The Deputy - Edge Series 2 (37 page)

‘I guess you can figure out for yourself why me and Don didn’t toast your good health, deputy?’

Harvey giggled and blurted: ‘And wish you a long life!’

Edge could not judge if he was faster than Harvey was, or slower than Bryce, in going for the draw. For none of their Colts came clear of the holsters before a man in the saloon barked an order: ‘Freeze or get it in the back!’

The two men on the threshold of the Dancing Horse Saloon both did as they were told and suddenly looked sick to their stomachs. This as a blond haired, dark eyed, thinly moustached, six feet tall man of thirty or so appeared between them. His stance and the position of his arms were such that it was clear he pressed a handgun into the small of each man’s back as he addressed them softly.

They dropped their revolvers to the saloon porch and raised their hands to shoulder height. And the clatter of metal on timber punctuated Rosita Jurez’s tensely spoken revelation:

‘That is the man who waited so long in the cantina at San Luis, Edge.’

The stranger raised his voice to introduce himself. ‘The name’s Ben Darnell. And the job I’m doing will be over as soon as I collect the bounty money due on these two. Rest of this business ain’t any of my concern.’

‘Jose?’ Marco Diaz sounded afraid now as he shouted the name above a babble of talk within the law office.

Perhaps two dozen people on foot, only a few of them carrying a weapon, moved up behind Edge and the mounted mixed breed and woman within sight of Martinez and the rifleman at the barred window. Twice this number were out of their houses in the noon day sun, but as yet were unseen by those in the building on the corner of Main Street and Mossman Road: men who still had the upper hand in terms of having vulnerable targets in front of their guns.

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‘Why don’t you call it a day, feller?’ Edge suggested. ‘Pretty soon you’ll have all your pa’s money. Which ought to buy you the best lawyers in Texas. Maybe a judge, too. Or don’t you value your own life as much as that of your old man?’

Within the law office Isabella Gomez pleaded desperately: ‘Jose, you must surrender!

Or we will all die!’

‘Shut up, woman!’ Martinez yelled and probably did not register how this echoed the order Ted Straker had so often directed at him in this very building. ‘Deputy! You people!

Back off! Or the boy will die! Then his brother! And his mother! Fidel, you have those two covered?’

The response was not loud enough to carry to where Edge stood on the centre of the street with the mounted Billy Injun and Rosita Jurez a few feet behind him and a bunch of equally stone faced local citizens in back of them. While the expanding crowd of other Bishopsburg people slowly but inexorably advanced from the north side of town. Martinez snarled in vehement Spanish: ‘I command you to do as I say! As we planned! All of you!’

‘What’s he saying, lady?’ Otis Logan demanded from where he stood alongside the horse of the unmoving and impassive Mexican woman.

Before Rosita could respond, Isabella Gomez shrieked at the top of her voice in perfect but quivering English: ‘Actions speak louder than words!’

She punctuated the cliché with a gunshot and Jose Martinez staggered forward two paces as he threw both his arms wide. The revolver was sent spinning out of his hand and the boy he had held captive suddenly collapsed to the side, his head stained scarlet with blood. And the advancing crowd came to a sudden, shocked and dumbstruck halt as Elizabeth Straker shrieked the name of one of her twin sons:

‘Frankie!’

Martinez corkscrewed to the law office porch, rolled off it and fell heavily on to the street. And a small bloodstain wound could be seen high in his back, a larger one in his chest where the rifle bullet fired from close range had exited. Then the Mexican who Edge had stabbed in the face with the broken bottle at the San Luis graveyard hurtled out of the law office, his hands held high and showing empty. He screamed: ‘Don’t shoot! Please do not shoot me!’

Edge had levelled the Winchester from his hip; its barrel steadied in the fisted hand of his no longer pained arm. And now he checked his finger on the trigger after he swung the rifle instinctively to aim at the shouting man. But a moment later the scar-faced Mexican was gunned down from elsewhere: another backshot exploded from within the law 211

office, which took him low in the spine. It sent him into a staggering run across the porch and pitched him spread-eagled on Main Street between the inert Martinez and the trembling, blood-splattered Straker boy.

Then Edge powered forward as a third rifle shot exploded in the same building. But this bullet cracked out of the muzzle of the rifle jutting between the bars of the cell window: and he felt the hot breath of displaced air as lead zinged by his forehead and went across the street to burrow into the chest of Morton Bryce.

The man shot in error gasped and dropped to his knees then crumpled to the threshold of the saloon. As his terrified partner whirled, perhaps intent upon lunging into the cover of the barroom. But Darnell saw the sudden move as an attack on him and triggered a shot from one of his revolvers. And Don Harvey screamed, clutched at the bullet hole in his belly and dropped into a quivering heap beside his partner. By then Edge had checked his short run and swung the Winchester. Exploded a shot at the cell window and grunted his satisfaction as the rifle that had been aimed at him from between the bars for so long was released to clatter to the hard packed surface of Mossman Road.

Acrid gunsmoke drifted in this town where there would have been total silence were it not for the voice of Elizabeth Straker as she continued to call out the name of one of her sons from within the law office.

Then the child with the bloodied head picked himself up and countless expressions of relief were released by the people in the crowd as they realised the blood in Frankie Straker’s hair and running down his freckled face was that of the dead Jose Martinez. Ben Darnell stepped between the corpses of Bryce and Harvey, advanced to the front of the saloon porch and thrust the matching Colts back into their holsters as he announced:

‘It’s lucky for me the flyers on these two killers state dead or alive.’

Edge said in a matching even tone: ‘I hear you were Judge Miller’s godson, feller. It was never mentioned you were a bounty hunter.’

Darnell shrugged. ‘It’s a living the army gave me a good training for.’

‘No sweat,’ Edge said as he thought about but chose not to mention his wish to kill Bryce personally. ‘I had the same training a long time ago and made a few bucks out of the same trade on occasion.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Did you know Bryce and Harvey killed the judge and the farming family he was staying with outside of town?’

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Darnell shook his head but offered no other response with word or expression as Edge did a double take at the man. Who looked nothing at all like him but resembled him in many other respects outside of being an army trained killer. Then Edge put to the back of his mind an ageing man’s inconsequential reminiscences of times long gone as Elizabeth Straker emerged from the law office.

Beside her was a sobbing boy who was the un-bloodied but otherwise identical twin of the youngster the woman rushed to embrace: dropped to her knees and hugged and kissed them both, unmindful of a dead man’s blood.

Isabella Gomez appeared behind her, a rifle held across the base of her bulging belly in both hands, unthreatening. Then the Winchester was even less of a threat after she dropped it and made a gesture with hands and head that caused her silver jewellery to jangle and to sparkle in the sunlight as she said: ‘Marco Diaz is also dead inside the jailhouse.’

‘All real neat and tidy,’ Darnell said.

‘I’d hardly say that!’ Doris Hyams challenged as she surveyed the sprawl of corpses on the brightly sunlit street, the blood seepage from the bullet wounds quickly stemmed by the congealing heat of noon as the inevitable foraging flies gathered.

‘I did what I did because it was best for me!’ Isabella voiced her excuse loudly: addressing the townspeople, many of whom turned to withdraw from the scene of bloodshed and from the sight of her. Then she raised her voice even higher to defend: ‘In the end, it was best for all!’

Edge lodged the rifle into the crook of an arm, took out the makings and began to roll a cigarette.

‘Hey, mister, now I can have that whiskey you promised me?’ Billy Injun asked and slid hurriedly out of his saddle.

‘I figure I could use a shot or two of that stuff myself, feller.’

‘And I figure you ran one hell of a risk there,’ Darnell said as Edge and the mixed breed approached the saloon. ‘And I don’t mean just for yourself.’

‘Like omelettes, feller.’

‘How’s that?’

‘You can’t make a peace without breaking a deadlock. Someone had to crack it.'

Rosita Jurez swung smoothly out of her saddle and said:
‘Muchas gracias, querido.’

Edge paused on the street while Billy Injun stepped quickly up on to the porch and went between the two dead bodies and the batwings to enter the Dancing Horse where he could be heard telling Jack Carr he had somebody with him who would be buying the liquor.

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‘What for, lady? Why are you thanking me?’

‘For helping me to get away from San Luis.’

‘No sweat, but I thought it was Mexico City where you wanted to go?’ He struck a match on the Winchester butt and lit the cigarette.

‘Once I did. But Mexico City or New York City or Kansas City . . ? Here in Bishopsburg, even?’ She shrugged, a resigned expression on her disease ravaged face. ‘I can look anywhere for the perfect man my father sought for me, can I not?’ There was in her dark, expressive eyes an age-old womanly wiles glint.

Edge told her: ‘You have to be careful with that, Rosita.’

‘Careful?’

‘If ever you do meet up with a feller you figure is the perfect man . . . ‘ He tipped his hat and showed a fleeting smile. ‘It could turn out that he’s looking to find the perfect woman. And an ugly bastard like me ain’t talking face values, lady.’

THE END

• The Deputy
  
• Dedication
  
• Chap - 1
  
• Chap - 2
  
• Chap - 3
  
• Chap - 4
  
• Chap - 5
  
• Chap - 6
  
• Chap - 7
  
• Chap - 8
  
• Chap - 9
  
• Chap - 10
  
• Chap - 11
  
• Chap - 12
  
• Chap - 13
  
• Chap - 14
  
• Chap - 15
  
• Chap - 16
  
• Chap - 17
  
• Chap - 18
  
• Chap - 19
  
• Chap - 20
  
• Chap - 21
  
• Chap - 22
  
• Chap - 23
  
• THE END