Name On The Bullet - Edge Series 6 (5 page)

Munro ignored the lawman and said in a rush: ‘Like I was telling you people! I figure we seen the couple you’re looking for. Not close enough to tell how long the dame’s hair was. But she was sure a blonde and so I figure you ought to – ‘

‘Shut up and get mounted up!’ Hooper shared his expanding anger between the prisoners and Edge: and had some to spare as he scowled at the rest of the men. ‘The same goes for you other guys. Anyone got anything meaningful to say will get his chance in court.’

‘Vic’s trying to tell you, the pair you really want to see in court are getting further away every moment of the time you’re wasting here!’ Hannah Foster implored. Munro seemed about to back her claim but then the fight drained out of him as the last remnants of short lived hope left his gaunt and pallid face. In its place he started to scowl his contempt as he shook free of the woman’s grip and climbed wearily astride his mount.

‘It’s no use honey,’ he sneered. ‘These boneheads are just eager to have anybody to hang without the trouble of making sure they’ve got the right ones.’ He spat at the ground.

‘Goddamn lawmen are all the Goddamn same every Goddamn place!’

There was no further talk while the others mounted up and rode out of the clearing back on to the turnpike. O’Brian and Costigan at the front, then the two prisoners with Edge, Hooper and Mann bringing up the rear.

‘Except for the one called Edge,’ Munro muttered after awhile as the night closed in around them, bringing a more biting chill to the air that seemed intensified by the glittering light of the half moon filtered through the tree canopy. ‘But he’s out-voted: and he don’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d take any trouble to stand up for other people’s rights.’

The sour-toned monologue drew no response and the mood of dejection continued to cling firmly to the group as they slowly rode back toward town, none of the Brogan Falls men revealing he felt any sense of achievement from the easy capture. Then Costigan turned in his saddle and asked doubtfully: ‘Are you real sure of what you saw, Edge?

‘Sure as I can be, feller.’ Edge continued rolling a cigarette.

‘Gene’s right, though, ain’t he? You didn’t see too much of the woman for too long?’

The expression on the ranch hand’s weather beaten face pleaded for the answer to be the one he wanted to hear.

There was a tremor of excitement in Mann’s voice as he said: ‘I’ll tell you what I know for certain.’

The woman turned in her saddle to glower at him and sneered: ‘So just what does that sewer of a mind of yours know for certain?’

The tall and skinny storekeeper met her scorn with a glare of triumph then said to the impassive man who rode on his right: ‘I been looking at the tracks left by their horses, mister?’

Edge finished lighting the freshly rolled cigarette and blew out smoke as he responded:

‘And you’ve seen that neither one of their mounts has got a shoe with a nick in it?’

‘That’s right,’ Mann confirmed.

Munro blurted eagerly: ‘That sounds to me like it’s important?’

‘We can forget about the horseshoe!’ Hooper said coldly. ‘I ain’t blind so I’ve seen the same tracks you have. But if Edge can be wrong about how long the woman’s hair is, he can be just as wrong about the damn horseshoe.’

Costigan started doubtfully: ‘But we’ve all seen for ourselves when we was riding out this way that – ‘

‘I’m not saying there wasn’t somebody through Brogan Falls recently rode a horse with a damaged shoe like that,’ Hooper cut in irritably. ‘But there’s no way to know when it was. So let’s leave it for now. Leave all of it, damnit!’

Munro seemed about to snarl an angry retort, but abruptly lost the will: shifted his backward look from over one shoulder to the other and fixed Edge with a quizzical gaze, then spared a glance for the scowling Mann.

The storekeeper looked at Edge, saw he was not going to offer any response to the tacit query and assured Munro: ‘Mister, you can count on me to say in court what I know and what I’ve seen. Even if your lady-friend ain’t been so polite to me. How about you, Edge?’

‘To tell the truth, I ain’t too concerned about how a whore like her talks to me, feller.’

‘Who said she was a – ‘ Mann started as his fellow citizens peered at Hannah Foster with as much renewed interest as the storekeeper showed.

The woman wrenched her head around to glower at all of them and snarled directly at Edge: ‘I ain’t ashamed of how I earn my living!’

‘
Used
to earn your living, Hannie,’ Munro hurriedly corrected with heavy emphasis on the past tense.

Mann shrugged and growled: ‘Shit, Edge, I wasn’t meaning that. I was talking about you having your say in court.’

‘I aim to be long gone from this part of the country by the time a trial’s held,’ Edge replied with more tobacco smoke trickling from the side of his mouth as he hunkered down deeper into the warmth of the sheepskin coat.

‘I’ll need to take a deposition from you before you leave, mister,’ Hooper offered sourly. ‘If you honestly do figure we got the wrong pair for killing Wendell.’

‘Fat lot of use that’ll be, I’ll bet,’ the woman complained bitterly.

‘Sure I can do that, marshal,’ Edge replied to Hooper. ‘Splitting hairs ain’t something I usually do. But I know for certain the woman riding with Quaid’s killer had a head of it and it was shorter than this one has. And she had different coloured eyes, too. I reckon those facts need to be put on record.’

Hannah Foster hissed: ‘And like I said, a fat lot of use that’ll – ‘

Edge showed a bleak grin as he broke in: ‘Though I doubt the lady would take the trouble to do the same for me . . . if the shoe was on the other hoof?’

CHAPTER • 3

__________________________________________________________________________

IT WAS long past suppertime when the posse and the two prisoners rode out of the
timber and started down the final stretch of the turnpike toward First Street. When the cold air of the brightly moonlit night was scented faintly with wood smoke that no longer held any trace of cooking aromas. Lamplight gleamed from the scattered farms. Also from the houses of Doc Driscoll and the Reverend Beck opposite the cemetery at the southern end of the street. But neither of these men came to his window to look out as the cluster of riders moved slowly and unobtrusively by.

‘So this is Brogan Falls?’ Hannah Foster was sneeringly scornful as she surveyed the dark length of the empty street flanked by the meagre scattering of buildings. Then her tone implied embittered criticism of Munro when she added: ‘I got to say it ain’t exactly what I was expecting, Vic.’

O’Brian spit a stream of tobacco juice as he reined in his horse out front of the law office and warned: ‘Pretending like you ain’t never been here before won’t wash with the court when it comes time to stand trial, woman. Guess you don’t need me any more, Gene?

There’s some chores I have to take care of ahead of tomorrow’s stage.’

‘Sure, Arnie,’ Hooper allowed wearily. ‘I’m obliged for your help with the capture. All of you men did a fine job for the county. Get on back to your places now, but I’ll be obliged if somebody lends me a hand with the prisoners?’

Edge offered: ‘No sweat.’

Then Mann swung silently down from his horse and led it across the street toward his store directly opposite the law office. O’Brian drawled his goodnights and headed out over the bridge to the blacksmith shop and stage line depot on the other side of the slow running stream. Costigan asked:

‘Do you want me to take care of the couple’s horses, Gene? I reckon Mr Nelson will be happy to stable them on his place for awhile?’

‘Appreciate that, Mike. And you tell Owen that the town will meet any expenses involved.’ Hooper sounded uneasy as he dismounted. ‘I have to do everything right in the way I handle this thing.’

Munro appeared oblivious to what was happening around him as the posse broke up: his gaze fixed on a point down and across the street. Then he was startled out of his grim faced reverie when Costigan said:

‘You want to pass me your reins, mister? I’ll see to it the animals are well tended to on Mr Nelson’s spread.’

‘Same as you and your lady friend will be well looked after in my jail, Munro,’ Hooper assured. ‘Despite the cold blooded killing you’re accused of - providing you behave yourselves. You keep them both covered, Edge. And bring them inside after I’ve got the lamp lit.’

Edge opened his coat to reveal the walnut butted Colt in the tied down holster then hitched his gelding to the rail out front of the law office while the ranch hand led his own and the prisoners’ horses out over the bridge behind O’Brian.

Hooper went into the office and struck a match.

The scowling Munro said evenly to Edge and loud enough for Hooper to hear: ‘I ain’t making no promises about what I will or won’t do. And if I get treated bad for whatever reason, it won’t be anything I’m not well used to.’

‘That sure is for sure,’ Hannah Foster confirmed with a grimace, then softened her expression as she rested a hand on his arm. ‘But those times before . . . there’s no doubting you deserved a whole lot of what you got, uh Vic?’

‘I’d be lying if I said otherwise, honey.’ There was a trace of sardonic humour in his tone and on his pallid, gaunt featured face as he made the admission.

‘I figure you’ve served time in bigger jails than this one?’ Edge said as Hooper made unobtrusive sounds moving about inside the office.

‘You can smell the big house on me, I guess?’

‘You’ve got a prison lack of colour, feller.’

Munro nodded and ran the fingers and thumb of one hand down over the dark bristles on a sunken cheek. Then he grinned sardonically as he asked: ‘Does it take one to know one?’

‘I’ve been close: but I never did spend any time behind bars in any jailhouse much bigger than the one here. Unless you count a Confederate prison camp.’

‘Okay Edge, bring the pair of them inside,’ Hooper called as flickering brightness from a newly lit lamp spilled out through the open doorway.

Arm-in-arm, much like Quaid and his new bride had been on this street for a brief time in happier circumstances earlier in the day, Munro and Hannah Foster stepped over the threshold into the building.

Edge followed them and perfunctorily eyed much the same scene as he had witnessed in several law offices during the years when run-ins with peace officers were routine occurrences each time he reached a new town. But this small office with a four space rifle rack on one wall, a map of the Stony River Valley on another and curling and faded wanted posters flanking the window beside the door, was neater and cleaner than any he could remember. Doubtless because it was under-used by a marshal who did not often need to sit in the new looking swivel chair behind the uncluttered desk. A stove in one corner was clean and cold and two cells could be seen through a rectangular archway in the centre of the rear wall.

‘In there.’ Hooper felt it necessary to draw his sixgun and gestured with it toward the archway with the open doors of the cells in a wall of bars beyond. Bars also separated the cells. ‘The way the two of you are such close friends, I guess you won’t mind that there’s no privacy back there? But it’s one to a cell: I ain’t gonna allow any co-habiting while you’re in my custody.’

‘A Goddamn lawman with moral scruples!’ Munro growled as he stepped into the cell on the right. ‘That sure is a new one for me.’

Hooper locked him in.

The woman entered the other cell and sneered as she turned around: ‘Vic’s seen all I got dozens of times. But if you figure you’re gonna get even a peek at me in the buff you’d better think again, marshal.’

‘I’m a happily married man, Miss Foster,’ Hooper countered staidly as he holstered the Colt, closed the door gently and turned the key.

She challenged harshly: ‘In my experience, men who claim that are usually the horniest kind!’

‘And you’ve already admitted that you’re a woman of great experience,’ Hooper muttered as he came out from the dark cell area.

She had been about to snarl an insulting retort but checked the impulse when Munro rasped something that was inaudible to the men in the lamp-lit, unheated office.

‘Obliged for your help, Edge,’ Hooper said as he dropped heavily into the chair behind the desk, pulled open a drawer and took out a pad of printed forms. ‘Consider yourself released from the duty of deputy. Down to me to take care of the damn paperwork and all the rest of what needs to be done.’ He opened another drawer, delved for a bottle of ink and a pen and sighed deeply as he prepared to undertake a chore he did not relish. Edge asked as he took out the makings: ‘You want to hear my deposition now, feller?’