The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (24 page)

‘Luke!’ his wife yelled imperiously.

He cursed under his breath, hurried into the house and slammed the door violently, which Edge guessed was maybe the only sign of temper he felt able to display within the woman’s domain.

The gelding whinnied softly and Edge stroked the animal’s neck as he said through lips pursed in the line of a quiet smile: ‘Yeah, I know, boy. Thank God you’re an altogether different kind of nag.’

CHAPTER • 15

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AS EDGE rode through the moonlit silvered darkness of the advancing evening
beyond the southern fringe of the town he followed a trail that wound across a plateau of rolling grassland. With no fenced off property and no glimmer of light or curl of smoke to signal the position of a house in any direction. He held the gelding down to a walking pace as he relished the solitude of the unspoilt countryside while he smoked a cigarette. And reflected on lengthy periods in the distant past when he had spent more time alone in the saddle far from any kind of community than he ever did in towns. But he had been a lot younger back then. More able to get along without the comfortable trappings of civilisation: less inclined to suffer from the ill effects of night cold or the burning heat of the high sun. And more willing and able to endure hunger and thirst if this was necessary for him to achieve a successful end to whatever whim or pressing need had caused him to be deprived of such minor luxuries. For awhile.

Now . . . These days . . .
Hell, he wasn’t so damn old!
And when it came down to it he felt certain he could survive deprivation for a whole lot longer than many younger men who right now were cosseted in the comfort of their homes back in Springdale. While he was out here in the middle of nowhere, east Texas: maybe engaged on a wild goose chase. But if that proved to be the case then what the hell! He was in line to get well paid and maybe that was the difference in these present times when he was a lot older – and a little wiser – than he used to be. If the potential reward was high, sufficient so he could afford a few of life’s luxuries when the time came to indulge himself in them, then he was certainly ready and willing to endure without complaint the lack of home comforts. For awhile. The
CASSIDY RANCH
was named on a high timber arch above an open five-bar gate in a long run of barbed wire fencing. But he would have known this was the spread he was headed for if there had been no sign for as he emerged from an expanse of timber and rode down the gentle slope of a low hill he could hear distant gunshots. He entered the gateway and a little later saw where a bunch of horses was clustered in the corner of a far off pasture near a small fire that gave off a column of smoke behind a wagon. Closer, he saw a group of men at the rear of the wagon were shooting at some kind of target object one of them kept tossing high into the air.

While he rode further down the much-used track into a hollow the sporadic gunfire continued but became gradually less obtrusive: the activity in the distant meadow now hidden behind slightly higher ground. The track ended at a yard in front of a large, once elegant, stone-built two-story house that was now ramshackle from neglect. As he swung out of the saddle it seemed his arrival was noted only by a dozen or so indifferent cows that chewed contentedly on hay in a barn to one side of the yard. To the other side was a second barn in which some relatively new, ill-used and mud-caked implements were stowed. The barns were as ill cared for as the house where no light showed at any of the windows. And the kind of house it had been, along with the new machines let go to wrack and ruin so soon perhaps suggested the once wealthy owners of the place had fallen upon hard times. Or, if they could still afford the best of everything, they lacked the inclination to maintain the buildings and the tools of their trade while their interests were directed elsewhere.

He led the grey toward the arched entrance porch of the house and halted ten feet short of it when the door creaked open and a man dressed in well worn dungarees stepped across the threshold and out of the shadows into the moonlit yard. He carried a Winchester rifle levelled from the hip, his right forefinger curled to the trigger. Gunfire continued to explode from time to time muted by distance as the man asked coldly:

‘What is it you want here, stranger?’

He was about sixty, tall, lean and maturely good looking with a pencil moustache as dark as the slicked down hair on his head. He had black eyes, too, as dark as the oil streaks that soiled his hands and face.

‘I’m looking for a kid named Eddie Sawyer.’ As Edge spoke the even toned response he briefly recalled the past again: and how he used to take dangerous exception to anyone who aimed a gun at him. He sure had mellowed, he acknowledged to himself as he added: ‘I was told I could find him here?’

‘You got no right to be on this land. You shouldn’t just open the gate and ride on to the property. We got some dangerous sections on the spread. Only a couple of days ago one of the hands was killed in an accident on the place.’ Cassidy, if that was who the man was, had an accent as far below the Mason-Dixon Line as his wife. But it was a lot less refined. Edge countered sardonically: ‘I’ve got to admit I didn’t see any welcome sign but the gate was wide open, feller.’

The man in the doorway altered the set of his scowl from aggression to anger as he snarled: ‘Then some careless bastard must have left it that way. Most likely that would have been the bone-headed Sawyer kid.’ He moved further out from the porch and waved his free hand toward the gap between the corners of the house and the livestock barn, lowered the aim of the repeater and took his finger off the trigger. ‘He’ll be up in the forty acre field with the rest of the men and Alice.’

‘It okay with you if I ride up to there, feller?’

‘Sure. You ain’t got no right to be either here at the house of up there. But if you want to run the risk, it’s our funeral. Ain’t no danger in the lay of the land between here and there but them friends of Alice’s being the kind of gun-crazy guys they are, best you keep an eye out. Be my guest, stranger. Just follow the sound of the shooting.’

‘You’re the owner of the place – Noah Cassidy?’

The tall and erect, dark haired and handsome man was heading for the implement barn but he paused for a moment, tossed back his head and directed a hollow laugh at the night sky. Then suddenly sounded like he was a little drunk as he started forward again and muttered without looking at Edge: ‘You’re half right, stranger. I’m Noah Cassidy sure enough. But a name is about all I own these days. Alice is the boss of the place and I don’t have too much say in how it’s run and who comes and goes. Hell, you seen a small example of how nobody takes any notice of me – the way the damn gate was left open.’

He disappeared into the barn as Edge swung into the saddle. Then the far off gunfire came to an abrupt end and the night was quiet again except for the lowing of the cattle in one barn and a tuneless whistling by Cassidy as he lit a lamp in the other. Edge held the gelding to an easy walk once more as first the smoke and then the glow of the fire provided a marker to where the group of men and one woman was gathered behind a chuck wagon in a corner of a large piece of pasture.

By the time he rode close enough to see them clearly the men had all peered long and hard at him and seen enough to decide he was not welcome. For they showed their displeasure at his presence with glowering expressions and aggressive stances. There were ten of them, kids aged from about sixteen or seventeen to a couple maybe past sixty. All of them were dressed in well worn, dark hued cowpuncher garb from rusty spurred scuffed boots up to sweat stained, misshapen Stetsons. Their gunbelts that were all fast draw rigs, some with twin holsters, were newer and better cared for than anything else they wore. None of the revolvers were drawn now and their rifles were stacked into a neatly propped up pile far enough away from the fire so as not to risk getting knocked over and toppling into the flames. A cooking pot hung from an iron tripod over the fire and except that he knew the ranch house was nearby and could see the hobbled horses were unburdened by bedrolls, Edge thought the scene looked something like the night camp of a small scale cattle drive.

Alice Cassidy, dressed in a heavy coat that reached to her knees and loose fitting pants tucked into high riding boots, stood apart from the men, close to the dropped tailgate of the wagon. The men looked quizzically at her as Edge rode up and her leadership of the group was further signalled when they waited for her to speak first.

‘How are you doing, Edge?’ She placed fists firmly on her wide hips and showed the merest trace of a smile, her attitude far removed from what it had been when she met him with her sister in town earlier today. ‘Did Noah just allow you to ride on up her without giving you an argument?

He dismounted and held on to the reins as he replied: ‘He warned me of the risks but he didn’t try to stop me, lady.’

‘I know what he wants here, Alice,’ the bad complexioned, slightly built Eddie Sawyer blurted. ‘He’s the Yankee hired on to see to it that Alvin Ivers don’t hang.’ From the way he glanced about him with a self-satisfied smirk while the others looked with quizzical interest between him and Edge it was clear Sawyer did not often get to be centre stage in this mismatched group of make believe gunslingers.

‘Thank you but I’m very well aware of that, Eddie,’ the woman said in the same cold tone while she continued to peer fixedly at Edge.

‘I need to talk with you is all, kid.’

Sawyer’s insecure confidence evaporated. ‘Me? Why me? What you want to talk to me about, mister. I don’t – ‘

‘You just said you know why I’m here. I need to ask you some questions about the killings at the Quinn house.’

‘I don’t know a thing about them, why should I?’ he spluttered and swallowed hard as he looked fearfully around at the men for signs of support. ‘I never figured it was me you come to – ‘

‘You want we should talk in private, kid?’ As Edge looked inquiringly at the men he was aware that Alice Cassidy turned and reached a hand into the rear of the wagon. Sawyer saw or sensed something that suddenly bolstered his self-confidence again and he challenged with a defiant sneer: ‘What if I don’t want to do that, mister?’

Edge said evenly: ‘I didn’t ride out here to look for trouble.’

One of the older men vented a harsh laugh as the woman swung away from the wagon, her face impassive as she revealed she held a big old Starr revolver across her prominent belly.

‘That better be so, stranger!’ the freckle faced youngster who was no more than seventeen warned, filled to the brim with bravado in the present company.

‘We’re familiar with trouble and we know how to take care of it, mister.’ The man who made this boast was fiftyish and had sparkling blue eyes and thick, short cut, iron-grey hair. He drew a chorus of agreement; most of it voiced in the same Deep South accent as his own. Alice Cassidy took no part in this and when Edge looked directly at her instead of being aware of her on the periphery of his vision he saw she was staring straight ahead. And he noted the knuckles of her hand fisted around the butt of the big revolver were white: wondered if she now regretted her impulsive action of bringing the gun out from the back of the wagon. It was not possible to judge from her demeanour whether she had intended to align herself with Edge or the group when she made the move.

‘Need to ask the boy about him and Nancy Quinn,’ Edge said evenly.

‘So go ahead and ask him,’ the grey haired man with eyes that were an ice blue match for those of Edge invited grimly. ‘Or move your Yankee butt off of Alice’s property!’

He snatched a look toward the woman like he was half expecting her to take exception to him giving the ultimatum. But, pre-occupied, she showed no sign she had heard what was said as she continued to stare into the night while she gripped the revolver with white knuckled firmness, the weapon not cocked nor aimed at anybody.

Edge said to Sawyer: ‘Alvin Ivers claims you know – ‘

‘Ivers in a thief, mister!’ The snarled interruption came from the grey haired man who had appointed himself spokesman for the group since Alice Cassidy had withdrawn into a state of deep reflection. ‘Him and that drifter Hooper have admitted that’s what they are. You didn’t ought to pay no attention to what no accounts like them say.’

‘You want to leave this until another time, kid?’ Edge asked. ‘When we can be someplace we won’t be interrupted?’

‘We can do that now!’ Sawyer snapped, nodded off to the side and started in the direction he indicated.

Another of the older men, with a drooping moustache and a crescent shaped scar on his forehead, called: ‘Eddie, you be careful what you say, boy.’ He glowered menacingly at Edge.

‘Anything that brings the real law down on us . . . You know what’ll happen.’

‘As if I would, George,’ Sawyer countered scathingly.

Edge led his horse in the wake of the slightly swaggering boy and as he past near to Alice Cassidy he saw that her eyes were tightly closed and her lips were pursed. When she shivered as if she was cold and vented a deep sigh her breath smelled strongly of liquor.

‘Okay, just what did that bastard Ivers say about me, mister?’ Sawyer demanded as he halted and swung around, standing close to the stack of rifles.