The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (33 page)

He spent some time attending to the horses in the stable and ensuring the house was secure against intruders. Then filled an hour or so with further quiet contemplation: this time taking his ease in the more appealing surroundings of the terrace at the front of the house with its panoramic vistas of verdant rolling countryside. He did not consciously apply his mind to anything in particular though soon found it veered in the alluring direction of Sarah Farmer. But not as an attentive listener to his summary of events concerning the murders. Instead he recalled what the attractive redhead had said about what she may have been persuaded to do had it not been for Muriel Mandrell’s poison pen letter.

Maybe, he thought wistfully, time had by now blurred the obscene images conjured up by the Mandrell woman’s twisted mind. And, spurred on by the knowledge that Edge would be leaving town shortly Sarah would perhaps be amenable to a little gentle romancing? Which could lead to something more . . . He pulled himself up short and murmured a curse.
Damnit,
he had lately been so concerned with people’s intimate relationships that were nothing like the kind he now envisaged, he had forgotten how normal men and women acted and reacted in this kind of situation. And he guessed the odds of a woman like Sarah Farmer eagerly submitting to the lustful yearnings of a man she hardly knew – and who was due to leave and she would surely never see again – would likely be longer than a million to one.
But what the
hell!
If nothing was ever attempted it was sure that nothing would ever be achieved. And as he had acknowledged while he sat in Devlin’s depressingly empty and over-heated office, much of what had happened to him during the past few days in Springdale had been triggered by impulse.

He went into the house as the slowly failing light of afternoon signalled the approach of evening, located a wooden bathtub, toted it into the kitchen and filled it with water from the pump above the sink. His flesh was still warm from sitting on the sunlit terrace and the first touch of the cool water felt icy as he lowered his naked body into the tub. Which acted to drive out from his mind all lascivious thoughts of a woman. But as his flesh adapted to the temperature while he soaped, scrubbed and rinsed himself then shaved for a second time that day, the earlier notions quickly returned to taunt him. And challenged him to achieve something worthwhile from his stay in this outwardly respectable town through which ran unexpected undercurrents of sexual deviations.

By the time he was dressed – of necessity in the clothes he wore before he took the bath – full night had taken all the heat from the Texas air and he rode without undue haste through cool moonlit darkness toward Springdale. He went by way of the shorter route along the Austin trail and because of the lay of the undulating land the lights of the town were hidden to his view until he was within a quarter mile of the community. Then as he crested a slope that swept gently down to the start of Texas Avenue he saw there were not enough lights burning in the town. And was about to instinctively rein in his mount but made a conscious effort to keep the grey gelding moving. The initial response triggered by his no longer reliable innate gift for sensing when all was not well in a seemingly deserted expanse of country or an apparently peaceful town.

Closer, the suspicion that something was amiss in Springdale was stronger. But nothing in the apparently too dark empty stillness posed an overt threat to him. Even though eerily darkened, unusually empty of movement and strangely silent this town certainly was tonight along the western stretch of its main street. Which maybe was not so odd at the end of the working day after the cotton processing plant and warehouses were shut up and the workers had gone home? But then he saw that not a soul moved on the mid-town intersection or along the sidewalks out front of the many stores at the start of Texas Avenue East. With so many buildings in darkness the subdued lights that emanated from the windows of the hotel and the law office seemed to gleam like beacons.

‘Mr Edge?’ The woman spoke the name in a surprised tone.

He looked toward a corner of a warehouse where Agnes Ivers sat hunched in a worsefor-wear buggy and tugged on the reins to angle toward him and halted. ‘Lady?’ He halted his mount alongside the rig.

‘I’ve done a bad thing. And a wicked thing, Mr Edge.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I’ve set my boy free from jail.’ Her expression and tone were both empty of emotion. ‘I thought you were leaving town for good when I saw you earlier and so – ‘

Edge concealed his own surprise. ‘There are worse crimes than a mother breaking her son out of jail, Mrs Ivers. And I figure – ‘

‘But the wicked thing is that I had to hit Mr Meeker over the head to do it. And I reckon I hit him so hard it could’ve killed the poor man!’ Her hollow cheeked face expressed horror. Edge peered impassively along the deserted main street of the unnaturally quiet town in both directions as he asked: ‘You only think you
may
have done that, Mrs Ivers?’

The emaciated old lady clawed some stringy grey hair off her face and explained in a strangled tone: ‘Well after I let Alvin out of the jail and sent him off to hide, Mr Lacy went into the law office. And then some other men, too. There was a lot of yelling and next they all come running outside and went to bring their horses. Then they rode out of town.’ She swallowed hard. ‘But not Mr Meeker: he never came out of the office and I reckon it’s because he’s lying in there dead. So they ain’t troubling to have Mr Winter come attend to him until they find my Alvin.’

‘Mrs Ivers – ‘

Her voice remained funereally low but there was a subdued shrillness to it now. ‘I tell you, Mr Edge, when they rode out them men looked to me like one of them lynch mobs you hear about. I didn’t mean for anything like this to happen. I just wanted my boy safe while it’s found out who really did kill Mrs Quinn and her little girl. But I reckon now they’ll blame Alvin for what I did to the sheriff and – ‘

‘Where is he?’

‘I told you, he’s still in . . . ‘ She shook her head vigorously. ‘Oh, I guess you mean my Alvin. He said he’d go hide out at the old mill. He reckoned he’d be safe there for awhile and

– ‘

‘Much obliged,’ Edge broke in. ‘It’s best you go on home and wait.’ He urged his horse further along the street and heard the buggy slowly move off in the opposite direction. At the intersection he glanced to left and right and saw the absence of people and sparseness of lamplight extended along River Road and First Street, too.

Out front of the law office he dismounted and hitched his reins to the rail. And now his horse was unmoving and the sounds of the trundling buggy had diminished into the dark distance he was more aware than ever of the heavy silence that gripped the night shrouded town. His own footfalls made obtrusive sounds as he stepped up on to the sidewalk and crossed the hollow boarding: peered in through the door’s glass panel and saw the lamp on Meeker’s desk was lit with the wick turned low. But it spread sufficient light for him to see that the office was empty. The door was not locked and it swung smoothly open on well oiled hinges to allow him into the building where the enclosed silence seemed more potent with ominous meaning than that which pervaded the entire town outside.

Then he heard a sharp intake of breath from out back in the jailhouse section beyond the arched doorway that was fully open. As he advanced on the source of the sound he picked up the lamp from the desk and held it aloft.

‘What’s wrong, Max? You have second thoughts? Decided you don’t have the stomach for it after all?’

Edge recognised Meeker’s sour toned voice before he moved far enough forward for the lamplight to spill through the doorway and reach into the single small cell in a corner. Where the overweight, shabbily suited Springdale sheriff sat on the side of the cot, his broad back stooped, elbows on his knees, three chins resting in his cupped hands: the posture as dejected as his tone of voice.

‘Is there something about your deputy I should know of, feller?’ Edge asked evenly. Edge turned up the wick and held the lamp high to the side to show himself and shed greater lighter into the room as Meeker straightened and swung his head, a relieved expression on his face.

‘Sonofabitch, Edge! They said you’d taken off out of town. Everyone figured that like the rest of us you’d decided Devlin had run out with the Quinn cash and you’d thrown in your hand?’

Edge set the lamp down on a table alongside a sink and looked around the undecorated, almost bare of furnishings room. ‘Where’s the key to open the cell door, feller?’

Meeker expressed dejection as he gently moved the fingertips of one hand in the grey and black hair at the back of his head. ‘I guess Max took it with him after the bastard locked me in here.’

‘Just the one key?’

‘Never had need of any more. It always used to hang there.’ He pointed to a section of stone wall that was blank except for a rusted hook from which nothing hung tonight. Edge pursed his lips and went to look more closely at the cell door. And found that in a generally law-abiding town like Springdale jail security was not of the highest order. There was just a simple padlock hooked through a pair of brackets, one fixed to the frame and the other to the end of a sliding strip of metal. The padlock hung open and a moment later so did the door.

Meeker rose unsteadily to his feet and came away from the cot as he said in a tone that was half a snarl and half elated: ‘Well, sonofabitch!’ I just knew Max’s heart wasn’t entirely in this craziness.’

‘What craziness is that?’ Edge went back into the office.

Meeker carried the lamp as he followed and replied with anger in his tone, sounding and looking like a man mad enough to kill somebody: ‘It’s a lynch mob seems to me, Edge! Got together after the Ivers kid was busted out of jail: by his ma, would you believe?’

Edge said: ‘The old lady just told me what happened. She thought she’d killed you.’

‘You saw that crazy Ivers woman?’ Meeker demanded. ‘Where? When?’

‘She was heading along Texas Avenue in a beat up old buggy the last I saw of – ‘

‘I’ll get around to that sneaky old biddy later, damnit!’ The disgruntled Meeker dropped heavily into the chair behind the desk and jerked open a bottom drawer then looked up with a sullen glower. ‘She suckered me, damnit! While Max was home having his supper she brought in some food for her boy and a plate of grub for me. Then while I was tucking in she came around behind the chair and whacked me over the head with something real hard. I came to with Max shaking me and there was a bunch of yelling men crowded in the doorway there. It seems somebody saw the Ivers kid running hell for leather out of town and the news spread real fast.’

The truculent Meeker took a rolled up gunbelt out of the drawer, drew a Colt from the holster and spun the cylinder to check there was a bullet in every chamber. Stood up and buckled the belt around his bulging waist beneath the suit jacket as he reiterated grimly:

‘Yeah, I’ll take care of my business with Agnes Ivers later. First thing I got to do is try to stop a lynching.’

‘How did the lynch talk get started?’

‘I don’t rightly know who set the ball rolling.’ Meeker moved to a corner of the room, snatched up a Winchester from where it leaned into the angle of the walls and checked that it was also fully loaded. ‘Doc Sullivan came to the office to look at my dented skull. He said it was best I stay in town and rest awhile instead of heading up a posse. And I would’ve agreed to doing that if Max Lacy hadn’t gone along with the opinions some of the men were muttering about.’ He gingerly eased on his hat and winced. ‘Saying it’d be better for all concerned if they shot Alvin Ivers on sight. So he’d never get another chance to go on the run and force his way with another woman then kill her.’

‘Sounds ugly,’ Edge said.

The lawman responded grimly: ‘It was that all right, I can tell you. And when I tried to use my authority as the sheriff guns were pulled on me. And Max locked me in the cell. Well, I thought that’s what he done, damnit!’ He went to the door, paused with his hand on the knob and growled: ‘Suckered for the second time in one night! But then maybe it not being locked on me means Max was only pretending to go along with what the lynch mob were thinking. Maybe he had it in mind from the start to act like the right and proper deputy sheriff he’s supposed to be.’ He stepped out of the office and drew in a deep breath. Edge followed him outside and watched him survey the four dark and silent streets that ran off the intersection. ‘Kind of quiet, uh?’

Meeker growled: ‘Hell, if I didn’t know better it’d look like everyone in Springdale took off after the Ivers kid.’

‘How many men did ride with Lacy?’

The sheriff gave a slight shrug. ‘There were ten or maybe even a dozen came to the office to see that the ruckus was about. But it seemed to me I heard only six or seven ride out. Rest of them must be lying low with every other able bodied man in town. Pretending nothing’s wrong so they can say they had nothing to do with anything bad that happens.’ He double checked the load in the rifle and continued in the same embittered tone: ‘Like they’ll all say they didn’t hear me hollering blue murder for somebody to come let me out of the cell after Lacy and the others left town.’

He sloped the rifle to his shoulder, stepped down from the sidewalk and started to amble across the intersection. Raised his voice and swung his head from side to side, shouting to be heard by anyone within earshot who cared to listen to his challenge. ‘I know you people can hear me now for sure! Same as you did before. But it’s fine with me if all you men stay right there safe in your homes! This ain’t nobody’s trouble but those that are sworn to uphold the law! Because that’s what they get paid for! And because they like to sleep nights!’