Return to Massacre Mesa - Edge Series 5 (37 page)

‘I am sorry, Edge. I offered you morning greetings, but in the Comanche tongue. My mind must have wandered and was back in a long ago time.’

‘Maybe when you were last as contended with life as you are now, lady?’ He dragged the back of a hand over several days’ growth of bristles on his jaw then unfolded to his feet with a grimace: stretched to ease the aches out of stiffened muscles that had been inactive too long.

‘Perhaps so,’ she allowed as the smile slowly faded. ‘But I do not say I was often discontented while I lived among the White Eyes. This morning, though, I feel particularly good because I have made somebody very happy.’ She nodded to the area where Lucy Russell had rested last night, before the younger woman was told exactly where to dig for what she wanted within the cave. And her tone became tinged with sorrow as she expressed the doubt: ‘If it is not wrong to feel anything but sadness about all that is left of Miss Lucy’s lieutenant?’

‘She’s had more than enough time to mourn, Rose,’ Edge said as he took his cup 256

to the fire, dropped down on his haunches, lifted the coffee pot and poured, relishing the aroma before he took a first sip.

‘That is just what she said when she came out of the cave. There were some silent tears while she was placing the bones of her lieutenant in the blanket. Then she sat with him - clutching the bundle, you understand – for longer than I was able to stay awake.’

‘All of us needed to sleep well last night, lady,’ Edge said and swallowed some more of the good tasting coffee.

‘I was disturbed by Mr Tree when he came down from being sentry. And although it was Mr Goodrich’s turn to watch, I heard Miss Lucy insist that since she could not yet sleep she would stand guard instead of him. She is still up on the ledge: and if she has fallen asleep at last, I think there is no harm done?’

‘I reckon not,’ Edge agreed then scowled at the sleeping forms of Dingle and Goodrich who had escaped standing watch through no fault of their own. ‘It just galls me to know those two fellers never had to lose any sleep.’

Rose shrugged as Crooked Eye returned to the fireside, his nostrils twitching at the smell of cooking and his impaired eyes gleaming at the prospect of eating the food.

‘What is done is done, I think,’ the squaw said as she poured the boy some coffee. ‘As Miss Lucy has at last come to realise, the past is gone forever: the wrong and the rights alike. All any of us can do is try to make whatever – ‘

‘Hey, that chow sure does smell good, Injun!’ Dingle yelled as he rolled off his side on to his back and turned his head to peer toward the source of the appetising aromas. Then he eyed the unsmiling man, woman and boy standing close to the fire and recalled suddenly that he should not he under his blanket, his gastric juices stirred by the smells of breakfast. He expressed shame then anxiety as he struggled to come upright and whined defensively: ‘Sonofabitch, I

oughta be on watch! But nobody

rousted me outta the sack, Goddamnit!’

‘You’re right on both counts, feller,’ Edge growled.

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‘But you have no cause to feel badly about it, Mr Dingle,’ Lucy Russell placated as she came down from the ledge, one hand raised to her right shoulder where she clutched the tied-together mouth of a blanket bundle. ‘I agreed to take the turns of you and Mr Goodrich because I wanted to.’ Fatigue showed in her dark rimmed, bloodshot eyes but her smile was as bright as she was able to make it. Dingle’s attitude lightened as he came toward the fire and saw Lucy carefully lower the bundle to the ground. Then his loud, excited voice roused Tree and Goodrich when he offered enthusiastically: ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do to make up for it! When the Injun shows us where the money’s hid, I’ll do all the work digging it up! How would that be?’

‘I’m glad you made the offer, feller,’ Edge said evenly as he exhaled some smoke from the first cigarette of the day.

‘Be my pleasure, mister,’ the beaming man assured.

Goodrich’s first waking thought was the same as Dingle’s second had been and he looked just as perturbed as he struggled to his feet. ‘Hey, why didn’t somebody get me out of the sack? Did I miss anything important that’s happened?’

Tree looked inquisitively around at everyone in turn and grimaced as he got the glimmering of an idea about why the quietly smiling younger woman looked so weary.

‘You took both their turns, Miss Lucy?’

Before she could start to repeat her explanation Edge continued to Dingle: ‘I’m glad about it because if you hadn’t volunteered to do that I’d have had to think of a way to make you even things up.’

Goodrich asked: ‘Are they Lieutenant Montgomery’s remains in the blanket, Miss Lucy?’

‘That is correct, Mr Goodrich,’ she confirmed, switching her uncritical gaze between him and Tree. ‘And there is absolutely no reason for anyone to feel guilty. For after I found Glenn I knew I just would not be able to sleep a wink so I was pleased – ‘

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Goodrich was no longer interested in why some sentry duties had been neglected as he pressed on to make his point: ‘So you’ve got what you came for?’

‘I certainly did. I can now bury Glenn decently in the Lakewood cemetery and prove that he had absolutely nothing to do with – ‘

‘So you’ll come back to town with Sam and me now?’ the fat man with the tiny beard cut in cheerfully.

‘I am ready to do that,’ she replied in much the same tone.

‘Not with me, not yet!’ Tree’s earnest tone acted in an instant to quell the good moods of the man and woman.

‘What the hell are you talking about, Sam?’ Goodrich snapped. ‘All along you’ve been saying – ‘

Edge extended his plate for the squaw to serve him some breakfast and said wryly: ‘Seems there’s a bone of contention between the lawmen.’

Tree snarled: ‘I’m not in any kind of mood for any more of your stupid jokes, mister!’

Edge countered in the same ironic tone as before: ‘But it seems it ain’t the funny bone.’

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CHAPTER • 24

___________________________________________________________________________________

AS LUCY Russell drifted into an easy, much-needed and almost soundless sleep
while the rest voraciously ate breakfast, Rose Bigheart repeated for the others what she had already told to Edge and the eavesdropping Tree about the hidden cache of silver dollars and the gun battle at the derelict mission. And afterwards, assured by the squaw that the place was no more than a few hours ride away, Goodrich let himself be easily persuaded by Tree to travel the final few miles of the long journey before turning to head back toward Lakewood.

Then even the obese, goatee-d liveryman was caught up in the general mood of optimism as the camp was broken and the group began to make unhurried progress toward a sure and certain destination. Later during the dazzlingly bright, uncomfortably hot morning, Dingle struck the first sour note when he snarled at the front riding Rose to hurry the pace. Edge was close enough behind the squaw to see her slightly built body stiffen at the way the avariciously eager man spoke to her: his scornful attitude acting to destroy her new found happiness that the arduous trek was almost at an end.

‘Dingle!’ Sam Tree rasped the name in the tone of an invective before Edge, who rode alongside him, had time to switch his attention from Rose to the impatient man who was positioned at the rear between Goodrich and Crooked Eye.

‘What can I do for you, deputy?’ Dingle seemed impervious to the ill feeling he had caused.

‘As I recall it, you had a nice long sleep and a fine breakfast when you finally woke up.’

‘What?’ Now he became aware that something was amiss and blurted defensively: ‘Look, it wasn’t my fault I wasn’t rousted to – ‘

‘A peaceful night in the sack and then some fine chow and coffee fixed for you by somebody else!’ Tree pressed on. ‘So I just can’t understand why you got the bellyache.’

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‘Me? I ain’t got the . . . ‘ He vented a hollow laugh that became an embarrassed croak as his gaze darted around and he found that everyone except for Rose was scowling at him. Then he snarled:

‘Yeah, okay, I get it. I’m bellyaching. That’s real funny, deputy: and I thought it was just Edge got to tell the jokes. Okay, okay: I’ll try to hold my water until we get to where we’re going. It’s just that we’ve all come a long way to – ‘

‘Why don’t you just shut the hell up, mister?’ Goodrich said wearily. ‘Before you give all of us the earache from having to listen to you.’

Dingle muttered some obscenities under his breath and this heralded a lengthy silence as the group rode through the rising heat of the hazy mid-morning, the earlier atmosphere of easy camaraderie dispelled by Dingle’s crassness. Just Lucy Russell’s mood remained unchanged as she rode on the other side of Edge from Tree, the blanket bundle of bones clutched tightly in one hand, the pensive gaze in her dark eyes lightened by a secret smile from time to time. Then:

‘There!’ Rose Bigheart exclaimed and suddenly reined in her pony. She raised an arm to point ahead and to the left and her tone was hushed when she explained:

‘There is
El Mission de Madonna de Sierras.’

She had moved further ahead of the close riding group: just as she had done at intervals throughout the morning. And those behind needed to urge their mounts forward several feet to where they reined them to a halt in a straggled line alongside the squaw. From where they peered round the crumbled end of a low sandstone bluff into the start of a valley that cut back into much higher ground. The steep flanks of the valley steadily rising and closing in, like this had once been the mouth of a long dried up river that spilled into the inland sea that became Dead Man’s Desert. If this had ever been so it was several million years before the Spanish came up through South America to cross Mexico and traverse the Cedar Mountains. And shortly afterwards a group of devout priests built the adobe mission at a midway point between the broken ends of the barren cliffs to east and west. Where they did their good works until a die-hard violent element among the heathen Indians they sought to convert to 261

Christianity in this Godforsaken piece or territory rose up and all but destroyed what the priests had established there.

Dingle yelled in high excitement: ‘Hey, let’s go! I ain’t gonna let anyone hold me back now!’

He thudded in his heels to send his mount at a gallop across the open ground toward the derelict building. Which as Rose had described, still had the remains of a collapsed bell tower at the eastern end to signal that it once was a church. The rest of the group moved off with less dust swirling haste than Dingle and maybe it was a sense of awe that held them back. Or more likely a feeling of anti-climax now that they had finally reached their journey’s end after enduring so much toil and trouble, deprivation and deadly danger.

For his part, Edge felt the mild stirring of a degree of elation it was not in his nature to display in the way Dingle did. Then he was briefly uneasy at the notion that yet again he could be deprived of what he had striven so hard to achieve. Which, God knew, was a bitter frustration he had faced and survived often enough between his boyhood on the Iowa farm and
El Mission de Madonna de Sierras
down here in the borderland
.
But, damnit, he never used to worry over what might happen: not before he got to be so old! Now he had to consciously move his line of thinking off this negative track and occupy himself with surreptitiously studying those who rode alongside him.

Saw Lucy Russell was still in the same trance-like state of contentment that had gripped her since she awoke from the brief sleep as they broke camp. That Tree and Goodrich, despite themselves, were finding it difficult to contain the impulse to react like Dingle. While Crooked Eye was obviously aware of the legend attached to the mission and showed his immaturity as a not yet fully fledged brave in how he was clearly fearful. And was only able to move ahead by exerting a powerful effort of will he certainly could not have sustained if he were alone. And Rose Bigheart: as stoic as ever, seemingly now unaffected by tales of the evil spirits that were supposedly harboured there.

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Then, up ahead, John Dingle suddenly reined his horse to a rearing halt and had to struggle to calm the animal. Rose crossed herself. Crooked Eye spoke low and fast in Comanche: and perhaps would have wheeled his pony and raced away had Edge not winked at him. Goodrich swallowed hard and Lucy continued to be totally detached from her immediate surroundings.

Tree yelled: ‘What the frig is wrong with you, mister?’

Dingle beckoned hurriedly without turning around, swung to the ground and waited for them to ride up close to what had once been the entrance to the mission. The timber door had not survived and much of the adobe to either side had been eroded to dust. Just one wall of the bell tower reached up to a height of fifteen feet or so while elsewhere five feet was the maximum. The floor was strewn with heaps of rubble and the fire scars that would have been left following the long ago Indian attack had been eradicated by the bleaching effect of the sun and the scouring of wind driven grains of sand.