The Deputy - Edge Series 2 (33 page)

‘
I heard that an Indian was making trouble because he was drunk and that Manuel Torrejon threw him in jail. But I know nothing else of him.’

‘You didn’t take care of a horse for him in your pa’s livery stable?

‘No, I did not.’

‘One other thing. The two fellers who waited at the cantina?’

‘Their names are Hernandel and Diaz.’

‘Were they the same ones who jumped me in the cemetery last night?’

She was anxiously pensive for a few moments then finally admitted: ‘I can say nothing else but perhaps, Edge. I saw them often in the cantina. Where it was light with the lamps, of course. But last night . . . ‘ She shrugged. ‘I was afraid and it was very dark behind the church. They moved so quickly in the attack and then after you – ‘

‘Okay, no sweat,’ he assured her.

‘If it was those, then it was perhaps also they who killed me father do you think?’

‘That could be, I guess. You want to tell me now about what it was that happened a time ago?’

‘Si
.’ She sighed deeply and nodded several times. ‘How I knew of Jose’s
amigos
Fidel Hernandel and Marco Diaz. Why they said what they did at the cantina. This will 187

explain, too, why the people of San Luis have acted as they have. Even though I do not think it excuses them?’

Edge encouraged: ‘If we have to ride all the way up to Bishopsburg there’ll be plenty of time for you to talk and for me to listen.’

She peered northward across the sun-baked terrain but in her dark eyes was the kind of remote expression that suggested she was gazing into the past rather than at what lay ahead. ‘It was more than a year ago. Three
Americanos
rode into San Luis and held up Alfredo Herrero at the cantina. Stole only a handful of pesos but killed a small boy as they galloped away. More a baby than a child - only three years old. They ran him down with their horse before the mother could get to where he was playing on the plaza.’

Edge struck a match on the stock of the Winchester in his saddle boot and lit a freshly rolled cigarette as Rosita went on: ‘Jose and his two
amigos
were in the village collecting rents and they demanded to ride with Manuel Torrejon to track the robbers. And the three of them captured the fugitives and brought them back to San Luis.’

She shuddered at a bad memory. ‘The
sergeante
tried to stop them and some others protested. But Jose Martinez and Hernandel and Diaz lynched the
Americanos
from the church tower.’

She directed a sidelong glance at Edge, drew nothing from his impassive profile and went on: ‘After the lynching there was much drinking. And even some of those who had opposed the hanging joined in with the despicable celebrations.’

‘That can happen at a lynching,’ Edge said to fill the pause she left while she came to terms with her vivid recollections of an evil day.

‘I am not familiar with such disgraceful events. Afterwards just a few people thought that what had happened meant the men of the lynch mob were as base as those they had hanged. And ever since that day a great many in San Luis have considered they owe a debt of gratitude to Jose Martinez.’

‘You and your father were with those who didn’t agree with the lynching?’

‘Si.
My father had many faults, Edge. But he always believed in equal justice for everybody.’ A choked sound exploded from her throat and Edge looked sharply at her. Saw nothing on her scarred, grim set face to augment the exclamation as she went on: ‘He also believed that the taking of a woman against her will was a great crime. Almost as bad as murder.’

She vented a similar sound to before and Edge said evenly:

‘That’s what it’s a part of when the rapist also kills the woman, I guess?’

188

She shook her head but did not dismiss the contention. ‘I am not talking about what happened at the celebrations near Bishopsburg.’

‘You’re not?’

‘After the lynching in San Luis . . . When so many men got stupidly drunk . . . Jose Martinez and the two men with him went forcibly with . . . Each took it in turns to have his way with me.’

Edge pursed his lips and tobacco smoke streamed out when he hissed: ‘I see.’

‘I cannot claim I was an innocent young virgin, of course. But I most surely did not consent to what took place. The way many people said I was certain to have done.’

That sound again and Edge realised it was a distorted sob that she struggled to keep trapped within her. He said:

‘The Martinez kid sure does like to take his women the hard way.’

‘Si.
But few believed it was rape when he and the others took me. Because of the way I was known to behave with men I liked, they thought that . . . ‘ She shrugged. ‘My father stood up for me but there was nothing he or I could do to persuade many people that a terrible wrong had been done at the hands of a Jose Martinez. And ever since that night we have not been highly regarded by the people of San Luis.’

Edge rasped the back of a hand along his bristled jaw line, realised he had unwittingly used the right one and that the pain in the arm was now reduced to little more than a low level of nagging discomfort.

‘So when you were seen taking me home, Hernandel and Diaz figured it would be safe to – ‘

‘It would seem likely. With you, my father and me silenced nobody else in San Luis –

where all are so beholden to and afraid of the Martinez family – would have spoken of it if questions were asked.’

‘But they overlooked Billy,’ Edge said pensively as he fleetingly reflected on his own past.

‘The Indian is a mysterious man, is he not?’

Edge smiled briefly. ‘And how.’

‘If he has done anything which helps to bring Jose Martinez to the gallows I will be as grateful to him as to anyone else who has had a hand in seeing that justice is done.’

‘He’d appreciate a bottle of rye,’ Edge murmured laconically. She did not hear him or chose to ignore his cynical remark. ‘That is all I desire from life for now, Edge. To see that Jose Martinez is recaptured, tried and hanged for what he

189

did to the woman in Bishopsburg. And I will know he is also paying the price for what he did and encouraged those other two drunken
bastardos
to do to me in San Luis longer ago.’

‘We’ll give it our best shot, Rosita.’

‘He is a filthy animal!’ she said through teeth clenched in a glower of unbounded hatred. ‘Without a grain of decent feeling in his body. I would like to – ‘ She abandoned what she had intended to say, maybe knowing it was not in her nature so the words she was to have spoken would ring hollow with the emptiness of a useless threat. This as they topped a rise and saw the broad and shallow river that formed the international border in the low-sided valley ahead. Edge told her:

‘But if you did what you’d like to do to him, you’d be no better than he is?’

‘Si,
I know this.’ She nodded emphatically. ‘But I think – ‘

‘Trust a feller with experience, Rosita: that’s the best way to handle it.’

‘Que?’

He tapped his temple with a hooked finger and showed a humourless smile.

‘Revenge. Do nothing more than think about it: you just keep it in mind.’

190

CHAPTER • 21

_________________________________________________________________

THEY BEDDED down under separate blankets long after nightfall among a
scattering of boulders at the foot of a sandstone outcrop: both bone deep weary after ten hours of steady riding interrupted by two short breaks to rest and feed the horses and to eat frugally themselves.

Edge slept soundly, contentedly confident that there was no need for Rosita and he to take turns at standing sentry duty. And when she was up and about earlier than him the next morning, and had lit a fire in a circle of stones and fixed breakfast and coffee, he acknowledged in his own mind that she was younger than him and this was as it should be. But he could not fail to notice there was a frown of anxiety on her flawed features and that she spoke hardly at all while he ate hungrily and she did little more than sip from a mug of coffee. His initial thought on this was that the woman was grieving for her father. But this assumption was soon proved wrong, for when he began to shave while she cleaned the breakfast dishes and cooking pots, she said:

‘There were some sounds in the night, Edge.’ She gestured out across the vast desert terrain. ‘Far to the north.’

‘Sounds?’

‘I think of gunfire,
querido.’

He ceased to flex his right arm and relishing the way the bruised area hurt hardly at all this morning. ‘How sure are you about that, Rosita?’

‘Both rifles and pistols, it sounded like. For a minute, perhaps a little longer: but not so much longer.’

Edge rose up from off his haunches and continued to scrape lather and bristles off his cheeks as he peered into the barren country bathed with early morning sunlight spread out to the north.

‘What time? How long ago do you figure?’

She shrugged. ‘I am not good at making such guesses. A long time after we went to sleep, I think. I did not sleep well for my mind was troubled by thoughts of my father’s murder. I awoke and could not get back to sleep. Then I heard the gunfire. Perhaps two hours before you woke after sunrise: or a little more.’

‘About how far off?’

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She gave another shrug, accompanied by an apologetic grimace. ‘I am not good at this, either. It was a long way off and did not disturb you and perhaps would not have awakened me if I had been sleeping. Like firecrackers, it sounded: so far off in the dead of night. If it had been close, I would have awakened you,
querido.’

‘The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll get to where it happened.’ Edge wiped the razor free of lather, folded the blade back into the handle and replaced it in the neck pouch hung from the string of Indian beads.

Rosita asked anxiously: ‘Do you think it could have something to do with the matter of Jose Martinez?’

He replied evenly as he attended to his bedroll: ‘I’m not much of a believer in coincidence, lady.’ He shifted his narrow eyed gaze toward the north again, where the horizon had already been moved closer by heat shimmer. ‘Though it’s a big country, me and violence always used to happen to come together as a matter of course, so maybe . . .

‘ He sighed. ‘And lately it seems that the clock is being wound back.’

‘I do not understand what you mean, Edge,’ she said with a perplexed frown. He showed the puzzled woman a fleeting smile as he started to saddle his horse and she followed his example. ‘It’s a long story, lady. A whole lot of stories, as a matter of fact.’

She nodded. ‘Ah, the past of a man who has been many places?’

‘A lot of years in the past. Quite a few places.’

They both swung up into their saddles and she said:

‘When you were a young man?’

Edge winced and briefly massaged the small of his back then flexed his shoulder muscles that had been stiffened by sleep. ‘Certainly before I got to be this old.’

He set a cantering pace and maintained it for as long as he judged the horses were comfortable in the less than blistering heat of early morning. Then he eased the progress down to a walk and began to pay closer attention to their surroundings of gently undulating scrub desert country.

In this terrain there were few distinctive landmarks to show that he was backtracking over the route he had ridden with Ted Straker and the Mexicans on the trail of the jail breakers. Also the way taken by a lone rider who had come later with news of Eduardo Martinez’s critical illness – albeit that man needed to have made a detour at some point to swing wide of the returning Bishopsburg posse.

192

One he called a brief halt, told Rosita to stay in her saddle and slid to the ground himself: took a close look at the confusion of sign on the dust layered rock hard surface. When they were again riding side by side the woman asked:

‘Did you learn anything of importance, q
uerido?’

‘There’s been too damn much coming and going in the past couple of days,’ he answered absently. ‘But it looks to me like a lot of the riders who came south have since gone back north. Smoking and spitting and their horses doing what comes naturally: the same as they did when they all come down this way. But nobody’s walking now.’

She looked disappointed. ‘I suppose we are still a long way from where the gunfire .

. ?’ She shrugged and sighed. ‘But I should be able to tell this better than you, Edge?’