Return to Massacre Mesa - Edge Series 5 (8 page)

GENTLEMEN’S GROOMING.
He guessed that in a small town like this the parlour would be no more than a basic barber shop, but cast an appraising look around as he stepped over the threshold and pinched out his cigarette.

He had run just such an establishment of his own not so long ago. But he saw this one was better furnished than his short-lived enterprise in Tucson had ever been. And that the white coated barber brushing off the shoulders of a satisfied looking elderly customer had the brand of eager to please but not subservient manner Edge had never managed to acquire.

‘Another fine job, Frank,’ the satisfied customer complimented as he surveyed the neatly trimmed back of his grey haired head while Shaw held up a hand mirror to reflect the image in a larger one fixed to the wall in front of the chair.

‘I’m real pleased to hear that, Mr Collins. So I can look forward to seeing you in my chair again in six weeks time?’

‘Sure thing, Frank.’ Collins gave Shaw some coins, took his hat off a stand and left the premises with a word of thanks for Edge who held open the door for him.

‘Now, sir: what can I do for you this fine morning?’ Shaw’s tone remained cheerful as he separated the coins by denomination and stowed them in a till drawer beside the wall mirror.

Edge hung his hat on the stand and then dropped into the chair facing the mirror as Shaw swept away the hair clippings from around his feet. ‘Just shorter and neater, feller.’

‘Certainly, sir.’ Shaw shook the nearly clean sheet of green fabric, draped it over Edge’s shoulders and immediately went skilfully to work with a comb and scissors so that hanks of hair, black mixed with strands of grey, soon began to fall to Edge’s draped shoulders and slid off to the floor. ‘Something I need to ask you, sir?’

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‘Go ahead?’ Edge looked at the reflected image of the rangy, middle aged, bright eyed and rubicund cheeked barber who was stoop shouldered from being over-height for a trade he had obviously followed for a long time.

‘Seeing as how you’re a new customer?’

‘That I am, sure enough.’

‘Need to know if you like to talk while I’m cutting your hair? Some gentlemen like to talk. Others prefer to listen to me gabble on. A few just like to sit and think.’

‘I had plenty of time to think on the ride to Lakewood.’

Shaw nodded and his broader grin that displayed buckteeth suggested he enjoyed conversation as much as the liveryman did. ‘Fine, so what’s brought you to our fine town? Are you going to – ‘

Edge broke in: ‘I’m not much of a talker at any time. But I can be a good listener when the subject interests me.’

Shaw found his bright gaze drawn to the glinting blue eyes of the man reflected in the mirror and saw something indefinable that made him feel uneasy. But his toothy smile brightened again when he heard the door open and he turned briefly to see a familiar figure enter.

‘Morning, Mr Monroe: have yourself a seat. Now, sir, is there any subject you find particularly interesting?’

‘I’m looking for someone who maybe is a customer of yours?’

‘Oh?’

Edge shifted his attention to the reflection of the newcomer who was a broadly built cavalryman or thirty or so with gnarled hands and rugged, unintelligent looking features. ‘Feller named Andrew Devlin.’

Shaw shook his head at once without any need to give thought to the name and seemed to be relieved that he did not know it. ‘No, sir, I can’t help you with that. 51

You’re the first new customer I’ve had in my chair for many a long month. And it’s not just customers I know in Lakewood. I’m familiar with a lot of men who get their hair cut by their wives or whoever.’ He laughed. ‘Quite a few that are bald and don’t have need of my services.’

‘Some of the guys get their hair cut on the post,’ Monroe said and showed a strained frown as he delved into his memory for a cavalryman named Devlin: gave the matter greater thought than had Shaw and finally shook his head. ‘Reckon I’d know him if he was – ‘

‘He’s not in the army,’ Edge said. ‘Was a lawyer a time back then came into money so maybe he changed what he does for a living. Or it could be he doesn’t do anything.’

The dull-eyed trooper thought some more, shrugged and expressed disinterest now he had exhausted the possibilities. He began to rake dirt out from under the fingernails of one hand with the thumbnail of the other.

‘So you knew this gent from elsewhere, sir?’ Shaw continued to work with dextrous speed and skill at the haircutting and every now and then gently nudged Edge’s head this way and that as necessary.

‘Yeah.’

‘Long ago?’

‘A year, give or take.’

‘So if he’s in Lakewood he wouldn’t necessarily be a stranger to town now?’

‘A few months back I heard he was making for here. Don’t reckon he’d have stayed around for long if he ever came here.’

Andrew Devlin had been an attorney in Springdale, Texas who cheated Edge out of a two thousand-dollar reward put up by one of the crooked lawyer’s clients named Nicholas Quinn. The client blew his brains out and Devlin disappeared with every dollar of liquid capital of the dead man’s fortune. Just property was left in the extensive, 52

complicated to probate estate. Eager to move on, Edge had agreed to accept one of the Quinn and Son chain of tailoring stores in lieu of cash. And with the prospect of selling the store he went to the town of Eternity, Kansas where the business was located.

There the only potential buyer wound up as dead as Nicholas Quinn. But there was a local woman who made a brief stay in Eternity pleasant enough for a time. This in the wake of a run of more of the kind of violent trouble that had started to play such a large part in Edge’s life again since his attempt to turn over a new leaf had failed. There were whispered innuendoes about Sue Ellen Spencer’s husband hunting propensities but these did not trouble Edge at first: while he began to have tantalising ideas of his own about entering into a second marriage. Considered the state of wedlock might be the key to the kind of stable, trouble free life he sought to achieve. But then this vision of marriage to a fine looking woman while he made a living out of the tailoring store or some other kind of peaceful business in the less than bustling railroad town of Eternity began to slowly change in his mind. Alter from a rose-tinted dream to something much more mundane.

Then came the morning when a drummer carrying a line of fancy tie-pins and collar studs happened by the store: and in response to Edge’s usual query to newly arrived strangers, reported that he had come across a man named Andrew Devlin at a stage line way station. This man was seen by the drummer as he took a meal break with a travelling companion while the team or horses was being changed over for the final west bound leg of a journey to a community called Lakewood in the Territory of New Mexico.

‘Hey, mister!’

Edge had only just left the barbershop and had paused for a few moments to relight the pinched out cigarette on the north-west corner of the planned intersection that was now bustling with people on foot and horseback and driving wagons and buggies. He turned to the side and saw that the trooper named Monroe had followed him out of Shaw’s establishment, his shoulders still draped with the cape and the barber’s comb 53

trapped in greasy hair at the side of his head.

‘Yeah, feller?’

‘I just thought of something. And I figure I can maybe help you with that guy you’re looking for.’

Edge removed the unlit cigarette from the side of his mouth. ‘Be much obliged if that’s so, trooper.’

‘The guy you’re looking to find has the name of Andrew Devlin? Did I hear it right?’

Passers-by who had shown brief overt interest when Monroe shouted to Edge were now going about their business. Even the intrigued Shaw had withdrawn into his parlour.

‘You heard it right.’

The uniformed man nodded enthusiastically then grunted in disgust and scowled.

‘Four months back, the Lakewood bound stage was held up a few miles out along the El Paso Trail. Ambushed by Mountain Lion and his bunch of renegade Comanche.’

His scowl became more ugly and more firmly fixed. ‘They killed the driver and one passenger and badly wounded two more. Them murdering sonsofbitches . . . We just can’t catch up with the bastards no matter how many patrols are sent out looking. I’m assigned to another one tomorrow, damnit!’

He whistled out a long breath and shrugged. ‘Well, one of the passengers that got shot up real bad but wasn’t killed is living with the squaw out along the Farm Trail, mister. I heard tell he’s real sick. The post sawbones couldn’t do nothing for him but the squaw knows a whole lot about Comanche medicine, it’s said.’

He shrugged. ‘Anyway, mister, the name of the wounded guy off the stage is Lyndon Andrews. But it could be that’s just a name he goes under? And it is kinda like the one that you . . .’ The trooper with the dull-eyed, dumb looking face abruptly appeared sorry he had got started on this. ‘Look, if the guy had good reason to switch

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names and you’re that reason and . . . Hell, I’m just trying to help. I don’t want to cause no trouble for nobody, mister?’

Edge showed an easy grin, shook his head and assured the concerned Monroe:

‘No sweat, trooper. If this Andrews turns out to be the Devlin I’m looking for, he’ll be relieved after he’s seen me.

The cavalryman’s previously worried face was suddenly wreathed by a broad smile. ‘Gee, I’m sure pleased to hear that: real pleased, mister.’

He swung happily back into the barbershop while Edge struck a match, lit his pinched out cigarette, stepped down off the sidewalk and growled through teeth gritted in what at first impression could have been a grin or a scowl: ‘Relieved of two thousand bucks.’

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CHAPTER • 6

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THERE WAS now just one old timer whiling away what was left of his life
sitting on a bench in the shade of the mid-town cedar tree. He was straggle-bearded and watery-eyed and wore a battered derby hat and a shabby once smartly styled suit. He told Edge that Farm Trail was the left fork to the side of the army post at the end of Cedar Street. It wound southward out into the hills while the right fork was the California Trail that cut due west across Dead Man’s Desert. He obviously had the same penchant for talking as Broderick Goodrich and Frank Shaw and clearly regretted he didn’t know anybody called Lyndon Andrews who lived someplace out along the trail that served a half dozen dirt farms spread among the Cedar Mountain footfalls. And the adobe of a fortune telling Comanche squaw was out there, too. Edge ambled back the way he had come from the livery, saddled up and took his chestnut gelding from the stable. Rode the entire length of the town’s only street in the hot, late morning sun. He attracted no more attention in the saddle than when he had been on foot until he came close to the timber walled army post. Here the pair of rifletoting sentries in sweat-stained and badly wrinkled uniforms who flanked the open gateway at the start to the California Trail eyed him with baleful suspicion. Which was displaced by scowling disappointment when short of the post, Edge veered to the left and so denied the disgruntled troopers a break in the achingly boring routine of guard duty.

He rode between the post to the right and to the left a small stone church that looked to be the newest building in town then on to a trail clearly marked by the sign of frequently passing horse-drawn traffic. Later the dungaree-clad, middle-aged drivers of two flatbeds that were heavily laden with bulging sacks amiably greeted him as they rolled sedately toward Lakewood. Then about a mile from town he forded a narrow trickling creek, rode a further half-mile up to the crest of a low rise and saw not far away a small adobe off to the right at the end of a short track. It was big enough to have two large or three smaller rooms. In a wire fenced pen 56

at the side was a milk cow and a hog and out back a scrawny horse was hitched to a pole by a length of rope. Squares of burlap were stretched tautly between the tops of posts to provide some shade for the animals at the hottest time of the day. There was a vegetable patch at the front of the place that looked like it was carefully tended and well used.

Ten minutes later, after he dismounted beside a dozen depleted rows of healthy looking kitchen crops to one side of the open front door of the shack, an unseen woman warned in a thickly accented voice:

‘You mind you tie up that animal of yours so he cannot trample or eat my plantings, mister.’

There was a hitching post some way off to the side of the vegetable patch and Edge did as he was instructed, using a short rein to tether the gelding. Then he turned to tip his hat to the woman who emerged from the doorway as he asked: ‘Guess the horse will be okay over there, lady?’