The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (34 page)

There was no response to the taunt. No sound except for the setting down of Meeker’s feet on the hard packed surface of the street and the scraping of a match on the law office hitching rail before Edge raised the flame to the cigarette angled from the side of his mouth. He had half smoked it by the time the lawman reached Harry Shelby’s livery, inhaling the harsh smoke deeply then quickly emptying his lungs. Had finished it, dropped the butt, stepped on it and swung up into the saddle when Meeker led his horse out from the stable. Then as Edge clucked the gelding forward the lawman mounted and rode back up the street in no greater hurry than he had been when he walked down there. The two mounted men met at the centre of the intersection.

‘You have any idea where they’ve gone?’

‘They headed down River Road. Because that’s where Ivers was seen to be running. You don’t have to ride along with me, mister.’

‘I hardly ever do anything I don’t want to, sheriff.’

‘You ain’t never made no pretence of anything else. It seems to me you’re the kind of guy who only ever does anything you don’t like if there’s money at the end of it?’

While they rode side by side between silent and unlit business premises Edge had no sense of being watched as he replied: ‘There are times when a man can’t choose. Especially when he needs to fill an empty belly.’

‘You figure you’ve earned that big wad of eating money Quinn wrote that his lawyer should pay you?’

‘I don’t figure I’m even close. But it probably doesn’t matter. Since it looks like Devlin has ducked out,’

‘Yeah. Me and some other people have had our doubts. The way that lawyer’s stayed away from here so long.’

‘You got any other doubts – about Ivers and Hooper being the killers for instance?’

Meeker spat to the side and took out his pipe and tobacco sack. ‘Without a confession there’s no way I can be sure, is there? If I were that kind of smart lawman I’d be a detective working for the Pinkerton agency maybe. And getting paid a whole lot more than Avery County comes through with at the end of every month.’

Edge said evenly: ‘Whether or not Ivers and Hooper killed the Quinn women, if the kid winds up shot dead by a lynch mob you’ll have another crime on your hands.’

As they rode out into the night shrouded country that was only slightly darker than the town streets Meeker began to fill his pipe with sweet smelling tobacco and said dolefully: ‘You don’t have to remind me of that, mister. And the way some of them men in my office were so riled up, right now I wouldn’t give two cents for the kid’s life if they’ve caught up with him.’

‘And if you get to keep your two cents?’

Meeker sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a long, low-pitched whistle. ‘He’ll go right back to jail to await trial. And unless Max has a damn good explanation I’ll fire him. Tell me something, Edge?’

‘What?’

‘Just why are you stringing along with me tonight? If you figure the lawyer’s gone for good and there’s no money in it for you no matter how this thing turns out?’

‘I don’t believe the kid and that dead drifter killed the Quinn women, sheriff. And I made a promise to Ivers’ ma that I’d do my best to keep her boy from being hanged for something he never did. Guess that goes the same for him getting shot by a lynch mob.’

Meeker took a few moments to get his pipe drawing evenly then said: ‘Some people around Springdale have got you tagged for a hired gunslinger who lucked out with a job that fell into his lap, you know that?’

‘I ain’t never given too much consideration to what people think of me, feller. Now, you want to tell me something?’

‘If I can.’

‘Why aren’t you doing any tracking? It seems to me you’re heading for a place you know you need to be?’

‘That’s right, mister. The Cassidy spread.’

‘And you’re not just following a hunch?’

‘No I ain’t. It seems I wasn’t all the way out after Agnes Ivers whacked me over the head. Not at first. It was kind of like I was in a daze. But I’m damn sure I heard her and the boy talking about what he ought to do. And he said he knew a place to hide for a while. Out on the Cassidy ranch.’

‘That’s a big spread.’

‘I know it. But I’m the law in Avery County and I’m going to come down hard on anybody I question who doesn’t tell me damn quick what I want to know. Like Alice or Noah

Cassidy when I ask them where are the best places on their ranch for a fugitive to keep out of sight.’

Edge reined in his mount and a few yards further on Meeker did likewise and looked back. ‘Luck to you, sheriff.’

‘What?’ The lawman was surprised.

‘You have to do it your way.’

Meeker looked about to press the matter but he either saw something in Edge’s glinting eyed expression or he made up his own mind, shrugged and said: ‘Well, I reckon it’s for the best. The way some folks in this neck of the woods think you’re no better than a hired gun or some kind of bounty hunter, you and me never could strictly be on the same side of the law.’

‘We’re on the same side, feller. But we got different angles.’ Edge tugged on his reins to wheel his horse. ‘It all comes down to a matter of money.’

‘Yeah, I guess it does for you, mister.’

‘Me maybe getting in a few days what you’d need a couple of years or more to earn.’

Meeker looked perplexed for a moment then shrugged and raised a hand in farewell. Edge touched a forefinger to his hat in response to the uncomprehending Meeker and explained: ‘One law for the rich and one for the poor.’

CHAPTER • 21

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EDGE RODE far enough back toward town so that he could be sure he was out of
sight and earshot of the county sheriff heading in the opposite direction. Then he angled to the side and moved in a wide half circle across broken country to the west of the trail until he was south of the Cassidy property line. And there had no difficulty getting on to the sloppily run spread through any one of many stretches of neglected fence.

The ranch was as quiet as the country surrounding it on the two sides Edge knew about. He also knew about the dangerous drop off a sheer cliff concealed within a stand of timber. But since he did not know the precise position of the potentially lethal bluff, he rode cautiously through the wooded darkness that was occasionally relieved by small areas of dappled moonlight beneath the tree canopy.

The first sound he heard beyond those he or his horse made was of slow running water. And shortly after he found the creek he got a first glimpse of the derelict mill that he had heard spoken of so often since he arrived in Springdale. It was a two-story clapboard building under a steeply pitched roof he saw as he dismounted and led the gelding by the bridle along the bank of the dried up mill run. And from several yards distance he smelled the putrid scent of decay that clung to the silently brooding place. The subdued trickling sounds of the creek, that long ago had been diverted to by-pass the defunct mill, served to cover the unobtrusive noises Edge made when he hitched the horse. Tied the reins to the water wheel that had fallen off its mounting and low lay among the tall grass and weed growing high in the former run. If Alvin Ivers was inside Edge guessed he would be afraid for his life and as dangerously tense as a trapped wild animal. But he could not know if the escaped prisoner was armed, so he slid the walnut butted Colt out of the holster as he moved warily along the door-less side of the building. He halted at a glass-less window curtained by a spider’s dusty web. And from here, a dozen feet short of the front corner of the mill, he could see where a wagon-wide, infrequently used track cut across the grassy clearing that surrounded the building in the extensive stand of close growing timber.

Then when he turned his head toward the window he glimpsed on the periphery of his vision the subdued glow from a fire: a considerable distance off through the trees. Next he heard a muted sound that caused him to snap his head around to concentrate his attention on the window as his thumb hooked to the hammer of the revolver. But he did not cock the Colt’s action since a moment later he had identified the muffled sound which did not signal immediate danger. The boy, seemingly unaware of anybody nearby, was quietly sobbing. Edge raised his free hand, swept away the fragile web and pushed his head into the frame: peered blindly into the blackness as the weeping came to an abrupt end before Alvin Ivers implored:

‘No! No, please, I never done – ‘ His voice became choked like a hand was tightly clutched to his throat.

Then an inarticulate cry burst from the boy’s lips and Edge experienced a powerful sense of imminent threat. He folded away from the window and took two long strides back as something heavy sailed out: crashed to the ground ten feet away. A chunk of rock that maybe weighed two pounds hurled with enough desperate, terror-powered force to kill a man if it struck him in a vulnerable spot.

‘It’s Edge, you crazy sonofabitch!’ He lunged forward and around the corner as he yelled at the kid and got to the doorway at the front of the building moments before it was flung open and the short and skinny Ivers raced outside. He was certain now that the running boy did not have a gun for why else had he chosen to hurl a rock instead of blasting a shot into the darkness when he was startled from sobbing dejection into abject fear for his life. A brand of deep, unreasoning fear of death in which a mere shouted order would surely not register in his tormented mind.

Edge did not relish chasing the young man who had so many years’ advantage over him. And took the only chance he had to stop Ivers short of bringing him down with a wing shot that would surely alert whoever had lit the fire beyond the far fringe of the timber. He thrust the Colt back in the holster and hurled himself full length, grunted with a mixture of anger and pain as he got a firm grip on the trailing leg of the petrified Ivers and both of them crashed hard to the unyielding ground.

Because fear continued to constrict his throat the boy could voice no more than a pathetic wail. But he had sufficient strength to put up a fight: kicked frantically with his free foot and lashed out with both fists as he flung himself over on to his back and sat up. Blind and deaf to the identity of the man who had caught him and convinced he must escape at any cost.

‘No! Let go of me! I never killed them two . . . ‘ He abandoned words as a waste of the energy he now channelled entirely into a desperate struggle to escape. Until Edge, his dispassionate anger stoked by the battering fists against his head into white-hot rage, released his grip on Ivers’ ankle, drew the Colt and stabbed it to the side. So the muzzle raked a painful arc across the flesh of Ivers’ cheek.

The boy’s gaping mouth signalled he was about to give full throated vent to a shriek but Edge squeezed tightly on the boy’s vocal chords with the hand not fisted around the butt of the Colt. Maintained the grip as he rose on to his haunches and pushed hard and slowly so that his slightly built victim was inexorably forced out full length on to his back. And while the muzzle of the Colt now rested only lightly against the centre of Ivers’ forehead he kept his voice to a low growl as he said coldly:

‘I’ll tell you again, Alvin. It’s Edge, you stupid sonofabitch! And I better be getting through to you now, kid. Or in five seconds I’ll have broken a promise to your ma as well as your scrawny neck.’

Ivers clamped his mouth closed and squeezed his eyes shut for several moments while he whimpered. Then he snapped his eyes open wide to stare fearfully into the hard-set face of the powerfully built man who had him at his mercy and finally nodded a single emphatic time. Edge released his grip on the pulsing throat but kept the gun muzzle pressed against the brow of the angular featured face.

‘I thought – ‘

‘Yeah, you thought it was run or die. I know.’

The kid gulped. ‘How’d you figure out I was here, mister?’

‘Your ma told me.’

Ivers’ normally ruddy complexion was ashen against the long and greasy black hair spread out beneath his head. His breathing was laboured and his eyes darted back and forth as if he was afraid to meet the unblinking gaze of Edge. ‘I’m so damn scared, mister. And I think I wet my pants.’

Edge withdrew the threat of the Colt, holstered the revolver, bunched the lapels of the boy’s jacket together in a single fist and hauled him upright. Ivers gasped, whimpered some more and jerked his head back and to the side like he expected Edge to punch him in the face.