The Deputy - Edge Series 2 (2 page)

The sound of the gunshots in the confined space of the farmhouse kitchen was ear splittingly loud and the taint of drifting gun smoke sickeningly acrid. Then the barrage ended abruptly as the Colt was emptied of its final round and the man who had fired it raised his free hand.

After a stretched second the rifleman triggered a final shot into the inert chest of the dead judge and pumped the action of the Winchester. The muted
ping
when the expended cartridge case hit the floor provided an anticlimactic last sound of violence.

And then there was just the even breathing of the pair of masked men as they calmly surveyed the results of their murderous attack.

‘It’s done,’ the rifleman said, a tone of quiet satisfaction in his voice.

9

The second man uttered an affirmative grunt as he glanced around again at the crumpled corpses from which no more blood seeped. Then he tilted the revolver and slowly turned the cylinder so that empty cartridge cases dropped one by one to the floor. When all the chambers were empty, he nodded and murmured.

‘That’s good.’ He spun on his heels and moved through the still open doorway, said without turning to look back into the room: ‘Okay, time to go.’

‘Yeah, sure!’ The contained high excitement in his voice matched the glint in his eyes.

Out in the moon lightened darkness of the night where the cooling air was untainted by the stink of black powder smoke, the man reloading his Colt said: ‘You really got a whole lot of pleasure from doing that, didn’t you?’

The rifleman stepped out of the house and did not close the door on the lamp lit kitchen. A hash laugh exploded spontaneously from his throat before he acknowledged:

‘I sure did!’

Then, arms draped over each other’s shoulders, they ambled out of the yard toward where their horses were tethered to a clump of brush a few hundred feet away behind the bigger of the two barns.

As they swung up and into their saddles they jerked the kerchief masks down off their faces and the rifleman vented a sigh and said in a mocking tone of contrition:

‘Guess it maybe ain’t so nice to laugh at newly dead folks.’ He suddenly threw back his head and guffawed. ‘But it surely can’t be wrong for a guy to enjoy his work!’

10

CHAPTER • 2

___________________________________________________________________

AT THE same time as the two cold blooded killers spurred their mounts into
a galloping retreat across the fields of the Bellamy farm ten miles to the north of Bishopsburg a trio of riders made much slower time down a clearly defined trail toward the town.

A woman with a man to either side of her.

Isabella Gomez was a little over thirty, of average height with a full figure that tended toward plumpness and even in her present sullen mood her face was undeniably pretty in a frame of long, jet black hair.

She wore pants, a shirt, a vest tailored for the female form and a stiff brimmed, low crowned Stetson, all her clothing dark hued. The two rings on each hand, the bracelets around her wrists and the jewellery encircling her neck and hung from her ears was polished silver that glinted in the moonlight. For a long period only the sounds made by the three easy walking geldings had disturbed the peace of the night before the woman announced morosely:

‘You know, the closer we get to town, the less I like what it is we are doing.’

Sheriff George North, who rode to her right, was also outfitted in dark clothing that was suited to travelling frontier trails. He wore no jewellery to reflect the light of the moon but like the tin star pinned to his left jacket lapel his teeth glinted as he briefly removed a cheroot from the side of his mouth and replied flatly:

‘You knew you were getting involved in something dangerous from the start,
senorita.
So quit bellyaching, uh?’

Anger and fear were mixed in equal quantities on her Hispanic features and sounded in her voice after she had scanned the night shrouded, rugged, low hill country all around them and countered:

‘I think I have the good reason to complain!’ She fixed North with a sneering glower. ‘I am doing my duty as a good citizen and I should not have need to worry when I have the protection of the law. But I think there is not enough law to protect me so well now we are getting close to Bishopsburg. Where Eduardo Martinez will be waiting!’

11

The man at who she directed her displeasure as he replaced the cheroot between his gleaming teeth was forty seven years old and looked at least five years older. A little over six feet tall, he weighed something over two hundred pounds: his once lithe and athletic frame thickened by middle age and he had a pronounced paunch.

His face still showed traces of former clean cut handsomeness but, like his physique, the features had become layered with excess flesh. Though not enough to smooth out the countless deep ruts the aging process had scored into the element burnished skin.

Above a jaw that showed a five o’clock shadow immediately after he shaved he had a mouth that in repose expressed life weary sourness. His steel grey eyes seemed hardly ever to be in repose: instead they maintained a piercing surveillance over the world and gave the impression of not missing a single detail and not liking very much of what they saw.

He rode with his Stetson hung down his back and it could be seen that his head atop a short, thick neck was crowned by un-thinned hair as black as that of the woman.

Isabella vented an unladylike snort and twisted her head around to direct a flashing eyed glower at the man who rode on the other side of her as she accused scornfully: ‘How can I even be certain this
hombre
is not in the pay of Eduardo Martinez?’

The man called Edge said with an easy smile: ‘Maybe I could have been, lady. But the sheriff got in his offer first. Some I win, some I lose.’

The wryly spoken response drew an explosive sound of disgust from the disgruntled and frightened woman. Then she spat forcefully to the ground to emphasise her deeply felt emotion.

Edge was somewhat older than North. Matched the lawman’s six feet two inches height but had a more muscular build. Below short cut, greying black hair his Anglo-Hispanic face was not quite clean shaven for he affected a narrow Mexicanstyle moustache that emphasised one half of his bloodline. This was counterbalanced by the narrow blue eyes of his mother’s north European heritage. 12

A seemingly easy smile glinted occasionally in his hooded eyes and thinned still further his broad mouth line: but those who came to know him passably well soon recognised it did not always express how he truly felt. He wore grey pants and shirt and a black Stetson, kerchief and un-spurred riding boots. The tin badge pinned to the left pocket of his shirt was inscribed with the designation:
DEPUTY
.

Like North, whose badge named him as a
SHERIFF,
Edge carried a holstered Colt .45 on a bullet heavy gunbelt. Each man was also armed with a Winchester rifle in a forward hung boot.

Because of the nature of the work he was undertaking, Edge additionally toted a cut-throat razor concealed in a pouch held at the nape of his neck by a circlet of dull coloured Indian beads.

North said sourly: ‘Guess you’d have preferred it if I’d gone to all the trouble of bringing Jose Martinez up to Railton City, uh? Fixed it for the trial to be held in the courthouse there?’

‘That would have been much better,’ Isabella said with a toss of her head that caused the long hair to swing about her fleshy shoulders and her earrings to glint more brightly. ‘The marshal at Railton City, he has three regular deputies, you know. All of them young and handsome. And some of the prisoners there, they were not so had for the eyes or a passionate woman to look upon.’

‘Let me tell you,
senorita
, in a dangerous times good looks don’t count for a hell of a lot,’ North growled and tossed away his cheroot as he peered yet again along their back trail, deep suspicion in his watchful eyes. Isabella shrugged, which gave erotic movement to her prominent breasts.

‘And let me tell you, sheriff, if I preferred older men, you would score highly with me.’

North muttered with heavy sarcasm: ‘I’m real flattered.’

She waited for Edge to look at her after he was through making one of his periodic surveys of the way ahead, in back of them and to either side. ‘And you are not so bad, I think. Also, you have some Mexican blood in your veins, is that not right,
mi caro
?
’

13

Edge said evenly: ‘I just hope I can give all my attention to the job I’m doing now I know how much you love me, lady.’

The attempt to lighten her mood having failed because of the sardonic responses she drew from the men, Isabella again became sullen. She hunched low in the saddle and resumed an apprehensive appraisal of their darkness shrouded surroundings for perhaps a full minute.

Then snarled: ‘You both can go to hell! But just make sure I do not end up there for real because you two
hombres
failed to provide the protection I was promised!’

‘Take it easy,
senorita.
’ There was a modicum of empathy in North’s tone now. ‘If they get to you, it’ll have to be through my deputy and me. And I’ve always planned on living to a ripe old age. Figure Edge has much the same aim?’

He leaned forward in his saddle to look across the irritably nervous Isabella at Edge who was rolling a cigarette.

‘I’d say that all my ambitions depend on me staying alive, feller.’

The woman grimaced, gestured with both ringed and bracelet encircled hands to encompass the arid, stunted brush featured hills all around them, swallowed hard and said: ‘Ambition does not stop bullets, I think.’

North sighed deeply.

Edge struck a match on the jutting butt of his rifle and lit the newly made cigarette. Then he began to pay close attention to the dark hills on all sides that North and the woman regarded with such suspicion.

Edge had not needed to think too long or deeply about hiring on for a fee of ten dollars to assist George North in escorting Isabella Gomez a distance of forty miles from Railton City to Bishopsburg.

For he needed the money: was down to his last two dollars and thirty cents as he enjoyed the luxury of a dime haircut at Baldy’s Barbering Parlour directly across the street from the city jail.

He had been a barber himself for awhile in Tucson not too long ago. And after he went bust at the trade he vowed to indulge in a hair cut whenever it was needed if he could cover the cost of the service without going hungry. 14

He would have had a whole lot more money – and a secure future – today had he not last night chosen to take a hand in a friendly poker game in the saloon of the Fourwinds Hotel.

Where, in a no-limits, strictly-on-the-level, tension-filled final hand of seven card stud he lost almost all his ready cash plus the wagon and two horse team that were the sole assets of the
First Freight Company: Based Nowhere, Go Anywhere.
From the time he had acquired the wagon and team in an Arizona town called Dalton Springs until he lost them in the Railton City poker game, the business he operated had provided adequately for his modest day to day needs.

And there had been enough left over every now and then to put toward the purchase of a second wagon and team and a permanent base for his operation in the not too distant future.

But, as had happened so often since he attempted to put the life of a rootless drifter behind him, the gambling bug had bitten and ruined his well intentioned plans. And he was once again left busted but unbowed.

The same optimism that tempted him into high stakes poker games also acted to bolster his spirits so he was never in any doubt that something would always turn up to provide for the few necessities he required to keep body and soul together. And so it did on this occasion, while he was indulging in one of the rare luxuries he allowed himself in less than affluent circumstances.

‘The local marshal tells me you were cleaned out in a card game down at the Fourwinds Hotel last night, Mr Edge?’

Edge had been aware that a second customer had entered Baldy’s single chair establishment and sat down on the bench shortly after he was caped and the scissors of the short, slightly built barber were snipping at his hair with admirable skill.

But he did not glance at the mutely patient man until the haircut was done and he stood up, thanked the elderly, perfectly nick-named little barber and the implied query was directed at him.

‘Are you a new deputy he’s hired on?’ Edge answered with a question as he stooped to have his shoulders brushed free of hair clippings and saw the waiting man wore a six pointed tin star on his shirt pocket.