California Killing (14 page)

"But now you got a personal interest right?" Edge pointed out. "Hood killed your wife…"

"Dexter told me how Magda died," the detective interrupted without acrimony.

"As good as killed her," Edge allowed. "She was a bomb he and his gang primed. Anyway, you're pretty anxious to see Hood swinging at the end of a rope. Or to blast him yourself?"

An infinite sadness showed in the detective's eyes. "I loved Magda very deeply," he said softly.

Edge's hooded eyes showed no sympathy for the man. "If you hadn't shot of your mouth to Mayer the whole gang might have been over at the jailhouse now."

Stricklyn sighed. "I knew Mayer was a fool. I didn't realize his desire for glory had made him insane."

Edge nodded. "Every man's allowed one mistake, Stricklyn. You made yours. From now on, stay out of my hair. I want Hood. If I get him; I'm in for ten grand less expenses. If I don't get him - and you're the reason I don't - I'll take money from you: in kind."

The threat did not provoke the detective to either fear or rage. "Will you need to kill him?" he asked flatly.

''That'll be up to him."

Stricklyn sighed. "I think you'll have to kill him." He shrugged his thin shoulders. "I guess it doesn't matter how he dies. As long as he dies."

Edge straightened up from the dresser and moved to the door. "Except to him," he replied as he went out onto the balcony.

Dexter was limping up the stairway from the smoke-laden, noise-filled saloon and at the top he waited for Edge to come to him.

"Holly's agreed," the dignified rancher announced. "If he can have half."

Edge nodded curtly. "Deal. You see Breen?"

"Yes. He put the word out to the Mex … Mexican families over at the pueblo. Most of them have relations working on the valley farmsteads. He's sure Hood's heard by now." Dexter looked along the balcony towards the broken door of Stricklyn's room. "You invited the Pinkerton man along?"

"I told him to stay out of my way," Edge answered. "State of mind he's in, he'd likely hate Hood to death before the guy could tell us where the money's stashed."

"Hey, Mr. Edge, you want your picture taken?" Wood yelled up from the foot of the stairway.

"As much as you want a hole in the head, Justin," Edge called back.

"No, sir, Mr. Edge," Wood said hurriedly, gathering up his tripod with its large camera and trying to lose himself in the crowd at the gaming tables.

"I'll see you at daybreak then?" Dexter said.

"Right," Edge replied. "And there better be only you coming out of the train."

Dexter's eyes became flinty for a moment, but then the tension drained out of him. "Mayer won't know anything about it until I offer him ten thousand less for his beef."

Edge nodded and turned away towards the door of his room. Dexter limped back down the stairway and then out on to the street. Breen was taking the evening air in front of his office, smoking a cigar. He acknowledged Dexter's nod with a similar gesture.

On the lighted stage of the playhouse, before the tiers of empty seats, the four dwarfs were in a boisterous mood as they rehearsed a tumbling act. Behind the flats, Rodney Holly opened a door and went into a room that was a combined wardrobe and property store. As he held a lamp aloft and surveyed an array of theatrical costumes, he hummed softly to himself.

In his room, Edge jammed the back of the chair under the door handle and then stretched out on the bed, laying on his side so that he faced the window. One hand was curled around the butt of the Walker-Colt tucked under the pillow and the other trailed on the floor, fingertips touching the stock of the Winchester. Even when his narrow eyes finally closed and his breathing became deeper, there was about the sleeping form an impression of lurking alertness. Like that of an animal which, although resting, has a sixth sense for danger and the ability to spring from sleep to full awareness in an instant. But the only menace to enter the room that night emanated from its occupant.

Chapter Fifteen

"C
AN'T
you keep this goddamn buggy on the goddamn trail, Dayton?" Hood roared angrily as the stolen stagecoach slewed around a turn and almost lurched on to its side when the front wheel bounced over a rock.

Up on the box seat, Dayton lashed at the team for more speed and grinned at the earringed man who held on grimly in the guard's place. Inside the stage the popeyed gang leader scowled as he massaged his aching leg under the frock coat. He shared the backward facing seat with Burt. The youngster and the remaining two members of the gang were squeezed uncomfortably together on the other side of the aisle, catching a lot of dust from the spinning wheels of the stage.

They had left their box canyon hide-out shortly after sun up, heading high into the mountains and along the crumbling, little used crestline trail towards the ocean. The day promised to be as hot as the one before and as the morning heat built up the headlong speed of the stage did nothing to alleviate the discomfort of its passengers. For the dust-heavy air which curled inside seemed to be breathed by the sun itself.

"You slow down when you catch sight of 'em, you hear?" Hood bellowed, sticking his head out of the window, then falling back in a coughing fit as he swallowed a mouthful of the swirling dust.

Burt thumped him hard on the back, working with a will as he recalled Hood's rifle blow across the stomach of the previous evening. Hood sensed the man's intent and whirled on the seat, jerking up the Spencer to jab the muzzle under Burt's chain.

"Knock it off, you bastard," he snarled.

Burt struggled to inject humor into his dull eyes - to back up the fixity of his grinning mouth line. "Trying to help, Sam," he blurted out.

"Did the Mexes say there'd be kids at the Mission?" the youngster asked hurriedly, anxious to take the tension out of the rattling stage, not wishing to be trapped in such a confined place if bullets started to fly.

Hood stared at Burt for a moment more, then lowered the Spencer. "They said." He grinned suddenly and looked across at a thick-set man with a cast in one eye. "Real fun for Cary. Cary likes 'em small, don't you, Cary?"

The man pasted a smile on his grizzled features. "Been so long I don't hardly recall."

"Whooooooaaaa!" Dayton yelled and the men inside the stage felt the decrease in speed as the driver hauled on the reins to bring the team out of the gallop.

Hood's bug-eyed face turned to the window and he licked his lips in anticipation. "Don't reckon it'll be long before you get the chance to freshen your memory, Cary," he said.

The stage moved at a decreased speed through a steep-sided gully which angled on a line to the south-west so that the trail was shaded from the morning sun.

"What'd you see, Dayton?" Hood demanded.

"Tail, Sam," Dayton said, his voice reedy with excitement.

"Holy tail," the ear-ringed man augmented with a cackle of dry laughter.

When the gully came to an abrupt end as the result of a prehistoric rock fall, the land took the form of a slightly undulating plateau layered with brush. Halfway across the plateau, to the left of the trail, was an ancient Spanish Mission, its weathered adobe walls dappled with sunlight through the tracery of leaves on an encirclement of shade trees.

Abandoned long ago when the Spanish were driven south to Sonora and Baja California, the Mission showed many signs of disrepair. But these were in process of being rectified. A priest squatted on the sloping roof in the shadow of the square bell tower, hammering nails into a newly positioned length of timber. Despite the heat, he was dressed in an ankle-length cassock. Below him, two nuns worked painstakingly to polish the stained-glass window, their habits smeared by the drifting dust stirred up under the feet of four youngsters. The boys, dressed neatly in knee pants and loose fitting shirts, were busying themselves unloading lumber from a flatbed wagon parked before the arched doorway of the Mission.

All of them, adults and children alike, were working with a will, raising loud, unmelodious voices to the clear heavens in singing a familiar hymn. The sound of their voices and the intensity of concentration upon their tasks ensured that Dayton was able to bring the stage to within three hundred feet of the mission before its approach was seen.

Then one of the youngsters spotted it between the trees. He gave a cry of alarm and scuttled into the protective doorway of the Mission. His small companions looked fearfully towards the trail and followed the example of the first. Initially, the priest and the holy women seemed unaware that their joyous chorus had moderated in volume and Dayton was able to bring the stage a few more menacing feet, and rein the team to a halt in a gap between the shade trees.

He and the earringed man, and the five gang members inside the stage, stared with evil eyes at the sisters, their dark garb standing out starkly against the sun-bleached whiteness of the Mission's walls. The women and the man on the roof, continued to give full-throated praise to the Lord.

"What about the priest, Sam?" Dayton asked easily.

Hood ran a coat sleeve over his bald dome, smearing the dust and sweat. "He's mine. Ain't fitting a man of God should witness such a thing as this."

"Low down, Sam?" Dayton asked.

"Low down," Hood replied, prodding the barrel of the Spencer through the window. "Call him turn around."

"Hey, holy feller!" Dayton roared. "We've come for Christian charity."

"But we got no faith and better than hope," Hood murmured as he drew a bead on the back of the man on the roof.

The singing ended abruptly.

Hood was the only man with a gun in his hand and when the four shots exploded from within the shadowed interior of the Mission doorway, his reaction was a split-second too slow. He saw the sisters dive to the ground to the right and move in an ungainly, all-fours scuttle towards the corner of the building. He saw the priest reach for the newly-fixed beam and then swing his gaitered legs through a gaping hole in the roof. Then he squeezed the trigger.

The earringed man toppled from his seat, the side of his head a mangled pulp of glistening red where blood-pumped from four bullet holes. As he fell in front of the window, he took Hood's bullet. Low down. It penetrated his stomach, but caused no pain for the man was already dead. As his body thudded to the ground, another fusillade of gunfire empted from within the Mission. Two bullets splintered into the wood of the stage, a third entered the eye of the nearside lead horse, dropping it dead between the shafts: a fourth took Dayton in the shoulder and pitched him screaming from his seat.

The stage jolted and rocked as the surviving horses struggled to flee and the men inside panicked to get out, all five fighting and clawing to leap through the door on the lee side at the same time. Then they tumbled out and dove for the ground close to the writhing Dayton. Another volley of shots tore into the stage - more than four this time.

The "sisters", sheltered by the angle of the corner, tore off their headdresses and fired with Springfield rifles snatched from beneath their flowing habits. One was Sheriff Breen, the other Elmer Dexter.

Inside the Mission, the face above the starched cleric's collar was that of Edge. As he dropped to the floor from the hole in the roof, he snapped a quick glance towards the arched doorway and saw the four dwarfs from the Playhouse. Each was blazing away at the, stage with a revolver. Then he reached the stained glass window in two strides, snatched up the Winchester from where it leaned against the wall, and smashed a hole in the pane with one shot before following this with directed fire.

Behind the stage, still jerking to and fro under the power of the terrified horses, the remaining members of the Hood gang cursed and howled as they fired blindly at the Mission before running for the more substantial cover of the trees.

"Help me, you bastards!" Dayton screamed as he clawed at his wound with blood-stained fingers. "I'm bleedin' to death."

But the others were too concerned with their own survival to even hear him as further shots from the Mission chipped dry bark from the protecting trees. For several moments he huddled himself into a tight ball, jerking with each slap of a bullet into the ground near him. But the panic overcame his lack of strength and he sprang to his feet, intending to run for cover. But the struggling of the terrified horses finally bore fruit. As they wrenched to the right, a shaft snapped like matchwood. The sharp sound it made drove the animals into fresh efforts and they reared. The splintered end of the shaft swung out to the side, then back.

Dayton saw what was to happen and knew for a split-second that he could not avoid it. His dirt-streaked, sweat-run face became a mask of horror and he screamed. The jagged, many-pointed end of the shaft thudded into his lower stomach and burst open his insides with a sound like the squashing of rotten fruit. His scream was curtailed abruptly and he died as a great spout of blood choked up from his throat. His body hung limply on the shaft like that of a speared fish.

"Two down, five to go!" one of the dwarfs cried jubilantly.