Return to Massacre Mesa - Edge Series 5 (38 page)

‘They just give me a scare is all,’ Dingle croaked apologetically and pointed through the former doorway that was now just a gap in the crumbled wall. The others crowded around him to peer at the three skeletons sprawled among the detritus of the derelict church: the remains of the killers of Rickets, their bones haphazardly arranged by the way their bodies fell at death. Just an easily recognised bullet hole in the side of one skull signalled they had died violently in a hail of gunfire. But after so long there was no shred of flesh on the bones. Nor were there any remnants of clothing fabric or the weapon they discarded as they died: everything that could be put to practical use had been taken by the men’s two killers. All else had rotted away.

Lucy Russell now showed startled awareness of her surroundings and frowned at the unburied remains of long dead men as she took a tighter grip on the bundle she carried at her shoulder.

Rose Bigheart said harshly: ‘I think that not even the scavenging coyotes and buzzards would come into this accursed place to find an easy meal. So just crawling 263

insects and maggots and flies stripped these bones, I think.’

Dingle recovered from the shock of his gristly find and snarled: ‘The hell with that! Where squaw? Where did those guys hide the money?’

There was a strange stiffness in the gait of Rose Bigheart as she advanced through the gap in the crumbled wall: like she had to steel herself against the threat of shuddering. Crooked Eye murmured in his native tongue and Rose crossed herself as she moved with care among the rubble, her head tilted to look down at the uneven surface so she would not trip as she weaved toward the western end of the ruined building. Here she stopped and turned to look to where the others stood on the threshold and by tacit consent held back from following her. Until:

‘I will surely never see such wealth again!’ Crooked Eye’s voice was a rasping whisper and he darted forward with the agile speed of youth.

‘Okay, leave it, Injun!’ Dingle commanded and lurched into a lumbering run. ‘I said I’d do the digging and I can’t wait to get started on it!’

‘Hell, Sam! After all these years of thinking it was never out here!’ Goodrich waddled excitedly in the wake of the others.

‘Mr Tree: Mr Edge?’ Lucy Russell’s tone was intrigued, her expression puzzled. ‘Do you not wish to – ‘

‘Somebody has to see to the horses now the kid ain’t interested,’ Tree cut in tautly and shifted his gaze away from where the squaw and the young buck stood as the two white men hurried toward them. Then he backed off a pace, turned and went toward the animals as Edge said:

‘I don’t have too many virtues, lady. Maybe that’s why I’ve always tried to hang on to patience.’

Tree predicted with heavy menace: ‘Hang is surely what you’ll do if you try to lay claim to that money and I don’t shoot you down here, mister!’

Lucy caught her breath and snapped her head around. Like Edge she saw the 264

saloonkeeper with a deputy’s badge pinned to his shirt was in among the group of horses and had slid a Winchester from a boot: now aimed it from his shoulder at Edge.

‘Is there any need for – ‘ the woman started.

‘Okay, Brod!’ Tree yelled. ‘I got this guy covered!’ He lowered his voice to order:

‘Ease the sixshooter from the holster, Edge. And toss it way out of reach.’

‘Mr Tree, this surely is not necessary!’ Lucy sounded like a schoolma’am rebuking a pupil for a minor classroom infringement.

‘I got it under control here, Sam!’ Goodrich yelled in triumph.

‘Shut up, Miss Lucy!’ Tree rasped through gritted teeth. ‘Edge, you and her better do like I say! I’m a duly appointed law officer and you’re under arrest for attempting to steal government money. So I’ve got the right to kill you for resisting arrest if I decide that’s what you’re doing!’

‘But Mr Edge is not resisting – ‘

‘No sweat, lady.’ Edge moved his right hand slowly, eased the Colt from the holster with a thumb and forefinger and let it fall to the ground. ‘Maybe he’s just doing what he figures is best.’

‘Get your hands in the air and step inside the building,’ Tree instructed, less tense now Edge was disarmed. ‘You go with him, Miss Lucy: let’s join the rest and be one big happy bunch of good buddies again, uh?’

‘I can’t promise I’ll be happy, deputy,’ Edge said with a mirthless, glittering eyed smile as he complied with the order and turned to head into the ruin. ‘Not now I’m not going to be rich.’

Lucy Russell, still clutching the blanket bundle at her shoulder, trailed Edge and then came up alongside him as he lowered his arms to his sides. ‘Really, you’d think after all we’ve been though together there would be a degree of trust among us, wouldn’t you?’

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Tree countered harshly: ‘For trust to be of any value, it has to be earned!’

‘Kind of like money,’ Edge growled. ‘Easy come: easy go.’

‘I wouldn’t say this money was easy earned!’ Dingle complained bitterly from where he stood before Goodrich’s levelled Colt, the squaw to one side of him and Crooked Eye on the other.’

Rose Bigheart was impassive and the young buck scornful while it was difficult to judge whether it was Goodrich or Dingle who was the more nervous.

‘Look, just what the hell is this all about, Tree?’ Dingle’s attempt to express rage was defeated by the shrillness of his fearful tone.

‘It’s something Sam and me have been agreed on to do from the start of it, soon as the money was found,’ Goodrich explained and talk seemed to ease his sweating apprehension. ‘And if you think about it, you’ll realise we’re doing everyone a favour. We stop you from stealing the government’s cash and you’re not guilty of any crime. All of you can just ride away free as birds?’

Edge drawled: ‘A couple of fellers as right thinking as you are deserve to be rewarded, but – ‘

‘That’s it!’ Dingle broke in. ‘We weren’t going to steal it. It’s just the reward we want!’

‘If you’ve led a righteous life, feller, I reckon you’re pretty close to getting your reward,’ Edge muttered, paused and added: ‘In heaven.’

‘What?’ Dingle’s expression altered from the start of a frown to a scowl as he realised the terrifying implication of what Edge had said. He shook his head, swallowed hard and pleaded as he shifted his gaze around the group: ‘Don’t make any more of those kind of jokes, mister! Not when we’re in this kind of fix!’

Now Goodrich was just as afraid as Dingle again and flapped his mouth above the tiny beard but no sounds came out.

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Crooked Eye spoke some fast Comanche.

Rose Bigheart responded with a single word in the same language and explained in English: ‘The boy says that history is yet again repeating itself. And I must agree with him.’

‘Sam, surely we ain’t going to – ‘ Goodrich stared, incredulity transcending fear. Edge had been dividing his attention between the two deputies and knew from Tree’s coldly calculated attitude and Goodrich’s anxiety that their partnership as deputy sheriffs and friendship as fellow businessmen had just ended. But it was Lucy Russell, having reached the same conclusion as Edge, who was first to voice her contempt. ‘It seems that there is little to choose between some men supposed to uphold the law and others who break it. There is no honour among them.’

‘Hey, Sam and me ain’t thieves!’ Goodrich’s movements were clumsy as he swung around and raked the revolver in the same arc as his angry gaze.

‘Brod, watch that – ‘ Tree began to yell.

Then he was distracted: and jerked the aim of his rifle from Edge to Dingle as the man lunged at Goodrich, his arms outstretched and his hands clawed to fasten on the fat man’s arm above his gun. The Winchester exploded a shot that opened a blood gushing wound in the side of Dingle’s head: to kill the man before he could utter a sound and hurl his body several feet across the littered ground. Rose Bigheart curled an arm around the shoulders of Crooked Eye and pulled the boy close to her. Used her other hand to force his head into her shoulder then swung her skinny back around. Which offered the only protection she could against a gunshot as Tree jacked another shell into the breech of the repeater rifle while he raked the barrel back across the same arc.

Edge wrenched the blanket bundle out of the grasp of the stunned Lucy Russell: whirled it faster than the rifle moved. It slammed hard into the chest of the deputy with enough force to send Tree staggering backwards several steps, his face darkened by a murderous rage. Then he tripped on a heap of crumbled adobe and lost his 267

balance: retained only a single-handed grip on the rifle as he tried to cushion his fall. But his hand plunged down between two blocks of adobe and there was a sharp crack of broken bone. He vented an agonised shriek, dropped the rifle and roared a string of curses as he struggled to reach across his writhing body with his good hand for the holstered revolver on the other side of his gunbelt. His stretched fingers brushed the butt of the Colt and he began to claw it out of the holster, all the time shrieking a stream of obscenities.

Edge saw the Winchester was too far away and for an instant considered drawing the razor stowed in the neck pouch. But instead he again used the bundle of bones snatched from the now hysterically wailing woman: whirled it once more and brought it viciously down into the pain-wracked face of the cursing man. The sound of the impact was strangely muted against the raucous voice of the man that an instant later was suddenly silenced. To herald a brand of hushed quiet that seemed in keeping with the place they were in: like the tranquil peace which would have filled the mission when the priests and their converts were engaged in mute worship. Edge allowed his breath to trickle out, unfolded from the stoop and knew even before he dragged the bundle off the head of the saloonkeeper become deputy sheriff that Tree was dead. For in the stretched seconds since he delivered the blow, he had seen the total inertia of the awkwardly sprawled man, the absence of any faint rise and fall of his broad chest.

‘Oh, my God!’ Goodrich rasped. ‘What happened to Sam?’

Like the ashen-faced Lucy Russell, the big man saw first the crimson soaked rent in the blanket and then the shard of blood dripping bone that protruded through it. Rose Bigheart, still clutching the head of Crooked Eye to her shoulder, looked to where Edge stood over the fallen man then moved her stoic gaze to Goodrich as he staggered forward: and was able to reach out and snatch the revolver from his shock-weakened grasp without resistance. The fat liveryman halted on the other side of the corpse from Edge and seemed unable to tear his wide-eyed gaze away from the gory hole in the throat from which the flow of blood had subsided to an ooze after Tree’s heart stopped beating.

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‘What a hell of a way to die,’ Goodrich whispered and lifted a hand to grasp his own throat at the matching spot where the splintered bone of a long dead cavalry lieutenant had penetrated Tree’s jugular vein.

‘If the sonofabitch hadn’t broken his arm it would have been quick and painless,’

Edge replied as the unobtrusive sounds of small chunks of adobe being moved were heard close by. ‘Just as quick and painless as it was for Dingle: and would have been for you if Tree had gotten to fire that Winchester of his a second time.’

Goodrich was finally able to raise his head and look away. Revealed he was holding back latent tears as he met the unblinking gaze of Edge. That held an expression once removed from the killer scowl his glinting ice blue eyes had shown when he swung the blanket bundle of bones down at Tree.

‘You really think he would have . . ?’ He shook his head incredulously. ‘No, not Sam . . . Not me! We’ve been friends for too long!’ He looked to where Rose and Crooked Eye were standing back from the place where they had moved several misshapen pieces of adobe to open up a cavity in the heap of rubble beside which Dingle’s corpse was sprawled.

Goodrich tried to go on: ‘Sam would never have – ‘

The squaw said as he once again found himself unable to put into words a contention that he knew deep down was untrue: ‘Here it is. Just where it was hidden by those men who killed Hiram J. Ricketts all those years ago. Twenty five thousand dollars in silver and some paper bills. For such an amount of money so many men have died.’

Goodrich heard a sound, sensed movement close to him and turned his head: showed resignation through melancholy when he saw Edge pick up the rifle dropped by Tree and start to cross to where the two women and the boy stood Rose was still impassive. Crooked Eye looked as drained as Goodrich did. And Lucy Russell wore a kind of half smile that perhaps signalled another period of withdrawal from reality.

‘What kind of people are we?’ Goodrich asked rhetorically. 269

‘I show you that I am the trusting kind - when someone has earned my trust.’

Rose held out Goodrich’s revolver, butt first, toward Edge. Edge offered the torn and bloodstained bundle to Lucy and she could not check a strangled giggle as she took it, struggling to contain her rising excitement. Then Edge accepted the revolver from the squaw, glanced down into the cavity and saw two crates of time-aged timber that perhaps resembled those that had been filled with sand. These two had no US government or military markings on them and their rope carrying handles were almost rotted away.

‘And I’m the kind who figures to have two thousand dollars of the reward that Uncle Sam put up for the return of this money, feller,’ Edge told Goodrich. ‘Leaves five hundred bucks to divide among the rest of you: if you want?’

‘I still want nothing,’ Lucy said adamantly and dropped to her knees to open, then re-bundle the collection of bones of her long dead lieutenant so none was exposed by the bloodied hole. Goodrich sighed deeply, straightened to his full height and made the effort to erase doubt from his fleshy features as he touched his badge with two fingertips. He said: