The Deputy - Edge Series 2 (31 page)

‘You want to tell me, feller?’

Torrejon nodded eagerly. ‘Sheriff Straker and the men with him have gone back to where they came from,
Senor
Edge.’ He waved a hand toward the north. ‘They have all returned to the town of Bishopsburg.’

He was uncomfortable, maybe because he was lying or scared or simply because he was too warm in his shabby and long unlaundered uniform: perhaps all of this.

‘The message is that you are to follow them if you want to resume the duties of a deputy. After you have recovered from your injury. As soon as you feel able to make such an arduous journey.’

‘Ted Straker said that?’

‘Si, senor.
He gave me this message to pass to you.’

‘When did he do that?’

‘Late in the night,’

‘I figure there has to be more to it than that, feller.’

‘Senor?’
The short and skinny man was smoking the cigar too quickly while his darting eyes looked everywhere but into the heavily bristled, impassively set face of the taller and more broadly built Edge.

‘They didn’t just pull out of here for no good reason?’

‘Ah,
si.’
Torrejon inhaled deeply from the cigar and let the smoke out nosily. ‘The Indian came back and he talked with the sheriff.’

‘Indian?’ Edge was sure this could be only one man.

‘
Si, senor.
An Indian, although I do not think he is a full-blooded Navajo.’

Edge instantly had a vivid image of the mixed breed he last saw scurrying down Main Street in Bishopsburg, a bottle of rye tightly clutched inside his shirt. And checked his 176

mind from racing beyond this point while he rasped the back of thumbnail across his right cheek. ‘That would have been a feller with a scar, from here to here?’

Torrejon bobbed his head and fixed a smile on his sweat run face.
‘Si, senor.
He is known as Billy and it is plain you know of him?’

Edge’s mind filled with another image - of the mixed breed riding his bay gelding. And reminded the Federale: ‘You said Billy Injun came back – so he was here before?’

The now more at ease man nodded vigorously. ‘He came to San Luis the first time during the fiesta. While there was much happiness with lots of drinking of pulque and tequila.’

‘He’d have liked that,’ Edge said caustically and tossed away his cigarette butt.

‘Si,
you clearly know him well. He got very drunk and attempted to pick fights with many men. So it was necessary to lock him in a cell at the post here.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘He slept and caused no more trouble. Then in the morning when he woke up he did not want to fight any more. I set him free and he left San Luis. Before everyone went to church for the service to end the fiesta. Before you and the other
hombres
from Texas came.’

‘Billy Injun.’ Edge murmured aloud the thought and shook his head reflectively.

‘That is the one,
Senor
Edge. People at the Fiesta of San Luis were joyful - happy and generous. It is the same each year. Everyone liked everybody else. The Indian was supplied with many free drinks. But after he became so very drunk . . . ‘ Torrejon grimaced and shrugged. ‘People refused to share with him any more. And then he was no longer friendly. He just wanted to pick fights for no reason.’

‘I heard he ain’t the most popular feller in Bishopsburg when he’s liquored up. You never made mention of Billy Injun when we asked questions yesterday. Nobody around here did.’ Even as he made the criticism Edge guessed the kind of response it would draw.

‘You asked only about Jose Martinez and those who helped him to escape, did you not,
senor?’

‘Billy Injun comes from Bishopsburg, so it seems to me a lawman like you ought to have – ‘

‘Por favor,
he never said where he came from,’ Torrejon cut in quickly, an expression of unabashed innocence on his angular featured face. ‘And I did not ask. Nor anyone else, I think. An Indian . . . A drunken Indian?'

He spread his hands to the sides and shrugged his skinny shoulders. Edge gently massaged his aching right arm and asked: ‘Tell me about Billy coming back to San Luis last night?’

177

‘I know only what I was told,
Senor
Edge.’

‘You what?’

Edge’s glinting eyed fixed stare at the uniformed man severely undermined the Federale’s recently established confidence. He tossed aside his smoked out cigar and fumbled another from his tunic pocket, toyed with it in both hands for several moments then met and held Edge’s demanding gaze.

‘I was asleep in my house with my wife.’ He spoke rapidly. ‘After the long night of the fiesta followed by a day of much worry after you and your
compadres
came to San Luis I was very tired. You understand how this can be?’

‘We all get tired, feller,’ Edge allowed pointedly.

Torrejon sighed. ‘
Si,
okay. I will try to be brief. Last night I think I could have slept through an earthquake if there had been one. But I woke when the Bishopsburg sheriff came to my house. To tell me the Indian had returned. Like you, the sheriff was very angry that nobody spoke of this man, but I – ‘

‘Yeah, that would figure,’ Edge cut in. ‘So, what did Billy say that sent the posse high-tailing it back to Bishopsburg?’

Torrejon fixed the look of wide-eyed innocence on his features again. Gave another shrug accompanied by the same splayed hands, palms up gesture as before. ‘I was not told this,
senor.
Which I do not like. I resent it because I think it means I am not to be trusted with the information. It seemed to me that the sheriff told me only what he had to out of courtesy – as one peace officer to another – that his business in my jurisdiction was completed.’

‘You said Straker made mention of me?’

‘
Si, Senor
Edge. Sheriff Straker came to my house to see me while the others were at the Jurez livery preparing their horses to leave. And after he told me they were leaving he gave me the message which I have told you.’

‘You sure that’s all Straker said?’

Torrejon’s tone became apologetic. ‘Well, he did say that he did not want the posse to be slowed down by an injured man. He said he was sure you would understand this. You looked to be in really bad shape after the attack on you last night.’ Just a shrug now, before he lit the cigar at last and said on a stream of smoke: ‘I cannot think there is anything else I am able to tell you.’

‘Maybe one more thing?’

He scratched the side of his head. ‘I don’t think I have forgotten anything.’

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‘When Billy Injun showed up in San Luis, left and then came back again, was he on a horse?’

Torrejon was puzzled. ‘This I do not know. I did not see him arrive the first time –

during so much activity at the fiesta. And after I released him I do not know where he went or how he got there.’

‘And last night?’

‘I did not see him at all. While I was sleeping at home he went to the cantina to speak with your
compadres.
If he did put a horse in the livery stable, the lady you were with last night would know of this?’

‘Much obliged,’ Edge said and made to turn away. But checked the move and raked his gaze over the blank façades of the silent buildings surrounding the plaza. ‘Where the hell is everybody this morning?’

The Federale was solemn faced when he replied: ‘They are afraid,
senor.’

‘What of?’

‘They fear that if Eduardo Martinez suspects any of them gave information to the lawmen from Bishopsburg that he will make all in San Luis suffer for it. So they stay inside and they worry and they pray.’

While he absently ran the hand of his uninjured arm over the pained area of the other one Edge made a second careful survey of his surroundings but learned nothing from it. Registered no more than a heightened awareness of being watched. With malevolence maybe, but still there was no sixth sense warning to signal an unseen threat. Torrejon went on: ‘They pray,
senor:
pray that this business will soon end. And that it will be over without them getting involved. But they are in truth innocent of involvement. Except as unwilling bystanders, is that not so?’

While he listened to the doleful Federale Edge thought about asking the man if there had been any other strangers – or unusual incidents – in San Luis recently, which he had failed to mention because the direct questions had not been put. And there was the unresolved matter of the two men with newly scarred faces who would not be able to merge innocently into the background of such a small community as this. But, Edge figured, since he had marked the pair of bushwhackers so badly, that ought to be vengeance enough for him. And right now the unfinished business at the Jurez house along with that which had started north of the border in Bishopsburg was more pressing. He said as he tipped his hat:
‘Haste la vista, Sergeante Torrejon.’

‘You will perhaps be kind enough to do me a favour,
Senor
Edge?’ The tentative Federale chewed his lower lip.

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‘I’m not much for making promises unless I know for sure there’s a good chance I can keep them, feller.’

‘
Si.
I understand this. And to me that means you are an honourable man. All I ask is that should you be in a position to do so, you will tell Eduardo Martinez that nobody in San Luis said anything to help you re-capture his only son?’

‘Mostly I tell the truth,’ Edge answered and moved off across the plaza, glanced up at the bird limed statue of the grim looking figure in military uniform and murmured out of the corner of his mouth: ‘I figure if you could talk you’d have a tale to tell, uh feller? But being where you are I ain’t so sure it would be the truth.’

He re-entered the livery, saddled his horse and rode at an easy pace to the Jurez house at the end of the track outside of town. Where the small adobe looked to be deserted and was as quiet as the buildings around the plaza in the village as the sun rose high enough to start the daily process of baking everything beneath its inexorable course across the cloudless sky.

After he closed the rear door of the house behind him he called: ‘It’s Edge.’

When he heard only silence coming down the hallway he raised his voice: ‘Rosita?

Senor
Jurez?’

Now he heard subdued sobbing and recognised it was a woman who wept. But the sound did not come from Rosita’s bedroom immediately to his right as he moved further into the house. Her door was wide open so he could see into the empty room where the covers had been dragged off the bed on to the floor and the chair where her father had sat was overturned, like she had rushed in alarm from the room. Gone to her father’s room from where the sobbing came. He lengthened his stride and three feet from this open doorway dropped a hand to drape the walnut butt of his holstered Colt. Grimaced as the ache in his arm exploded with searing heat from the sudden move.

He briefly recalled the eerie stillness of the outwardly empty town and the uncorroborated explanation for this offered by Torrejon. Thought that maybe it was all a ruse of which this was the deadly climax. But by now it was too late. For if men with lethal intent were waiting for him to be lured into a trap by the histrionic sobs of a woman he was already securely ensnared in it.

He reached the threshold of the room, looked inside and allowed the hand of his pained arm to fall away from the revolver butt. For now he could clearly see that the weeping of the woman was a genuine outlet for her grief as she knelt on the floor beside 180

the chair facing the window where the dying old man had been seated when Edge was last here.

‘Rosita?’

She wrenched up her head and snatched her hands away from the chair. For stretched seconds peered across the room at Edge like she failed to recognise him: saw him as a menacing stranger. Then her glistening with moisture dark eyes showed she registered who he was and she vented a final sob. Much louder than the others, as if the sound was composed of all those which had been trapped within her during the tense moments of terror between becoming aware of his presence and the blessed realisation he was a man who meant her no harm.

‘Edge.’ The name was whispered harshly between trembling lips from out of a constricted throat. ‘Edge, my father is dead.’

His initial reaction was of irritation as he watched the woman scramble awkwardly to her feet. Because the death of Jurez meant the old man could not provide the information he needed to hear: to match up with what the Federale had told him. But this uncharitably cold emotion lasted for just a moment before he experienced genuine sympathy for Rosita in her loss. He took a pace toward her and attempted to offer the distraught woman some kind of consolation.

‘Well, I guess it wasn’t unexpected. So I reckon – ‘

She shook her head, her long dark hair swinging violently out to either side of her disease scarred face. ‘No, you don’t understand. They have killed him.’

She extended her hands toward Edge, palms uppermost, to display the dull coloured congealed blood on them. And he advanced further into the room as she stepped aside, away from the chair, so he was able to get between it and her and look down at the corpse. He saw first the wooden handle of the knife that had been plunged deep into the centre of Jurez’s belly, then that the man’s head was tilted on to his right shoulder, the mouth sagging open, the sightless eyes unnaturally wide and totally expressionless. His slight form looked even more emaciated in death than when he had been living. Edge did not take the time to search for a pulse because there was absolutely no doubt that the sick old man had suffered a more premature death than he had been expecting: and that it had happened more than a few minutes ago. As he turned from the corpse, Rosita confirmed in a monotone: