The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (11 page)

‘You heard right.’

Slocum moved purposefully to the rear of the wagon and raised the end of the tarp. Saw the lower portion of the corpse and tossed the cover fully aside. Totally exposed the awesome injuries to the man’s head and now he had been bound and helpless while his torturers put him to agonising death.

The undertaker gave a noncommittal grunt but otherwise revealed no reaction to what he saw. Continued to express the same professional lack of emotion when he shifted his deep set green eyed gaze from the corpse to Edge who half turned on the wagon seat to claim evenly:

‘I didn’t do that, feller. Guess you knew him, uh?’

‘I knew Fred Drayton, sure enough. Not well. Don’t think anybody did. He didn’t socialise much. But if I’d seen him around town every day for the last two years, I can’t say that I’d recognised him, the way he is now.’

Edge shrugged. ‘For a couple of minutes last night I talked with a man who claimed to be Fred Drayton. This morning the local banker told me how to get to the farm he said was Drayton’s. This piebald is the same animal was ridden by the man I met last might. It and the other horse were in the corral at the farm. Found the corpse strung upside down from a beam in the barn. Clothes look to be the same as the man was wearing last night: when he took delivery of a wagon load of farm implements. Paid me what I was owed. So I figure this is – ‘

‘Yeah, all right!’ Slocum scowled. ‘It’s Drayton I guess. I’ll take care of him. But ain’t nothing to be done about starting to find out who beat the poor bastard’s head to a pulp. Not with the sheriff out of town. I guess McCall’s jurisdiction reaches as far as the Drayton farm. That’ll need to wait until later.’

As Slocum began to carefully position the corpse so he could lift it off the wagon, Edge climbed down from the seat and asked:

‘You need a hand with that?’

‘Made a lifetime’s vocation of dealing with cadavers and all that goes with them, mister. I can handle it.’

69

If the corpse had been stiffened by the onset of
rigor mortis
while it hung in the barn, it was totally limp when Edge cut it down and remained so now. And it was almost as if the passing of time since Edge found him had caused Drayton to shed weight. Slocum doubled the body over a shoulder and carried it into his workshop with the easy skill of long experience that made the heavily built dead man seem less than half his true bulk. There was no studied reverence as Slocum went about the task, but neither did he treat the remains of Fred Drayton like a loosely filled sack of potatoes. Edge continued to watch from the doorway as the evenly breathing man set down his burden on a stained pine table in a corner of the workshop. A place that smelled of cigar smoke, sawdust, glue and lamp oil and was furnished with a second table, two benches, several racks of well used woodworking tools and the finished, partially completed and newly started caskets that were a stock in trade of Jake Slocum. Who now used a recently sharpened knife to saw through the ropes which bound the unfeeling flesh and talked as he worked.

‘Normally I wouldn’t do this until after John McCall had checked over the cadaver: seen how the man died. But since there’s no telling how long it’s going to be before he gets back – and when he does get back he’ll have plenty more problems to occupy him – I’m doing it now. A man that’s dead don’t care how he looks or what happens to his remains. And when there’s no next of kin to make the arrangements, it’s left to the likes of me to take care of what has to be done. See it’s done decently: with dignity.’

‘How did McCall’s other problems come about today, feller?’ Edge asked from where he remained on the threshold.

A scowl came to the angular face of the cheroot smoking man working dexterously to free the body of binding ropes. ‘Shannon and a couple of other guys just rode into town, hitched their horses to the rail outside the saloon and swaggered in, guns drawn.

‘Was there a woman with them?’

‘Nah, she showed up a little later. Said something to them about a wagon being well hid in the hills outside of town. Anyway, Shannon said they’d shoot down every man in there – and I was one of the half dozen in the Lucky Break at the time – if the two Mexican lawmen didn’t surrender. Along with Bart Bannerman who, like you know, took over McCall’s duties?’

70

‘He told me why he had to do that.’

‘Yeah, Bart’s the mayor. Him and the two Mexicans had to agree. Wasn’t nobody going to argue with Shannon: all of us knowing the kind of mean hearted, cold blooded killer he is. So we all done what we was told. And what we was told after the hostages were locked up in the jailhouse was to go about our business like everything was normal. But them of a religious disposition should pray that nobody tried to be a hero. Because if Bart had the two
senors
died first, a whole lot of others would follow.’

‘That won’t happen! Not if it’s done properly!’ The challenge was spoken by a woman at the rear of the alley, her voice a vehement whisper.

‘Kitty, you been told no!’ Slocum snapped the response in the tone of a man whose patience was near to breaking point.

Edge backed out of the doorway and turned toward the newcomer as she emerged from the darkness into the fringe glow from the workshop. Had guessed from hearing her given name who she probably was: now recognised her from glimpsing her smiling face at the window when she signalled an affectionate goodbye to a man riding away with the posse shortly after dawn. Kitty Raine, widow of the deputy Luke Shannon callously murdered last night.

‘Was told by a bunch of spineless small town cowards afraid of their own lousy shadows!’ She lowered her rasping voice still further as she drew close to Edge in the doorway. ‘But this guy is something else. Twice already he’s shown he’s not the kind of man to let anybody mess with him and get away with it.

Close up and wearing a scowl, Kitty Raine was as good to look at as she had promised to be from a distance, seen briefly while she smiled radiantly through the window. She was about thirty, tall, with a build that was slender but certainly not boyish. She had auburn hair which she wore long so it fell to her narrow shoulders in luxuriant waves, framing a face that was also long and was finely moulded with features that were curved rather than angular.

Her unlined complexion was blemish free, her eyes cornflower blue and her teeth very white in the light from the doorway. She wore an unrevealing but figure hugging plain black dress that was high at the neck and brushed her unadorned shoes at the hem, with sleeves that reached to her wrists. Her only jewellery was a plain gold wedding band. 71

Kitty Raine was, Edge thought as she briefly abandoned the scowl to show him a pale imitation of the smile she and directed toward another man early this morning, certainly a beautiful young widow, suited to black.

As she came toward the doorway Slocum started to complain: ‘Kitty, you’ve already been told by – ‘

She reached the threshold, pulled up short, vented a strangled shriek and pointed a trembling arm into the workshop as she rasped in a horrified tone: ‘Who . . ? Whatever in God’s name happened to him?’

‘Most likely it’s a farmer named Fred Drayton.’ Slocum replied grimly. ‘He was beaten to death. And if the sight of him scares you, get ready to see a lot worse if anyone rubs Shannon up the wrong way.’

She shook her head, long tresses flying, swallowed hard and swept her gaze from the corpse to Slocum then Edge. For long moments she seemed on the point of being chastened by the undertaker’s warning. But then she displaced horror with narrow eyed, thin lipped wilfulness and the look on her pallid face wavered only slightly before it became hard set. There was no tremor in her voice when she countered:

‘You think a man like Shannon will simply walk away, calm as you please, when he’s got what he came here for?’

She switched her wide eyed gaze constantly between the two men, as anxious to convince the one who had already turned her down as Edge who was hearing her plea for the first time.

Now she stabbed a finger at Edge, but addressed Slocum. ‘Ask him. He was there in the law office last night. He said Shannon shot Phil just for the hell of it. And that’s what he does, isn’t it? He kills people for a living and when there’s no living to be made out of it, he kills for twisted pleasure. So how can you – ‘

‘Kitty!’ Slocum snatched the cheroot from between his clenched teeth when he barked her name and stopped her in mid-flow as he advanced on the doorway. As she struggled to pick up the thread of what she had been saying, Edge asked:

‘Has Shannon said what he came back to Dalton Springs for?’

72

‘No!’ Slocum snapped the response in the manner of an impatient dismissal of a trivial side issue. Then, to the woman: ‘We’re not cowards, Kitty. There’s not a man in this town who’ll be found wanting when the time’s right. But we can’t go off half cocked. Not against the likes of Shannon and his bunch of –

‘Three lousy rotten gunmen and a whore!’ Kitty Raine jeered. ‘And a whole townful of real heroic men was all they had to scare to take over Dalton Springs!’

Her contempt was powerful enough to force a fine spray of salvia from her trembling lips.

Slocum hooked a hand around the edge of the door and his glower implied he would have preferred to launch the fist at the woman’s face rather than slam the door closed when he snarled: ‘Go to hell, Mrs Raine! It’s sure where you’ve been bound ever since you took up with – ‘

Slocum elected to curtail the taunt before the crash of the door into the frame would have cut off what he was saying. In the moonlight which was all that held back the darkness from the alley after the light from the workshop lamp was blocked off, the woman’s rapid breathing was enough to let Edge know how deeply the half completed accusation had struck into her sensibilities.

But she recovered in moments and as Edge made to tip his hat to her she got a firmer grip on her emotions. She stepped up close enough to him so he could faintly smell her perfume and clearly see that her cajoling expression was a match for her tone when she offered: ‘Are you hungry, Mr Edge?’

He nodded. ‘It’s been a long time since I ate breakfast with Bannerman at this saloon, lady.’

‘I’ve fixed supper for myself. But what with the worry of all that’s happened in this town I’ve lost my appetite. You’re welcome to come have the food I can’t eat anymore?’

‘Much obliged. But first I need to take care of the horses.’

‘Fine, you do what you have to, Mr Edge. I live in the house right across the – ‘

‘I know where you live, lady.’

She made a muted sound of disgust. ‘In this town is there anything about anybody not known to everybody else?’ She spoke rhetorically, each word dripping with bitterness.

73

‘I’m a stranger here, so I can’t say,’ he answered, then climbed back up on to the wagon seat as she turned to leave the alley by the rear, which was how she had entered it: the end furthermost from her house behind the green picket fence on the other side of the street.

She muttered grimly as she moved off: ‘But you’ve been here long enough to find out what happens to local people’s guts when they’re called on to show them?’

From beyond the closed door Slocum warned ominously: ‘You better be very careful of her, mister. A man that’s hungry is liable to bite off more than he can chew with the kind of woman she is.’

Edge took up the reins and acknowledged wryly: ‘Much obliged for the advice, feller. It could maybe give me food for thought while I wait on supper.’

74

CHAPTER • 9

_________________________________________________________________________

EPRAIM RIDER’S livery was as silently empty of human presence as Dalton
Springs’ main street. So Edge was unable to ask if anybody ran the place in the man’s absence.

He parked the wagon out back of the two story clapboard building and dutifully attended to the needs of the pair of horses. Of the twenty stalls in the stable, twelve were vacant and he saw to it the piebald and the grey had adequate feed and water and clean straw in two of these. Then he drew a pail of water for his own use: washed up and shaved in the darkened building.

Shaving without a mirror was no hardship for him and after he was through he had effortlessly left the merest trace of a moustache along his top lip, curved down at each side of his mouth.

Started off again his single affectation since he was old enough to shave, something that left no doubt in the minds of all who saw him that he was a half breed: a prominent feature of his countenance with which he chose to stress the Hispanic bloodline of his father. Which counter-balanced – some women used to say handsomely - the natural blueness of the eyes he inherited from his mother’s Scandinavian origins. Then, feeling hungrier by the moment, he elected to take a more covert route back toward the place where he had been invited to eat supper. Moved from the livery near the north side of town to the Raine house closer to the south by crossing behind the properties lining the east flank of the street.