The Deputy - Edge Series 2 (20 page)

But the man riding beside him was peering impassively straight ahead, either not listening to the exchange or maybe concentrating intently on it as he rolled a cigarette.

‘That’ll only happen if you don’t go along with what me and Don have got it in mind to do.’

‘That figures.’

‘All we want is to get Jose Martinez out of the Bishopsburg jailhouse without too much trouble, sheriff.’

North said dully: ‘Now why don’t that surprise me?’

Bryce drawled: ‘Exactly how we plan to do that, I’ll let you know later. For now, let’s just enjoy a nice quiet ride to that nice quiet town of yours in the cool of the evening after a hot day.’

‘Am I allowed to talk with the woman?’

‘As long as you keep it polite,’ Harvey countered and vented what sounded like a forced laugh. ‘So best you keep it in mind what happened to that Mexican back there who bad-mouthed the lady.’

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North warned sourly: ‘I don’t reckon Bishopsburg folks would trade the Martinez boy for a dead lawman.’

‘You’ve got a point,’ Bryce allowed. ‘But we’d still have Edge for our ace in the hole. Ain’t that right, deputy?’

Edge struck a match on the butt of his Colt and lit the cigarette. ‘You’re dealing this hand, feller. But you should know that in this particular game this particular ace is low.’

North said:
‘Senorita,
you mind telling me how you got loose from Alvarez and his men at the old ferry crossing?’

She laughed with more gusto than Harvey had managed a few moments ago. ‘I am getting used to being at the centre of trouble,
Senor
North. And this time I was able to turn it to my advantage for a change.’

‘You sure are a survivor and no mistake, Isabella,’ North growled.

‘Is it all right if I tell the sheriff what he has asked to know of,
Senor
Bryce?

‘You’re a woman, honey,’ he replied in a wry tone. ‘If you gotta talk, then I guess you just gotta talk.’

‘Okay, so I tell you what happened, sheriff. When they took me back to the house of the ferryman who once ran the Rio Bravo crossing – after you and
Senor
Edge came to the Brady place – there had been trouble there also.’

She started to speak more earnestly. ‘Filipe Rodriges was dying with a bullet in his chest. And Francisco Gonzales was gone. Filipe was the brother of Rubio, perhaps you remember?'

North said sardonically: ‘Sometimes a family can have a run of bad luck that way.’

He looked balefully back at Bryce and Harvey and rasped: ‘Like the Bellamys the other night.’

When this drew no response from the two men riding immediately in front of her Isabella went on:

‘Anyway, before he died, Filipe remained strong enough to be able to tell Alvarez how he had a fight with Gonzales. Concerned with making money from Eduardo Martinez. Money for telling him where you were to come to make the deal, sheriff? Honour among thieves, uh?’

The handsomely hard looking Harvey muttered: ‘Let me tell you, lady: honour ain’t always held to by so called decent law abiding folks when there are big bucks involved.’

‘That sure in right, buddy,’ Bryce growled.

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North spat to the side, briefly met the impassive gaze of Edge, sighed and shrugged:

‘So it was this Gonzales guy – one of Alvarez’s men – who told old man Martinez what was in the letter the Carter kid delivered to Edge and me?’

‘That is so,’ Isabella confirmed. ‘But he became afraid. Did not want to face Raul Alvarez and his other
compadres.
And he tried to sneak away from the ferryman’s house.’

‘And Rodriges tried to stop him but stopped a bullet instead?’ North asked.

‘
Si,
sheriff. It seems Gonzales was filled with remorse for his betrayal and felt the need to tell Filipe Rodriges what he had done which was why he was leaving.’

‘Then the rest of them turned up with you?’

‘
Si.
And soon after he told of what had happened, Filipe died. Then they buried his body and much drinking began. During which there was a great deal of talk. Some of it about Gonzales being right perhaps. And because of the risks they were all taking, they should make money from the Martinez family. Not just take revenge against Eduardo by helping to see that Jose was hanged.’

‘So they held a wake and they all got drunk, is that what you’re saying, Isabella?’

North asked. ‘And you – ‘

‘I pretended to drink as much tequila as all of the others did.’ A note of pride entered her tone as she went on: ‘But mostly I tipped it away. And when they collapsed into drunken stupors, I ran off.’

She shrugged. ‘Because I was worried that if Francisco Gonzales had betrayed his
amigos
for money once he could do so again. And I did not want to be caught in the middle of another gunbattle. Maybe not be so lucky this time. So I ran away.’

‘Right into us is where the lady ran,’ Harvey said with a harsh laugh. ‘And when we heard what she had to say we knew we’d hit the jackpot we’ve been looking for ever since we left Uncle Sam’s army, ain’t that right, Morg?’

‘That sure is right, buddy. And I figured my faithful old nag had worked hard enough carrying me and this lovely lady all the way to that spooky hill. So that’s why I just had to get rid of the greaser back there. Now I figure the lady has answered the sheriff’s question fair and full. So there’s no need for any more gabbing.’

And there was little more talk during the remainder of the slow ride from the old Navajo burial mound as full night lit by a bright half moon descended. Except when Isabella Gomez occasionally tried to relieve her boredom with idle chatter and was snarled into silence by the increasingly uneasy Harvey.

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Then, some time after they had ridden beyond the dark and silent adobe where Billy Injun lived and could see the lamp lit windows of Bishopsburg gleaming in the distance, Bryce instructed:

‘Just head right on into town, sheriff.’

He and Harvey slid their Winchesters from the boots and levelled the rifles at the two men riding ahead of them.

North acknowledged: ‘Whatever you want.’

Bryce replied tautly: ‘Glad to hear it: and what we want is for as many people as possible to see us. The more the merrier, like they say.’

Edge was certain that behind his attempt to seem totally at ease with what was happening, Morgan Bryce was afraid. While Don Harvey did not try to hide his true feelings as he said with a nervous tremor in his voice: ‘I still ain’t so sure this is such a good idea, Morg.’

He made a harshly dry sound in his throat that sounded like a failed attempt to raise some saliva to spit before he added: ‘It’s goddamn dangerous, seems to me.’

‘With stakes this high, I reckon the risk is worth taking, buddy,’ Bryce growled. ‘It’ll make what he paid us before seem like chickenfeed. And for a pot this big I’ll even take a chance on you wetting your pants.’

Harvey cursed softly and Edge asked:

‘What he paid you for before was to kill the judge, I guess?’

‘That’s old business and not yours, deputy’’ Bryce countered absently as they rode off the trail and on to the southern end of Main Street. ‘Okay, honey: it’s time for you to move on out ahead of us now.’

Isabella Gomez, as overtly frightened as Harvey, moved her horse to the front of the tight knit group as there continued to be no subterfuge about the advance into town. No attempt to conceal the fact that North and Edge were prisoners of the two men riding behind, their Winchesters trained steadily on their backs. They rode up the centre of the wide street, in full view of anybody who cared to look out from the flanking buildings that in this part of town were mostly neat houses in picket fenced yards.

‘Hell, what’s going on, George?’ a man yelled as he rose hurriedly from a rocker on his front porch and dropped the pipe he had been smoking.

Bryce and Harvey moved their horses into a line of four with those of North and Edge. And angled their rifles across their bodies, the barrels resting on the bars of their 116

forearms, the muzzles a few inches from the heads of the sheriff and the deputy, a trigger pull away from exploding certain death.

‘Oh, my God!’

‘Lizzie, come see!’

‘What on earth is this town coming to?’

The babble of shocked talk and some rasped anxious questions continued as the woman and four men rode at a funeral pace up the street until a brittle silence gripped the town. Then:

‘Uncle George! Uncle George!’

A small boy of ten or so appeared at the open doorway of a neat little single story house across from the church. He was excitedly pleased, as was another grinning child who came out of the house to stand at his side. They were like mirror images of each other in their joyous moods as well as their freckle-faced features and clearly they were twins. The grim faced North finally broke the silence it had been anguish for him to maintain for so long. And his voice was ragged with deep concern as he roared: ‘Elizabeth!

Elizabeth, you hear me, girl? Get the boys back inside the house! Before they see something they shouldn’t!’

A tall, dark haired, slender woman of thirty or so who was also heavily freckled appeared on the threshold behind the two boys and stared aghast at the tableau passing by. She remained held in rigid terror for a stretched second then clawed a hand over a shoulder of each suddenly alarmed youngster, hauled them back into the house and kicked the door closed.

‘Deputy Straker’s wife and twin sons,’ Isabella offered, perhaps airing her local knowledge simply for something to say to try to ease a little of the tension that gripped her. Further up the street as the riders reached the intersection with River Road, a man demanded imperiously: ‘George, what in tarnation is happening here?’

Edge flicked his eyes across their narrowed sockets to look up from under their hooded lids toward the second story of the Hyams Guest House. Where he saw the lathered, part shaved ugly face of Otis Logan at an open window and called: ‘What you see is how it is, feller.’

Harvey caught his breath and for a split second Edge wondered if his time had come. For the man aiming the rifle at his head was maybe primed to react with ultimate violence to any event not pre-planned by his dominant partner.

Then the moment was gone and Bryce rasped: ‘Easy, buddy!’ Next raised his voice and swung his head to look in every direction to warn: ‘In case any of you people didn’t 117

hear what the deputy said, I’d better repeat it - because it sure enough is right! He said that what you see here is how it is! So you all better stay back and out of it! That way maybe nobody else gets hurt!’

Edge shifted his glittering eyes across to the other extreme of their sockets and glimpsed a blurred impression of the sweat run, hard set, deeply lined profile of George North. And checked an impulse to tell the lawman he should take it easy himself: not say or do anything likely to trigger sudden violence in which they would be the first victims. Then he acknowledged that what happened after that – who got killed next – was of academic interest and so he abandoned this train of inconsequential thinking. Then they reached their destination and there was no need for an announcement of their arrival because Straker had heard the raised voices followed by the brief interruption of vocal silence counter-pointed by the clop of slow moving moves down the street. Then the further exchanges. And he stood grim faced at the doorway of the law office. Jose Martinez was at the nearby window of his cell, gripping two bars with his face pressed between his clenched fists. It was the prisoner who spoke first, rasped something inaudible through gritted teeth, his expression perhaps a smile, maybe a snarl. The five riders reined in their mounts a few feet from the door angled across the corner of the office and jail. Straker stepped over the threshold, a Colt in his tied down holster but a Winchester with the hammer back slanted across the front of his broad chest in a double handed grip. He was plainly tense as he struggled not to look afraid.

‘Ah, the handsome young Deputy Straker!’ Isabella greeted and although she obviously wanted it to sound light hearted the ambient atmosphere of high tension undermined her intention. Her voice was husky, like she had an inflamed throat.

‘George?’ Straker growled.

‘Sorry, Ted. We got taken. They killed Rodriges.’

‘Keep that in mind, deputy,’ Bryce warned and it sounded like he had to force the words through the same kind of throat infection that seemed to affect the woman. ‘One’s already a goner. And we don’t care how many more we have to kill to do what we came here for.’

Just as he had ignored Isabella when she spoke, so Straker now did not even glance away from the lawman to look at the tough talking Bryce. Waited impatiently for him to finish before he asked: ‘What do they want, George?’

Isabella made a sound of disgust as she tugged on the reins of her horse to move into a position out of the line of fire between the four mounted men and the one standing in the doorway.

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Harvey snarled: ‘We want your prisoner, deputy dummy! What the hell else would we want? And unless you turn him over we’re gonna kill North and Edge. Then you if there’s time!’

‘Just like that?’ Straker sneered.

Bryce warned: ‘Easy as pulling the frigging triggers, deputy!’

‘And then just ride out of a town full of law abiding people like nothing ever happened?’ Straker challenged.