The Deputy - Edge Series 2 (19 page)

their riders. After the only response from the silent hill was the faint echo of the lawman’s words he said something under his breath as he again raised cupped hands and injected a harsher tone into his voice.

‘Isabella Gomez! I’m in no frame of mind and I got no time for fooling around! Have to leave pretty soon now! With or without you! You either let me know where you are or you stay there, damnit! You hear me, woman?’ He started to lower his hands then thought of something else and raised them again. ‘This is Edge with me! And one of Alvarez’s men!

You got nothing to fear from any of us!’

Silence continued to cloak the pocked side of the hill for perhaps ten seconds. Then the woman yelled shrilly from one of the dark holes:

‘I am here, Sheriff North!’

The next pause seemed much longer as the three men swept searching gazes over the pitted curved slope of the hillside, unable to pinpoint the spot from where the voice came. Until the woman suddenly appeared at an entrance that was closer to the base than the crest.

She was clearly defined, even the less than garish colours of her clothes making her stand out against the pitch blackness immediately behind her. Her silver jewellery glinted in the dulling rays of the sinking sun. Then North groaned, Edge muttered an obscenity and Rodriges snarled an even more forceful Spanish curse.

For two men had appeared behind Isabella as she stepped fully out into the open. They stood at either side of her, one with a hand hooked over her right shoulder as he held the blade of a knife against her throat. The other grasped her left wrist and pressed the point of a knife to the underside of her breast.

They were of equal height, standing a head taller than their captive, but the brims of their Stetsons threw shadows over their faces and it was not possible to be sure of their nationality from the distance across which the three mounted men saw them.

‘I am so sorry, Sheriff North! These
bastardos
forced me to – ‘ Her plea was terminated by a shrill scream as the men applied painful pressure to her shoulder and wrist.

‘And if you guys try anything stupid, she bleeds!’ the man threatening her throat yelled. There was no trace of south of the border in his accent: he originated much closer to New England.

‘Bleeds all the way to death!’ the second man augmented, his voice revealing he was as much of a Yankee as the first.

‘I feel like I’ve been here a time or two before,’ North said sourly. 108

Edge said: ‘But I figure this ain’t anything like what happened on the Railton City trail or at the Brady place, feller.

Rodriges uttered another rasping Spanish curse.

‘You guys had better listen to what we got in mind,’ the man with the knife at the woman’s throat threatened.

‘Please!’ Isabella shrieked.

‘We never counted on three, but we can live with it!’ the obvious spokesman for the two snarled. ‘It’s up to you to make sure the dame does the same, uh?’

‘So spit out what you want us to do!’ North’s voice was a little shaky, like he was in danger of losing his self control.’

Edge jerked a thumb over his shoulder and called: ‘Two of us will back off if you want!’

The less talkative of the two countered: ‘Funny you ain’t, mister!’

‘Want all three of your guys to slide the sixguns out of your holsters. Unload them of shells and put them back. Do the same with the rifles. Not much to ask in exchange for a woman’s life, uh?’

The other man laughed raucously: ‘Especially such an important woman as she is, eh sheriff?’

‘I do not like this,’ Rodriges rasped unnecessarily.

‘We’re not here to like anything,’ North growled coldly, his feelings back under firm control. ‘Just do like the sonofabitch says, damnit!’

He did so first, keeping his movements slow and deliberate so the men on the hill could not misconstrue any of his actions as aggressive and be panicked into deadly reactions with their knives.

Edge and Rodriges imitated him and there was no sound nor movement from the trio on the hillside until it was done: three Colts back in the holsters, Winchesters in the boots, the loads spread out on the ground in glinting disarray around the hooves of the quiet horses.

Isabella called huskily: ‘Oh, thank you!
Gracias, senors! Muchas gracias!’

The man who held the knife against the woman’s breast withdrew into the hillside while the other one forced her to step forward and start down the slope. He steered her over a cautious zigzag path and ensured she remained in constant danger of a slashed throat.

Half a minute later the second man re-emerged leading two saddled horses and followed the same downward path. Then the first man stopped and forced Isabella to stand 109

motionless at the base of the hill until the second one joined them. Next they started slowly across the level ground and when the distance to the mounted men had closed to thirty feet a strangely childish giggle burst from the trembling lips of Isabella Gomez. This clearly signalled all was not as it seemed but before any of the trio of duped men could even form their lips into the shapes of profanities, the two who flanked the woman had drawn, cocked and levelled revolvers. This as the threat of the knife was removed from the throat of Isabella. And then as the final dregs of tension drained out of her she gave vent to a sneering guffaw.

‘We did real well, uh lady?’ the man holding the horses asked rhetorically.

‘Si,
I think we could all make good livings in the theatre. For we are fine actors!’

She began to pace excitedly around in a tight circle, smiling broadly and dipping into histrionic bows while spreading her arms wide and high as if receiving thunderous applause from an audience.

Rodriges snarled a stream of vicious toned Spanish, his hate filled eyes fixed on the woman whose good humour suddenly evaporated. She began to hurl insults back at him in the same language until she was interrupted by the gun toting man at her side who had a long and thin, angular face adorned by an oversized moustache.

‘Quit it the both of you!’ He needed to repeat the order then to reach out and grip her shoulder with painful force before she did what he demanded.

‘But he calls me every kind of filthy name and I only tell him that they are all the same for – ‘

‘Goddamn sticks and stones,’ the moustached man said evenly and shifted his cold eyed gaze from her angry face to that of the scowling Rodriges. ‘But names never hurt anybody. Bullets, though . . . ‘

He brought up and thrust forward his Colt to aim at the same spot where his gaze was fixed: squeezed the trigger. Rubio Rodriges took the shot in the centre of his forehead, his expression caught between hatred and horror: remained upright in the saddle for a stretched second then slumped forward and slid sideways to fall heavily to the ground. His horse wheeled and bolted as the killer completed his mangled version of the children’s homily: yelled it above the snorting and stamping of the other horses spooked by the sudden intrusion of explosive sound:

‘They can do more than just hurt people!

Edge and North calmed their mounts while they were constantly covered by one gun in the rock steady grip of the killer, the other held in a less careful aim by the man in charge of the skittish horses as the animals jerked on their restraining reins. 110

‘You want to go and get that loose mount the Mexican don’t have any more need of, honey?’ the moustached man instructed without shifting his gaze or the aim of his Colt away from North.

Isabella had attempted for a moment to appear joyous when she watched Rodriges go down. Then she seemed sick to her stomach while she stared in horror at his inert form sprawled on the ground. Now she pressed a hand over her mouth, perhaps to hold back the nausea that threatened her phoney composure before she whirled and hurried away to capture the dead man’s gelding that had nervously halted some fifty yards away.

‘My name’s Bryce, sheriff,’ the killer introduced himself conversationally. ‘In case you ever get to put out a wanted flyer on me. Morgan Bryce. From Boston, Massachusetts by way of Dodge City, Abilene, Tombstone and a whole lot of other towns where I left my mark. On other men’s markers, if you get my drift?’

‘It ain’t hard,’ North said thickly.

Bryce shifted his attention to Edge. ‘And what about you, mister? You don’t seem to have much to say for yourself?’

Edge answered evenly: ‘I speak when there’s something I figure needs saying, feller.’

‘That’s something like my sidekick here. Name of Don Harvey. He’s done his share of killing from time to time.’

‘When it’s needed,’ Harvey said and was less careful about maintaining the aim of his revolver as he swung up into his saddle.

He was a broadly built, red haired, hard looking man of the type that impressionable females invariably glanced at twice. At six feet he weighed a muscular hundred and eighty pounds or so. In the same early thirties age group as Bryce, he would be clean shaven after a morning session with soap and razor.

North looked from the corpse to the killer with the same expression of revulsion as he accused caustically: ‘And you do even when it ain’t necessary.’

Bryce jerked a thumb toward where the woman was climbing clumsily astride Rodriges’s mount, then he swung up into his own saddle and said: ‘It’s better for all of us if she has a mount instead of having to ride double with somebody else.’

Isabella made no move to start the dead man’s horse back to where the others were grouped and called in a voice that sounded like she still felt nauseous: ‘Are we going to leave this awful place now?’

‘We sure as hell are, honey! And you can ride point if you want!’

‘I certainly do not want,
Senor
Bryce!’ she replied gravely. ‘You are far too free with using that gun for me to feel safe if my back is toward you.’

111

Bryce laughed raucously, made a circular motion with his revolver and augmented:

‘Okay, you guys. Turn around and head back the way you came.’

‘You mind telling me what this is all about?’ North asked wearily, sounding like he had faint hope of getting a direct response to the question.

‘I’ve heard tell you’re one smart guy, sheriff,’ Bryce said lightly as North and Edge wheeled their horses and the woman rode in a wide arc to come up behind the four men who heeled their mounts forward at a walk. ‘So I figure you can do more than one thing at a time? Like you can ride while you listen?’

‘So do you mind telling me – ‘ North started to repeat his request.

‘And how about you, Mr Edge?’ the good looking Harvey posed, his mood as relaxed as that of Bryce since the latest stage of their plan had been successfully completed. ‘I hear it right - Edge is your name?’

‘It’s my name.’

‘Like Morg already mentioned, you don’t have a lot to say for yourself?’

‘But I think a lot, feller.’

‘Thinking can be bad for a man,’ Bryce said in a tone heavy with menace. ‘Especially if he has the wrong thoughts. I hope you ain’t trying to figure out some way to turn this situation around?’

Edge replied evenly: ‘I’ve been thinking that if Rubio Rodriges hadn’t been riding with us, that would be me dead in the dust back there?’

Bryce laughed shortly and said flatly: ‘I guess you think right, mister.’

Edge muttered: ‘And I also think that no right thinking man of my age ought to be in this kind of situation.’

112

CHAPTER • 12

_________________________________________________________________

EDGE AND North, empty weapons in their holsters and saddle boots, rode side by
side at the front of the group. Immediately behind came Bryce and Harvey with their loaded Colts back in the holsters: and Isabella Gomez brought up the rear. Bryce, who was clearly top man of the pair, was in no great hurry to get to where they were going. And the easy pace of the ride through the hills in the darkening early evening, back tracking on the route by which Edge and North and the doomed Rodriges had journeyed to the burial mound, was matched by the tenor of the talk.

‘You’re highly thought of in Bishopsburg, ain’t that so, sheriff?’ Bryce asked without any hint of sarcasm.

Harvey added in the same tone: ‘For being as honest as the day is long, it’s said?’

North replied earnestly: ‘I try to do what I’m paid for to the best of my ability.’

‘So the people in that town would be real sorry to lose you?’ Bryce suggested as evenly as before.

‘You got any plans for them to lose me, mister? North asked and attempted to trade a glance with Edge.