Return to Massacre Mesa - Edge Series 5 (19 page)

Edge lowered his voice to ask: ‘Do either of you ladies recognise either of those two fellers from how they talk?’

Lucy replied at once: ‘No, not at all.’

‘Nor me, Mr Edge,’ Rose added. ‘But I wish you’d do as they ask, whoever they are. If Crooked Eye is harmed I will have much trouble with my conscience unless I know I’ve done all I can to protect him.’

‘Shit, what the hell!’ Edge eased the rifle hammer forward and slid the repeater back into the boot. ‘If they figured to kill us and they ain’t the worst shots in the world, we’re sitting targets anyway.’

Lucy yelled nervously: ‘You men in the woods! It’s all right now! Mr Edge has put away his rifle!’

‘That’s good!’ The less aggressive of the two men sounded greatly relieved. ‘So, fine! We’re coming out now! And we’d appreciate it if there could be trust on both sides, you know what I mean?’

Edge muttered sardonically: ‘Right now you fellers are calling the shots. And only in a manner of speaking, you understand, you better be straight shooters.’

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CHAPTER • 12

___________________________________________________________________________________

IT TOOK Edge only moments to recognise the faces and recall the names of the
two men who walked nervously out from among the shadows under the trees and into the glittering moonlight. One was John Dingle, who led a pair of horses by the reins, and the other Chester Conners who gripped Crooked Eye by the scruff of the neck. The Comanche buck expressed determined defiance but had plainly given up the struggle to break free from his scowling captor.

The men had changed from their customary eastern style garb into western outfits but only Conners wore a gunbelt with a revolver jutting out of the tied down holster on the right. Both were as unshaven as Edge and their newly purchased clothing showed the sweat stains and dirt streaks of rigorous travel. The taller and broader Conners still had a discoloured jaw from when Edge hit him for calling Mexicans a derogatory name and he began to massage the old injury with his free hand while he glared at the man who caused it.

As the trio on foot came to a nervous halt twenty-five feet from where Edge and the women continued to sit their horses, nobody said anything until Conners released his hold on Crooked Edge and growled:

‘That you go, Injun. Okay you folks, that wasn’t so bad for anybody, was it?’

‘Ladies.’ The sunken eyed, slack mouthed, dissipated looking Dingle directed a nod and tipped his Stetson toward each of the women. ‘And Mr Edge, too: it’s good to see you all again. My friend and I feel we have some important business to discuss that is of mutual benefit to all parties concerned.’

Rose vented a noncommittal grunt.

Lucy Russell said: ‘You are Mr Dingle and this gentleman is Mr Conners? And you were both staying at Mr Tree’s hotel in Lakewood, isn’t that so?’

‘That’s right miss,’ the man with the bruised jaw confirmed gruffly. ‘Chester 129

Conners from Omaha, Nebraska.’ He hooked a thumb at his companion. ‘This here is John Dingle, out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.’

Crooked Eye was still suffering from the effects of being recently terrified as he took a cautious step forward. ‘I thank you all for saving my life. I am so sorry if I – ‘

‘Shut your damn mouth, Injun!’ Conners ordered. ‘This here is grown up talk. And anyway, it only oughta be between whites.’

Maybe because he recalled Edge’s violent reaction when Conners bad-mouthed Mexicans back at the Wild Dog, Dingle hastened to check further trouble. ‘Chester, you best not – ‘

Crooked Eye was no longer tentative. He spun fast on his heels and lashed out an arm, the hand clenched into a fist. The roundhouse punch connected hard with Conners’ crotch and the man yelled as much in surprise as pain then reached instinctively for his holstered Colt.

But Edge was faster as the two women and Dingle gave shrill vent to fear.

‘That is for treating me so badly, White Eyes!’ The young Comanche half turned to fully face the powerfully built man and stood with his arms akimbo, his feet splayed. The scowling Conners saw he had been beaten to the draw and stayed his hand on the butt of the Colt.

‘All right!’ Dingle yelled with firm resolve in his voice and stance as he fixed Conners with an unblinking glare. ‘That’s enough of this crap, Ches!’ He looked contritely at the two women. ‘Please pardon my uncouth language, ladies. I hope that everybody is fully satisfied we’re all square now?’

He shifted his gaze to include the whole group in the query and Crooked Eye was the only one to respond: the young Comanche grunted and made the sound affirmative with a curt nod.

Conners’ scowl did not diminish after he dropped his hand away from the Colt, snatched the reins of one of the horses from Dingle’s grasp and growled: ‘So let’s go, 130

John!’

‘Go where?’ Lucy Russell expressed perplexity while Edge and Rose remained impassive.

Conners explained sourly: ‘John and me figure we can help you people find what all of us is looking for.’

Rose grunted much as before.

‘How’s that, feller?’ Edge asked.

Conners made a hand gesture. ‘It’s over to the west and I guess we might as well be riding in that direction while we talk our business through?’

He and Dingle swung up into their saddles and the shorter man seemed as uncomfortably awkward at handling a horse as Lucy Russell.

‘Business that’s going to be of mutual benefit to all of us?’ Edge reiterated what Dingle had said. He made no move to turn his mount and the pack pony around.

‘That’s what John stated and it’s what we meant!’ Conner was still aggrieved by his present and past pains.

Crooked Eye asked sullenly: ‘What about me?’

‘What about you?’ Dingle countered impatiently.

‘Can I come with you? I’ve already told these folks how I can be of help –

cooking for them and taking care of their horses. But if I can come with all of you to do the chores, I’ll need to ride with somebody?’ He implied his choice by moving toward where Edge sat his gelding.

Edge slid the walnut butted Colt into the holster then shifted forward in the saddle: leaned down with an out-stretched hand and received a bright smile of relieved gratitude from the young Comanche who he hauled smoothly up behind him. Crooked Eye said: ‘Thanks so much, Mr Edge. It is very good of you.’

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Lucy was puzzled. ‘I’m not in any way being critical of what you’re doing, Edge: but I’m intrigued as to why you’re being so compassionate toward the boy? You don’t strike me as the sort of man to lend a helping hand to anyone unless for a very good reason?’

Edge took up the reins and steered his horse and the animal on the lead line into a wheel. Then he grinned sardonically as he answered: ‘Well I’ll tell you, lady: after I just saw what kind of low punch this kid can throw . . . I’d like to ensure he doesn’t strike me any kind of way.’

Crooked Eye started to ask: ‘I don’t think I under – ‘

Lucy Russell broke in frostily: ‘Don’t worry about it, boy: Mr Edge chooses the most inappropriate times to make not very good jokes.’

Crooked Eye shook his head and muttered disconsolately: ‘I still have much to learn about the ways of the White Eyes I think?’

Without any kind of instruction being issued, Dingle urged his mount up alongside that of Edge while the two women flanking Conners moved into a line behind them. And then they started off through the moonlit darkness of a new day that was still several hours away from dawning. The country was more rugged now as the foothills rose into the fringe of the mountains in the south. But every once in a while anyone who remained alert to their surroundings looked back and had a glimpse through the gaps in the intervening high ground of the vast expanse of Dead Man’s Desert to the north.

Every small sound made by human or animal was magnified in the pervading silence but nothing was heard from any other source. Chester Conners elected to be the first to speak after the ill-assorted group had been on the sluggish move for several minutes. ‘You people are looking to find the pile of dollars that the Comanche were supposed to have been given in exchange for signing a peace treaty all those years ago, ain’t that right?

‘How can you possibly help Edge and Rose to – ‘ Lucy began. 132

Edge turned to look beyond the boy who rode double on his horse at the woman riding behind the chestnut gelding to the right. ‘Let’s just listen to what these fellers have to tell us, lady,’ he suggested. ‘And if there’s anything else we need to know when they’re done, I reckon we can ask.’

‘But of course you can,’ Dingle assured eagerly.

‘Well, he’s wrong about me for a start, isn’t he?’ Lucy sounded defensively irritated. ‘I’m not out in this awful godforsaken country to look for stolen government money. Am I?’

‘That is quite so, Miss Russell,’ Dingle placated with an insidious smile. ‘You are looking for the remains of Lieutenant Glenn Montgomery: one of the group of officers from Fort Chance that was escorting the consignment of money. And the man you would have married had he and the rest of those doomed men survived?’

Lucy swallowed hard and vented a short gasp.

Conners gave a terse guffaw before he boasted: ‘John and me know what we’re talking about, uh?’

Edge allowed: ‘It seems like you two fellers didn’t spend all your time back in Lakewood drinking and whoring in the Wild Dog?’

‘
I
, Mr Edge,’ Dingle responded with heavy stress on the personal pronoun, ‘have invested considerable time and effort – not to say money - in researching the project that now engages all of us.’

Lucy uttered an unladylike snort.

Dingle pressed on insistently: ‘It began for me many years ago: when I was a detective with the Pinkerton Agency. Assigned to assist the investigation into the theft of the money. Soon after the crime occurred.’

‘Oh.’ Lucy was disconcerted.

‘More recently I expended a considerable sum, and further time and effort, as a 133

private citizen. But please understand I simply register these facts with you people. I require no additional remuneration. An equal share: no more no less.’

Edge said: ‘That before now you figured on being fifty per cent, I guess?’

Conners grunted his malcontent.

Dingle agreed: ‘I have to allow, Mr Edge that would have been a perfect division of the spoils for Ches and me. Although at the outset of my search for the money – as a private citizen long after I left the employment of the Pinkerton Agency, of course – I did harbour the hope I would be able to pull it off alone. But as time went by and I realised what was involved, I came to realise that I needed to seek help.’

‘So John invited me to have a piece of the deal,’ Conners cut in. ‘After he found out that I had ideas of my own to find the haul.’ His arrogance became more evident as he went on: ‘And I had some information about where it’s hid that was newer than his.’

‘Quite so, that is absolutely correct,’ Dingle took up the story again, unable to conceal his irritation with his partner’s self-important complacency. ‘Ches and me met up in Omaha where he’d been a guard at the penitentiary.’

Rose Bigheart said something in embittered Comanche.

‘What’s that?’ Conners demanded.

The squaw answered grimly: ‘I speak words in my own language that should not be voiced by a decent Catholic woman in any tongue.’

Edge turned to ask of Conners. ‘I guess you were a guard at the time when a feller named Clyde Nagel was locked up in there, right?’

‘I sure enough was, mister,’ Conners confirmed and there was again a quality of arrogant pride in the man’s attitude as he began to tell what he knew. ‘Nagel was inside doing a stretch for beating up and nearly killing a railroad brakeman in the Omaha depot freight yard. And one time he tried to bribe me into helping him bust out of jail. But the sonofabitch didn’t have any damn cash there and then. Just some yarn about twenty-five grand of stolen government money that was hid and how he knew 134

where to find it.’

Dingle sighed a time or two while Conners spoke, impatiently resentful at having lost his small audience to the other man. But he made no further attempt to interrupt his garrulous partner as Conners went on:

‘I sure as hell wasn’t going to risk my neck on account of that crazy story.’ The man riding between the two women took out a cigar. ‘And as it happened, I got fired from the penitentiary awhile later for breaking some half ass rule about not smuggling booze in to the prisoners.’

‘Stick to the point, Ches,’ Dingle urged fretfully.

‘Yeah, okay,’ he answered irritably. ‘Well, I got myself a job bartending in a gambling saloon near the railroad depot in Omaha. And that’s where I seen Clyde Nagel again, after they let him outta the penn. He was buddy-buddy with a fast talking cardsharp who wasn’t so hot at what he did. A guy that lost more times than he won and for sure it wasn’t no part of his crooked game to do that.’

‘That double dealer was Andrew Devlin who later showed up in Lakewood with a bullet in his belly and the new name of Lyndon Andrews,’ Dingle said smugly.

‘Right,’ Conners agreed, like he and Dingle were engaged in an agreeable private discussion. ‘I don’t know why them two pal-ed up the way they did, unless it was because they were both no-hopers.’

‘The damn point, Ches,’ Dingle reminded with a scowl and a deep sigh. ‘Just keep to it, uh?’

‘Yeah, okay, sure John: well, one night when they were just about on their uppers, I heard them talking in the saloon. You ever notice how nobody ever takes any notice of a bartender once he’s supplied the guy with the drink he wants? Well, it was like – ‘

Dingle cleared his throat and scowled pointedly.