The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (26 page)

Then he was vaguely troubled as he reasoned there was an obvious ulterior notice behind her trust in and kindness toward him. For it was plain Emily Jonas was trying to bribe him into helping John McCall with the unfinished business of Dalton Springs. But he frowned for just a few moments, then grinned at the artful guile of her ploy. Drank his coffee fast then hunted for the pencil she had used to write her note and added a message of his own beneath:

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Much obliged for the coffee but I’ll pass on the breakfast, Miss Jonas. I have some
business to do that’s best done on an empty stomach.

He placed a dollar bill under the note on the unused plate, washed his cup and left it upside down to drain and dry in the sink. Collected the carpetbag from his room and stepped out of the empty house on to the deserted street.

The tolling of the funeral knell had ended and in the silence clamped over the town this bright, fast warming morning he could hear the voice of the preacher as he conducted the graveside service. But he made no effort to discern the actual words spoken as he moved closer to the cemetery, heading for the stage line depot. There he checked the schedule posted on the wall beside the closed double doors and learned a stage was due to reach town at ten this morning and start the return run north at noon.

Through the glass panel of one of the depot’s doors he could see a wall clock that showed the time was just after nine. So he had a wait of almost three hours in prospect. But with a few exceptions in the recent past, he had always been a patient man. He sat down on the bench under where the timetable was posted, took off his jacket and tipped his hat forward to keep the glaring light out of his eyes as the sun moved up the cloudless sky above Ephraim Rider’s livery immediately across the street. Rolled and lit a cigarette.

Unobtrusive animal sounds in the stable reminded him of the promise he had made to himself about acquiring a horse. And the morose tones of the preacher performing the interment service caused him to recall the vow he made to kill anyone who attempted to steal it.

But he had spent a great deal of time in the saddle lately. And since a Tucson-bound stage was due today, for the present the meagre comforts of a Concord coach held a greater appeal than the back of a horse.

The mass funeral was not a protracted affair for after the preacher was through there were no eulogies. Just the off-key singing of two verses of
We’ll All Gather At The River
before the exodus from the cemetery commenced: the black garbed mourners no longer in procession as they trickled out on to the street.

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They were in small groups or pairs, talking in low tones with mournful expressions to match their drab clothing. It was certain that everyone who moved by Edge was aware of him seated out front of the stage line depot. But few showed any interest and most of those who did spared him little more than a passing glance that fell far short of a greeting. Until Emily Jonas, in the company of three other elderly women, looked at him long and hard with an accusing frown. And for a few moments she seemed on the point of breaking away from the group to approach him, but thought better of it. She clearly considered him a lost cause in terms of what she had asked of him last night and this put him beyond the pall. And from the backward glances her companions directed at him after they had gone by it was obvious Miss Jonas was expressing an unflattering opinion of him.

John McCall and Bart Bannerman were among the last mourners to leave the cemetery, a couple of minutes behind the clerically garbed young preacher and ahead only of Jake Slocum and the men who could still be heard helping the undertaker to refill the graves.

Both the sheriff and the saloonkeeper, who today wore a deputy’s badge on his jacket lapel, eyed Edge with much the same kind of reproach as Emily Jonas and her
confidantes.
Close to the seated man, Bannerman advised:

‘You could be in for a longer wait than you expect, Mr Edge.’

‘Why’s that, feller?’

‘About the only thing that’s usually right in the company’s printed schedule is the day the stage rolls into Dalton Springs, turns around and rolls out again. Once it was early, a couple of times it was on the button. Mostly it’s late.’

‘Damn late,’ McCall added sourly and finished lighting a cigar. Edge shrugged. ‘I don’t have any pressing business where I’m going. Reckon I can wait as long as it takes.’

‘You could ride with John and me,’ Bannerman suggested.

‘Just the two of you now?’

McCall growled: ‘There’s been plenty of volunteers. All the men who rode out with me the first time. And some others.’

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‘Lots of folks had money in the bank,’ Bannerman said.

McCall glowered at the saloonkeeper and waved a hand to dismiss this as a motive for the for the willingness of men to join a posse. ‘Shannon being the kind of grudgecarrying sonofabitch he is, he wouldn’t give anyone a second chance. I’m not ready to let any man risk his life if he doesn’t have a duty to do it. I’m the sheriff.’

‘And I’m the mayor!’ the big man added morosely.

Edge shrugged. ‘I’m a passing through stranger with a different axe to grind in a town a long way from Dalton Springs.

McCall asked: ‘What about when your business in Tucson’s over and done with?

‘Uh?’

‘You don’t have a job. And the money Kitty Raine paid you for work you didn’t do won’t last forever.’

Edge tossed away the cigarette butt and said: ‘No sweat, feller. Something’ll turn up,’

‘I’ve got Fred Drayton’s wagon and team impounded here in Dalton Springs. I reckon the pay of a deputy for as long as it takes for the three of us to bring in Luke Shannon ought to be enough to buy them off the county. And you’d still have the cash stake you’ve got now to – ‘

‘How many days you figure, feller?’

‘As many as it takes.’

Edge smiled bleakly. ‘So it could turn out to be a real expensive wagon and team?’

‘We can come to some kind of arrangement, I reckon.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘How long?’

‘Long as it takes. Maybe until the stage gets here.’

McCall shook his head. ‘Even if it’s on time today, we’ll be long gone by then.’

‘Especially if it’s as late as it usually is,’ Bannerman added ruefully. 169

Wagons were heard to move in the cemetery and the men out front of the stage depot watched the now unladen flatbeds emerge on to the street, the dark clothing of Slocum and his three grave digging helpers up on the seat streaked with dust, their dour faces run with sweat from the arduous chore they had just completed.

‘I’ll let you know,’ Edge said.

‘Hell, we plan on leaving in a – ‘

McCall scowled at the anxious Bannerman, snatched the cigar from between his teeth to spit to the side and directed what remained of the scowl at Edge. ‘Leave it, Bart. We’re not going to beg for help from the gun slinging likes of him.’

He half turned to start down the street toward his office. Then thrust the cigar back in his mouth and spun around to face Edge. His hand dropped to the holstered Colt on his right hip and he drew, cocked and levelled the revolver at Edge’s belly. The wagons halted abruptly, the men aboard as mute as the horses in the traces. Edge had started to groan when he recognised the first sign of what was about to happen. Then closed his eyes to concentrate on steeling himself against reacting in kind to the clumsy draw against him. Only opened them when he heard the hammer thumbed back and the sharp intakes of breath by the shocked saloonkeeper and the men on the wagons.

‘You’re under arrest, mister!’ McCall rasped tautly,

Bannerman started to warn: ‘John, you can’t do – ‘

McCall broke in: ‘Get that sixgun off him, Bart.’

Edge groaned again, rose slowly up from the bench and turned: thrust his right hip forward so the nervous Bannerman could reach out at arm’s length to ease the Colt from the holster.

‘You mind telling me what I’m being arrested for, feller?’

‘Murder of Sam Kress.’

Bannerman began to protest again: ‘But that wasn’t the kind of shooting that – ‘

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McCall interrupted him again. ‘I wasn’t here at the time it happened. So I got to hold him for the killing until I get some time to do the necessary investigating. Okay, Edge, you know the way to the jailhouse.’

Edge nodded, smiled mirthlessly, raised a hand to explore with fingertips the area where Bannerman had crashed a shotgun against his temple several days ago and rasped softly: ‘Seems like some memories get deeply impressed into a man’s brain.’

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CHAPTER • 20

_________________________________________________________________________

AS THE trio of men rode out of Dalton Springs a half hour after one of them had
arrested a second against the advice of the third they had a widely scattered audience. Some people watched overtly from the street, the sidewalks and house porches but most followed their progress surreptitiously from the shadowed interiors of buildings. There was no reason to suppose that those who were unseen surveyed the slowly departing riders with any different brand of bleak eyed apathy than those who showed their unanimated faces. And there was about the town in the dazzling brightness of the midmorning sunlight an atmosphere not dissimilar to that which had gripped it while the mass funeral was taking place.

As they moved out of town and on to the north trail, passing the cemetery featured with so many fresh graves, Bannerman rasped between gritted teeth:

‘It’s like they figure the only difference between us and those poor bastards under the new turned dirt is that we’re still breathing . . . for awhile. McCall growled: ‘Quit talking so morbid, Bart. The guys we just buried were foolhardy amateurs. And we’ve got a top professional shootist with yes, I reckon. And the way I see it, you and me . . . well, we got our duty to perform.’

He had stared fixedly ahead while he responded to the gloomy saloonkeeper and now turned his head to peer expectantly at Edge who rode in impassive silence between him and Bannerman.

Edge said: ‘I told you at one of those night camps we shared with the Federales, feller. The only time I hired on to kill, I was in uniform and the Union army picked up the tab.’

For awhile there was no more talk and in the stillness disturbed only by the sounds made by the moving horses as the morning few hotter, Edge reflected upon what happened after McCall arrested him and took him at gunpoint to the familiar law office and jailhouse. When he was certain he knew what McCall had in mind and considered the options that were open to him.

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Firstly pick the right moment to get the drop on this small town lawman who had too much on his mind to be able to think straight and act fast? And who could expect little help from the town’s full time saloonkeeper and mayor and now a reluctant part time deputy. But he quickly rejected this plan: for if he got the upper hand without killing anybody, he then had to get out of Dalton Springs – where the townspeople had already shown themselves ready to stand up and fight even when the odds were stacked heavily against them.

And if he was able to run the gauntlet of every Ephraim Rider, Jake Slocum and Billy Williams ready to take a shot at him, he would again be a fugitive: which he certainly had no wish to be.

Alternatively he could have submitted to being locked up behind bars again. Left to kick his heels in the jailhouse for as long as it took McCall and Bannerman to find Shannon and return to Dalton Springs. Or get themselves killed in the attempt. Which would mean a new peace officer would have to close the matter of the wrongly arrested prisoner. And bearing in mind the high regard with which the townspeople viewed their present sheriff, a newly elected local man was not likely to make life easy for Edge: if only from a sense of outrage he had not ridden with McCall and Bannerman and maybe prevented them from getting killed.

So only the third option remained – the one McCall had counted on him accepting. And the sheriff made an overture the moment they were all in the office, the door closed behind them on an intrigued town: ‘I reckon you know why I’ve done this, mister?’

Edge had not been about to make it easy for the troubled lawman. ‘I know if you fellers weren’t wearing badges I reckon this would be a crime called abduction.’

Bannerman only then realised the purpose of the charade and rasped a curse. The sheriff shrugged. ‘Whichever way you want to look at it, Edge. The deal is that if you co-operate you’ll be free and clear of all charges related to anything that’s happened in this town.’