The Deputy - Edge Series 2 (36 page)

Edge lightly touched the butt of his holstered Colt and eased the rifle barrel a little away from his shoulder, then let it fall back again and showed a brief sardonic smile that probably nobody saw as he murmured: ‘Take it easy, Billy. Maybe some of us’ll get to stay in this hell on earth – if I’m as good as I used to be.’

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CHAPTER • 23

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NOT BY a long way for the first time in a life frequently featured with violence,
Edge felt very close to death as he neared the L-shaped stone and timber building on the corner of Main Street and Mossman Road that housed Bishopsburg’s law office and jail. This as he rode into town and was disconcertingly aware of countless pairs of eyes focussed upon him while he walked at a measured pace along the centre of the street. Moved under a blisteringly hot, brilliantly bright Texas sun that glinted on the deputy’s badge that was once again pinned to his shirtfront.

Knowing it was an unsubstantiated notion created by his imagination, he detected a range of emotions in the minds behind the eyes of the silent watchers. Intrigue, scorn, fear, pity and hatred – targeted at him by the terrorised people of the town as they cowered within the relative safety of their houses. Many of them surely unaware of who he was or what he was and why he was here as he advanced inexorably along their main street: doubly armed, with a Colt revolver in a holster tied down to his right thigh and a Winchester rifle canted to his left shoulder.

His bristled, angular, narrow eyed features were fixed in an impassive set and the more perceptive citizens perhaps saw he was at once provocatively threatening in the way he moved and yet looked vulnerable because of his total isolation on the centre of the empty thoroughfare.

While he was aware that a similar gamut of powerful emotions as he had sensed from elsewhere, minus pity perhaps, emanated from the open doorway of the law office and the barred window of the nearby cell.

Earlier, while he listened to Otis Logan tell him about the dangerous situation that gripped the town, he had himself experienced the beginning of a smouldering anger that threatened to expand into all-consuming rage as he sat astride his unmoving horse. While he peered along the broad street and did not see a soul. Yet he knew there must be scores of able-bodied men behind the blank facades of the broodingly silent buildings. All faced with a sickening dilemma, but none was in a position to resolve the problem as an individual. And each of them terrified to make a first move in the event it led to a tragedy for which he would be held responsible.

And Edge himself . . ?

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He was a man set apart from the normal emotions that preyed upon others in such a nerve-wracking stand-off as this. Because he had nothing to lose except whatever was left of his life - and nothing to gain except affirmation of self-respect. While the people of Bishopsburg were being forced to make an impossible choice – to select between sacrificing the lives of a helpless woman and two innocent children or destroying their homes and businesses. And whichever it turned out to be, if they were destined to survive they would have to live with the guilt of what they had failed to do. Exist with the self-contempt such knowledge was certain to generate. Which was not likely to be assuaged until after the passing of a great deal of anguished time - if ever. A man yelled from within the law office: ‘What kind of game do you think you are playing, you
loco gringo?’

Despite its uncustomary shrillness, Edge recognised the voice of Jose Martinez. This as he came to a halt out front of the stage line depot: on the opposite side of the street and some seventy paces or so short of the focal point of this desperate town this tense morning. The Mexican’s shouted demand triggered a buzz of talk, contributions coming from all over Bishopsburg. But nothing was heard clearly out on the street while Edge waited for the wave of sound to subside before he responded: ‘My job, feller.’

He shifted the rifle barrel along his shoulder, to ensure that the deputy’s badge pinned to his left shirt pocket was clearly revealed. Then he emphasised what he meant when he brought up his right hand, the thumb hooked to stab at the tin star.

‘You are some kind of
loco hombre,
Edge!’ Isabella Gomez accused bitterly. ‘Sheriff North is dead. Deputy Straker, also. And Raul Alvarez and all the bandits that were hired by North. There is just you alone!’

‘It’s a place I’ve been before, lady,’ Edge countered evenly. Another man in the law office taunted: ‘I think you have surely seen what we think of men who wear such fancy badges,
gringo!’

Martinez warned: ‘After what you did to Fidel and Marco, they are going to get very great pleasure from killing you!’

‘You bet we will!’ one of the men from the San Luis graveyard confirmed harshly.

‘Let me kill the
bastardo
right now, Jose?’ the other badly scarred Mexican pleaded.

‘Not yet,
amigo!’
Martinez spoke the words as he suddenly stepped on to the threshold of the open catty-cornered doorway of the law office. One of his hands was hooked over the shoulder of a slender, freckle-faced, fair-haired young boy Edge recognised. The Mexican’s other hand was fisted around the butt of a Colt .45, the hammer 206

back, the muzzle pressed tightly against the tear-run cheek of one of the trembling Straker twins.

The abrupt appearance of the arrogantly threatening Martinez who forced the terrified youngster to stand at his side brought gasps of shock and cries of helplessness from behind the facades of many buildings along the southern stretch of Main Street.

‘So,
gringo
lawman with the shiny badge!’ Martinez’s tone was cold and flat. ‘You now can see that I do not make idle threats. Because of how they have hounded me, the people of this town drove my father into an early grave. And now I demand restitution for this crime that is far greater than those I am accused of.’

The coldly arrogantly angry Mexican and the terrified Straker boy both gazed at Edge with expectation in their eyes. But the man on the centre of the street remained impassively silent.

Then Martinez pressed on: ‘If you have not already been told, I inform you now. Either Bishopsburg burns to the ground or I will claim three lives. Kill those whose husband and father was still hounding me at the time of my own father’s death,
gringo
lawman!’

Edge spoke now, his tone as ice cold as that of the young Mexican. ‘What then, feller?’

‘That is the deal! There will be no bargaining in this matter. The town burns or the mother and her two children die.’ Martinez had to struggle to keep his voice from rising, perhaps because grief for the loss of his father constantly threatened to undermine his dangerously insecure equanimity.

Edge repeated: ‘What then?’

‘I can silence this tough talking
hijo de puta
with a single bullet, Jose!’ It was either Hernandel or Diaz who made the threat as he thrust a rifle barrel out through the bars of the cell window, the muzzle trained unwaveringly on Edge.

And sweat oozed from the pores at the small of the target’s back and at the nape of his neck as he continued to remain silent and unmoving. From the palms of his hands, too: one of these fisted around the frame of the Winchester and the other loosely curled close to the jutting butt of the holstered Colt.

‘I will give you the order when, Marco!’ Martinez snarled and the tension coiled within Edge was eased a part of a degree, but the sweat did not evaporate from his flesh.

‘To answer your question,
gringo:
I will then leave!
Because however it ends, I will consider that the death of my father has been avenged.’

‘And you figure these people will let you just ride away from it, kid? From the ruins of the town? Or the corpses of Mrs Straker and her sons?’

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The captive child shuddered but seemingly had no tears left to spill as Jose laughed –

the shrillest sound he had yet made as his almost girlishly handsome face was contorted into brutish ugliness.

‘You have seen what the people here are like,
gringo!
You see it now! How they do nothing but wait and watch! And I will tell you something – I know already how it will end!’

Behind him in the law office a woman shrieked: ‘No, please!’

Martinez pressed on, an almost gleeful smile spread across his youthful features:

‘They will wait and they will watch until we kill the woman and her children at noon: because it is too late for them to do anything else now. As I knew it was sure to be,
gringo!

I have shown what I can do to achieve my ends. And to know what I am able to do has terrified these people!’

‘Kill me!’ Elizabeth Straker pleaded. ‘Kill me if you must! But please, I beg of you, do not harm my boys!’

Then the voice of a second woman was heard in the law office but the sense of what she said did not reach out into the street. And Edge guessed Isabella Gomez was attempting to calm the distraught mother.

‘They know they are not a match for me and the men who are loyal to me!’ Martinez continued to taunt, not hearing or choosing to disregard the interruptions. ‘I, who will be their
patron
now my father is no more!’

He lost the inner struggle to keep his voice under control and it suddenly got louder and more strident. ‘I could have fifty men here with me! One hundred, even! But this is not necessary,
gringo!
In a town such as this filled with cowards! People like they are! A handful is more than enough, that is plain!’

It was precisely the kind of boastful rhetoric Edge had counted on drawing from Jose Martinez. The kind or arrogantly contemptuous gloating that might drive poisonous barbs of self-revulsion into the consciences of the craven listeners. That just could shame them out from their safe, stinking of fear hiding places.

But when he shifted his eyes from one extreme of their sockets to the other he saw no sign of movement. Except at the cell window where the rifle barrel was thrust out a little further, it’s aim still firmly fixed on him. And in the law office doorway where Martinez pressed the revolver harder into the cheek of the hapless child, forcing the boy’s head a little more to the side.

And he heard no sounds of movement from elsewhere in town. Until his glinting eyed attention was drawn abruptly to the front of the Dancing Horse Saloon, across the 208

alley from the stage line depot immediately to his left. Where the batwing doors were eased slowly open wide and two men stepped over the threshold. One was the thin as a whip Morgan Bryce with the oversize moustache dominating his sharp-featured face. And alongside him was the taller, broader, harder looking Don Harvey. Each with his right hand draped over the butt of a holstered revolver, a full shotglass of whiskey clutched in their other hands. Both of them were smiling with smug satisfaction.

‘Guess this ain’t turning out the way you planned it, uh Edge?’ Bryce asked conversationally. ‘Reckon what you hoped was for Martinez to needle the local yellowbellies into stepping outside to back your play?’

‘But the best laid plans of mice and men, like they say,’ Edge countered and swung his head from side to side, pointedly addressing his accusation to everybody within earshot.

‘Seems there are plenty of scared rodents in this town. But one hell of a shortage of rat catchers.’

Then he saw that the pair of gunslingers in the saloon doorway and Martinez on the threshold of the law office were abruptly distracted by something happening behind him. And after he saw them begin to smile he chanced a backward glance: groaned when he saw Billy Injun had started his horse along the street at a walk. And then Rosita Jurez heeled her mount forward to follow the mixed breed.

‘Hey, I am with you!’ Billy called sombrely. ‘The Navajo blood in me, it means I am supposed to be afraid of nothing, right?’

Edge growled softly: ‘Trouble is I ain’t sure if I’ll ever be able to buy you any of that Dutch courage I promised, feller.’ Then he faced front again after taking account of the fact that neither the mixed breed nor the woman had thought to acquire a weapon before they began their impulsive moves.

The angle of the opposite corner of Mossman Road blinded Diaz to most of the southern length of Main Street and from the barred window he demanded to know: ‘Jose, what is happening,
amigo?’

Martinez replied with heavy contempt: ‘The deputy has got for himself a drunken Indian and an ugly woman to back his play.’

Harvey laughed harshly and yelled: ‘And ain’t neither of them dummies got a gun!’

‘Hey, Don, something’s happening, damnit!’ Bryce was suddenly uneasy as he snapped his head from side to side to peer in both directions along Main Street. Where several doors had swung open and people began to step outside. Most of them were men gripping guns but there were also some unarmed women.

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Edge felt an almost overwhelming compulsion to guffaw his relief, but a glance at the ominous expression on the face of Martinez and the way the young Mexican thrust his revolver with painfully vicious force against the cheek of the Straker boy acted to involuntarily check the impulse.

Bryce spoke a terse, low voiced command to Harvey and they both swallowed their drinks at a single gulp before they hurled the empty glasses down to the street. Then the smaller man taunted: