Return to Massacre Mesa - Edge Series 5 (26 page)

What’s to be will be, for goodness sake! And nothing is to be gained by squabbling amongst ourselves, trading personal insults or trying to guess what the Indians have it in mind to do. Don’t you agree with that, Mr Edge?

‘I figure you’re telling it like it is, lady.’ Edge was smoking a cigarette and seemed just as detached from the resting group as he had been ever since they had all started out walking from the ravine.

‘So?’ the snub nosed, bulbous cheeked Dingle demanded.

‘Edge?’ Lucy urged after several moments had elapsed and the impassive man had shown no sign of offering a response to the apprehensive fat man. Then Edge hooked a thumb over a shoulder. ‘Back there we made a decision to press on because we agreed it was the only thing we could do. Said we’d make for the place most of us have been heading for from the start.’

Dingle sighed deeply and growled impatiently: ‘I say again, mister: so?’

‘I agree with the guy, John.’ Conners’ green eyes were devoid of emotion as he stubbed out the half-smoked cigar that was probably his last. Edge asked: ‘So, feller, what’s happened to cause us to change that decision we 180

made back there?’

Dingle scowled and said: ‘Well, for one thing I’m getting to feel real hungry.’

Edge glanced pointedly about their surroundings in which they were the only visible forms of life and said: ‘We could waste a lot of time hunting for game hereabouts and come up empty-handed.’

Conners growled disconsolately: ‘Like the kid said awhile ago, it’ll be thirst that’s likely to kill us first, damnit!’

Crooked Eye said as he shook his head: ‘I have spent much time looking for sign there will be water and seen none.’

Sam Tree, his clothing no longer looking so neat and his handsome features as bristled as those of the other men, muttered grimly: ‘What I’ve seen without too much looking is sign of some Comanche who are dogging our trail.’

‘What?’ Goodrich’s voice was a strangled shriek as he and the others peered back across the country they had covered before the rest halt. Edge said to Tree: ‘So you’ve spotted them as well, feller?’

The saloonkeeper turned part-time deputy shrugged his broad shoulders.

‘Seemed to me they weren’t making too much effort to stay hid, mister.’

Edge made an affirmative gesture.

Dingle rasped irritably: ‘You two guys mean that you’ve known all along we’ve had Injuns for company - and you never gave us any warning about them being back there?’

‘Damnit, we could have been gunned down at any second!’ Conners complained.

‘Sam?’ There was implied criticism in the single word spoken by the vastly overweight, heavily sweating Goodrich. Then the nervous liveryman made another careful survey of the terrain to the east and added: ‘But I’m damned if I can see any Comanche now.’

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Edge said: ‘That’s the way it is, feller, sometimes they come and sometimes they go. Maybe according to the kind of cover there is. Or maybe on account of they’re trying to spook us.’

‘They’re sure succeeding with me and I ain’t even seen the bastards,’ Dingle muttered and mopped at his brow with a grubby, already damp handkerchief.

‘Edge?’ The mourning clad Lucy Russell was again eager for reassurance. Tree said: ‘Seems to me like it’s the same situation we had back at the ravine. They could have done for all of us then but instead they just killed poor old Frank. I reckon they did that to show us they’re not too fussy about killing anybody if and when it suits them. Ever since we started out from the ravine they could’ve finished us. Picked us off one at a time or slaughtered us all in a bunch.’

‘But they don’t want to!’ Dingle’s tone was husky as his nervous gaze darted around the grim set faces of the others.

‘Or they just ain’t ready yet,’ Conners suggested.

‘Edge?’ Lucy repeated in the same plaintive tone but expanded her plea this time.

‘Just what can they be waiting for?’

He made a final survey of the terrain to the east, stubbed out his cigarette in the dirt, rose to his feet and suggested: ‘It could be they’re savouring the taste of revenge before they take their fill of it, lady.’

‘Revenge?’ She caught her breath. ‘Oh, for the Indians that Mr Tree and Mr Goodrich and poor Mr Shaw killed in the ravine?

‘Hey, that’s right!’ Dingle blurted excitedly. ‘It was the deputies who did that!

That wasn’t nothing to do with us, was it, Ches?’

‘We’re all of us white and we’re all of us in one bunch, John,’ Conners sneered then stabbed an accusing finger toward Crooked Eye. ‘Except for him.’

‘You don’t think that if we sent him back to them they would – ‘ Dingle started. 182

‘No!’ Crooked Eye snapped. ‘They want nothing to do with me! I am bad medicine.’

‘That stands to reason!’ Goodrich sneered. ‘The Injuns only took the squaw and they turned him loose, didn’t they?’

Edge reminded evenly: ‘And they let you come back alive, feller.’

Goodrich cupped a thick-fingered hand to his throat and swallowed hard. ‘Yeah, I know, damnit! Which I figure is one life gone and I ain’t no cat with eight more of them still to go.’

‘What about them taking the squaw, Edge?’ Tree asked. ‘You figure that’s important for us?’

Edge shrugged.

Lucy Russell revealed evenly: ‘Rose Bigheart knows where the stolen government money is hidden.’

‘The squaw knows what?’ Tree demanded.

Goodrich rasped: ‘You mean all those silver dollars are still around some place in these hills?’

He and Tree traded puzzled glances.

Dingle’s apprehension expanded as he swung his head this way and that before he demanded: ‘Look, you people who live in Lakewood? Did any of you ever do anything to make that squaw carry a grudge against you? Maybe that’s why – ‘

‘You and your buddy Conners are the only ones who hate the Comanche just because they’re Injuns,’ Goodrich accused caustically.

‘Yeah, but we never come up against any of them murdering Injuns until – ‘

‘Rose isn’t responsible for what’s happening to us,’ Lucy defended. ‘I can assure you of that.’

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‘I got to disagree with you, lady,’ Edge said.

She caught her breath and glared at him with righteous indignation. ‘Rose and I have been very good friends for a long time! And Mr Tree has always treated her well: he used to have her work for him at the Wild Dog before some interfering strangers – ‘

Edge cut in: ‘What’s happening to us is that we’re staying alive, lady. And there’s a good chance that could be on account of Rose Bigheart.’

‘How d’you figure that?’ Conners demanded and spat forcefully to the side.

‘Hell, what difference does it make?’ Dingle snapped. ‘We’re still alive and what’s important is how we plan to stay that way!’

‘And richer than we are now?’ Edge’s tone turned the statement into an ironic question.

‘What?’ Dingle was briefly perplexed then he shook his head and shuddered.

‘Look, I don’t deny that rich would sure be a bonus. But right here and now I’ll settle for staying alive and healthy and being on my way back to Philadelphia without a lousy nickel to my name.’

‘That’s damn right!’ Goodrich agreed. ‘Missing out Philadelphia for me and Sam!’

Tree said sourly: ‘We never did come out here to get rich, Brad. Just to do the duty Billy Russell gave us.’

Conners seemed about to make a comment and his earnest expression suggested it could be a valid one. But Lucy spoke first and from the way he nodded constantly while she was speaking it seemed she voiced his thoughts, too.

‘Of course it’s not so important as simply remaining alive, Edge,’ the puzzled woman in black allowed. ‘But I’d be interested to know what plan you think Mountain Lion has in his mind and how Rose put it there?’

‘He could be figuring to get his hands on the twenty five thousand dollars that the squaw has told him we can lead him to, maybe?’ Edge suggested with an almost 184

imperceptible shrug.

‘Hell, none of us has any idea where the money is!’ Dingle growled scornfully.

‘It’s only the squaw who knows that and . . .’ His voice trailed away and then a knowing smile spread fast across his unshaven face as the obvious conclusion dawned on him.

His partner expressed the same notion in words. ‘Yeah, that’s right, John. But the Comanche chief don’t know that because the squaw ain’t told him!’

‘Okay, so what do you think that Comanche has it in mind to do?’ Goodrich shifted the inquiring gaze in his tiny eyes away from Tree toward Edge and back again, seemingly excluding everyone else from having any opinion worth hearing. Tree muttered: ‘I haven’t got a single idea of my own in my own head, Brod. So I sure ain’t going to try to figure out what’s going on in somebody else’s.’

Lucy asked: ‘Edge?’

‘If I’m right about Rose Bigheart’s thinking, I figure we ought to make out like we know what we’re doing and where we’re going.’

‘That makes sense.’ Tree took the lead in suddenly rising to his feet and moving off at a fast pace.

‘Yeah,’ Dingle said with an embittered scowl as he rubbed his belly with a splayed hand. ‘And for some reason I don’t feel so hungry when I’m on the move.’

Conners took a final look around before he came wearily upright as he said grimly: ‘It’s worrying about getting a bullet in the back that’s ruined my appetite.’

None of them saw any trace of the Comanche braves on their back trail during the rest of the long, hot, wearying afternoon. Then they made night camp beside a rock outcrop just before the sun went down and Crooked Eye appointed himself without protest to collect kindling. He also built and lit the fire they would need against the cold of the Cedar Mountains night that had to be endured without blankets to cover themselves nor hot food in their rumbling bellies.

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Because he stayed awake all last night and had been unable to catch up on lost sleep after the horses were run off from the ravine, the young Comanche was virtually comatose, curled up into a ball close to the fire as soon as he had it burning evenly. Edge volunteered to take the first watch this night and was unsurprised by how fast the others fell quickly asleep despite the crackling of the fire, the barrage of snoring and the knowledge they were surely under constant surveillance by a band of renegade Comanche.

Between tending to the fire he circled the camp, the Winchester lodged in the cook of his arm while he made and smoked an occasional cigarette rolled from a diminishing supply of the makings in his poke. Or blew into cupped hands as the cold of the high country threatened to penetrate bone deep because his sheepskin coat was lashed to his bedroll on the back of the long gone chestnut gelding. Perhaps because of the uncomfortable combination of hunger, cold and tiredness – he refused to add the ageing process to the list – his sixth sense for being under hostile surveillance gave him no signals. So he had to rely on plain and simple logic to figure that the Comanche were close by: at least one of their number detailed to keep watch on the motley group of whites and the young buck considered by his own kind to be bad medicine. It surely was a strange and dangerous situation he had gotten himself into and as his mind grew accustomed to the unobtrusive sounds made by the fire and the group of sleeping people, he applied his thoughts to how it had come about and how it could be resolved. Then he tried unsuccessfully to come up with another explanation for what was happening in the event he was wrong about Rose Bigheart using a ploy to keep them alive after three of Mountain Lion’s braves had been shot down. Which was an act of violence that should have been reason enough for the Comanche to instigate a revenge attack against more than just a single white man when five more and a woman were trapped in the ravine. But there was no other line of reasoning he could figure, even though the longer he reflected on his circumstances, the more unlikely it seemed to be.

He interrupted his brooding musings to take out and check the fob watch Dingle had loaned him and saw the time was a few minutes beyond the two-hour period the 186

group had agreed for each period of sentry duty. Then he saw with a stab of mild irritation at his lack of attention that he had circled wider than usual away from the camp. And made to move back toward the flickering, far less bright fire: scowled at the prospect of having to stoke up the flames before waking John Dingle to take over the watch while he surrendered in to the luxury of much needed sleep Then he came to an abrupt halt as a small shower of pebbles and dust tumbled and billowed down the side of a low escarpment twenty feet to his left. And he was instantly wide-awake as he swung to face the direction of the sound. His eyes narrowed against the still gently swirling dust of the minor rock fall while he concentrated his attention on the top of the bank where something – or somebody – had moved to cause the disturbance. A final pebble completed its fall down the bank and came to rest where gravity dictated. Then there was a moment of silence from the top of the escarpment before the head of a horse showed above its fifteen high crest, outlined against the star-sprinkled heavens.

The animal scraped a fore-hoof at the ground to spill a little more shale down the steep slope as Edge saw there was a white blaze on its dark muzzle. And it had on a leather bridle: that probably meant that it was not an Indian pony - or had not been until an Indian appropriated it?

‘Hey, come on back here, you half witted, ornery nag!’ a man rasped in a harsh whisper. ‘Now I got you, I ain’t gonna lose you, Goddamnit!’ He was not a young man, Edge judged from the voice that sounded from a few yards behind where the horse halted at the top of the bank, one eye glinting for a moment in the moonlight. ‘Now, you stay right where you are and don’t you dare – ‘