Return to Massacre Mesa - Edge Series 5 (9 page)

She was at least forty or maybe even fifty, short and thin, her hair starting to fade from Comanche black to universal grey. She had dark coloured but bright, deeply sunken eyes. Her brown, almost black skin was heavily lined. She wore a home-made fabric skirt and shirt both in subdued shades and store bought leather shoes. There were a few crudely crafted silver bracelets of Indian design around her right wrist.

‘That’s fine, mister. And thanks for that
lady
which I haven’t heard applied to me for many years
.
So, what can I do for you? You are not from Lakewood or anywhere nearby. You want me to do a reading, maybe?’

‘A reading?’ As he repeated the word he recalled what the old timer sitting under the shade tree had said about the squaw being a fortune-teller.

‘Usually there are just two reason I get callers. Either they want to hire me to do the chores they’re too busy or too lazy to do themselves. Or they want to know what I know of their futures. I thought – ‘ She broke off when he came close enough for her to see him clearly. For though her eyes were bright it seemed to Edge that she was 57

short sighted. She peered hard at him, like someone in need of spectacles and was abruptly apprehensive. ‘No, not a man like you are, I think. You want something else. Not for me to clean your house or launder your clothes or hoe your crops?’

‘I’m looking for a feller who calls himself Lyndon Andrews. And I was told he was living with a Comanche squaw called Rose out along Farm Trail. In the event you’re not Rose and somebody calling himself Andrews ain’t here, maybe you can tell me where they are?’ He directed a glance southward, to where the intervening rises hid the farms he had been told were scattered among the mountain foothills.

‘I am Rose Bigheart and the man you seek is just about living here, mister.’ She expressed sadness. ‘To say he is dying here would be nearer to the truth.’

Edge was aware of mixed emotions: satisfaction at maybe finding Devlin and frustration that the imminent death of the crooked lawyer would probably deny him the money he was owed. He said evenly: ‘I’m real sorry to hear that.’

The squaw’s suspicion of her visitor deepened. ‘Why are you sorry? Are you a friend of this man, mister? You do not look so sorry to me.’

Edge advanced on her without menace and she backed away without fear through the doorway as he said: ‘I’m not sure if the man you’re taking care of is the one I need to see. If he is, him and me have some business to attend to.’

The squaw sidled across the room while Edge moved slowly after her and took off his hat. In his nostrils were the odours of old cooking, stale sweat and something more pungent that maybe was the stink of imminent death.

The room served as both a kitchen and a parlour, furnished with the bare necessities of daily life in abject poverty. Mostly the furniture was home made with little skill but there were a few once finely crafted pieces badly patched up with whatever materials had been readily available. A deep, fire scorched pan of water on top of a pot-bellied stove was beginning to come to the boil, the bubbling sound competing with the ragged breathing of an obviously sick man. He was in the room beyond an archway that was hung with a once brightly 58

patterned blanket, the fabric’s colours dulled by use and age. Beside the arch was a rickety table on which was a crucifix propped against the wall.

‘I heard he was badly wounded by some renegade Indians in a stage hold up outside of Lakewood awhile back?’ Edge looked again at the squaw in time to see her snatch a short bladed knife off a battered bureau and try to hide it behind her narrow back as she shuffled toward the archway.

‘He was shot up bad, mister,’ she agreed and hooked the thumb of her free hand to prod it against the centre of her flat stomach. ‘Here.’

‘And the bullet’s still - ‘

‘The bullet was taken out by the army surgeon at Fort Chance who does doctoring for all kinds of people, not just soldiers. But the wound did not heal with the White Eye’s potions.’ She grimaced. ‘I am considered to be a medicine woman for I know many Comanche remedies for ills that befall the human body. The wounded man heard of my skills and came to me for help. But when the flesh rot starts to eat at a living body Comanche medicine is of little more use than the ointments and potions of the White Eyes. So, what do you want with the dying man I am caring for?’ She had taken up a guard-like stance before the blanket-hung entrance to the other room, the knife still concealed behind her back. On her dark, deeply lined face was an expression of resolute determination.

‘Nothing, if his name is Lyndon Andrews. But if it’s – ‘

‘Who’s out there, Rose? What’s happening? Can I hear a man out there with you, woman? Tell me what - ’ The reedy voice was unrecognisable. But Edge had not spent much time with Devlin and had exchanged few words with the lawyer. Then the man behind the curtain was prevented from asking more questions by a fit of violent coughing.

Rose waited for the wracking sound to stop then turned her head a little to direct her voice into the other room but swivelled her eyes across their sockets to maintain a mistrustful watch on Edge. ‘He wants to talk business with you if your name is not truly 59

Lyndon Andrews. He is a stranger to these parts: a large, powerful man who carries a pistol and he looks to me like he would use the gun to kill without it troubling him. He is not a full-blooded White Eyes, but not a Comanche.’

‘Who is it? Who are you, mister?’ For some reason trepidation gave the sick man’s voice a more normal tone and Edge showed a cold grin as he thought he detected a familiar timbre in the words.

‘It’s Edge, feller. Last time we met up was in the Texas town of – ‘

A gasp from the bedroom brought a harder scowl to the gaunt, heavily wrinkled face of the squaw. The dying man groaned: maybe because of the pain that gnawed at his inside, maybe not. ‘All right, Rose: let him through. If Edge wants to see me, you won’t be able to stop him from doing so.’

She expressed defiance for long moments then was abruptly resigned as she brought the knife out from behind her. ‘I think it was stupid of me to even think I could stop you? The kind of man you are?’ She carefully took a different grip on the knife and suddenly sent it spinning across the room toward a dilapidated ladder back rocker: with enough force to sink it deeply into a strut and set the chair rocking. Edge, who had not seen that kind of knife throwing skill since he rode with Adam Steele, did a double take at the squaw. And thought he was supposed to be impressed rather feel threatened. ‘Obliged, lady.’

She eased aside the blanket. ‘I keep the window drapes closed because the sunlight troubles his eyes.’

‘No sweat.’ He stepped through into the bedroom that was less than half the size of the room he left. The smell of putrefying flesh was very strong in the half darkness through which he could see two narrow beds.

They were set end to end in the confined space that allowed for no other furniture except a chair placed near the head of the bed on which the dying man lay, covered from neck to feet by a single blanket that outlined his emaciated form. Another, larger crucifix hung on the wall above the empty bed.

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When Edge looked down at the face against the dark coloured pillow he saw at once, despite the havoc wrought by pain and sickness, that the cavalryman’s assumption had been correct. The man here called Lyndon Andrews had been Andrew Devlin when he practised law in Springdale, Texas. Sixty years old, with a long and narrow face, the skin sallow and strangely shrunken: the eyes deep set and pale blue, the mouth line weak. Edge had never seen him this unshaven before, nor so sparsely fleshed: but there was no doubt just who this man was.

‘It must be best part of a year and a half, Edge?’ In his eyes there was no sign that Devlin was still afraid of his visitor.

‘Best part, feller.’

‘You’ve been searching for me all that time?’

‘Not just looking for you. I needed to work to earn an honest dollar or two every now and then.’

‘You should know that if you finish me off, you’d be doing me a big favour. I haven’t got the courage that Nicholas Quinn had. I couldn’t kill myself, more the pity.’

He shuddered. ‘Way I’m being rotted alive by the poison in me, it’s . . . ‘

Devlin’s voice trailed away as Edge reached inside his shirt. But the move was only to draw out a longer than it was wide envelope as he said: ‘I guess you don’t have much of Quinn’s money left?’

‘I was robbed, Edge.’

‘I know the feeling.’

Irony was lost on the suffering man. ‘A lot of it I dropped gambling. Then I spent some on the wrong kind of women. And what I had left was stole from me by those Indians that held up the stage, a dozen miles east of Lakewood. A few months ago.’

‘I can vouch he has no money, mister,’ Rose said sourly from the archway. ‘I buy all I can of what we need. What I cannot afford we go without. We would not live like 61

this if there were any money here.’

‘How much you got?’ Edge asked.

‘I told you – ‘ Devlin started.

The squaw answered: ‘Ten dollars that I’ve managed to set aside for emergencies. Money saved from what I have been paid for doing the chores of town folks, mister.’

‘What do you plan to do?’ Devlin croaked. He raised his head with difficulty off the pillow as Edge moved back into the archway where the squaw continued to hold aside the blanket.

Edge needed the sunlight in the other room with the open doorway and undraped window to display the contents of the envelope. ‘Can you read, Rose?’

She snorted and looked insulted. ‘I had schooling from a mission priest.’

‘Edge, what the - ’ Devlin tried to snarl, but the effort triggered another fit of painful coughing.

‘Hush up and rest yourself, man,’ Rose told him. Then to Edge, who jerked back the paper as she reached for it: ‘It seems to be some kind of legal document?’

‘It’s the title deed to a piece of property in the town of Eternity, in the state of Kansas.’

‘So?’

‘I recall Quinn had a store there.’ Devlin’s voice was little more than a croaking whisper from beyond the arch.

Edge spoke loudly enough for what he said to carry into the other room: ‘I took it instead of the two grand Quinn’s estate owed me. But I can’t sell the damn place at any price.’

‘The ten dollars is all I have in the world, mister,’ the squaw said morosely. ‘But 62

if I had a whole lot more, I would not wish to buy a store in a town I never heard of in a part of the country I have no wish to go.’

Edge made a move to advance further into the main room of the adobe and the squaw gasped in fear as she backed out of his way.

Devlin demanded: ‘Where you going?’

Edge halted and turned as the sick man raised his head off the pillow but was too weak to hold the posture for more than a few moments.

‘The stink of you is playing havoc with my sinuses, feller,’ Edge answered and then breathed in deeply: relishing the clean scent of the steam from the pan of boiling water that went some way to negating the stench of gangrene. He asked of the squaw:

‘How come Devlin’s living in your place, lady?’

She expressed apprehension and tried to peer beyond where he stood to see the dying man on the bed. But she had been standing in the sunlight-filled room for a long time and her eyes had trouble adjusting to the half darkness beyond the archway. Edge prompted: ‘He was robbed in the stage hold up, so he doesn’t have any money to cover his keep.’

‘We met in the Wild Dog Hotel in Lakewood.’

‘You got a crib there?’ His tone was sourly sardonic. Her face showed a greater degree of righteous indignation than before at his implication that he considered her a whore. Then suddenly she seemed not to have the strength to maintain high emotion. ‘Look, mister, you think what the hell you like about me. I have to attend to his wound. It’s already past the regular time and it’s important I bathe it when it’s due for cleaning.’

‘Sure.’ Edge moved away from the threshold between the two rooms and held back the blanket so she could more easily carry through the steaming pan. And just for a second the light in her glinting eyes warned she thought about hurling the scalding water at him: then the inclination was gone.

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‘I used to clean up at the Wild Dog,’ she explained. ‘That’s how I came to be in that place.’

She set the pan down on the chair beside the bed and re-emerged from the foetid room. Went to a battered tin trunk, delved inside it and returned with some squares of ragged but clean white fabric.

‘Until two passing through travelling men objected to having a
dirty Injun
like me clean up the mess made by White Eyes. And Mr Tree had to let me go.’ She glowered as she quoted the deprecating phrase. ‘He has asked me to come back a time or two since, but I do not lightly forget insults spoken to me because I am a Comanche. It was such a time - when Mr Tree asked me to come to the Wild Dog Hotel to talk of working for him again - that I saw this very sick man who needed help.’

There was a pitcher of cold water under the chair and she poured some into the steaming pan, tested it and nodded her satisfaction with the cooler temperature.

‘Anyway, I have many other jobs and they more than make up for what I have lost by not working at the hotel any more.’

‘Do I have to suffer this torture again, Rose?’ Devlin pleaded.

‘The army surgeon says it is all that can be done for you, you know that, mister.’

‘But you and me know that it’s not going to help in the long run,’ Devlin complained bitterly. ‘It’s agony for me and all it’ll do is keep me alive a few more lousy days.’

‘Obliged if you’d hurry it up,’ Edge said. ‘It it’s going to help with the stink of him.’