Killing Time In Eternity - Edge Series 4 (21 page)

He saw that the Widow Whittier’s notion store across the street was in darkness while on this side, lamps burned in back of Joel Gannon’s funeral parlour. And further on, the office building in which Arthur Colbert had been stabbed to death a few hours ago was darkened. Beyond, most of the line of large houses and at least one window that showed lamplight.

The first one, diagonally across from the corner of the schoolyard, was a single story frame building, L-shaped with the porch and door set crosswise in the angle. The front yard was enclosed by an unpainted picket fence and in the pale moonlight that came and went to the dictates of the wind driven clouds Edge saw it was mostly of dug over bare earth at this time of year. Just a few winter vegetables grew in bedraggled rows. He opened the gate, went up the hard packed dirt walk and saw dim light glimmering through a crack in the drapes hung at the window to the right of the doorway. He could smell smoke from many chimneys and also detected the appetising aromas of cooking meat that made him feel hungrier than ever as he raised a hand to knock on the door. But his fist never made contact with the timber. Just for an instant he recognised he was not alone in front of the silent, almost darkened house. Perhaps he heard a footfall on the walk 110

behind him? Or a drawn breath? The rasp of fabric on fabric as somebody moved? Or simply knew someone was nearby – in the way he had invariably been able to sense danger in the past when violence had been a way of life?

Whatever, somebody was behind him sure enough. There was time to know this, but not enough to turn to face the danger before a hand reached around his neck from the right. Another curled over his left shoulder and grasped the wrist of the first. And the right forearm became a choking bar across his windpipe as his back was jerked hard into the chest of his attacker. And for stretched seconds he was frozen by a degree of mind numbing shock that gripped him as tightly as the physical constraint of the arm lock across his throat.

He had been jumped a lot of times before: but way back then he had been younger and more agile. And able to think and react more quickly to sudden attack. Unlike now, when a kind of paralysis held him while he was dragged backwards before the man behind him thudded a knee viciously into the base of his spine. A groan of despair was trapped in his throat by the attacker’s arm as a white-hot streak of pain raced up the length of his backbone. Then he was released and he thudded down to the wet earth beside the walk. Numbness kept him helplessly inert within a world of intense pain so that he was unable to move a finger in his defence. And through the tears that the agony squeezed from his eyes he saw two shadowy forms towered over him.

One of the distorted giants drew back a leg as if to launch a vicious kick at him, but he held off for a stretched second. While the second one stooped and rolled the defenceless victim on to his side. So the booted foot took Edge in the belly with enough force to slither him across the mud of the yard as he was doubled up with more unbearable pain. His throat was suddenly no longer blocked and he was unable to check a bodywrenching groan. Before he gagged when the damaging foot thudded back down to the ground and splashed a spray of evil tasting mud into his gaping mouth. He saw blurred movement and heard far off voices. And suddenly a stab of blinding light spilled out of the house as the door was wrenched open and another man appeared, shouting angry words Edge could not comprehend. Somebody stooped low over him, dropped into a crouch and leaned forward until his kerchief-masked face was just a few inches away from Edge’s mud-splattered, pain contorted features.

‘You best get the hell back to wherever you came from, you meddlesome sonofabitch! On account of you’ve stirred up a whole mess of trouble hereabouts. And you’ll get a whole lot more of this if you don’t ride out of Eternity like I’m telling you. Ride out pretty damn quick!’

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Edge heard two more voices from further away, raised in argument. Then came a cry and he saw blurred figures moving in the light from the open doorway. Obscenities peppered the quarrel and Edge tried to do some cursing of his own at the man who now loomed high above him. But he couldn’t hear the sound of his own voice. Told the shadowy figure what he could do with his threats. And what he would suffer when they met again. Cursed at himself for his inability to function here and now. To turn the futile warning into satisfying reality.

Then he found he could move his hands and inched the right one toward the Colt in the tied down holster. But the next blow landed. He didn’t know from where: just that he was hit with sickening force on the side of the head. And abruptly there was darkness and silence. Without pain, anger or fear.

He was oblivious to this blessed ending to suffering for an incalculable period of time. Then agonising awareness returned. While he was still sprawled out in the wet darkness, unable to move and uncaring what had gone before and why. He wanted only to be unconscious again. Or dead if that was what it would take to permanently end the hurt that affected every nerve ending in his punished body. But that was a crazy thought! He had been in too many other pain-filled tight corners not to be able to handle this one. Old as he was
damnit!

He moved too fast and too far, which started pulses of sharper pain throbbing through every fibre of his body. Which acted to clear his mind of self-pity: displaced by vivid memories of the recent past.

Firstly Billy Childs, who wrote a bunch of letters to a woman and didn’t send them. Then there was something about an unknown friend of the kid who he felt able to trust with knowing of his lustful fantasies about the object of his desires.

I told someone about how I feel about you and they reckon as how it can

never be for us.

Edge felt better, even though he still had a whole catalogue of hurting places in farflung areas of his punished body. But now he had the will to recover: to struggle up out of the mire in which he had been left by the two sonsofbitches who had jumped and beat up on him. He sat up, gripped his thighs tightly with both hands while his head tipped straight forward, chin resting on his chest. And felt that if he allowed it to shift a degree to left or right, he would be toppled over in that direction.

It seemed he remained like that for a long time, planning a next move to get to his feet. To bring his knees up then pushed himself on to his haunches? Or maybe to take a chance of rolling back down, going all the way over on his belly, then his hands and knees, next up on to his haunches, finally unfold his protesting body to its full height? Or as 112

straight as he could get it without his spine and stomach silently screaming it was all too much for his aged body to take.

He slowly raised his pounding head and saw he was sitting in the cold mud some ten feet away from the open doorway that no longer spilled light out over the threshold into the front yard. Likewise the curtained window was totally blacked out now. He had been closer to the front of the house when he was jumped, so they must have dragged him away.
Which was of no damn consequence!

He attempted to get to his feet in one of the ways he had rehearsed in his mind but moved too fast and finished flat on his belly when his knees slid from under him in the sucking mud. Tried again, more cautiously, while he urged himself on in a rasping tone. Standing erect at last, he swayed, spread his feet wide apart, squeezed his eyes tightly closed and struggled to get his sense of balance under control. Then saw he was facing the wrong way, cursed and turned around slowly, feeling groggy. Needed to take three staggering paces, like a drunk, to stay upright. And would have fallen had he had not slammed heavily into the wall beside the doorway and grasped the frame awkwardly with both hands. He shook his head, which set up an insistent buzzing in his ears. Shook it again and the clamour ended. There was still pain in every part of his body, but while he remained unmoving it diminished to a series of nagging aches and dull throbs. The meagre light of the moon that was filtered through slow moving clouds reached into the house and showed to the left fuzzy outlines of a wall hung with pictures and to the right the furniture in a cluttered parlour. And something what was not a piece of furniture –

could have been a heap of rugs maybe, but he instinctively knew it was not. Warmth from a fire in the range against the rear wall engulfed Edge as he advanced across the threshold. Then crouched carefully to listen for the breathing of Colonel Walter Benson who was slumped, half curled, in the centre of the room. No sound came from him and there was no pulse to be felt at the side of the inert man’s warm neck. He straightened up from the corpse, found the lamp that had been doused, lit it with difficulty and held it above the body. Saw no knife sunk into the flesh and tipped the dead man over with a foot. There was no blood immediately visible from any kind of wound. But hunkered down again, teeth gritted against his pain, he now saw matted blood in the grey hair at the side of the old man’s head.

Footfalls sounded on the hard packed dirt of the walk between the gate and the house as two men approached cautiously. Which gave Edge time to set the lamp down on a table and draw his Colt before they came through the doorway.

‘Goddamnit, there ain’t no need for the gun!’ Ward Flynt snarled grimly. Clay Warner growled: ‘Shit, not you again!’

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‘It really is me then?’ Edge muttered as he slid the revolver back into the holster.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Warner demanded.

‘You hurt, Edge?’ Flynt sounded concerned.

Edge massaged the side of his throbbing head and the area of his belly where the most pain was centred as he answered through clenched teeth: ‘Well I gotta tell you it sure seems that right now I’m not feeling my usual self.’

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CHAPTER • 14

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THE tall and heavy Ward Flynt asked tautly: ‘Is the colonel as dead as he looks?’

‘They must’ve hit him a whole lot harder than they did me,’ Edge replied. ‘Seems like it just needed the once.’

The two men stepped into the dimly lit room, the skinny, black clad Warner still scowling while Flynt wore the expression of a man with an open mind as he said:

‘You look to be in one hell of a mess yourself, mister.’

Edge glanced down at his mud-caked clothes as the lawman crouched to confirm it was indeed the corpse of the once square shouldered, ramrod straight Walter Benson curled up totally inert on the floor of the rapidly cooling room.

‘I was bushwhacked by a couple of fellers as I got to the house.

‘Was Benson one of them?’ Warner’s attitude was suspicious rather than ironic. Flynt sneered scornfully and made a quiet sound of disgust then asked: ‘Did you see who they were, Edge?’

‘No, but I figure I maybe know them.’

‘You figure maybe? What’s that supposed to mean?’ Warner sounded exasperated. Flynt straightened up and directed a quizzical double take at Edge. ‘I’d like to be clear on that, too.’

‘It’s just that if I didn’t know them, they wouldn’t have needed to wear kerchief masks.’

Warner said: ‘So you ain’t able to tell the marshal the names of these guys who beat the shit out of you? You ain’t got any idea who they were?’

‘No,’ Edge lied. ‘And I guess I could be wrong. Maybe it was Benson who would have recognised them.’

‘In which case they didn’t plan to kill him,’ Flynt said wearily.

‘Right,’ Edge agreed, certain in his pain afflicted mind that it was Gus Brady and Lester Hardin who had jumped him. And Benson was a victim of tragic circumstances not of his own making – which Flynt should be able to work out for himself if he had the intelligence and the will to put the right questions.

‘You mind telling me what you were doing here at the colonel’s place?’ the lawman asked.

‘Looking for Sue Ellen Spencer’s house. I’m invited for supper and I don’t know where she lives.’

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Flynt sighed and shook his head ruefully, then growled sourly as he swept a hand toward the dead man: ‘I guess this has got to have something to do with all the other killings that have happened around here lately?’

Edge had been standing too long in one position and as he moved he winced when fixed muscles in his lower back were painfully unlocked. ‘I don’t figure Benson as a rival for Sue Ellen, marshal.’