The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (20 page)

127

And, despite the strong possibility that there was mortal danger ahead, he felt a thin lipped, narrow eyed grin come unbidden to his aquiline features: unseen by the trio of men riding in front of him.

The disquieting sensation of being chill on this warm Arizona morning was totally gone now, which pleased this hard headed realist who was not usually given to indulging fanciful notions. And he realised he felt more alive and in control of his destiny than he had for a very long time.

A few minutes later the blandly good looking Antonio Sanchez peered over a shoulder and showed a quizzical expression as he broke the vocal silence.

‘
Senor
Bannerman, he said much about you while we were prisoners,
senor.’

Edge lit the cigarette he had just rolled. ‘If it wasn’t bad, you’d best not believe it, feller.’

‘Que?’

‘Don’t take him too seriously, Sanchez,’ McCall advised. ‘Mr Edge is inclined to make light of all kinds of situations the rest of us don’t see any kind of humour in. Guess you could say . . . ‘ He forced a hash laugh. ‘He’s the joker in this pack.’

It lost something in the translation Sanchez provided for the puzzled Mendoza and neither Mexican raised a smile.

Edge shrugged and said evenly on a stream of exhaled cigarette smoke: ‘Depends on the deal, sheriff. If it turns out to be a bad one, I can be one hell of a wild card.’

128

CHAPTER • 15

_________________________________________________________________________

THERE WAS scant talk during the ride along the south west trail toward the
Drayton farm and beyond, where their route became little more than a line of least resistance across broken terrain on which only the toughest vegetation survived. In truth, once past the deserted farm in the hollow, the four taciturn men were not so much following a trail as riding in the clearly defined tracks of a wagon and team and a bunch of saddle horses.

It was at the night camp that they established in the fold between two low hills when the men first exchanged something more than terse references to the sign seen on the parched ground, or the heat and dust, the flies, the discomforts of the Mexicans’ injuries or the varying degrees of fatigue each of them experienced.

While they ate a Spartan supper of jerked beef and beans prepared by McCall, washed down with coffee fixed by the Mexicans, it emerged that Sanchez and Mendoza were agents for a section of the Federale organisation with special responsibilities for cutting off the cross-border supply lines of bandit groups intent upon overthrowing the government.

McCall volunteered he had farmed a spread to the east of Dalton Springs before he became a lawman and was persuaded to stand reluctantly for election when the previous county sheriff died of old age, never having fired a shot in anger. After Edge gave a brief account of his early years on an Iowa farm with his Mexican father and Swedish mother and a younger brother the others claimed – McCall a little apologetically – that they had guessed he was part Mexican. Nobody asked to hear more about his time in the Union army during the War Between the States than he voluntarily told them, but he sensed they suspected he left much of substance out of what he said about the war and then his life between its end and his meeting with Ezra Franklinn in a Tucson cantina.

Which was as it should be: all those resting by the campfire abiding by that part of the frontier code that allowed a man the privilege of keeping his own counsel concerning his past if that was how he wished it to be.

129

After supper and the trading of carefully excised life stories, Edge did his share of the camp chores by cleaning the dishes while he reflected on aspects of the more immediate past.

How it had become apparent during the day-long ride that he had gotten rusty in tracking skills: which was not an unexpected revelation to him since he had not needed to use them for so long.

Likewise it was not surprising how McCall had always been prepared to accept the interpretation Sanchez and Mendoza put on the sign they were tracking. Because he was the sheriff of a small backwater town where there was little law breaking until now. So it was likely he had seldom been required to head up a posse into open country. Whereas the Mexicans were experienced in hunting down wanted men across just this kind of terrain. Expert at finding traces of the passing of men and animals: reading the meaning of the sign. Just like Edge had been able to do as second nature for so much of that part of his life he had not spoken of to his companions at this night camp. Mendoza was making a final check on the horses, Sanchez was dousing the fire and Edge was readying his bedroll for sleep when McCall again stubbed out the cigar that had lasted him all day, overcame an obvious reticence and made a statement into a tentative question:

‘Way I heard it told back in town, Edge, you handled Jake Slocum’s Winchester like it wasn’t the first time since you were shooting a rifle for Abe Lincoln’s Union cause?’

From the way the sheriff traded sidelong glances with the government men from south of the border, Edge guessed this had been a topic of discussion in the law office this morning: while he was busy getting a horse and gear from Ephraim Rider at the livery. He had demonstrated his prowess with a repeater and possessed a Colt .45 he chose not to strap on just for effect. So probably he could use it with the same deadly accuracy as a Winchester? Which were good reasons to allow him along, despite his yen to even a personal score on account of the gun running duplicity.

He answered flatly: ‘I learned a long time ago that I’ve got a natural aptitude for firearms, feller. Rifles and handguns both.’

130

‘There are many such
hombres, senor,
’
Sanchez allowed when he was through translating Edge’s answered for Mendoza. ‘Such skills as a
tirador
. . . a marksman, they can be acquired or come naturally to a man. But to use them . . . ‘

He looked apprehensively into Edge’s inquisitive eyes and it was apparent the Mexican was wishing he had never taken the initiative away from McCall. Then he shrugged: a slight movement but one that caused him pain.

The sheriff vented a low growl of impatience, grimaced and accused scornfully: ‘But to kill a man for a few bucks? Maybe it takes skill, but it needs something else as well, mister.’

Edge remained impassive as he pulled off his boots and slowly shook his head.

‘Shooting straight comes natural to me. And if a man crosses me bad and there’s no other way I can get even with him, it’s just as natural I’ll kill him.’

McCall snapped his fingers. ‘Just like that?’

‘No, feller,’ Edge corrected wearily as he slid beneath his blankets and rested his head on the carpetbag. ‘It’s always the last resort. Like I said – when there’s no other way to get even.’

‘You appoint yourself judge, jury and executioner?’ The contempt in McCall’s voice was more heavily stressed.

Mendoza identified the tone and rasped a demand for a translation as he and Sanchez interrupted their preparations to bed down, tiredness having dulled their interest in Edge or anything else for what remained of today.

Edge said: ‘No, sheriff. I never think of myself like that. The way I see it, if anybody crosses me he puts himself in the firing line. And so it could be he’ll just wind up dead before his allotted span.’

‘You talk like a gunslinger, mister!’ McCall snarled softly as he sat down wearily on a rock, draped blankets around his narrow shoulders and checked the action of his Winchester, preparing to take the first watch for which he had volunteered. Edge asked evenly: ‘It sounds like Kitty Raine told it to you wrong. I remember making it crystal clear to the lady I wasn’t taking her money to kill anybody.’

131

McCall spat into the already cold ashes of the fire. ‘Your kind of thinking doesn’t hold water any more, mister, Maybe it did once out in this country. When there weren’t so many peace officers around. But now, with the likes of me and our two
amigos
always being close by, there’s no place for men who put themselves above the law. Claiming to uphold it their way. That just places them outside of it.’

‘I can go along with that,’ Edge allowed. ‘When there’s a lawman around and he does his sworn duty. But this is a big country, sheriff. And Sam Kress was heading off out into it with my money. There wasn’t a lawman within shouting distance to stop him, so I took care of my own business myself.’

‘
Senor,
if everybody lived by such a – ‘

Edge broke in on Antonio Sanchez: ‘But everybody doesn’t, feller.’

‘Just bear this in mind, Edge,’ McCall said before the Mexican could respond. ‘While you’re riding with me, you abide by my rules. The ones laid down by the United States government.’ He hardened his tone even more. ‘This matter is going to be concluded by the book.’

Edge smiled wryly up at the star bright night sky before he closed his eyes and murmured: ‘Take it as read.’

If the night was disturbed by rumbles of summer thunder from far out across the Territory of Arizona, howling coyotes on distant hilltops or the close by snoring of his companions, Edge was unaware of it.

For many hours, until he was awakened by Esteban Mendoza to take his turn at sentry duty, he slept the deep sleep of a contented man.

The other three took their rest through the final hours of darkness and into the false dawn just as peacefully. Maybe slept even more soundly, because they had endured much mental anguish or physical pain before they set out on the long day’s trek from Dalton Springs yesterday morning so were in greater need of solid rest than Edge. In the end, when the sun was starting to brighten the eastern skyline, he had to shake each of them awake out of a deep, heavy breathing sleep that had obviously not lasted long enough.

But although all of them were disgruntled, the smell of freshly made coffee and hot food sizzling in the skillet, along with the truth of Edge’s contention that the earlier they got 132

started the better time they could make through the coolest hours of the day, acted to snap them out of lethargy, if not ill humour.

They remained as sullen as ever after they were on the move, Edge taking a turn at leading the pack horse this morning. And he wondered indifferently if his own easy going attitude was as much to blame for their morose moods as anything else. Certainly they were weary and irritable because of recent hardships from which they had not had enough time to recover: but was their scowling tetchiness made worse by contrast with his temperament?

Whatever, as they pushed on through the mounting heat of the day, following sign that swung from the south west to due south toward the Mexican border, Edge made no effort to conceal how good he felt: no attempt to match his tone or expression to those of the other men on the infrequent occasions when there was a need to speak. Sanchez and Mendoza were as confident of their tracking abilities as yesterday and neither the brooding McCall nor the untroubled Edge took issue with anything they claimed to learn from the sign seen on the sun baked land. Be it a hoof print or a wheel rut in a pocket of dust, a patch of dried wet, a discarded cigar butt, the remains of a fire or a line of horse apples.

They did not get close to their quarry that day, but toward the end of the next, during which the mood of all four riders reached a degree of even tempered equanimity, McCall was first to spot a single column of grey smoke in the distant south. It rose vertically to a great height through the fast falling desert evening, above a darkly silhouetted line of jagged topped hills. As he pointed it out to the others, he asked of Sanchez:

‘How far you figure?’

The Mexicans conferred in their own language then Sanchez replied:

‘Three hours ride,
senor.
If the way does not become significantly more difficult.’

Mendoza delivered an opinion in Spanish and his partner nodded several times then interpreted for McCall:

133

‘They are the foothills of the Sierra Madres, sheriff. The mountains which mark the border between our two countries. The terrain is often difficult. The way through the high country narrow and twisting.’

Edge said as he discarded a cigarette butt: ‘They were able to get a wagon up to where they’re camped.’

‘If it’s them,’ McCall growled, spat and re-lit a cigar that had lasted him just a half a day and now was almost spent.

Edge checked a sardonic response about the vast emptiness of this piece of country in which they and their quarry had been the only human life for three days. For although their relationship had become less caustic today, it was obvious McCall continued to nurture a dislike and mistrust of him. For although the lawman had not allowed his simmering bad feelings to explode, he was always ready to disagree with much of what Edge said, direct resentful comments at him and demonstrate in any way he could how he had only contempt for a man he considered a gunslinger. McCall’s attitude put no great strain on Edge’s nonchalant disposition and he had quickly come to terms with it. Used it as a practical exercise in helping to combat the boredom of the long, hot, dusty ride.

Particularly when the Mexicans took issue with the man’s abrasive demeanour. Like now when, after a brief exchange of Spanish with the Federale officer who outranked him, Sanchez directed a puzzled look at the Dalton Springs’ sheriff peering fixedly at the distant smoke and said: