Killing Time In Eternity - Edge Series 4 (32 page)

Sue Ellen used the back of a hand to brush raindrops off her melancholy face. ‘I think that poor woman could be a little unhinged, Edge. Right now she’s desperately worried Hardin and the others will go looking for Troy. She thinks that because they never found you then maybe they’ll turn against him because he ran out on them. She peered fearfully about her, obviously feeling that whatever dangers lurked beyond the curtain of fast falling early morning rain were more potent now that there were no sounds to be heard from the angry mob. ‘But it’s plain he must be long gone by now,’ she went on anxiously.

‘So you’re the only one left to hunt down. Which surely means you should keep out of sight for awhile?’

He shrugged his indifference to her worried suggestion and allowed evenly: ‘Maybe that’s what I ought to do.’

She did a double take at his heavily bristled face with its neutral expression. ‘But you won’t do that - so what is it you have in mind?

‘Like you to do me a favour, Sue Ellen?’

‘If I can.’

‘Tell me where’s the safest place in Eternity for somebody to hide out for awhile?’

She was frowningly thoughtful for a few moments then showed a brief smile as she nodded and answered: ‘I’d say the theatre. Under the stage.’

‘Okay. If Victoria Shaver thinks we’re a couple so will other people, I figure. So I’d like you to go there and wait for me.’

He started away from her.

‘What?’ she exclaimed. ‘Edge, this is ridiculous! I thought . . . Just what – ‘

But he was gone. One moment he had been beside her at the open gateway in the hedge and the next he had set off at a loping run: angling away from the bottom of the dead end street.

Soon after he had unburdened himself of the responsibility he felt for Sue Ellen Spencer the morning grew lighter. Though the swirling curtain of rain was both helpful and 171

a disadvantage. For although it hid him from prying eyes beyond a distance of a few yards, at the same time it gave cover to those who were hunting him. He heard another blast of the whistle. It came from discernibly closer to town but the approaching train was still some distance off to the east. And he slowed his pace as he followed a circuitous route toward the lower end of Main Street.

The rain continued to hiss and the wind to make many low pitched sounds as it raced in from the prairie. Buffeting the solid obstacles of the line of buildings behind which Edge advanced across the backyards of the
Eternity Post Despatch
office, a coffee shop, a gunsmith, a bakery and then to the rear of the theatre. Dawn seemed to have broken very fast. But the rain eased more slowly and Edge was able to lope across the broad quagmire of the street from the theatre to the hotel without inviting a chorus of enraged voices or a fusillade of deadly gunshots. He had neither the time nor the inclination to consider he may have been seen by an enemy prepared to wait for a better opportunity to make a lethal move against him.

Under the slightly brightening but still slate grey sky the wind slackened a little: then dropped entirely as he climbed to the second story of the hotel by way of an outside stairway that canted steeply up from an alley. Then he balanced on the balustrade of the front balcony outside the drape curtained window of a room, stretched up his arms to hook his hands over the lip of the flat roof and cautiously hauled himself aloft. Midway through this strenuous manoeuvre he suffered an assault of pain from yesterday’s beating. But he was able to confine his vocal response to a low moan rasped through gritted teeth and reached the roof with as many sweat beads as raindrops clinging to his bristles. And for stretched seconds as he sprawled out on his back on the rough surface of the hotel roof taking deep breaths, he was uncomfortably aware of how more sweat pasted clothing to his aching body. He craved to rest there for a lot longer while he visualised the warm dryness of a bolthole beneath the stage of the theatre across the street. And for just a short time indulged the fantasy of sharing this hideaway with Sue Ellen Spencer while she proved the truth of how in the right circumstances she could be all woman and not at all a lady.

The whistle from the east blasted once more and he was suddenly aware of the locomotive’s thudding pistons, slowing in cadence while his nostrils filled with the pungent smell of smoke mixed with steam in the dank air that signalled the train was close to the Eternity depot. He eased carefully over on to his belly and snaked across the roof to the far side. From here he could look down across the single story, wedge shaped bank at the meeting of the trails and Main Street to the train station.

** ** **

172

He was able to see but not hear what was being said by the three men who stood on the depot platform as they exchanged brief comments while they watched the shuddering locomotive crawl in off the prairie. Then roll past the stockyard pens, its brakes screeching, hauling two clanking passenger cars and a caboose.

One was the short and thin, pale faced Travis Hicks, neatly attired in his uniform with polished buttons and a peaked cap who constantly checked his watch and expressed officious satisfaction that this special train was arriving on time. The taller, heavily moustached and rubicund faced Marshal Ward Flynt and the tall and thin, black-clad Clay Warner were both unshaven and wore Stetsons and slickers. These were unbuttoned so they were able to hook thumbs over the fronts of their gunbelts while they shared their intent attention between the train and their immediate surroundings: clearly suspicious and with more than a trace of unease in their attitudes.

‘Right on the button, Ward,’ Hicks announced complacently as the locomotive heading up the short line of cars finally came to a halt, releasing a blast of pent up steam in a raucous hiss. ‘Reckon they ought to get the water and any cordwood they need loaded in fifteen minutes. After that the job’s been done perfect here in Eternity.’

‘Sure, Travis.’ The tense looking, hoarse voiced lawman abandoned fingering his bushy moustache and swept his unusually grim eyed gaze away from where two middle aged, peak capped dungaree-clad men were climbing down from the locomotive’s footplate. And was puzzled when he saw the glassless windows of both passenger cars were fitted with closely spaced iron bars.

‘What’ve you spotted, Ward?’ the railroadman asked anxiously, his former contentment suddenly evaporating. ‘You see something that’s wrong?’

Flynt shrugged and shook his head uncertainly. ‘It’s just that I figured they’d have shipped it in box cars instead of – ‘

‘I’m real sorry about having to do this, Ward.’ Warner’s words seemed to have a timbre of genuine sincerity a moment before a door at the front end of each of the passenger cars crashed open. And Flynt and Hicks, who were already unsettled by Warner’s sentiment and the tone he used to express it, swung their heads to stare fearfully at the man.

‘What the – ‘ Flynt curtailed the snarled query and halted an instinctive move to claw his Colt from the holster.

‘What is this craziness?’ Hicks demanded huskily and began to dry wash his hands. Warner had his own Colt drawn and levelled at the marshal while on his lean featured, nondescript face was a contrite expression that seemed to be as genuine as his 173

voice had sounded. Then he gestured with his free hand toward the train. ‘It seems like it’s your day for getting lousy surprises, Ward.’

Flynt and Hicks returned their startled gazes to the train where a man had appeared at each open doorway, both of them grimacing as they aimed Winchesters in rock steady grips. Flynt recognised the identical drab institutional grey shirts and jackets and pants in which the men with rifles were clad and groaned incredulously: ‘Damnit, they’re convicts!’

The older and shorter one of the pair who stepped down off the train contradicted:

‘No we ain’t, marshal! That’s what we used to be. Now we’re free men. Ready and able to do whatever it takes to stay that way! Show him the samples, boys!’

He signalled with a jerked movement of his rifle and moments later something heavy and bulky was tossed out of the doorway through which he had come. It collapsed into a heap on the steps of the car and slid lethargically off them to the platform. Then the same thing happened at the other doorway and revulsion suddenly caused Flynt to catch his breath and Hicks to gag and turn away in horror. Two more men in prison garb emerged from the doorway of the front car and one from the second, all of them unarmed. Each stepped around the inert, bloody, bullet holed blue uniformed corpses that had been dumped unceremoniously off the train and came to join the two men with rifles. Flynt shook his head dejectedly as he announced bitterly: ‘I was damn sure it was a gold bullion shipment, Travis.’

‘Are all the guards as dead as them two, Deeks?’ Warner asked of the middle-aged man who led the other four escaped prisoners toward the trio before the depot building.

‘Them and the brakeman, Clay. Way it was always planned to be. It’s gone like clockwork. So far?’

‘I convinced my stupid self it was a gold bullion shipment,’ Flynt reiterated morosely to anybody willing to listen. ‘Why didn’t the Justice Department tell me what was really aboard?’

Only Hicks paid him any attention, briefly after he forced his horrified gaze away from one of the dead guards and muttered forlornly: ‘The company just told me it was an early morning special. No more than that, Ward. God, what an awful thing to happen in our little town.’

‘
So far
, Clay!’ Deeks repeated with heavy emphasis, a scowl on his narrow, sunkeneyed unshaven face.

‘The horses’ll be here any time now,’ Warner assured.

‘With full saddlebags?’ a near toothless man with a lividly scarred left cheek asked eagerly. ‘I’m talking cash, mister?’

174

‘Sure, Loomis: the final details were all fixed last night. Horses corralled in one place and the tack and all the supplies we need stowed some place else.’ Warner was boastfully confident.

‘I hope there’s plenty of good grub in the saddlebags as well?’ the youngest convict said anxiously. He had blond hair, vivid green eyes and alongside the darkly unshaven quartet looked like he didn’t need to shave yet, although he was at least twenty. ‘I’m sure looking forward to eating some decent chow again.’

‘I made sure to get everything you boys asked for,’ Warner assured.

‘I don’t like the way this town’s so quiet!’ a wiry, rodent faced, red headed man complained. His tiny eyes peered nervously along the side of the train to where the engineer and fireman were pumping water from the trackside tower into the locomotive as if nothing untoward was happening on the platform a few yards away.

‘Me and the marshal let it be known this was a special train, Roy,’ Warner explained, apprehension beginning to undermine his earlier confidence as he directed several glances toward the start of Main Street and beyond. Where much of the town was clearly visible now the rain had ceased and dawn was fully broken beneath a no longer threatening sky.

‘Told people it’d be just a water stop here and there wouldn’t be any goods aboard for anyone in town.’

His recent period of unease suddenly evaporated and a wide grin spread across his thin face as he heard another sound outside of the now subdued noises vented by the stationery locomotive. The thudding of hooves as a cluster of horses came cantering down Main Street.

‘How many guards did you kill?’ Travis Hicks’ deeply frowning face was ashen and his voice was now pitched abnormally high as he struggled to come to terms with the two bullet riddled corpses on the platform of his normally peaceful depot. Deeks ignored him and ordered the boy: ‘Jed, you get in there and put the telegraph out of action.’

‘Six,’ the green-eyed blond youngster answered excitedly. ‘We were the most dangerous prisoners in that stinking New York penitentiary, mister. And the bastards that ran that lousy place figured there had to be one guard for each of us prisoners. On the way to the new jail that was supposed to have more chance of holding the likes of us!’

He cackled with harsh laughter and the scar faced Loomis and the half-breed echoed the sound. Then he went into the telegraph office where, moments later, something heavy crashed to the floor and he came out to report with a lop-sided smile: ‘Telegraph’s taken care of, Deeks.’

175

‘My God, Clay, did Beth know about this?’ Flynt rasped and shook his head as a bunch of eight horses came into sight on the lower end of Main Street, seven of which were saddled but without riders, held on lead lines in the grasp of the widely grinning Lee Baldwin.

‘Howdy, Raymond, my big brother!’ Olivia Colbert’s broadly built, immaculately dressed top hand yelled as he reached the front of the stalled train and reined in his mount. The horses behind him came to a whinnying, wheeling and rearing halt.

‘Lee, how the hell are you doing, old son?’ the rat faced convict who shared only the colour of his hair with his handsome sibling responded happily. Deeks, who was clearly the acknowledged leader of the escaped prisoners made a sound of impatience and spat forcefully to the side before he snarled: ‘Right now we ain’t got any time for all that happy family reunion crap, you boys! Warner, are we all but home and dry now, you figure?’

The skinny, black-clad man directed several more surreptitious looks toward town: beyond where Baldwin was calming the horses near the two-man crew who had almost finished replenishing the locomotive’s water tanks.