Name On The Bullet - Edge Series 6 (10 page)

‘What’s going on is that you get to stay alive for awhile, woman.’ He spoke in a wearied tone that implied this was maybe not such a good thing after all. Edge suggested as he holstered his Colt and stepped up on to the law office porch:

‘And a bunch of men get to be able to live with themselves?’

‘I reckon you’re right,’ Hooper said. ‘Will you tell me something?’

‘What?’

‘If Elliot hadn’t backed down would you have put a bullet into him?’

Edge dug out the makings from a shirt pocket beneath his sheepskin coat and replied evenly: ‘No sweat, marshal.’

‘For the kind of woman she is?’ He grimaced and shrugged. ‘I’m a lawman so I’ve got a duty to protect my prisoner. But you – ‘

‘Not because of the kind of woman she is,’ Edge cut in. ‘On account of the kind of man I am.’

CHAPTER • 5

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AFTER HOOPER had gone into the cell area of the building Edge dropped down on to
the chair in front of the desk and listened while Hannah Foster used a wheedling tone to try to talk the lawman into turning her loose. Then after this failed to draw a response she exploded into shrill voiced anger that moments later triggered Hooper into a snarled command to shut the hell up and she became silent. At no time during any of this did the woman shed tears for the dead man while Hooper made unobtrusive sounds as he covered Munro’s corpse with a cot blanket.

As Edge finished rolling and then lit a cigarette footfalls sounded on the porch and he half rose, half turned and moved a hand closer to the jutting butt of the holstered Colt when the door swung open. Cold air flowed in ahead of Murray Driscoll and Henry Beck: the elderly doctor apprehensive and the bulging eyed preacher showing an angry frown that suggested he was spoiling for a fight. Or maybe had just got through speaking his mind to Driscoll.

‘Where’s Marshal Hooper?’ Beck demanded as the sounds of slow moving hooves and turning wheels approached from the south end of the street.

Driscoll licked his near colourless thin lips and explained apologetically: ‘We’ve come for the cadaver, Mr Edge. There’s no regular mortician in town and Hank and I always – ‘

Hooper emerged from the archway; grim faced from the gristly chore he had just completed. He still felt bitter about the threatened lynching in which the doctor had been ready to take a hand and he fixed his bleak eyed gaze on Driscoll as he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘I covered the corpse. The least I could do. One of the few decent things anyone round here has done tonight.’

‘Look, I – ‘ Driscoll started to defend, looking not at all distinguished.

‘Bill’s almost here with the wagon, Murray,’ Beck cut in flatly and ran a hooked finger around the inside of the neck of his shirt that was minus the usual clerical collar. ‘Let’s be ready for him. Then I suggest you make your excuses to God ahead of anyone else.’

He bustled through the archway and the disconsolate Driscoll followed, keeping his gaze averted from Hooper who stood aside to allow the pair to pass. The wagon came to a halt out front as the two men re-entered the office, the sagging corpse carried between them. A limp hand below a blood stained coat cuff trailed across the floor. Bill Matheson was a grey haired, wall eyed, rangy man of fifty with an off-centre nose and buck teeth who did all kinds of small jobs for little money around town. He lodged with Driscoll and acted as sexton to Beck. Now he shuffled through the doorway and without a word relieved the preacher of the shoulders of the dead man and backed carefully outside, Driscoll forced to follow him. Beck was unmoving for stretched seconds, seemed about to speak but got no tacit encouragement from the scowling Hooper or the impassive Edge. Then he raised his splayed hands, shrugged in a gesture of helplessness and went outside, closing the door softly behind him.

‘Hell of a thing.’ Hooper came away from the wall beside the archway, dropped heavily into his chair behind the desk and seemed to be totally drained of energy. ‘I’ve heard about the old time lynch mobs. But I never thought I’d see anything like that here in Brogan Falls.’

‘Hell of a thing,’ Edge repeated. ‘It seems like the feller who killed Munro did this town a favour.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ Hooper allowed dully. ‘Those sounds I heard earlier must have been McGowan and the others getting together so they could – ‘

‘There’s something else.’

‘What?’

‘It means you won’t have a hope in a million of raising a posse to go after the killer.’

‘Yeah, some good comes out of bad, uh? Because there’s not that same chance in a million of tracking him down: whether it’s just me on my own or riding with a whole bunch of deputies if I could raise a whole bunch?’

‘Unless it was somebody local: a feller who wanted to make it more personal that being a part of a lynch mob?’

‘Damnit, the guy’s right!’ Hannah Foster blurted harshly. ‘I never thought of that!

Somebody from this lousy town would find it real easy to sneak up at the back of this crummy jail again. And blast me into hell the same way they did Vic!’

‘It seems to me the lady has a point.’ Edge spoke as the lawman was about to snarl at her again.

Hooper had taken up his half smoked pipe and now paused in the act of re-lighting it then shrugged as he said: ‘I can’t do any more than I am already. That wasn’t enough to keep Munro from getting killed – and if I fall down on the job again the whole problem’s solved.’

‘You are one lousy, lazy, good for nothing sonofabitch!’ the woman shrieked. Hooper ignored her, lit his pipe and grimaced as he said: ‘I guess feeling that way does make me a rotten peace officer. But I can live with that, seeing as how I never did have any ambition outside of being the best I could be.’

‘I’ve come across some no good bastards in my time!’ Hannah Foster spat. ‘But you sure do beat all of them hands down!’

Hooper again ignored her as he shook his head reflectively, blew out a stream of aromatic smoke and pondered absently: ‘I reckon I can understand why Elliot acted the way he did, Edge: not at all like his usual self. He was hit hard by the killing and so he wrapped himself around a bottle for maybe the first time in his life. But the rest of the guys that were out there on the street . . ?’ He shook his head again. ‘The likes of Doc Driscoll – that takes some figuring out.’

Edge rose wearily from the chair and went toward the door, his footfalls loud on the floorboards in the silent office. Likewise the lifting of the latch.

‘Hey, you’re not really gonna leave, are you, Edge?’ the woman in the cell implored.

‘The office now and this town just as soon as I can get some trail supplies from the grocery, lady.’

‘But you’re the only man with any guts around here!’ she pleaded. ‘And more important, the only guy who knows me and Vic never had nothing to do with – ‘

Edge closed the door at his back and her voice rose as she realised he had gone. But it was not loud enough for what she said to carry clearly to him as he unhitched his horse and led it across the street to Earl Mann’s darkened store. He tried the reins again and thudded the side of a fist against the door. Almost immediately moving light showed at an open doorway in the rear of the store. Then Mann approached nervously, holding the lamp high so that at the same time as it illuminated the late night caller it also revealed the degree of apprehension the storekeeper was feeling. A fear that did not diminish and was plainly evident in his voice when he cracked open the door and asked huskily:

‘What the heck do you want, mister? This ain’t no fit time of night for a man to be buying groceries. And if it’s something else . . . like riding out with another posse to track down the guy who – ‘

‘You’re wide awake and fully dressed, feller,’ Edge pointed out evenly and reached forward to apply pressure to the door. ‘And I figure you’re not so rich you can afford to turn down an order for a few supplies, cash on the nail?’

Mann hesitated for a moment, anxiety still fixed on his pale, gap-toothed face then backed away: turned and scuttled to get behind the counter along the rear wall before Edge had entered and closed the door.

‘Obliged to you,’ Edge said as Mann set down the lamp on the counter and turned up the wick so light reached to the far corners of the small, well-stocked grocery. ‘This won’t make you much richer but every little helps, uh?’

Mann was briefly easier in his mind now he knew Edge was not here on law business and it showed in a short-lived wry smile before he frowned and responded earnestly to his caller’s easy going manner. ‘Hell of a thing?’

‘That’s exactly what the marshal and me agreed awhile ago. I need some trail rations is all?’

Mann brought up a scrap of paper and a pencil from under the counter and invited:

‘Shoot.’

Edge recited a list of the basic essentials similar to those he had requested and been supplied with in many grocery stores in many kinds of towns west of the Mississippi over more years than he cared to remember. And Mann began to collect what was needed: piled the cans, sacks and cartons on the counter with the fluid movements of a man content with the familiar chore that occupied him. Edge was through with his list before Mann had gathered all the merchandise but the storekeeper had a good memory and produced every item that had been asked for despite going a lot of talking while he worked at his chore.

‘What I meant was: it’s a hell of a thing how so many guys in Brogan Falls acted the way they did. Almost all of them, damnit: didn’t need no second asking to show up at the law office after Elliot McGowan came knocking on doors. And I ain’t excluding myself, mister.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Nothing ever happened like that around here before. First the shooting at the church this afternoon. Then us finding that killer and his whore in the woods. Wasn’t nobody as drunk as Elliot but it just seemed like the natural thing for us all to do: drag the killers out of the jailhouse and string them up?’

He shook his head and it was not that he was unable to find what he was looking for that caused him to interrupt the flow of words. During the pause he located the two cans of pork Edge had requested then went on in a more rueful tone: ‘In truth it’s a blessing somebody shot Munro, mister. For certain, as the world keeps turning and night follows day, it surely wouldn’t have seemed natural to anyone of us as soon as the stringing up was done.’

‘I reckon you’re right, feller,’ Edge agreed evenly.

‘Been the kind of awful things that would have haunted men’s minds until the day they all died. Kept them awake a lot of nights and put them off their grub whenever they remembered it come suppertime. Made them look the other way a lot of times when the folks who knew what happened caught their eye for whatever reason. Don’t you reckon that’s how it would have been, mister?’

‘The way things turned out, it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks about that, feller.’

Edge craned his head to look at the paper on which the storekeeper had listed the price of each item supplied and now added up the total.

He dug for bills and coins and put down the required amount on the counter top.

‘Thank God for that,’ Mann said absently, quickly counted the money and nodded.

‘And thanks for your custom, mister. Now you be sure to watch out for yourself out there on the open trail.’

‘I’ve done all right at that so far.’ Edge gathered up the heap of supplies and turned away.

Mann came out from behind the counter and hurried on ahead to the door to open it for a customer with both his arms full. Then he waited on the threshold and frowned in deep thought as Edge loaded the merchandise into a saddlebag. ‘Yeah, you’ve got the manner of a guy well able to take care of himself. But after what we’ve all seen happen in Brogan Falls today, it seems to me it’d be a foolish man who figured he couldn’t get run off the rails at least once in his life. It’s been a black day indeed.’

Edge unhitched the reins, swung up astride his gelding and tipped his hat to the earnest faced storekeeper. ‘Maybe that’s so, but it seems to me a feller needs ties to stay on the rails. And they sure ain’t for me.’

Mann was perplexed by the railroad analogy then shrugged as he watched the tall, powerfully built, faintly Mexican looking man back his horse away from the store, turn and head off down the street toward the start of the Sacramento Turnpike. Then his attention was drawn way from the slow riding Edge and he peered toward the law office directly across the street, where no lamplight shone behind the window or the glass panel of the door now. But despite the solid darkness and total silence that enveloped the building, the storekeeper sensed watching eyes. Not fixed on him, though: instead on the figure of Edge until the rider and horse merged with the dark backdrop of the expanse of timber that covered the south eastern slope of the Stony River Valley.

Edge was aware he was being watched by Hooper, which did not at all surprise him. For he had often been envied his ability to move on whenever he wanted by men with the kind of responsibilities that had shackled him so infrequently. Seldom, but often enough so he surely relished the freedom from ties he had lightly referred to as he took his leave of Earl Mann. Parents, a younger brother, the Union Army, a wife and a handful of favours owed for favours done. And a farming family who had been good to him for a whole summer so he had felt beholden to them: even though he had given a fair day’s work in exchange for a fair day’s pay during the time he was at the McGowan place.