Return to Massacre Mesa - Edge Series 5 (28 page)

‘Yeah,’ Conners sneered. ‘I’m figuring to go talk with them troopers out here in the mountains, mister! Not them that are still back at Fort Chance: which is a lot further off. Anyway, who the hell voted for you to be top hand around here?’

‘Nobody, feller,’ Edge allowed. ‘Just like you weren’t elected to get yourself killed because you tried to take our one and only horse and high tail it away from here.’

‘Meaning you’d do something about it if I tried?’ Conners challenged.

‘I’d feel bound to do that.’

Conners gestured with a hand. ‘While all these folks I’m planning to keep from getting butchered like Frank Shaw stand by and watch you do it?’

Edge shrugged and spoke as evenly as before. ‘Or they’ll try to stop me from doing that, feller. In which case I’ll probably have to try to kill them. Which will certainly mean some of them will try to kill me. And I’ll feel just the same as if I’d just stood by and allowed you ride that horse away from here. I won’t like it.’

The next moment the cold muzzle of a gun was pressed firmly into the nape of Edge’s neck and he froze. Shifted his eyes across their sockets without moving his head and not unexpectedly saw every member of the group except for Sam Tree. Then the saloonkeeper who wore a deputy’s star spoke and confirmed he held the gun that threatened to blow a hole in Edge’s head, much as had been the case in similar circumstances in the Wild Dog Saloon not so long ago. 195

Tree said flatly: ‘It sounds to me like we’re having a real trying time, mister. But I figure Conners’ idea is a fine one. And I’m ready to do more than just
try
to kill you if you don’t take your hand off that rifle and allow him to go bring the army.’

A broad grin spread across the broken nosed, rugged features of Chester Conners as the obese Goodrich vented what sounded like a strangled giggle of almost child-like relief. The scar faced Slade shook his head and scowled while Crooked Eye expressed fear and Lucy Russell seemed at a total loss about what was happening.

‘Most of you folks agree with me, I guess?’ Tree pushed the revolver muzzle harder against Edge’s neck and growled emphatically: ‘I told you to let go of the Goddamn rifle, mister!’

Edge raised his hand away from the Winchester and moved his head slowly to briefly scan everyone in turn. Except for Tree who took a backward step and removed the pressure of the gun muzzle from his neck.

‘Well, it don’t make no never mind if they do or they don’t, it seems to me!’

Conners crowed and drew his own revolver as Tree hunkered down, reached carefully forward with his free hand and slid the Colt out of Edge’s holster. ‘You and me have got the drop on him, deputy. And that means we can do whatever we want, right?’

Tree stepped to the side and then to the front, so Edge could see the solidly built saloonkeeper grasped a revolver in each hand. He glowered scornfully at the triumphantly beaming man and gestured with his head and both sixguns as he said deliberately:

‘I’m anxious you should do what you said you were gonna do, Mr Conners! Which ain’t to hang around here boasting about how smart you are. You ought to be heading out on that horse to get us some help like you been saying you planned to do!’

The suddenly uneasy Conners nodded quickly several times while he listened then hurried to put the saddle on the horse. Released the hobble from the gelding and swung astride him, all the time scowling his response to Tree’s criticism and at length said: ‘I’ll get back to you folks just as soon as I can with as many troopers as the 196

army can spare us.’

Tree warned: ‘Mister, if you don’t come back and you ain’t killed by the Comanche, you better hide yourself as well as those silver dollars everyone’s so excited about. I guess you get my drift?’

‘You can trust me!’ Conners assured indignantly. ‘And the Comanche are behind us, damnit!’ He tugged on the reins to wheel the horse then thudded in his heels to command the animal into a gallop.

As he rode out of sight through the rocky, undulating terrain and the thudding hooves of the racing animal faded from earshot, Goodrich complained anxiously: ‘If that crazy fool keeps riding as fast as that it’ll be my horse that’ll be dead, damnit!’

Dingle muttered sourly: ‘In which case, I reckon we ought to get after Chester!

There’s a lot of good to eat meat on a horse carcass.’

‘Edge?’ There was an apprehensive query in the single syllable Tree spoke. Edge turned from peering through the settling dust raised by the rider as the final sound of the galloping hooves receded into the dark distance and the mountains were again silent on all sides of the tense and apprehensive group. Tree was extending Edge’s Colt, gripping the barrel so the walnut butt was presented toward its owner, but three feet beyond his reach. He said:

‘There ain’t no sense in us killing each other, mister. Not with thirst and hunger and the Comanche waiting to do it. You’re welcome to have your weapons back if you’ll agree you lost out in a democratic vote?’

Edge remained impassively silent as he rose wearily to his feet, groaned and massaged a familiar ache at the small of his back.

‘That’s right, mister!’ Dingle agreed. ‘I’m with Deputy Tree in wanting Chester to ride to get help from the military.’

‘That gets my vote for sure,’ Goodrich agreed.

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‘You people need some help and there ain’t no mistake about that,’ Slade said earnestly.

Crooked Eye started tentatively: ‘Mr Edge, I – ‘

‘Even if you were white you ain’t old enough to vote, Injun!’ Dingle cut in and turned his head rapidly from side to side to look at Lucy who eyed Edge with a brand of sorrow that maybe intimated her regret for failing to side with him. ‘And women don’t have a vote even out here in the godforsaken territories, as far as I know?’

‘Edge?’ Tree spoke in the same tone as before, his expression less grim but without any trace of self-satisfaction now his assumption about the thinking of the rest had been proved correct. Edge leaned forward to accept his revolver but Tree jerked it out of reach and snapped irritably:

‘I need your word that we got us a deal, mister!’

Edge nodded. ‘It seems to me we got us a different deal, feller. Now the horse has been taken out of the pot there’s nothing to win or lose.’

Tree hesitated for maybe three seconds then extended the Colt. And for a few more moments the silent tension at the campsite expanded: until Edge took the revolver and thrust it back in his holster as he hunkered down close to his rifle again. Tree holstered his own Colt and spat between his booted feet to release his feelings. Dingle asked: ‘So, what are we gonna do now? Are we just gonna wait around here for Chester to bring the army to us or what?’

‘Yeah, Sam what do you think we should do now? I thought the idea was that we were supposed to make the Comanche think we know what we’re doing out here!’

Goodrich’s demeanour was a match for the general feeling of anti-climax that permeated the group now that the latest dangerous situation had been resolved. Until a few moments ago there had seemed to be an unspoken agreement that Edge should be regarded as the leader of the group. But with the forthright Conners absent as a result of decisive direct action by Sam Tree, it now seemed the 198

saloonkeeper wearing a deputy’s badge was accepted by the majority as the top hand. But the tall and broadly built Tree did not exude confidence as he growled in a disgruntled tone:

‘Well for starters I don’t reckon Edge is right. It isn’t a whole new deal we’ve got here. It’s the same damn one we had before Slade showed up with the horse and gave us an ace. We played it and now we’re the same as we were only better off than then: the same deal but with an inside chance of winning. So I figure we should do like we were doing before.’

Goodrich suggested without enthusiasm: ‘Right, we move on and make out like we know what we’re up to, uh Sam?’

‘It seems to me it’s what we have to do,’ Dingle said morosely.

‘Edge?’ Tree queried in much the same tone, obviously not relishing the burden of responsibility he had impulsively and maybe accidentally acquired.

‘I came into these mountains looking to recoup some money that was stolen from me, feller. And I don’t plan on giving up on that plan until I’m certain there’s no hope of ever getting what I’m due.’

‘Or you die trying?’ Slade blurted with a suppressed giggle that was the first audible sign he had shown that he was perhaps unhinged.

‘Everybody’s got to die, feller,’ Edge pointed out as he peered in the direction Conners had gone. ‘And one way or another, it seems to me that a lot of us do it trying to get rich.’

He stretched out on his back again, aware for a few moments after he had placed his hat over his face of an even-toned exchange among the others: their talk concerned with whether they should press on immediately under cover of darkness or wait until dawn. He discovered the outcome of the late night discussion when he awoke, saw the sun was newly up above the cloudless eastern horizon and everyone else except for Crooked Eye was still asleep.

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The young Comanche was quick to explain: ‘Everyone took a turn to watch, Mr Edge. Except for Miss Lucy and Mr Slade. All of us were too tired to start out last night.’

With no horses to attend to, no breakfast to prepare and eat, nor coffee to drink or any water to wash in, they set off from the night camp within minutes of all of them coming awake. Lucy moved immediately up on one side of Edge and Crooked Eye closed in on the other. Tree, Goodrich, Dingle and Slade fell into a loose bunch behind and after a few minutes of trudging silently through the cool and bright early morning, the obese liveryman with sunlight glinting on his deputy’s badge asked:

‘Tell me something, Edge?’

‘What makes you think I’m any smarter than you are, feller?’

‘I don’t!’ he countered indignantly. Then moderated his tone. ‘But if Sam here hadn’t got the drop on you and that Conners guy never got to take off to look for the army, what did you have in mind to do with the horse?’

Slade giggled again and began to scratch at his crotch as he stared fixedly at the swaying slender hips of Lucy Russell while he claimed proudly: ‘If it hadn’t have been for me, there wouldn’t be no horse!’

Edge ignored him and replied evenly to Goodrich: ‘I’d have done the same thing Conners said he has it in his mind to do.’

‘And what makes you think you’d have made a better job of it that Chester?’

Dingle challenged with a sneer.

‘I don’t know that I could have but I know myself better than anyone else.’

Dingle hurried to retort: ‘Don’t none of you folks worry. He won’t let us down!

Not unless something he can’t help happens to stop him getting to where the army are. I guess he ain’t the most lily-white straight-up guy in the world, but Ches won’t pull no sneaky tricks on us in the kind of situation we’ve got here!’

Slade guffawed at a private thought.

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Goodrich accused Dingle: ‘You sound to me like a man trying to talk himself into believing something, mister.’

‘And how about you, Edge?’ Tree asked. ‘If you were riding the horse right now, would you consider double crossing the rest of us?’

Edge peered directly ahead, his eyes narrowed to glittering ice blue slits that implied a simmering anger while his lips with a freshly lit cigarette angled from a corner became pursed into the thin line of a mirthless smile.

‘Edge?’ Lucy obviously did not trust the man’s expression. The young Comanche had the same kind of doubt as he stared anxiously up at the man moving at a measured pace beside him and matched the woman’s tone when he asked: ‘Please, why don’t you give us an answer?’

Edge removed the cigarette so he could spit forcefully to the front, then said with a shrug: ‘Let’s just say that in the kind of tight corner I’m in, I’d prefer it was me who was riding our luck.’

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CHAPTER • 19

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THE PACE of their progress was painfully slow and was frequently interrupted
from mid-morning to mid-afternoon by the equal need of them all to rest during the hottest period of the day. Lack of water quickly became uppermost in everyone’s mind as the glaring sun seemed to suck every drop of moisture from their bodies and began to erupt blisters on the lips of Lucy Russell and John Dingle who were the most pale complexioned of the group. While the sanity of Zane Slade came increasingly into question after he lost interest in Lucy Russell and began to babble incoherently to himself while he scratched mostly in his beard now.

Dingle, his recently purchased western-style clothing already stained and shabby, complained the most vocally of being thirsty. And more often than not made the squint eyed young Comanche the target for his anger because of how the even-tempered buck had volunteered at the outset to look for sign there could be water nearby. Edge, then Lucy and next Tree attempted to calm the snub-nosed, overweight man’s volatile anger by pointing out that in the event Conners did not bring the well-supplied army to meet up with them, there was sure to be plenty of water at Mesa Desolado. For Rose Bigheart and Hiram Rickets had lived in the area for a long time and must have had access to a reliable source of water while they did so. At other times, when Dingle’s painful discomfort exploded into bursts of cursing temper, Broderick Goodrich whose obesity maybe caused him the most suffering of all during the gruelling trek, needled the irascible man further. By pointing out in a sneering tone that his partner should have returned by now, unless he had doublecrossed those who had trusted him. And for a while guilt by association with his missing friend silenced the grimacing man whose sun-burnished face was as grizzled with unshaved stubble as all the others.