Killing Time In Eternity - Edge Series 4 (8 page)

‘Morning, Brad. Weather’s going to be somewhat better than yesterday by the look of things.’ It was Walter Benson, the ramrod straight, florid complexioned, former artillery colonel who made the almost boomingly loud announcement.

The head shorter, more solidly built John Dickens nodded to the newspaper publisher and Edge while the retired railroadman divided his amiable greeting equally between a fellow citizen of Eternity and a stranger to town. Then, with Benson in the lead, the newcomers pushed through a hinged section of the partition that divided the office into 39

public and private areas and went to a large table at a rear corner between the potbelly stove and an archway that gave on to the print shop. There Benson sat down at the table and produced a dog-eared bundle of papers from inside his heavy topcoat while Dickens took down from a rack one of a score or so sheaves of newspapers held together by strips of polished wood fixed with brass screws.

Frost felt the need to explain to Edge: ‘The colonel and John are planning to write a history of Eternity and – ‘

‘My, my, we’re well past the planning stage now, Bradley,’ Benson corrected in a chiding tone. ‘John and I are already in process of actually writing our history.’

Edge took out the makings while the colonel rustled his bundle of papers and Dickens showed a disconcerted grin as he shook his head.

Frost went on without malice, plenty loud enough for the two old timers to hear: ‘The strange thing is, the pair of them only ever need to read up on their subject in the winter months. When they can drink my coffee under my lamps in front of my stove so they can save on their own heating and lighting costs. And they – ‘

‘Oh, do quit pretending to bellyache, Bradley,’ Benson cut in. ‘You know damn well you enjoy the company. And anyway, why aren’t you out doing some work?’

‘I am working.’ He opened a palm to show the coins Edge had given him. ‘Selling advertising.’

‘That’s Beth’s job. You ought to be out and about discovering just what that no account gunfighter is doing back in Eternity.’

‘I already know why Clay Warner’s back in town,’ Frost countered triumphantly. The two men at the table looked up with keen interest and Edge paused with his hand on the door latch.

Obviously eager to score points off Benson in a friendly, long running verbal contest, Frost indulged in some restrained gloating. ‘For a visit with Beth, that’s all. Warner has been promising to come see her for months and she’ll be real pleased he made it at last. On account of it’s her birthday next weekend. Which is hardly the sort of news item that merits a front-page account in the
Post Despatch.
Wouldn’t you agree, gentlemen?’

Dickens shrugged and returned to the file of newspapers. Benson looked fleetingly agitated, then muttered sourly:

‘If Warner does anyone a kindness – even a favour for a one time lady love – without there being something untoward behind it, I’d guess it’ll be for the first time in his wretched life.’

Dickens nodded his unqualified agreement as feminine heels were heard to click on the sidewalk outside the office. And Edge was in time to swing open the door and tip his 40

hat as the friend of the man Benson and Dickens held in such low regard came in. The tall and slender Beth Flynt was briefly startled then re-kindled a beaming smile that was too radiant to be meant just for Edge, Frost and the old timers. Clearly her joyful expression was a continuing sign of the excitement that had gripped her ever since she saw Warner was aboard the morning train.

‘Good day to everybody,’ she greeted cheerfully and suddenly looked and sounded a lot less than her age as she continued girlishly: ‘Did you see? Did all of you see? Clay’s back in town! I just knew he’d make it here before my birthday on Sunday! Didn’t I say that, Brad?’

‘You surely did, Beth. I’m pleased you’re so happy.’ He became businesslike. ‘Mr Edge here is the gentleman who placed the for sale announcement about the old Sims store. He stopped by this morning to pay for a re-run in next week’s edition.’

Benson had done some histrionic grunting and noisy shuffling of papers during the exchange. While Dickens immersed himself in the back issues of the newspapers as he toyed with his moustache. Neither of them made any pretence at sharing in Frost’s alleged pleasure for the woman’s happiness.

‘I sure hope the
Post Despatch
can help you to sell Mr Sims’ store, mister.’ She briefly made her smile even brighter for Edge as she pushed through the hinged section of the partition.

He confined his acknowledgement to a second tip of his hat then stepped out of the office into the cold morning air. Where he paused to strike a match on the doorframe and light his cigarette before he crossed the street to the livery. Here the forty years old, powerfully built, black bearded and bespectacled Dan Paine who had just opened up the place for the day’s business, set a fair price for the chestnut gelding that interested his customer. And he got an even better deal on a set of tack that, like the horse, had belonged to the late Billy Childs: the transaction sweetened by Paine throwing in for free the worse-for-wear but serviceable Winchester rifle that was in the saddle boot.

‘Does you buying this horse and the gear mean you’ll be staying around town?’ the liveryman asked as Edge began to saddle the gelding.

‘Don’t plan on doing that, feller.’

Paine shrugged his broad shoulders and scratched in his beard. ‘It’s just that I know you arrived in Eternity aboard the train. And I figured if you was gonna leave, it’d be the same way. Man like you, though, be my guess that a train ain’t your preferred means of travel? So I figured maybe the notice I seen in this week’s paper got a buyer for the store and you’d be . . . ‘

41

Since the watershed of his life in the deadly aftermath of his final violent partnership with Adam Steele, Edge had spent much time in small towns. And so he had almost gotten accustomed to accepting, for most of the time with equanimity, the inquisitive nature of the people who lived in such claustrophobic communities. Occasionally he was irritated by their interest in his business but nowadays he was mostly able to keep his ill feelings hidden behind impassivity.

‘There’s no taker yet, feller. But you’re right. Whether I stay around one place for awhile or if I’m planning to cover a lot of country miles on the back of a horse is the way I like best to travel.’ He led the gelding outside, tossed away his part smoked cigarette, swung up into the saddle and asked the big man who had followed him from the livery:

‘Guess there are a whole bunch of chestnuts and bays with a white blaze in this part of the country and so – ‘

‘Ward Flynt already asked me about a horse like that, Mr Edge,’ Paine cut in as he shook his head. ‘Dozen or more in Eternity, I’d say. That I know of. Real sorry I wasn’t able to help the marshal out. I had a lot of respect for Doc Childs and I’d really like to do something to see that the cowardly sonofabitch who bushwhacked him gets what’s coming to him. And the killer took a shot at you, I hear tell?’

‘It’s a pleasure doing business with you, feller.’ Edge heeled his new mount forward and rode down to the bottom of Main Street then swung east on to the Dodge Trail, past the extensive spread of empty stockyard pens and headed out into open county. This piece of south western Kansas was not so flat and featureless as it appeared to be on first impression. Like a lot of the mid-west – as he well knew from being born and raised in Iowa and riding through most other states between the Mississippi and the Rockies

– the rolling prairie had a share of low rises and shallow hollows, rock outcrops and isolated stands of timber.

The Dodge Trail out from Eternity took account of such features of the landscape and occasionally curved to follow the easiest route. Whereas the men who laid the railroad track to the south of the trail had graded the terrain to keep the line arrow straight. So that sometimes the track, although not the row of telegraph poles that ran parallel with it, was lost to sight as Edge put his new mount to the test: by turns galloped, cantered and trotted the animal. Soon he felt as exhilarated as he knew the gelding beneath him was, man and animal alike relishing the freedom of being beyond the confines of the town. And for a short time he was tempted to just keep on going: to abandon here and now the mundane responsibilities that went with being a small town store-keeper. But reason prevailed. Initially because his belly began to feel the lack of breakfast and next when he acknowledged it would be crazy to write off the financial gain he was 42

due. And some three miles or so out along the trail he reined in and wheeled his quivering mount to start an easy walk back west. This time chose to follow the railroad, which was the straight, shorter route back to Eternity. He was about halfway back to town when he saw another rider emerge from out of one of the hollows around which the trail curved. The distant rider halted his mount and remained in the saddle for several seconds, peering toward Edge.

Then the man in the distance dismounted and led his horse to a telegraph pole to hitch it. Stood as still as the pole, no longer peering toward where Edge continued to narrow the gap at an unhurried pace. A few minutes later when he came to within a hundred yards of where the newcomer stood, he saw he had been mistaken. It was not a man. And less than fifty yards away, he reined in his new mount, recognised the woman and had some idea of why she was out here in this barren piece of open country. Closer still, he saw that fixed to the pole to which she had hitched her horse was a wreath of winter flowers, their naturally less than vivid colours dulled further by exposure to many days of Kansas November weather. Another pointer to this being the spot where the mutilated body of Billy Childs had been found was the manner in which the woman stood beside the railroad: her head bowed as she gazed down at the track bed with fixed intensity. Hands clasped low in front of her.

‘Mr Edge,’ Sue Ellen Spencer greeted dully before she turned her head to look at him. He tipped his hat, dismounted and led his horse by the reins.

‘Do you think it’ll last for a couple more days without falling apart?’ She gestured with a gloved hand toward the bedraggled wreath.

Edge glanced at the weather beaten token of mourning and saw it carried a card, the hand written message smudged and all but obliterated from being drenched by the heavy rain since it was first hung there.

‘I reckon so.’

‘Maybe it’s best to just let it rot away into nothing, do you think? Or maybe it’s just plain stupid anyway – leaving it out here where Billy was found? Instead of on his grave?’

‘Whatever eases you grief best, lady,’ he told the brown haired, slim bodied woman he had found so attractive at first, second and now third sight. She shook her head. ‘It was the doc who put it here. He said he did it because it was the last place where Billy was a whole person as he remembered him. What was buried in the cemetery in town, that was nothing like . . . Well, the train ran over him and did some awful – ‘ She caught her breath, grimaced and snapped her head away from Edge’s level gaze.

‘I heard. I reckon I can understand how the boy’s pa felt about it.’

43

‘Now Doc Childs is dead, too.’

‘I know.’

‘Yes, of course you do.’ She was irritated with herself. ‘You saw who killed him and his friend from New York City. And then he tried to kill you?’

Edge nodded as his attention was drawn toward the west. Where on the horizon two more riders had come into indistinct view, following the straight line of the railroad track. Sue Ellen Spencer looked in the same direction when Edge said:

‘Getting crowded out here. More mourners, maybe?’

She shrugged inside the heavy coat. ‘I worked for Doc Childs, you know?’

‘Somebody mentioned that.’

She turned away from the track, went to her horse and unhitched the reins. ‘I took care of his paperwork – the medical records of his patients and such like. And sometimes I could be a sort of nurse, too. Because of how he trained me. Although he was the town doctor – or maybe because of it – he didn’t have many close friends in Eternity.’

Edge swung up into his saddle and showed a faint smile as he said: ‘Wasn’t he a very good doctor?’

She was in no frame of mind for light humour and quickly sprang to Childs defence as she climbed into her saddle. ‘I didn’t mean that! He stayed home so much because whenever he went out socially people were always bothering him for free advice about what ailed them. So he hardly ever mixed with other – ‘

Edge cut in: ‘I wasn’t being serious, lady.’

‘Oh? Oh yes, of course. I’m sorry.’ She attempted an insecure smile of her own but did not feel comfortable with it. ‘The doc played chess with Mr Gannon every Sunday. And he was kind of courting the Widow Whittier.’ She shrugged. ‘What I’m trying to say, I suppose, is that now Doc Childs is dead, there’s nobody close left to grieve for Billy.’

‘And these two aren’t out here to do that?’ Edge nodded toward the riders. They were still some distance off, but close enough now for him to guess from the build of one and the garb of the other that they were the tall and heavy marshal and the black clad, near emaciated bounty hunter who got off this morning’s train. She squinted into the distance. ‘I’m sorry. I’m a little short-sighted. Which is because of all the clerical work I’ve done, I suppose.’

‘It’s the town marshal and a feller named Clay Warner,’ Edge supplied. She grimaced at mention of the bounty hunter’s name and predicted bitterly: ‘It’s for sure that neither of them has come out here to mourn for Billy.’