The Deputy - Edge Series 2 (12 page)

‘Like hell,’ North countered. ‘She’s scared and in my opinion she’s got damn good reason to be. Which means I’ve got as good reason not to take her word on anything, however many promises she makes!’

Isabella glared, worked saliva up into her mouth and for a stretched second seemed about to spit into North’s grimacing face. Then she read a tacit message in his narrowed, steel grey eyes that warned her to do this would be a bad mistake. She swallowed the bubbling fluid and almost gagged on it as she peered fearfully at the other men. Alvarez asked: ‘But I hope you will trust us, sheriff?’

North did not need to think about the request. ‘After everything that’s happened, I reckon I can use some reliable help. But I’d like to know how you’ll know when to – ‘

‘That is simple, sheriff. Rubio Rodriges has already been offered work in Bishopsburg. By
Senor
Whitman the town’s liveryman. And while he is there Rubio will always be ready to bring a message to us from you.’

North indulged in a brief period of deep thinking concerned with what he was about to agree to do while all eyes remained firmly fixed on him. And when at last he nodded there was a collective sigh of pent up breath released by the men. A groan came from the woman.

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North asked wearily: ‘What have you got against it,
senorita
It’ll be the same as when you were up in Railton City. Make it a lot harder for Martinez’s hired guns to put a bullet in your head than if you were in Bishopsburg. You got to see that?’

Up on the roof, the embryo grin that had started to form on Edge’s face abruptly altered to a scowl as the end of the exchange was delayed even further. Isabella used both hands to gesture contemptuously at the Mexicans. ‘Just look at them! If you were a woman, do you think you’d want to remain in such company for God knows how long?’

Paco Diego directed at her the same degree of scorn she had shown for him and his partners. ‘It seems you have a high opinion of yourself,
mujer.
I think you should know there is not one among us who does not have a wife or a
novia
in our village who is worth a hundred of you!’

A chorus of agreement was closely followed by some more rapidly spoken Spanish from the woman that was greeted with scorn by the men and curtailed when North interrupted evenly:

‘Now we’ve agreed a deal, I’ll take back my property, Alvarez?’

The bearded man nodded and signalled for Diego to return the lawman’s gunbelt with a Colt in the holster.

Diego started to comply.

Then everyone in the room save North and the woman were frozen into immobility: suddenly displayed scowls that cut deep into their faces. These reactions triggered by a shrill whistle that shattered the stillness of the night.

Raul Alvarez clawed his revolver from the holster and aimed it unwaveringly at North as the sheriff rasped:

‘I’ll be a sonofabitch, Edge!’

Edge murmured through gritted teeth. ‘That’s maybe what you are, feller. But don’t go barking up the wrong tree.’

69

CHAPTER • 8

_________________________________________________________________________

THE GLOWER of hatred on the face of Alvarez warned he was perilously close to
triggering a bullet into North’s head when he snarled: ‘I should not have trusted you to come alone,
gringo!’

The slightly built Diego leapt back from where he had been about to return the gunbelt to the lawman. And Ricardo Zamora, tall and gauntly thin, lunged toward the lamp, doused it and flattened himself against the wall. At the same time as Pedro Sanchez, who was the youngest and best looking member of the group, whirled to take a position at the side of the window.

From the barn, Rubio Rodriges started to yell in Spanish: ‘There are many – ‘

But the rest of what he shouted was masked by a barrage of gunfire, most the bullets thudding against the front wall of the house while some found the glassless window to crack into the room.

North and Isabella had sprawled to the floor and from his restricted viewpoint through the crack in the roof timbers Edge could not tell if they went down of their own accord. But he did know that if they had been shot it was by the attackers on the hill for no man in the house had fired a weapon.

‘I only brought one man to cover me, damnit!’ North yelled hoarsely, his throat constricted by anger and the fear of violent death.

A babble of Spanish answered the sheriff, the men’s voices tremulous with the same mixture of emotions: this counter-pointed by shrill shrieks of terror vented by the woman. North yelled above the pandemonium: ‘Just Edge, damnit! I swear it, Alvarez! Only Edge, you hear!’

On the roof Edge no longer peered into the room beneath him where the four men and a woman were no more than moving shadows in a darkness barely relieved by scant moonlight from the window.

He swept his narrow eyed gaze toward the barn where the door had swung open and now Rodriges stepped on to the threshold. Then he peered up the slope of the hillside beyond the building: down which six men were running, triggering intermittent rifle shots, like well drilled infantrymen advancing in battle.

Every moment he remained motionless on the flat roof of the house the attackers drew closer to the cover of the barn that was their first objective. But while he did not 70

move, his prone form remained effectively merged with the roof, unseen by the fast closing riflemen.

Inside the house from where not a single shot had been fired, the shouting ended abruptly. And a series of rasping whispers disturbed the tense silence. Then the door was flung open and a fusillade of bullets cracked out into the night: an acrid taint of black powder smoke billowing through the clear air.

At the same moment, Rodriges lunged out of the barn and raced toward the house, his head tucked down low, arms flailing and legs pumping as he shrieked in Spanish:

‘Hold your fire! It is Rubio! Hold your fire, all of you!
’

The hail of gunshots from the doorway and window ended abruptly. Then the men inside the house began to shout encouragement as the enemy on the hill saw the running man and changed the direction of their fire.

Rodriges vented a cry and staggered forward at greater speed: brought up his right hand to grasp the exit wound of a bullet that had penetrated high in the back of his left arm and burst out the front in a welter of blood.

Then he reached the doorway of the house and was out of Edge’s line of sight. A moment later the gunfire from the hillside ended as the injured Rodriges collapsed on the floor inside the house. The door slammed close and somebody rasped:

‘Rubio, what – ‘

The harshly spoken response was in Spanish.

‘What’s he saying?’ North demanded.

‘That he thinks it is only a flesh wound,’ Isabella translated tensely.

‘How many men out there?’ North wanted to know.

‘Six . . . Maybe there are more, but I counted just six.’ Rodriges’s breathing was ragged with pain and from exertion.

‘Americanos?’
Anger still dominated fear in the voice of Raul Alvarez.

‘No! They are Mexicans. I am sure of this!’

‘I told you, didn’t I tell you?’ North snarled. ‘I just had Edge along to cover me. So damnit, give me back my gunbelt!’

There was a brief pause and the silence within the house compounded by that from the hillside had an eerie quality that acted to stretch time in the human mind. And Edge momentarily felt himself to be trapped in an unreal world in which it was tempting to stay where he was: to wait for the outcome of this violent situation over which he had no control. Like he was playing a role in his own vivid dream, destined to witness a tragedy he was powerless to influence.

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‘Paco, give the sheriff back his pistol!’

Alvarez’s order was obeyed without hesitation. For the Mexicans surely realised they needed every gun they could get and were now ready to trust George North to help them survive against the unknown attackers.

Isabella asked fearfully: ‘Why has Edge not taken a hand in this if he is out there somewhere?’

‘If he’s around, he’ll do something,’ North predicted with confidence. ‘You by the window – do you see anything out there?’

Sanchez replied breathlessly: ‘Not really,
senor.
It is too dark. I sometimes think that I see – ‘

Edge moved just his head: tilted it to put his mouth close to the crack while he kept his gaze constantly swinging back and forth across the hillside, watching the advancing men as they slowed their pace, scampering in ungainly crouches from one area of cover to another.

‘Hey, North!’ He pitched his voice above a whisper but not so loud it would carry more than a few feet, directly down into the room beneath him. There was a rasped chorus of hushed talk and some gasps of shock before North commanded silence and snarled:

‘Edge? Is that you up on the damn roof?’

‘It sure ain’t Santa Claus, sheriff. So don’t expect no fairytale ending. I count six of them and they haven’t got me spotted yet.’

‘You got something in mind, damnit?’

Alvarez warned menacingly: ‘This had better not be a trick,
gringos!
There will be a terrible price to pay! You will – ‘

Edge broke in coldly: ‘You want to hear how to handle this, feller? Or do you want to waste time talking yourself into an early grave?’

There was another burst of Spanish from many man, all of them demanding that their leader listen to Edge.

North augmented: ‘Goddamnit to hell, hear the man out why don’t you!’

‘Si!’
Alvarez blurted, irritably disconcerted at losing his usual total control over the situation. ‘We will listen to the
hombre!’

Men began to move on the dark hillside once more. Surreptitiously now. First one then, after a brief delay, the other five. It was clear the first scuttling figure was in command, the others watching for his moves and taking their cue from him.

‘Edge?’ North sounded afraid and impatient. ‘What have you got in mind?’

72

‘When I start shooting, you fellers throw some lead. If you can’t see any of them, aim to either side of the barn.

‘We have only pistols and limited ammunition here in the house,’ Alvarez warned anxiously.

Edge said: ‘Do your best with what you have. Maybe it’ll be enough, unless they’ve got reinforcements waiting someplace close.’

‘I sure hope you know what you’re doing, damnit,’ North growled. Edge saw the leader of the men on the hill rise and lunge forward. A moment later five more shadowy forms did likewise.

And he wrenched up his head, raised himself on to his elbows and nestled the rifle stock into his shoulder. Aligned the sights and triggered a shot. The man who led the attackers took the bullet in his chest and threw up his arms. The rifle he gripped in one hand was hurled off to the side and clattered to the ground several feet from where he pitched forward.

A harsh chorus of raised voices sounded in the house below, then there was the thud of the violently jerked open door as it hit the wall. Next another barrage of gunfire. For an instant the men on the hill were frozen in shock. And while they were transfixed Edge pumped the action of his repeater: triggered a second shot. Saw the man closest to his first victim sprawl backwards.

By the time Edge had ejected the second spent cartridge and jacked a new round into the breech the other four attackers were out of sight. Had turned and scampered back to the area of solid cover where they had been hidden before making their final attempt to reach the Brady place.

A moment later the barrage from the house faltered and came to an end as guns rattled empty. Dark, drifting gunsmoke and its pungent taint acted to heighten the tension of the lengthening silence.

‘We’re all reloading now, Edge,’ North rasped unnecessarily as a series of unmistakable sounds of metal on metal signalled what was happening within the house. ‘I don’t reckon we got them all, right?’

‘Two down, one of them the top hand.’ Edge’s voice was louder than before as he continued to fix his intense attention on the night shrouded hillside, not prepared to abandon this concentrated watch to lower his face and speak through the crack.

‘What of the four
pistoleros
who remain?’ Isabella’s voice was huskily taut. ‘Why have they stopped shooting at us?’

‘Figure they’ll try to get me, then get the hell away from here. But I could be wrong.’