The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (20 page)

‘No!’ The old timer kicked out at Edge with his free foot as he was pulled clear of the glowing cinders. Friction against the hard packed ground smothered the small flames that had stared to burn his ragged shirtfront. ‘We’re finished! Ain’t nothing to be done for us!’

‘Quit it, you crazy bastard!’ Edge commanded as he hauled the struggling, shrieking man to where Sarah Farmer was up on her feet, folded forward with both hands clutched to her middle like the fall had winded her.

‘Joe! It’s me, Sarah!’ She dropped to her haunches at his head as Edge released the old man’s legs and straightened up.

He peered around more carefully and for longer to try to spot the gunman: his revolver drawn from the holster and levelled, the hammer thumbed back. Then he swung the Colt slowly across a wide arc while he heard louder sounds within the surrounding trees: heavy footfalls as well as raucous voices now, getting closer by the moment.

‘See, I told you all it was Crazy Joe’s place on fire!’ the black bearded Harry Shelby yelled clearly and triumphantly as the liveryman and a half dozen other Springdale men emerged from the timber. ‘Didn’t I say that?’

Edge lowered the gun to his side as everyone ignored the boast and the shabbily business suited Sheriff Vic Meeker held up a hand to halt the loose knit group of men and demanded:

‘Was it you fired that pistol shot, mister?’ He advanced to where Edge stood over the now silent and unmoving but still breathing Kellner.

Sarah Farmer, who had been speaking soothingly sympathetic words to the old timer broke off and wrenched up her head to glare at the lawman and snapped scornfully: ‘No, of course it wasn’t Edge who shot Joe!’

Matt Colman and Doc Sullivan came into the clearing behind the others and while the running to fat youngster held back with the rest of the men the always harassed looking doctor, who had brought his medical bag, pushed past Meeker without complaint from the lawman and announced:

‘Okay, Miss Farmer, I’ll take over now if it’s all right with you.’

‘It sure ain’t all right with me! I don’t want no doctoring!’ The weakened Kellner’s protest was voiced with much less vehemence than earlier.’

‘Come on, Joe, don’t be such an awkward cuss,’ the cherubic faced Jed Winter placated.

‘Let the doc do whatever he can for you.’

‘The bastard who burned my place should’ve finished me off proper!’ Kellner groaned bitterly to the undertaker. ‘Then you could’ve taken care of what was left of me and that’d have been an end to it.’

Meeker completed making a cautious survey of their thickly timbered surroundings, failed to see any sign of the gunman who shot the old man and asked of Edge: ‘You didn’t see anything of the bushwhacker?’

‘No, feller.’

‘When did you get here?’

‘Few minutes ahead of you.’

Meeker shook his head and stroked his excess of chins with his free hand. ‘If it hadn’t been for the shot I might have thought Joe started the fire himself. By accident, I mean.’

‘It’s what Sarah Farmer figured had happened at first.’

‘You and her get here at the same time?’ The bespectacled Virgil who had a penchant for showing up on the fringes of violence asked this in a tone that heavily emphasised the implication of his query.

Edge fixed his glinting eyed gaze on the old man and the almost palpable power generated from between his narrowed lids was forceful enough to drive the no longer smirking Virgil into a hasty backward step while he maintained a white knuckled grip on his cane.

‘Edge!’ Meeker cautioned with a grim light in his own narrow eyed gaze. Edge chose not to meet this glare as he said icily: ‘An old buzzard who thinks like you . .

. He ought to have a dirty mind crowded with memories enough to fill his time without any need to dream up – ‘

‘I got plenty of – ‘

‘Shut up, you old fool!’ Colman snarled.

‘Sheriff, it seems like Joe will be okay,’ Sullivan reported as he rose from crouching beside his patient. ‘It’s just a shoulder wound and it looks like the bullet went right on through and out the front without clipping the bone.’

Kellner, his ragged, bloodstained and fire scorched shirt bulging with a temporary dressing, struggled to stand up with Sullivan and Sarah supporting him between them. Then all attention was suddenly drawn to the fire as an internal wall of the shack collapsed with a crash, sending a column of spiralling dark smoke, flaring flames and glittering sparks high into the air. Nobody said anything until the angry sounds of the blaze had subsided then the wounded old man, his heavily wrinkled, soot smeared features expressing despair, complained as he gazed woefully at the remains of his home: ‘You’re wrong, doc. Now my place has gone up in smoke I’ll never be okay.’

‘Don’t you worry, Joe, I’ll see to it you get somewhere to live,’ Sarah promised as Shelby replaced her on one side of Keller.

‘I don’t want no damn charity from nobody!’ In his drained condition close to collapse the challenge sounded pathetically hollow.

‘For now you need to come to town and let me patch you up properly,’ Sullivan told him.

‘It’s not a serious wound, sure enough, but it could be if it gets infected.’

Kellner sighed in defeat. ‘Aw, the hell with it - whatever you say, doc. I just don’t give a damn no more.’

He submitted to having Sullivan’s jacket draped around his skinny shoulders and probably did not hear the doctor’s warning that he must keep warm to guard against the effects of shock. Then Sarah came toward Edge and lowered her voice so what she said did not reach the ears of the men more interested in their conversation than in the dying fire or the injured old timer:

‘God, it’s so awful for him, Edge. I suppose there’s little point in trying to save what’s left of the place?’

‘Reckon not, lady.’

She looked balefully toward the group moving out of the clearing and held back to suggest doubtfully: ‘I’ll see you around, maybe?’

Edge took out the makings, glanced impassively at the heap of charred and smouldering, evil smelling rubble and said: ‘I figure I’ll be around. Until stage time next Wednesday anyway.

She showed a fleeting rueful smile, moved to where Sullivan and Shelby were having some trouble, but not too much, in persuading Kellner to leave the fire ravaged remains of his home and start back for town. After several others had trailed this group there were just Edge, Meeker, Colman and Winter left beside the smouldering, pungently smoking ruin of the shack.

‘Why do you figure anyone would want to kill Old Joe?’ Colman addressed his query to anyone who cared to volunteer a response.

Meeker made another troubled, head shaking study of the surrounding timber and muttered: ‘It beats me, son.’

‘What is certain is that it wasn’t the Ivers boy,’ Jed Winter pointed out.

‘Nor the Hooper kid, unless you believe in ghosts,’ Edge said.

‘Is that supposed to mean something except for the facetiously obvious, mister?’ the undertaker snapped irritably, not looking so cherubic now: perhaps because he had ridden out from town to no professional avail. ‘One of those jokes I hear you like to make, maybe?’

Meeker explained wearily to the petulant undertaker: ‘Old Joe claims a couple of men broke into his place and stole some clothes.’

‘I ain’t following this!’ Winter complained with a resentful scowl. Meeker sighed and shrugged. ‘With me thinking I got one of the killers under lock and key and the other one’s dead and waiting in your place to be buried, Jed, it’s looking like Kellner didn’t dream up the robbery he says happened here on the morning the Quinn women were murdered. And maybe the two guys who committed both crimes wanted to make sure there were no loose ends: because Joe Kellner knows something that can prove Ivers and Hooper ain’t guilty.’

‘Crazy Joe’s place was robbed?’ Colman shook his head in disbelief. ‘He never had anything in there worth stealing, did he?’

Edge finished rolling a cigarette and lit it as Meeker brought out his pipe and told the boy: ‘That’s what Joe tried to tell me and Max Lacy, son. And then told Edge when we didn’t pay him any attention. But we Springdale folks know the kind of crazy old drunk Kellner can be sometimes. And his memory ain’t never very good.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Winter put in with a shrug.

The lawman said: ‘Notions come and go in his head. So maybe he remembered something else apart from some old clothes being taken. Or maybe he had it in mind all the time and was trying to raise some cash by promising to keep it to himself. And he wasn’t trusted to do that.’

Winter said pensively: ‘I don’t reckon he would ever do that, Vic. Not when the Quinns were involved. He had a lot of respect for that family.’

‘He sure did,’ Colman agreed.

‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’ Meeker said grimly and lit his pipe. ‘I guess there won’t be any sign to be found of who shot him?’

‘That’s a strange aspect of this business,’ Winter said, his brow still furrowed in a thoughtful frown. ‘Why didn’t this sharpshooter just walk up to Kellner in the first place and put a bullet into him where it would count? Why try to burn him to death then shoot him when that didn’t happen?’

Meeker said: ‘The way I figure it he wanted to make Joe’s death look like it was an accident. But hung around to make sure and when he saw the old timer get out of the house alive he had to throw the accident idea out of the window.’

‘And you really think Joe knows who killed Martha Quinn and her daughter?’ Winter asked. ‘If it wasn’t Alvin Ivers and that dead drifter?’

‘I’m sure gonna ask him. And pay more attention than before to what he has to tell me, Jed. Just as soon as he’s recovered his senses. Now he’s been burned out of his shack it ought to scare him into telling me everything he knows.’

‘Sounds like a good idea, Vic,’ Winter said eagerly. ‘I think you ought to go straight to the doc’s house and – ‘

‘I have it in mind to do just that after the old man has had some time to think about what’s happened,’ Meeker cut in and abruptly set off in the wake of the others who had moved out of earshot by now.

After Jed Winter hurried to catch up with the lawman Edge said to Colman on a stream of expelled tobacco smoke: ‘Like to talk with you, kid?’

‘What about?’

‘Not here. I’ve got other things to do right now. In the saloon, at about noon?’

Colman nodded. ‘Sure. I can be there then. I don’t know what else I can tell you but I want to help if – ‘

‘You can tell me about the party that got a little out of hand at the old mill on the night before the killings.’

The young man swallowed hard and his good-looking face became flushed. ‘You’ve heard about that craziness? I don’t see what – ‘

‘It’s what a couple of fellers didn’t see that could mean something, kid.’

‘Look, mister . . . I want you to know . . . What happened at the old mill, it wasn’t like Nancy to act that way. Sometimes a girl takes it into her head to show herself off for some reason that – ‘

Edge nodded and cut in: ‘There’s no point in you trying to tell me why women do things like Nancy Quinn did the other night.’

‘But – ‘

Edge started to leave the clearing. ‘Remember, kid. I was of an age to hanker after seeing the naked female form while you and other youngsters at the mill were still in liquid form.’

CHAPTER • 13

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THE TALL and broadly built, handsomely blue eyed and dimple chinned Matthew
Colman was already in the saloon of the Grand Hotel when Edge got there, a little early himself. The kid sat alone at a table close to the archway that gave on to the hotel lobby, far removed from four men with the look of storekeepers and office clerks who stood up to the bar nursing almost empty beer glasses. He still wore the same smart suit but had removed the bandage from his injured hand and he was obviously apprehensive as he chewed his lower lip and peered at the batwings when Edge pushed between them and came toward him.

‘I’m here like you wanted, mister.’ He half rose, thrust out his hand to be shaken but decided it was a wrong move and withdrew it hurriedly as he sat down again. ‘You want Fred Tolliver to bring you over a drink? I’ve started a tab so it won’t be – ‘

‘I pay my own way,’ Edge told the over-talkative boy. He went to the bar and ordered a beer from the tall and skinny, always eager to be of service bartender. The four men aligned there all studiously ignored him as they continued to talk about state politics while Tolliver drew the beer and accepted payment for it. Then, after he sat down on the other side of the table, facing Colman, he said: ‘You seem a little tense, kid?’