understood each other, drew a nod in response, re-corked the bottle with one hand and extended the other across the table. Edge reached into a pocket before he consented to shake the proffered hand and remained impassive when Tree expressed irritation to find a coin pressed against his palm.

Edge told the scowling man: ‘You’ve got a rule about payment in advance for the services you provide here at the Wild Dog, feller. And I’ve got one about always paying my own way.’

Tree’s demeanour lightened as he shrugged and made to rise from the table, a hand fisted around the neck of the bottle.

Edge said: ‘There’s a favour you could for me?’

‘Favour?’ Tree was intrigued.

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‘I’d like to make an early start tomorrow. And I figure to be out in open country for quite a while. So I need a pack pony and enough supplies for me and the two horses to last ten days or so?’

‘I run a hotel is what I do so – ‘ Tree started grimly.

‘The favour I want is for you to tell me how I can arrange for all of that tonight so it’ll be ready early tomorrow, feller. I’ll pay a fair asking price for everything I need.’

Tree inclined his head in acknowledgement and straightened up fully from the table as he said: ‘You can leave it all up to me, mister. When you go to Brod Goodrich’s livery for your horse in the morning, there’ll be somebody waiting with what you need. And you’ll have to agree the terms with whoever it happens to be.’

‘I’m obliged.’ Edge rose from the table and crossed toward the stairway while Tree headed for the end of the bar counter.

At the foot of the stairs, Edge held back to allow the full figured, garishly dressed Dolores Jiminez and the darkly business suited and neck-tied Chester Conners to descend, the both of them grinning broadly. The woman beaming maybe with satisfaction at what she had just earned and the man probably expressing contentment that he had received what he thought was good value for his money.

‘Hell, Chester, you sure do like the Mexican women around here, don’t you, boy?’

his friend called drunkenly from where he needed to lean heavily on the bar counter to keep from reeling backwards and toppling over.

‘I sure do, good buddy!’ Conners yelled happily.

‘It seems to me like that’s about every whore in this place that you’ve had, Chester!’

‘That sure is the truth, John boy!’ Conners confirmed, the grin getting broader on his broken nosed, rubicund face. His green, bloodshot eyes suddenly met Edge’s impassive gaze and he came to a halt on the lowest stair then slapped Dolores on her ample rump. Hard enough to send her staggering into the saloon as he shouted for 98

everyone to hear: ‘I’m all done with them greasers now. Just wish that the cook was still around. A woman with her kind of build and dressed all in black always did get me stirred up!’

He vented a bellowing laugh and swept his liquor-glazed gaze around the saloon before he looked back at the man immediately in front of him at the precise moment Edge slammed a powerful punch into his belly. He yelled, clutched with both hands at the source of his pain and began to double up. Which was when Edge landed a second punch under the man’s jaw and he straightened for a moment before his legs buckled and he collapsed heavily to the stairs: then slid down into a heap on the floor, out cold.

‘Hot damn!’ John shouted and made to lunge across to the foot of the stairway. Then he recognised the latent threat in Edge’s narrowed eyes and thin set lips and decided against going to help his friend immediately. He swallowed hard looked at Tree behind the other end of the counter and demanded: ‘You ain’t gonna allow my good buddy and a good customers of yours to get beat up in your establishment and do nothing about it are you, Mr Tree.’

Tree slowly poured himself another drink from the bottle of good whiskey, raised it in a tacit toast to Edge and told the incensed man: ‘It seems to me, Mr Dingle that
your
good buddy got what he had coming to him. The way he insulted the daughter of
my
good buddy. And if Edge hadn’t done something about that, I just maybe would have.’ He raised the glass again in the same way and in the same direction as before and emptied it with obvious relish as Edge stepped around the groaning Conners and started up the stairs.

Edge’s voice was loud enough for everybody in the saloon to hear his response. ‘I reckon the sheriff’s daughter can fight her own battles, feller. The reason I laid out that sonofabitch was because he called Mexicans a name that half of me don’t like to hear.’

Up in his room Edge did not sleep as well as he usually did most nights. But when he got out of bed at first light he figured this was because of how he had slept for so long during the hot afternoon. He washed up, shaved and left the Wild Dog Hotel by way of the outside staircase at the rear. Crossed to the livery and found the overweight, 99

red bearded Goodrich waiting for him with his gelding already saddled, along with a strong looking roan laden with well packed and evenly distributed supplies. The fat man’s eyes showed more evidence of lack of rest than Edge and he was unshaven and looked like whatever sleep he did get was in the clothes he still wore.

‘That’ll be twenty-five bucks, mister,’ the big man muttered sourly. ‘Fifteen of which is for the horse that’s mine and ain’t no thoroughbred. The animal won’t outrun the average burro, but it’s my opinion he’ll keep travelling for longer than you own mount, if that’s what’s needed.’

Edge nodded and stooped to make a cursory check on the roan. Then turned his impassive attention to the chestnut and saw that as he had expected Goodrich, who claimed he was no expert horse rider himself, had made a good job of putting on the bridle and saddle and fixing the saddle bags and bedroll in place.

‘You got trail rations for you and the two horses for ten days or so, like Sam Tree told me you asked for - provided you find water for the animals. There are just the basic necessities without any luxuries, mister. Ten bucks is what the storekeeper charged for the goods. It seemed like a fair price to me, okay?’

‘Much obliged.’ Edge pulled a slim roll of bills from his hip pocket and asked: ‘I guess the cost of stabling my horse in your livery is included in your fifteen?’

‘You bet, mister.’ Goodrich tugged at his small beard. ‘Lakewood’s a long ways from anyplace else and nothing is for nothing around here.’

‘Way I prefer things to be, feller.’ He counted out some bills to the big liveryman, tied the lead line between the packhorse and his mount and took them outside to swing up into the saddle. Rode through the silent at dawn town with his mouth line set in a grim scowl and his heavily hooded eyes narrowed: uneasily aware that the money he had just paid out had reduced his stake by more than half.
I like to pay my own way,
was what he had told Sam Tree last night and this morning had shown he could still do it – just about. But there was no point in fretting over not having the two thousand dollars he had come all the way to Lakewood to get, 100