Killing Time In Eternity - Edge Series 4 (27 page)

and I’ve still got some painful memories of what happened the first time. When I was on my own.’

She grinned her gratitude for the reassurance his gratitude gave her and after a reflective pause asked: ‘And you still don’t have any idea of what all this is about?’

‘It’s too serious for games, Sue Ellen. And the way I see it, making guesses would be a kind of time wasting guessing game right now. No, I don’t have any idea.’

‘But I hope you’ve figured out that you’re in more danger than ever after what’s happened?’

He shrugged. ‘Brady and the rest of them ought to be thinking the same about themselves.’

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‘So what are you going to do about it? Will you tell Ward Flynt what happened out here tonight?’

Edge took out the makings. ‘Maybe, maybe not.’

She shook her head and sighed deeply. ‘The marshal’s either dumb or lazy. Or perhaps he’s both. Or it could be he’s real smart in one way, Edge. Staying back from all this killing and letting you take all the risks. Happy for you to do the hard and dangerous work while he hangs around reliving the old days with that awful Clay Warner individual.’

‘I’ve thought about Flynt in that way,’ Edge answered as they reached the turnpike and swung on to it in the direction of town. He finished rolling the cigarette, hung it at the side of his mouth and lit it with a match struck on the butt of his holstered Colt.

‘And?’ she prompted.

‘Whether he or anyone else in Eternity is dumb or smart or lazy or full of vim, the way things are shaping, I’m not about to trust anyone in that town.’ He flicked the dead match over his mount’s head in the direction of Eternity somewhere in the dark distance. She said: ‘You aren’t really a very trusting man, are you, Edge? Although the marshal may not be smart or over fond of work, I think that he’s basically trustworthy.’

He said earnestly: ‘So far there’s only one person around here who’s done anything to show I can trust her, Sue Ellen.’

She answered in a rush: ‘Well, I suppose I can understand why you say that. But you can’t mistrust everyone in an entire town. Most of the people there have never had the chance to prove they can be – ‘

‘I’ll tell you something.’ He peered impassively ahead. ‘For a lot of years I never trusted anyone in the entire world until he – or sometimes she – proved they merited it.’

‘That must have made for a very lonely life,’ she murmured in a melancholy tone. He replied evenly on a stream of expelled tobacco smoke: ‘That never concerned me over much, lady. Mostly I’ve just aimed for it to be a long one.’

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CHAPTER • 18

_________________________________________________________________________

THE WIND gained in strength and began to buffet them with powerful gusts as
they neared the darkened town, their coat collars turned up and their hats secured firmly with chin ties. Talk without shouting was impossible.

A half-mile short of the plank bridge at the top end of Main Street that looked to be as deserted as the turnpike, Edge signalled his intention to Sue Ellen and they swung off to the side. Then they forded the Eternity River in a stand of timber to the south of town and dismounted. Led their horses by the bridles to the rear of the house where she lived, which was in the middle of the row directly opposite the church. By then Edge had become aware that she had started to experience a delayed reaction to her part in what happened at the derelict canning plant. So he was not surprised when she admitted to feeling as exhausted as she looked and offered no challenge to his claim that he could take care of himself for awhile in this dangerous town. She surrendered the reins of Wyatt Ramsay’s gelding to him and accepted his promise to come see her as soon as he could.

Then as furtively as he and Sue Ellen had re-entered town, he back tracked to the stand of timber with the horses, hitched them there and headed for the work yard behind Troy Shaver’s house on the California Trail. The sound of the wind gusting through the trees then whining in his ears as he moved across open ground masked the rumblings in his stomach as it protested its long term emptiness.

He came up to the yard at the rear fence, went along the side of the property and then to the gates at the front with his hand draped constantly over the walnut butt of the holstered Colt. Because he knew it was unlikely the crack on Brady’s skull had caused him to lose his memory of how he had seen and recognised the intruder. Although Brady’s injury had probably taken him out of the reckoning for longer than he was unconscious he would certainly have told Shaver and Hardin of Edge being at the old cannery. But would they expect him to show up where he was now?

Despite the loose hasp, the gates were firmly padlocked so Edge needed to undertake the painful process of climbing them and lowering himself inside the cluttered yard. There he waited, unmoving for stretched seconds until his eyes became accustomed to the many areas of shadow and sometimes near total darkness whenever the strong wind pushed thickening cloud across the moon.

Eventually his night vision became sharp enough for him to clearly make out the restored carriage under the tarpaulin canopy, the two ill cared for shacks, the scattered 145

heaps of discarded building materials and the broken down flatbed wagon. And then he was able to weave his way safely among the obstacles to the door of the larger shack, locate the handle and discover with grimacing irritation but no surprise that it would not turn. But it was easy enough to find a discarded length of heavy timber then to time the smashing of the window at the side of the building to coincide with one of the louder gusts of wind.

He guessed that the windows of a tradesman in the building repair business would get far less attention than those of the customers he was paid to fix. And he did not attempt to open this one: simply knocked out the remaining jagged shards of glass from the rotting frame and climbed gingerly inside. He struck a match and needed to shield its frail flame from the draughts as he held it high while he peered around: refreshing his recollections about the layout of the interior of the shack and the positions of its fixtures and fittings.

This mapped in his mind, he made a thorough search of Troy Shaver’s workshop, striking other matches from time to time as he slid open drawers and swung closet doors wide: hunting for something that would provide concrete evidence of murder. And just as in Billy Childs bedroom earlier today, he had no idea what precisely he hoped to find. It was some thirty minutes before he was ready to admit defeat: having looked into every nook and cranny and found nothing that did not legitimately belong in this disordered place. From where a craftsman ran his business as a builder, carpenter and painter and occupied his spare time renovating old carriages and providing scenery for the local theatre. The papers he came across were mostly bills and receipts for paid work Shaver had been employed to do in the business premises or homes of Eternity or volunteered to provide to the Washington Memorial Theatre. And there was also a set of detailed original plans for an eighteenth century English phaeton coach.

Edge sat down at the desk and brooded on his failure for awhile. Smoked a cigarette and acknowledged there had never been more than a scant chance of success doing things this way. The same as if he had ridden out to the Colbert spread and broken into the big house to search it from top to bottom.

Because it was obvious that the kind of people conspiring in the brand of lawbreaking that included murder as an acceptable side issue were not likely to leave evidence of their guilt in any easy to find place. Billy Childs’ letters addressed but not sent to a woman named Elizabeth . . ? Hell, they were proof of nothing beyond the undisputed fact that ever since it all got started in the Garden of Eden, man was constantly at risk of making a fool of himself over woman.

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Edge finished rolling a new cigarette and grimaced as he dug out a match to light it. For sure there was no chance of success doing things this way. Which wasn’t his way,
damnit
! He was not some sharp witted, deep thinking detective with an instinct for how the pieces of a puzzle interlocked one into another. His way was to follow a hunch, corner the quarry and, if it was necessary, terrify or beat the truth out of whoever he suspected was concealing it.

He heard footfalls advancing along the track from the trail before the sound was abruptly cut off by a gust of wind. And he set down the match and unlit cigarette. Briefly thought about going to the broken window and climbing through it so he would not to be trapped within the confines of the cramped building. But then it was too late for him to do that. The wind died down while he crossed the shack and in the lull he heard one of the gates creak open. Then he reached the unbroken and grime smeared window beside the door and was in time to see a man step in through the gateway. The gate closed and the newcomer’s silhouette became merged with the shadows: but not before Edge had registered the man’s tall and broad build and decided he was either Hardin or Brady. Because it was not likely anybody else of similar stature would have a key to the padlock on these gates.

The wind became suddenly noisily strong again and hurled rattling raindrops at the dirty window as the yard’s second visitor moved confidently among the detritus that littered the ground. And Edge felt a satisfied grin spread spontaneously across his face when he saw the top of the newcomer’s blond-haired head was swathed in a bandage. His mirthless grin stayed firmly in place as he moved back across the shack, having seen Brady begin to sort through a bunch of keys. He had the Colt drawn and levelled when he heard a key rattle in the lock, along with the sound of the laboured breathing of the man. Then the door swung open.

Edge thumbed back the Colt’s hammer.

The powerfully built Gus Brady rasped: ‘Shit, not you again!’

He backed off the threshold as Edge stepped forward and said: ‘Us nosy bastards just never give up, do we?’

Brady continued to back track until a heel caught on a pile of timber off-cuts. He vented a croaked cry as he stumbled and then cursed when he crashed to the ground. Froze in the act of struggling to his feet when Edge stooped and aimed the Colt at the centre of his face from two feet away.

‘Troy ain’t gonna like how you busted into his place!’ Brady tried to sound aggressive but his voice quivered with fear.

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Edge said evenly: ‘He’ll be real touched to know you were thinking of him at the end, feller.’

‘What?’ He swallowed hard and then a little of what bubbled up into his throat spilled out over his trembling lower lip. ‘You ain’t gonna use that pistol!’

‘I sure hope that’s a question and not an order, feller. Because you ain’t the one in any position to give orders.’

‘Look, mister! Troy and Lester’ll be here any time now. So you better not . . . ‘

Arching forward caused Edge’s bruised back to trouble him and he straightened up. And Brady’s warning trailed away as the move by the man who towered over him trickled more of the liquid of terror into his throat.

‘Think about this Colt, feller. It’s called a sixshooter. That’s because it has six chambers. And believe me, it’s fully loaded. So if your two buddies show up and I need to kill all of you, I’ll still have three shells to spare. If I’m a good shot. And believe me again, I’m a real good shot.’

‘You’re all talk, you know that?’ Brady challenged. ‘Nothing but a small town storekeeper with a – ‘

Edge moved fast, which created another sharper pain in his lower back. But it was worth the discomfort because Brady was caused greater agony when his boot thudded viciously into the man’s crotch. A shrill scream exploded from his trembling lips. If the sound carried to the darkened Shaver house perhaps the occupants would think it was just another noise of the wind. Or if they didn’t . . .

‘That could maybe bring your boss out here to lend a hand, you figure?’ Edge asked evenly against Brady’s groaning. ‘Then I’ll be able to shoot my mouth off at him, as well: and Hardin, too, if he’s around. Unless it turns out not to be my mouth I shoot off? One slug each and three to spare. I hate waste, don’t you?’

‘You got no right to be here, mister!’ the helpless and suffering man croaked miserably. ‘Not at this time of night: any time, come to that. Not without the boss’s say so,’

‘I figure I had as much right as you and the rest of that bunch with you did to be out at the old cannery earlier.’