The Deputy - Edge Series 2 (10 page)

There was another, less strident Spanish curse. Then some harshly inarticulate sounds as the angrily powerless prisoner tossed and turned in search of a comfortable position on his cot.

Straker grinned tightly and nodded his satisfaction with the ensuing silence from beyond the barred door then made a circle of his right forefinger and thumb to signal his appreciation of Edge’s idea.

When it was time for him to leave, Edge took from the end of a four weapon rifle rack the Winchester he had been loaned by the Railton City marshal’s office. And Straker followed him out to where his ready saddled gelding was hitched to the rail. Where he ended a lengthy silence during which he had become increasingly uneasy: obviously with something on his mind he was reluctant to voice until he blurted:

‘Edge?’

‘Yeah, feller?’ Edge slid the Winchester into the boot.

Straker carefully eased the door closed and lowered his voice as he glanced toward the corner beyond which was the barred window of the jailhouse: ‘Just in case George didn’t tell you and you’re wondering . . ?’

‘About what?’ Edge turned and stooped to check the tautness of the saddle cinch. It was clear the young deputy was embarrassed to confide what was bothering him to the man he had recently shown enmity toward. Then he explained: ‘Him and me have always got along pretty well. Better than ever after he married my mother a couple of years after pa died. Even though she was real sick and he knew she was dying and wanted 57

to make her last days as comfortable as he could. So it’s only natural him and me should . .

. ‘

‘I wasn’t wondering,’ Edge said as he swung astride his horse and Straker unhitched the reins from the rail, handed them up to him. ‘But I guess it explains why he worries about you so much, feller.’

‘With everything else he’s got on his mind, he didn’t ought to think he needs to protect me, damnit!’ Straker growled forcefully.

Edge showed a brief smile that bared his teeth but did not reach to his glittering eyes as he backed the horse away from the rail and recalled how he had been needled by Otis Logan’s use of the term as he murmured: ‘All the same, I’d guess he’d want you to watch your step, son.’

It was full night as he rode under a sky of broken cloud to within sight of the house and barn that were all that had ever comprised the Brady place: the two buildings first seen as mere ill-defined black shapes on the sometimes moonlit, sometimes darkened landscape of scattered hills featured with rock outcrops, patches of brush, occasional stands of timber and the little used trail that followed the barely discernible course of the arroyo. Edge had not adhered to North’s instructions. Because once beyond the farmstead with a house showing no lights that he assumed was the Carter place he rode hard to what he judged was the point of no return.

Then, taking care not to reveal to a possible lookout – or no North himself – that the sheriff had company, he veered off the east trail. And began to make steady but no longer headlong process that cut the corner between the east and the spur trails: made a rough check of his course by the stars whenever a break in the clouds allowed it. He neither saw nor heard anybody else moving through the low hills until he crested a final ridge and came within sight of the abandoned house and barn, about a half mile distant at the end of the Creek Road spur.

Then he spotted the bulky form of George North astride his horse, making a cautious but not furtive approach over open ground toward the pair of adjacent buildings where no glimmer of light showed.

Here Edge dismounted and led his horse by the bridle to the foot of a moon shadowed slope that put him on a level with the lawman.

He neither saw nor heard anything to signal danger to himself or North as he waited for the sheriff to ride up to the barn and go from sight beyond it. 58

He knew there were certainly living things in the night on all sides of him: snakes, lizards, insects, small animals and nocturnal birds. And surely there were men, too. But there was no sign of other human kind except for North: the lawman seen again, between the barn and the house.

The clop of slow moving hooves was the only sound in the darkness while the moon was hidden by high cloud – until another horse whinnied softly, the sound coming from within the barn. Then the creak of a hinge and the crash of a door as it was thrown forcefully open to thud against the outside wall.

‘Right on time, sheriff,’ a Mexican said evenly and stepped out over the threshold of the house. ‘It is to be hoped that all else goes according to my plan?’

The moon abruptly re-appeared as North reined in his horse thirty feet from the doorway where the man stood. He was the bearded, squint-eyed driver of the wagon at last night’s ambush. Although he packed a sixshooter in a holster on his left hip his hand did not hover near the jutting butt.

North answered tensely: ‘I’m on time and I came alone. Just like your letter asked me to. If there’s going to be any double cross you people will be the ones to spring it.’

The man held up both hands, palms to the front. ‘My name is Alvarez, but you may call me Raul, sheriff. Won’t you please dismount and step inside? Have a drink with us?

Some light, Paco!’

A match flared within the building then the glow of a lamp spilled out through the doorway and a window to the side of it.

North swung wearily down from his saddle and replied sardonically: ‘If I’d known it was going to be a party I’d have had my daughter-in-law bake a cake or some cookies.’

‘There is no party, sheriff.’ Alvarez replied evenly. ‘We have some bad business to discuss, but this does not mean we must be bad friends. Bad friends can mean bad trouble, is that not so?’

‘Is it going to take long?’ North asked.

‘Why do you ask, sheriff? Have you arranged for the United States cavalry to arrive soon, perhaps?’

‘If it’s going to take some time, I’d like to attend to my horse.’

‘Rubio will do that for you, if you will allow him? Rubio Rodriges is our farrier and knows much more about horses than how to shoe them, so you do not need to be concerned about your animal in his capable hands.’

‘Okay,’ North allowed.

Alvarez raised his voice: ‘Hey, Rubio, you will come attend to our guest’s horse!’

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Rodriges was the slightly built young man with a mangled left ear. He emerged from the still dark barn and approached North, but held back until the sheriff stepped away from the docile piebald and gestured toward the animal.

The gelding was led toward the barn where others of its kind were making subdued sounds and some smells that were not unpleasant in the night air. Alvarez stood aside and ushered North up to and through the entrance of the house, the door was closed and only the light from the glassless window supplemented the unreliable moon outside. For Rodriges did not need a lamp to light his chore of en-stalling the lawman’s mount.

Edge slid the Winchester out of the boot and left his horse hidden in a stand of cottonwoods. Then made good, almost silent time advancing on the house. Had to take a chance every now and then when he moved out of cover that the man tending the horse in the barn was the only member of the group of Mexicans outside. Because there was no glass in the house window the talk within the room into which North had been invited was clearly audible outside. And the sounds of voices, along with the unobtrusive noises from the barn masked Edge’s careful footfalls. He did not attempt to comprehend what was being said but he became ware that one woman – he immediately recognised her as Isabella Gomez – and at least one other man in addition to North and Alvarez were contributing to the exchanges. He could do nothing but hope the missing men – there had been at least seven involved in the ambush and kidnapping of the Gomez woman – were either staying silent inside or were a long way from the Brady place: unable to watch his cautious advance. He tightened his double handed grip on the rifle and ignored a nagging itch between his shoulder blades as he reached the side of the house, out of sight of the barn. For several stretched seconds which maybe mounted into a minute he remained pressed against the rough adobe outer wall of the room in which sounds other than talk could be overheard now. The clink of a bottle on glass and the gurgling of liquid being poured.

The low toned talk was of how well Isabella had been treated - which North could see for himself - despite her present sullen attitude.

Then, as Alvarez suggested they should drink a toast to the successful conclusion of the business they were about to discuss, Edge swung away from the wall. Went around the rear corner of the house and there found some unused adobe blocks that gave him the height he needed to climb up on to the flat roof of the building. 60

He sacrificed haste for stealth and it was perhaps two minutes before he managed to crawl far enough across the slightly front-to-rear pitched roof to where the closest of several small cracks between the warped timbers allowed him to peer inside the house. He looked with one eye down into the ill-lit thirty by thirty feet room that had obviously served many purposes in the days when the out-of-luck gold prospector lived here. For apart from a small area partitioned off in a corner it comprised the only accommodation within the simple shack.

Tonight it was furnished with saddles and bedrolls and littered with the paraphernalia of a recently eaten simple meal.

Isabella Gomez, more dishevelled that last night but still wearing a great deal of silver jewellery, sat on a bedroll in the centre of the room, looking by turns resentful and afraid. Her lower lip trembled often and her hands were clasped tightly in front of her ample belly as if to stop them from shaking.

Behind her a man pointed a revolver at the small of her back in a token threat. Positioned so that he could easily alter the aim of the gun within part of second to make North, who stood with his back to the door, a new target.

Two other men already aimed Colts at North from the far side of the room. So, including Rubio Rodriges out in the barn, five of the seven kidnappers were at the Brady place. Two of them Edge recognised as horseback riders at the ambush. The other one had been concealed in the rear of the wagon.

As if he had read Edge’s mind, North growled: ‘You’re not taking any chances.’

He drained his brimful glass of colourless liquid in a single swallow.

‘We cannot afford to,’ Alvarez said purposefully. ‘And now I feel I must even relieve you of your pistol, sheriff. But, just as last night, the weapon will be returned to you eventually. If all goes according to my plan, of course.’

‘It seems like I don’t have any choice.’ The scowling North unbuckled his gunbelt, unfastened the holster toe ties and let the whole rig drop to the dirt floor. Then he moved away from the door to sit on a bedroll facing the woman across four feet and asked of her:

‘They truly didn’t hurt you,
senorita?
In any way at all?’

A man rasped bitterly: ‘All Mexican
hombres
are not rapists like that
bastardo
Jose Martinez,
senor!’

The woman ignored him to challenge North: ‘Do you truly care, sheriff? Last night you allowed them to take me without that much resistance!’ She held a hand high and snapped her fingers.

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North shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t have done any good for us to fight them last night. But you’re alive and I’m here now and that shows I still feel responsible for you, doesn’t it?’

Two of the unnamed Mexicans continued to keep North covered while another claimed his gunbelt, holstered his own revolver and slung North’s rig over his shoulder.’

Isabella sneered: ‘Tonight it does not appear like you could be responsible for taking care of a pet cat, sheriff!’

North’s grimace and nod acknowledged the undeniable truth of her claim, then he turned toward Alvarez and said as the leader of the Mexicans finished his drink: ‘It seems to me I’ve kept my end of the bargain,
senor.
So what do I get in return?’

‘The
senorita,
sheriff,’ was the even toned reply, a trace of a cryptic smile playing at the corners of the be-whiskered mouth.

North and the rooftop eavesdropper both switched their attention rapidly between Alvarez and Isabella. Saw the man’s smile stayed insecurely in place while her expression changed from a churlish scowl to incredulity and then mistrust.

‘I will explain.’ Alvarez was impassive, then became tense as he fulfilled the promise. ‘Me, the Rodriges brothers, Paco Diego, Pedro Sanchez, Francisco Gonzales and Ricardo Zamorra . . . ‘

He sighed. ‘I am ashamed to admit that we are outlaws, sheriff. South of the border in our native country we are bandits.’

One of the other Mexicans made to interrupt but Alvarez held up a hand in a gesture that served to keep him silent.

‘It has not always been so. We once were decent, hard working men. Poor peons who scraped an honest living for ourselves and our families from our fields deep in Mexico. Until we were forced to leave what was rightfully ours by the land-hungry Martinez family.’

The other men in the room nodded and murmured their agreement, their unwashed and unshaven faces expressing a gamut of emotion from sorrow to hatred as they recalled better times and how these were ended by the father of the man locked in the Bishopsburg jailhouse.

‘We gathered one night at the cantina in our village and there we agreed to form into a band of outlaws. Pledged ourselves to prey upon the Martinez family and those who do business with them.’