Return to Massacre Mesa - Edge Series 5 (24 page)

Sam Tree, whose personality seemed to be unchanged from how it had been at the Wild Dog, agreed absently:

‘Yeah, Billy gave us the right and the duty to do that.’

Then he was suddenly no longer detached. ‘Frank, I’d like for you to go bring our horses. Brod, you best see if you can round up the animals that bolted off from these folks.’

Goodrich directed a nervous glance toward the far end of the ravine and did not attempt to camouflage the obvious fact that he was fearful of Comanche revenge. ‘You mean on my own, Sam? There were three Injuns went that way all painted up and packing guns and - ‘

As Shaw moved eagerly back along the ravine Tree broke in wearily on the apprehensive fat man with the sweat-beaded face. ‘Just do like I tell you and earn the money that the county’s paying you, Brod.’

‘But why don’t I take Edge along and maybe one of the other – ‘

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Tree interrupted him again: ‘I’m about to ensure that all these gentlemen surrender their weapons without giving me any argument: ain’t that right, you men –

no argument? So first off you toss that rifle across the ravine, Mr Edge. Then all of you unbuckle your gun belts and throw them into the same area.’

Lucy blurted: ‘Mr Tree, this is getting to be more ridiculous by the moment!’

Tree ignored her as he prompted: ‘And I’d like it to be in my time rather than yours, if you don’t mind, gentlemen? Because you must surely realise that you are all under arrest for involvement in the abduction of Miss Russell.’

The woman’s voice became shriller: ‘I wasn’t abducted, you stupid man!’

Dingle claimed tensely. ‘As you can see, I do not carry a gun of any kind on a belt or anywhere else.’

‘In that case you’re excused from doing what I said.’ Tree allowed with a shrug as Edge tossed away the rifle that had been canted to a shoulder. Then, he impassively and Conners with an angry scowl, started to unbuckle their gun belts as Tree went on in the same conversational tone: ‘You only have to worry if you really do have a firearm hidden somewhere and I find out about it, Mr Dingle.’

Dingle formed his slack mouth into a scowl of his own as he glared at Conners and accused grimly: ‘I didn’t think I had any need to carry a gun since I had Chester for a partner.’

Shaw moved out of sight beyond the eastern end of the ravine and the irritably apprehensive Goodrich started off reluctantly in the opposite direction. Edge asked: ‘So what now, feller?’

‘Yes, now what, Mr Tree?’ Lucy paraphrased the query, her tone and expression more challenging than Edge’s had been as she sidled closer to him and gripped his upper arm: to perhaps register she had more faith in him as a protector than Dingle did in Conners.

‘We’re all gonna head back to Lakewood,’ Tree answered evenly, still as unruffled 166

as he had been since he first appeared amid the settling dust and drifting gun smoke.

‘Then it’ll be up to your pa to decide what’s to be done.’

‘I guess you and the other two aren’t getting paid big bucks for doing this, mister,’ Dingle said, a cunning glint showing in his eye.

‘We’re all getting the standard rate for a deputy sheriff.’

Dingle urged: ‘Then why don’t you forget about this posse nonsense and you’ll make a great deal more than that, I can promise you.’

Tree said scornfully: ‘I guess you’re talking government silver dollars, uh?’

‘Of course.’

‘Shit, we ain’t gonna give anyone else a share!’ Conners snarled. ‘The take’s being cut too many ways already!’

Tree vented a harshly sardonic laugh, but he did not relax his vigilance over the small group in front of the rifle he regularly raked from side to side.

‘You people are living a fantasy! That stolen money ain’t within a thousand miles of Lakewood. The deserters who stole it took it away with them all those years ago. And it’s all been spent by now for sure.’

‘That is merely your opinion, sir!’ Dingle countered.

‘It’s what I know for a fact!’ Tree snapped and there was a trace of bad temper in his tone for the first time. ‘Because I still have the common sense I was born with!’

A moment later the hooves of a galloping horse sounded from beyond the eastern end of the ravine and Tree instinctively spun around: which jerked the aim of his rifle away from the group. Conners dropped to his haunches, clasped a hand to the butt of the Colt in the holster on his discarded gun belt and started to slide the revolver free of the leather.

Edge was equal with him going down into the squat but came up faster. The Colt in his fist was still in the holster, the gun belt swinging beneath the muzzle that was 167

aimed midway between Conners who was sideways on to him and Tree who had his back to the sixgun.

‘Don’t, Edge!’

Lucy Russell’s shrieked plea caused all attention to be directed toward him for an instant. Then everyone swung around to look at the chestnut gelding that raced into the ravine from the eastern end. Saw the animal veer to the side of the sprawl of three Comanche corpses and then continue its headlong pace toward the group of briefly immobile men and the woman.

In the next moment they had lunged out of its path and by chance all flattened themselves to the same ravine wall. From where they were able to see the top half of Frank Shaw: the man lashed belly down over the saddle, his head bouncing loosely from side to side to signal that his neck was broken. All eyes were drawn to the gaping wound where a powerfully wielded tomahawk blade had almost decapitated the erstwhile barber who had died a part time lawman. Then the horse was past the group and the thud of its pumping hooves quickly receded beyond the end of the ravine: the fast diminishing sound replaced by splashes of the bent over Lucy Russell being sick to her stomach.

‘Sonofabitch!’ Conners’ voice was a strangled croak while he struggled to control his own nausea, a hand clasped to his throat.

‘Godamnit, that was fast!’ Tree snarled then complained in the tone of a man offering what he knew to be a lame excuse: ‘We only knew about the three we back shot. And the three that took off in the other direction. We never saw another Comanche out there.’

His tone was of incredulity now as his unblinking gaze remained fastened on the settling dust that was all that moved at the western end of the ravine. Until two figures appeared side by side in the gap between the cliff faces, their physiques near the extremes of the human form. One was the adolescent Crooked Eye who was just beginning to develop a muscular frame and the second the massively 168

flabby Broderick Goodrich who weighed maybe three or four times as much as the young Comanche buck.

‘What in the name of God is happening here?’ Dingle rasped. Lucy finished emptying her stomach on to the ground, gave a final dry retch, straightened up and scrubbed the back of a hand vigorously over the ugly mess dripping from her lips and jaw.

‘Beats me.’ Sam Tree was unable to tear his gaze away from the two figures who advanced slowly along the ravine and soon were close enough for their expressions to be read. Goodrich looked scared out of his wits, his porcine eyes strangely wide and staring straight ahead while streams of saliva spilled from the corners of his trembling mouth to trickle into his tiny beard. Crooked Eye appeared stoically resigned to what had happened and what was yet to be: his squinting gaze fixed on the ground immediately ahead, as if to be certain he did not trip on a rock or a hole in the hard packed dirt.

‘Edge?’ Lucy spoke the single syllable as a question that demanded a reassuring answer.

He responded evenly: ‘It looks like we’re in big trouble, lady.’

‘That’s what I call stating the damn obvious!’ Dingle snarled with heavy sarcasm.

‘I only talk of what I know, feller.’ Edge eased the Colt hammer forward and then buckled the gun belt back around his waist; sure that for the moment there was nothing to fear from the stunned Tree and the quaking Goodrich.

‘Brod?’ Tree prompted.

Goodrich halted unsteadily a few feet away and needed to open and close his mouth several times before he finally found his voice. ‘I’ve just seen Frank, Sam. They near enough hacked the poor guy’s head off.’

‘We all saw the same thing!’ Conners snarled.

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‘I guess the Comanche took all the horses?’ Edge asked. It was Crooked Eye who replied: ‘Yes, that’s what they did, Mr Edge. And Mountain Lion and his braves have ridden off from here.’

‘And what has happened to Rose Bigheart?’ Lucy asked. The boy said: ‘The squaw is gone, lady.’

‘Gone?’ She sounded frantic. ‘Do you mean that – ‘

‘Mountain Lion took the squaw with him.’ He was even more resigned to the inevitable. ‘He made a prisoner of her and she agreed not to try to escape if I was allowed to return here.’

‘And I bet after they butchered Frank that way the savages took our horses, too?’

Goodrich peered forlornly eastwards along the ravine, plainly with no hope of seeing anything that was likely to improve their desperate situation. Tree said grimly: ‘They’re bound to have done that I reckon.’

‘Edge?’ Lucy repeated and gripped his upper arm more tightly than before. ‘What are we going to do? ‘I’m sorry but I’m so afraid.’

‘He’s already told you!’ Conners snapped. ‘If he don’t know something, he’s the kind of guy who don’t run off at the mouth about it.’

‘There’s one thing I’ve learned about running, feller,’ Edge drawled, stooped to retrieve the Winchester that he canted to his shoulder before he started to move off westward at an easy pace.

Dingle sneered: ‘Oh yeah, and what’s that, mister?’

‘Before you can do it, you first have to walk.’

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CHAPTER • 16

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TREE GRIMACED and gestured with his rifle to indicate the direction from which they had all come: ‘Yeah, walk is all we can do. And there’s a whole lot of miles ahead of us so we ought to get started!’

Edge said: ‘I guess you mean what I think you do, feller? Back to Lakewood?’

Tree nodded emphatically. ‘Where else?’

Lucy dug her fingers more firmly into Edge’s arm.

‘Yeah, where else but back to town?’ Goodrich swung his head from side to side like he was trying to keep both ends of the ravine in view at the same time: and sometimes he peered upwards, his eyes cracked against the narrow strip of bright blue sky between the tops of the sandstone walls. But there was no sign of a living Indian anywhere.

Edge slowly lowered the rifle from his shoulder but did not level it at anyone. He invited: ‘No sweat, you two deputies are free to be on your way to wherever you want to go.’

Conners rasped: ‘Yeah, I’m all for that. As far as I’m concerned, it’s best not to have any lawmen riding . . . damn it, walking along with us! First thing, though, they’d better hand over their weapons, uh? Considering the way they got the drop on us before. Don’t you reckon that’s how it ought to be, Edge?’

Tree glowered and fastened a tighter grip around his rifle but kept it tilted toward the ground directly in front of him. While Goodrich seemed oblivious to all else as he concentrated on maintaining his tense watch over their surroundings. Edge answered: ‘The lawmen get to keep their weapons, feller.’

‘Why the hell should they?’ Conners’ green-eyed stare was contemptuously incredulous. ‘So the sonsofbitches can get the drop on us again the first chance that 171

comes along?’

Tree’s voice was even toned but his dark eyes glittered a warning that his anger was burning on a short fuse when he reminded: ‘As I recall, it was the Comanche had the drop on you people when me and Brad and Frank showed up.’

Edge said: ‘They may need to defend themselves from Mountain Lion and his braves.’

‘What? Yeah, of course!’ Goodrich shuddered and his head jerked at a faster rate to spray sweat droplets in all directions.

Tree dropped the butt of his rifle to rest it on the ground and fisted a hand to the muzzle in what he probably did not consider to be a kind of sloppy stand easy attitude.

‘Look, Brod and me were given a job to do by Billy Russell. In truth, it’s just to bring Lucy back to her pa. Because I have to allow I know you didn’t abduct her, Edge. So we can do the job Billy gave us just by taking her back to Lakewood. You three guys and the Comanche kid can – ‘

‘No!’ Lucy shrieked and abruptly moderated her tone. ‘I’m a forty years old adult and I’m getting really sick and tired of the way my stupid father treats me like a child all the time!’

‘There’s your answer, feller,’ Edge said. ‘She’s a full-grown woman and you’ve admitted that no crime’s been committed. So it seems to me that there’s no legal duty for you and Dingle to carry out around here. But if you plan on doing a favour for your buddy the sheriff, I figure it’s best you think again.’