The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (8 page)

‘Much obliged again.’

‘You got reason for asking?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Which you ain’t about to tell me, I guess?’

‘You guess right, feller.’

A short, fat, crimson faced, dark haired woman of fifty or so came into the saloon from under the hotel and dining room sign. She carried a tray on which was a steaming, good smelling bowl of chicken soup and a plate piled high with hunks of thickly buttered bread.

‘Maybe we got us a customer for one of the rooms, Mrs Wexler,’ the bartender announced and showed a mischievous glint in his deep-set eyes when he added: ‘This gentleman here, who was asking about the Farmer family.’

The overweight and seemingly overworked woman set down the tray of food on the table, glanced at Edge with disinterest and told the bartender: ‘Well, Fred, you know where to send him if he decides he wants to rent a room here at the hotel.’ She waddled away and went out through the archway as Fred whispered to Edge:

‘The Wexlers don’t like the Farmers over much.’

Edge started on the soup and found it better than he had expected: no worse than he had eaten in dozens of places similar to this saloon. When he was through eating he rose from the table, hefted his gear up from the floor and headed for the batwings. He nodded to the bartender who called a cheerful farewell but ignored the three doleful old men who had held no conversation while they unashamedly eavesdropped on every mundane exchange in which he had been involved.

The streets were sparsely populated and free of moving traffic at this time in the early afternoon. So he was in no danger of being run down by any local bigot with particularly strong feelings about a half Mexican Yankee as he angled across the centre town intersection, heading for the stage line depot.

Because the depot office was much smaller than the saloon the air inside was a great deal hotter. It was silent in there except for the irritable buzzing of a bluebottle as the insect banged against the large window beside the open doorway: and the eating sounds made by the fat, ruddy complexioned, middle aged man in shirt sleeves and a waist apron who had been at the doorway of the place when the stage arrived this morning. He sat on a high backed chair behind a wall-to-wall counter that divided the room in two, sucking his teeth with noisy gusto as he made inroads into a large wedge of chocolate cake that oozed cream from both sides. He swallowed, licked his fingers, grinned broadly and greeted: ‘Afternoon to you, stranger.’ More finger licking. ‘Just having me a little snack. What can I do for you this fine Texas day?’

‘Like to know when the next stage to Austin is due?’

‘Not until next Wednesday, sir. Once a week service is what the company runs through Springdale in both directions. To Austin ever Wednesday. And the other way each Monday. You want to reserve a place on next Wednesday’s stage?’

‘Can I get a transfer?’ He dug into a shirt pocket and took out the ticket he purchased by barter at the way station.

The eager to please man wiped sticky fingers on his apron, took the ticket, peered at it, sucked his teeth, nodded and handed it back. ‘That’ll be no problem, sir. Your ticket’s good for any stage any day she runs through here to Austin. You got any baggage?’

Edge glanced down at the saddle and gear he carried. ‘I travel light.’

‘So there’s no problem there, either. Stage will leave the depot here at noon or near as makes no difference next Wednesday. I’ll see you then if I don’t run into you before, Mr Edge.’

‘Much obliged.’

‘My pleasure, sir.’ He took another bite of the chocolate cake as Edge went out of the cramped, stuffy office and the fly follow him and circled high into the sunlit air toward the cloudless bright blue sky.

‘Ah, Mr Edge, is it not?’ The speaker was yet another polite sounding citizen of Springdale, his manner like that of the bartender and the stage depot man, contrasting sharply with the outspoken crassness of Max Lacy and tacit antipathy of some other townspeople. Edge looked quizzically at the man who stood on the sidewalk between the stage depot and the law office. Dressed in a stained and threadbare pale grey suit and derby hat, he was about sixty with a scrawny build and a long narrow face, the skin heavily wrinkled and sallow. He had deep set watery blue eyes and a weak mouth line. And bony hands that he clasped in front of him as if to keep them from shaking. The expression on his under-fleshed face was of nervous indecision.

‘Something I can do for you, feller?’

The skinny, doleful faced man hooked a thumb over a shoulder to indicate Meeker’s office and explained: ‘I’ve just been speaking with the sheriff. Andrew Devlin is my name, attorney at law my profession. Nicholas Quinn is a client of mine. The sheriff informs me you are a friend of his?’

‘No, that’s not so.’

The unexpected response perturbed the already diffident lawyer. ‘Oh? I was given to understand by Mr Meeker that you and my client struck up a friendship during a stage trip and that you and he . . . ‘ He hunted for words.

Edge helped him out. ‘We share the stage between Pine Wells and here and on the way Quinn invited me to visit his house. But he was drunk at the time and the news he got when he reached town knocked him for a loop. He forgot his valise so I took it out to him. None of that makes us bosom buddies.’

‘Oh, I see. Yes . . . Well . . . It’s a . . . If you are to see him again shortly perhaps you would broach the subject of a visit from me? Or, of course, if Mr Quinn would rather come to my office in these tragic circumstances . . ?’

‘I don’t plan on going to – ‘ Edge broke off when he saw that Devlin’s attention had been distracted, when the man suddenly peered across the intersection and along the western length of Texas Avenue. And Edge turned to look in the same direction and saw a slow moving buggy had rounded the curve of the Austin Trail. Was now rolling along the street between the warehouses and the cotton processing plant.

‘No, it’s all right, Mr Edge. I’m sorry to have troubled you. Here is Mr Quinn now. I’ll go speak to him personally.’ Devlin was almost joyful with relief as he spun around and quickly moved away. But he slowed down after he stepped down off the sidewalk and started across the intersection.

Then Edge’s attention was drawn along River Road: to where a familiar horse and rider were much closer than the gleaming, new-looking buggy Devlin had said was being driven by Nicholas Quinn. And sensed again, just as in the blacksmith forge earlier, that Sarah Farmer was more than merely idly curious about him as she approached astride the newly shod roan mare.

But despite this he allowed his attention to be diverted from the good looking redhead with the enquiring green eyed gaze and watched as Quinn’s buggy came to a halt midway between the start of the trail and the intersection. Then saw the man climb unsteadily down from the rig and stumble in his haste to enter a building on the south side of the street. And registered that Devlin quickened his pace, like he was anxious not to miss any part of whatever was to occur within the building where the apparently drunken man had gone from sight.

‘Have you yet made up your mind whether you’ll be staying on in our fair town?’ Sarah Farmer asked as she reined in her mount level with where Edge stood.

‘I’ve just now arranged to leave on the Austin stage next Wednesday.’ He tipped his hat.

She twisted in the saddle and by accident or design showed her slender but pronouncedly curved upper body in erotic profile as she peered along Texas Avenue. ‘Isn’t that the Quinns’ new buggy parked out front of Jed Winter’s place?’

‘Quinn got out of it and if that’s the undertaker’s parlour then – ‘

She cut in scornfully: ‘And there goes Andrew Devlin. Just can’t wait to tie up the details of his financial cut of this awful business.’

‘It’s Quinn’s lawyer sure enough, lady.’

She shot a fleeting glance of irritation toward Edge but quickly displaced it with a neutral expression as he met her gaze. Then she showed the shadow of a smile and accused: ‘You’re a man who does not readily commit himself, I think?’

He inclined his head, set down his gear and took out the makings. ‘Until I know all that I can about what I’m committing myself to, I’m usually that kind of man, lady.’

She nodded sagely, took up her reins and said lightly: ‘I’m the impulsive, devil-may-care type myself. It runs in the family. Perhaps we’ll – ‘

A gunshot cut her off in mid-sentence. The report had a muffled quality in the midafternoon quiet of the small town: its source easy to identify when the horse in the shafts of Quinn’s buggy reared in snorting fright, clattered down and dragged the rig a dozen feet on its brake locked wheels.

‘Was that what I think it was?’ The stage depot man had appeared in his open doorway, wiping chocolate stains off his chin with the back of a hand as he made the harsh toned demand.

Sarah Farmer said curtly: ‘It certainly was not a firecracker, Mr Conway.’

The law office door was wrenched open by Lacy with Meeker close behind him and it was the tall and broad, square faced deputy who demanded:

‘Where’d that shot come from?’

The woman astride the horse started to point, Edge opened his mouth to speak and then Devlin lunged out of the undertaker’s premises, saw the group at the intersection and raised both cupped hands to his mouth to amplify his voice.

‘Sheriff, you best get down here! And have someone get Jim Sullivan! Nick Quinn has shot himself!’

Meeker barked an order to Lacy and both men lunged away in opposite directions. Conway said hoarsely: ‘My God, if he’s dead that’s the entire family wiped out in one day.’

Sarah Farmer clucked her horse into a walk then murmured grimly: ‘Which doesn’t leave many mourners to attend the funeral.’

Conway scowled after her as Edge began to roll a cigarette while he watched Lacy return; trailed by a short, pot-bellied, harassed looking man in shirt sleeves who carried a medical bag.

‘Don’t pay no mind to what she says, mister,’ Conway told Edge anxiously. ‘There’ll be enough folks at the church to see the Quinns get a decent send off.’

‘You sound like you think that should make a difference to me, feller?’

‘Well, don’t it?’ Conway was perplexed

‘Why should it?

‘I thought you and Quinn were good friends?’

‘That seems to be a common mistake hereabouts.’

Conway shrugged. ‘Okay, if you say so.’

Edge stooped to pick up his burdens, stepped off the sidewalk and hung the newly made cigarette at the side of his mouth. Then he struck a match on the depot hitching rail and told Conway: ‘I hardly knew the feller. It’s just there was a stage where we had a drink together is all.’

CHAPTER • 5

___________________________________________________________________________

THEY DID not keep their dead above ground for long in the town of Springdale.
Or
maybe, Edge reflected wryly as he placed a red three on a black four. It was just the corpses of those Yankee interlopers not held in high regard that were disposed of with such undue haste.

That afternoon, while Jed Winter prepared four caskets and his wife attended to the laying-out of the bodies of the Quinns and Bob Jordan, a group of men dug one single and one family grave in the cemetery beside the church at the eastern end of Texas Avenue. Edge was disinterestedly aware of this activity as he sat in a well-furnished second floor front room of the Grand Hotel playing a desultory game of solitaire with the deck of cards from his saddlebag. Occasionally he heard snatches of talk rising to the open window and less frequently he glanced down through the lace curtains that moved almost imperceptibly in the slightest of breezes from the east.

Later he went downstairs to the saloon, ordered a beer and sat at the same table as earlier while he smoked a cigarette. And for some time he was the only customer with just the silent, newspaper-reading bartender for company. Then the trio of old timers gathered again to share another bottle of rye and as the working day drew to a close more men of all ages came in off the cooling street.

From various exchanges of talk Edge confirmed without actively eavesdropping what he had learned earlier in the day. He overheard, too, that Meeker and Lacy had been out at the Quinn house for some time, continuing their investigation into the violent murders that had triggered a gory suicide. There were several lurid versions of what the gunshot had done to the head of Nicholas Quinn. But only an occasional reference was made to the untimely death of Jordan out on the Cassidy spread.

Other patrons drifted in as the evening progressed without the saloon ever becoming crowded or raucously noisy. Among these was James Sullivan, who had a disturbingly agitated manner that did not inspire the kind of confidence Edge would seek to find in a medical man. And the convivial Frank Conway from the stage line office; Harry Shelby, the more circumspect blacksmith and liveryman; and a few others with the look about them of tradesmen or less well paid professional men.