Return to Massacre Mesa - Edge Series 5 (20 page)

Conners pressed on: ‘All right, damnit! Anyway, I heard Nagel telling his buddy 135

the same tale he told me in the penn about the big bundle of government dollars. And how they could find it if they could raise the stake to get down to the south west part of the country.’ He laughed. ‘Well, the next morning both of them had beat it outta town on a westbound train. A few hours after a big winner in a late night card game was beat up and robbed of every buck the poor bastard had – bushwhacked in the alley out back of the barroom where I worked.’

‘Quite,’ Dingle said, obviously bored from hearing an oft-told tale. ‘And later that same day I came to town. Looking for Clyde Nagel, a man who I knew had been named Martin Farmer when he and a second trooper named Patrick Crabbe deserted from Fort Chance just before the money was stolen.’

Lucy Russell murmured: ‘Oh, I see.’

Rose Bigheart spoke some words of her own language, her tone as harsh as before. Crooked Eye tightened his grip around Edge’s waist. And Edge said:

‘You two reached Lakewood independently, both on the trail of the pair of fellers with changed names and each of you knew you’d hit a dead end?’

‘That certainly was the way it seemed,’ Dingle confirmed. ‘We heard Nagel had been killed in the Indian attack on the stage so we were waiting for an opportunity to do a deal with Devlin, who was calling himself Andrews, if he recovered.’ He cleared his throat: ‘Not unnaturally, Ches and me would have liked to keep what we knew to ourselves and divided the money on a fifty-fifty basis just as you suggested. But when I found out about your interest – and I include you in this as well, my good woman . . .

‘ He looked back at the stoic faced Rose. ‘ . . . and heard that the wounded man was as dead as Nagel, I persuaded Chester that we should throw in our lot with you people. Better a larger force to win the prize than two smaller ones who might well fight over the spoils? And perhaps lose everything? Even their lives in such country as this where not all Comanche are as friendly toward whites as those in the present company?’

His tone and the way he looked askance at Edge implied a question and Edge said: ‘Maybe you have a point, feller. I guess you knew pretty soon after I rode into Lakewood that I was looking for Devlin?’

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Conners answered, speaking around the newly lit cigar angled from the side of his mouth. ‘You’re real famous back in that one horse town, mister. First for being in at the death of Andrews or Devlin or whatever his damn name was. Then after the way you and the sheriff’s daughter got together. And the sheriff tried to kill you but ended up putting a bullet through his foot.’

‘This gentlemen and I did not
get together
in the manner you appear to suggest, Mr Conners!’ Lucy snapped defensively.

Dingle recaptured all attention when he announced in an impatient tone ‘Just like you, Mr Edge, Ches and me came to Lakewood looking for Andrew Devlin. And, small towns being what they are for talk, we heard of his death and how you were with him at the end. You and the Comanche woman.’ He shrugged. ‘And I reasoned that if the three of you – for Miss Russell was shortly to join you two - were doing as I suspected, then it would be best to throw in with you.’

‘
Ask them to throw in with us
is how you put it, John,’ Conners corrected grimly.

‘Especially after we heard how the soldier boys at the fort have got information that a bunch of renegade Comanche are gonna go on the warpath again.’

Dingle made a dismissive hand gesture. ‘Whatever: how does our idea sit with you folks?’ He looked at Edge then turned his head to show a quizzical expression that involved the two women in the invitation to respond.

Rose Bigheart asked scornfully: ‘What information have you two men got that we three don’t already know, mister?’

Conners growled: ‘Look, I ain’t so sure I take to the idea of doing business with a Comanche, let alone a squaw! And sure as hell not with an Injun kid who ain’t so many years off being a full grown savage!’ He shared a glower of disgust between the woman riding to his left and Crooked Eye astride the horse behind Edge. Rose Bigheart continued to gaze straight ahead, her mouth set in a tight line and her eyes filled with simmering resentment.

Dingle sighed then implored hurriedly: ‘Please, you folks, you’ll have to make 137

allowances for my partner. Ches is one of the old school in the way he has major doubts that Indians and whites will ever be able to live together in peace and harmony.’

Edge started: ‘I guess your buddy can’t help being a stupid sonofabitch but – ‘

‘Who’re you calling stupid?’ Conners snarled and spat out his part smoked cigar.

‘Edge!’ Lucy yelled in shrill warning.

All the horses snorted as they were suddenly reined in and Edge yet again instinctively reached for his holstered Colt. Then checked the move after he half turned in the saddle and saw Rose’s hand streak sideways: to fasten a white-knuckle grip on the wrist of Conners who was on the point of drawing his revolver. It was clear from how the scowling man struggled and from the way his glowering expression changed shape that he was badly pained by the taut hold he could not escape.

‘Goddamnit to hell, Chester!’ Dingle complained sourly. ‘Why do you have to be so ornery all the time?’

Conners found he was compelled to look into the face of the slightly built Comanche squaw who had such a powerful grip on his wrist. Then Rose told him evenly:

‘So, mister: you do not like to make a deal with a Comanche? Well, I surely do not like the idea of doing business with a man who would shoot another in the back, White Eyes.’

‘Calm down, I beg of you!’ Dingle implored and swept his gaze over all the riders.

‘Will everyone please calm down? There’s just no call for this kind of trouble. Such infantile squabbling does not bode well for good relations among us if we do agree to throw in together.’

Conners and Rose continued for a few more moments to lock their glinting eyed gazes: until the man’s anger drained out of him. Then he opened his hand on the gun butt while pain was still evident in his screwed up eyes as he allowed: ‘Okay.’

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Rose nodded and loosened her hold on his wrist.

Edge shook his head, sighed, faced front again and started the group moving as he said: ‘I was going to ask the same question she did. What exactly do you fellers have that we ain’t got already? Why do we need you along except as a couple of extra guns if Mountain Lion and his renegades jump us?’

Dingle said anxiously: ‘Look, I feel that we should all come to some form of agreement to be a part of one group before we start to trade any information.’

Edge countered: ‘As far as I know, we’ve got all the information we need for what we aim to do, feller.’

Dingle showed a faint smile that was almost an underplayed smirk. He spoke in a very distinct tone as he listed: ‘You know the place where the massacre happened. And you know how much cash was stolen. You know the names of the two troopers who stole it and deserted: one of them now dead for certain and the other maybe. But it’s my opinion that you could spend the rest of your lives looking for the money without ever finding it.’ His triumph was almost as childishly smug as Conners’ had been earlier.

‘Like a bunch of mountain crazy gold grubbers who don’t even know what to look for that shows where there’s paydirt in the ground under their feet!’ Conners challenged.

‘You know what I think?’ Crooked Eye asked.

Conners rasped: ‘I don’t give a shit what the hell some lousy – ‘

‘The way Ches and me see it, you have no say in this matter, young man,’ Dingle cut in, his tone a little less insultingly contemptuous than Conners. ‘If you are going to have some of the spoils it will have to be paid out of other people’s shares. Certainly neither Chester nor I will agree to give you – ‘

‘I know that!’ the young Comanche snapped. ‘I wish for nothing: except not to be made to go back to live with the Comanche!’

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‘What is it you want to say, Crooked Eye?’ Lucy asked sympathetically.

‘That I think none of you has anything to lose by trusting each other. Especially it is better, as Edge has said, to be in a larger group since Mountain Lion and his braves are in the hills. But when you find what you are looking for – when you have got that –

I think then it could be another matter.’

‘Crooked Eye speaks much sense that is beyond his young years,’ Rose said. ‘We have nothing to lose until we have something to lose. Except for our lives. Do you not agree with that, Edge?’

Edge looked at the frowning Dingle beside him then back at the scowling Conners, the stoic Rose Bigheart, the puzzled Lucy Russell and finally the impassive Crooked Eye, who prompted: ‘What have you got to lose except your life? Like she says?’

Edge answered sardonically: ‘Right now outside of my life only something that I’ve lost and found maybe ten thousand times.’

‘Just what on earth are you talking about?’ Lucy asked impatiently.

‘Peace of mind, lady,’ he answered evenly. ‘And I reckon I can get along without that for a while.’ He hardened his tone: ‘But some of you people better take warning: I’ll kill anyone who tries to lay claim to my piece of the action.’

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CHAPTER • 13

______________________________________________________________________________________

THE MALCONTENTED group of three men, two women and a boy bedded down
without disagreement when John Dingle’s fob watch showed the time as four o’clock. They made their camp in a narrow rocky valley of the Cedar Mountains, close to where the broad, arid plain of Dead Man’s Desert carved an extensive, bay-like indentation into the high ground. It was a formation that suggested this area might once have been a lakeshore in the far distant, pre-historic past. Because of the early hour at which they began to take their rest it was agreed that they should sleep on into the new day well beyond sun up. And because of the risk that Mountain Lion and his renegades could be looking for them, a sentry was posted. Crooked Eye, the youngest member of the group and so the most able to get by with little sleep, volunteered to keep look out.

Only the petulant Conners took issue with this suggestion and made no pretence that the reason for his objection was anything other than his innate bigotry and suspicion the Comanche boy would betray them at the first opportunity. And he persuaded Dingle also to stay alert for the first two hours after which he was to be roused to take a turn at keeping watch on the watcher. But when the sun had climbed high into the cloudless Southwest sky and the young buck gave a short, shrill whistle that was the pre-arranged danger signal it was immediately clear Conners’ plan had not worked. For when Edge came awake to the sound he saw that Conners was still deeply asleep under his
blankets at
the same spot where he bedded down. And Dingle was still up at the look out point near the crest of the valley’s north side, some hundred yards from the camp. He was sprawled out on his back and soundly sleeping to the extent that he had not been stirred at the high-pitched whistle made by the hunkered down Comanche boy just feet away from where he lay. Moments later Rose Bigheart came awake as the boy responded with a hand gesture to Edge’s tacit sign that there was no further need for audible warnings. Lucy stirred, groaned sleepily and asked nervously: ‘What’s wrong? Where am I?’

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Then she uttered a harsher sound when an arm joint creaked painfully from being slept on for too long.

Her cry woke Conners, who cursed at a leg muscle that troubled him in a similar way. And both of them sat up abruptly, peered around to get their bearings and took stretched seconds to recall where they were. The woman scowled as she massaged her aching arm and Conners was briefly sheepish: then angry as he shifted his gaze to look up to where Crooked Eye peered fixedly northward and Dingle continued to sleep deeply.

‘That sonofabitch didn’t wake me!’ he snarled. ‘We could all have been slaughtered by a bunch of – ‘

‘Not while a trustworthy Comanche was keeping watch!’ Rose Bigheart countered grimly. Her expressive dark eyes poured scorn upon the disconcerted man before she got to her feet and moved off in the wake of Edge, who had already started up the steeply sloping ground, his Winchester canted to a shoulder. Lucy hurried after them and Conners brought up the rear, hobbling on his cramped leg while his thickly bristled face expressed a grimace that was probably due more to his troubled mind than physical discomfort. Closer to the top of the valley side Edge dropped down on to all fours to remain below the crest of the rise at the same level as the shorter Crooked Eye. When he was within six feet of the young Comanche he asked:

‘What’s up, kid?’