The Deputy - Edge Series 2 (7 page)

One of these fellow guests was an exceptionally thin, sour faced maiden lady of early middle age named Bette McBain who was the local schoolteacher and the other Otis Logan, a long-ago retired from working elderly relative of Doris Hyams. The aromas of hot food and coffee were suddenly more strongly in evidence than Miss McBain’s floral perfume as the owner of the house wheeled in a cart on which was a huge coffee pot and four large plates already piled high with food. Then there was a flurry of talk concerned with the size of the breakfast placed before each guest as the flushed with pride Doris Hyams circled the table, filling cups with coffee.

‘Enjoy,’ she encouraged and waddled out.

Next the eating commenced and Edge realised the earlier polite protests were a part of a morning ritual at this breakfast table.

He figured that a man of Whitman’s size who worked at a strenuous trade would have an appetite to match the food provided and this was so. But he was surprised at how the diminutive schoolteacher and the frail looking old man attacked their meals with so much gusto.

40

For his part, Edge felt that in this genteel company he needed to steel himself against wolfing down the food, not aware of just how hungry he had been until he began to eat. The result was that he finished last and was introduced to another custom of the first meal of the day at the Hyams Guest House. This that there was no talk of anything other than the quantity and quality of the food until everyone was through eating and there was just coffee to drink.

‘Are you just passing through, Mr Edge?’ Logan asked. He was a southerner from far below the Mason-Dixon Line. In his seventies, he had grey hair and weak brown eyes, with ears that stuck out and teeth that protruded.

‘Mr Edge rode in with George North,’ Whitman supplied.

Miss McBain, who enunciated her words very carefully as if she was addressing a class of impressionable young children said: ‘I understand the sheriff did not have with him the Mexican lady storekeeper he went north to escort back to Bishopsburg, sir?’

Edge realised that as a novice to the table he had not played the breakfast game entirely by the unwritten rules. He had emptied his coffee cup while he was eating: not saved any to accompany the gossip that followed.

He smiled briefly as he rose from the table and looked down at each of his fellow guests in the correct order as he replied to their questions.

‘That’s right, the sheriff and me came in from Railton City together. Whether I’m just passing through or not depends on my job prospects in Bishopsburg. Figure the matter of Isabella Gomez is something you should take up with George North. And as a stranger here, I don’t figure I ought to involve myself in the town’s troubles.’

Otis Logan said something that caused Edge to pause at the door to the hallway. ‘It seems to me, mister that a man who caries a gun on his hip at breakfast . . . He maybe ain’t no stranger to the kind of trouble we got in this town?’

Edge lightly touched the walnut butt of the Colt .45 jutting from his holster. Then dropped his hand away, smiled at the ugly old man who fixed him with a demanding stare and said: ‘Don’t let appearances fool you, feller.’

‘Your appearance don’t fool me, son,’ was the even toned reply. ‘You won’t be just passing through here. Mark my words.’

‘You figure you’re a teller of fortunes now, Otis?’ Whitman chided. ‘Don’t you pay no attention to Otis, mister.’

Edge said: ‘Don’t hold with fortune telling. Though I sure would like to make one.’

41

CHAPTER • 6

___________________________________________________________________

SHORTLY AFTER Edge returned to his room to retrieve his hat and the rifle that
had been loaned to him by the Railton City marshal’s office he heard a horse moving on the street below.

He went to the window out of idle curiosity and saw the tall, heavily built figure of the cheroot smoking Sheriff North in the saddle on the piebald gelding Isabella Gomez had been riding before the lawman’s mount was shot out from under him. There was a grim faced, rigid determination in the way North sat his saddle, looking neither to left nor right as he turned off Main Street on to River Road. And continued to hold the horse to an easy walk, apparently in no hurry to get to where he was going. Probably, Edge mused, because he did not relish what he knew he was going to find when he reached his destination: which was surely the Bellamy farm. Other people began to appear on the stretch of River Road Edge could see, and along Main Street to the north and south of the intersection. Among them were his fellow guests at the boarding house, Rex Whitman and Miss McBain, who joined other townspeople starting out for work.

Downstairs, the long retired Otis Logan had lingered at the breakfast table after the others left and now he emerged into the hallway as Edge was letting himself out of the front door.

‘So son, a rifle, too?’ the jug eared old timer drawled pointedly. ‘I knew we had a little trouble hereabouts, but I didn’t – ‘

‘Quit bothering my new guest, Otis!’ Doris Hyams rebuked sternly from the kitchen at the rear of the house. ‘And get your useless self back here to help me with the dishes.’

Logan winked at Edge and grinned while he spoke loudly in a disgruntled tone, obviously intent on irritating the woman. ‘Son, you take note of this, you hear? A man don’t necessarily have to be married to find himself under the thumb of a nagging female.’

Mrs Hyams snapped a retort but Edge did not hear it through the door he closed at his back.

As he strolled toward and then across the intersection several total strangers acknowledged him with a brief word or two and others nodded. Although most eyed him with a degree of mistrust, doubtless because of the rifle he carried. No other man he saw had even a holstered sixgun on his hip, let alone a repeater sloped to his shoulder. 42

As he crossed the start of Mossman Road his attention was drawn to the window of the cell where last night he had seen the man he presumed was Jose Martinez. But there was no grinning face visible between the bars this morning. He saw through the glass panel of the door that Ted Straker was on duty in the law office, seated behind the only desk. The good looking young deputy was hunched over some papers, writing laboriously, and he looked up with a bleak eyed gaze as the door swung open.

Then a trace of unease showed on his dark eyed, slightly pouting mouthed, recently clean shaven face. And Edge recalled the mixed reception he had received on account of the rifle as he came here. He spread an easy smile across his far more life scarred features as he explained:

‘Name’s Edge, feller. Maybe North mentioned me? Come to return this Winchester that ain’t mine. And collect five bucks that is?’

Relief caused Straker’s Adam’s apple to bob, then he raised a wan smile to replace the nervous frown, set down his pen and came up out of the chair.

‘George said to expect you.’

‘You best get your business done and leave this place quickly,
amigo,’
the prisoner advised from beyond a barred door in the corner behind the desk. ‘Be safer for you. Because when my father’s men come to – ‘

‘Shut up, Martinez!’ Straker’s pointedly weary tone suggested it was a command he had often issued.

The prisoner who advanced to the barred door was eighteen years old, no taller than five and a half feet and had a stocky build. There seemed to be more muscles than excess fat filling out the plain grey shirt and suit pants he wore. He was youthfully good looking almost to the point of feminine prettiness but there was in the set of his regular features a pointer toward a rugged handsomeness to come in later years. If he did not hang for murder at this early age, Edge reminded himself. His hair was dark and tightly curled by nature. His teeth were as white as they had looked in the darkness last night. And his eyes were polished black and gave the impression he had not a worry in the world as he shrugged and accepted Straker’s order with equanimity.

The deputy came around the desk and extended a hand to be shaken. Then he took the rifle and leaned it against a wall. Nearby was a small safe with a key already in the lock. He opened it, took out a single bill and gave it to Edge as he closed the door with a booted foot.

43

‘There you go.’

Edge added the money to the small stake in his hip pocket. ‘Much obliged, feller.’

‘George is out to the Bellamy farm right now.’ He gestured to the disarray of papers on the desk. ‘Another man’s written report of what he’s seen can’t really replace taking a look at something like that for yourself.’

‘I guess not,’ Edge said from where he had paused at the threshold.

‘Something else I can do for you?’ Straker returned to the chair behind the desk and picked up the pen.

‘Idle curiosity. Have you heard anything of the Gomez woman?’

The deputy was grim faced as he shook his head.

Martinez guffawed and crowed: ‘The poor judge, he is dead! The only witness, she has gone! It seems certain to me that I will soon be out of here! Maybe you and me will have a drink together in the Dancing Horse Saloon when they are forced to set me free, eh
amigo?’

Edge said: ‘I wouldn’t count my drinks until you’re free of the coop, feller.’

‘I said for you to shut up, Martinez!’ Straker snarled, this time with vehemence rather than resignation. Then to Edge in a more moderate tone, he said: ‘I saw Rex Whitman taking you into Doris’s place. I guess you’re staying there? Pretty good, uh?’

‘No complaints, feller.’

‘You won’t find a better rooming house if you plan a long stay in Bishopsburg.’

‘My plans depend on finding work.’

Straker expressed tacit inability to help. Then he had an inspiration but sighed and grimaced as he offered apologetically:

‘The only man I’d guess will be hiring on right now is Clyde Grover. He’s the undertaker: has a workshop along Mossman Road. He’ll be needing help with the grave digging chores. We never before had more than two people die around here in a week far as I can recall. Clyde brought in five dead bodies from the Bellamy place real early this morning.’

‘Much obliged, but I’m not too pushed for ready cash just yet.’

From beyond the barred door Martinez muttered with heavy menace: ‘Do not turn your nose up at such a lowly task,
amigo!
Because if I am not set free very soon the digging of graves will provide much regular work for men in this town. Those who are still alive!’

44

Straker turned to snarl his usual response but then sighed heavily and made a dismissive gesture with both hands. Raised one in farewell as he heard the door open and looked around in time to see Edge leave the office.

Outside, somebody nearby rasped: ‘Hey, mister!’

The husky voice drew Edge’s attention across the front of the law office facing Main Street. And he saw a boy of fifteen or sixteen leaning out of a narrow alley between the building he had just left and the as yet unopened for business telegraph office next door. Edge looked around and saw there was nobody else in the immediate vicinity as the boy said with an emphatic nod:

‘Yeah, I mean you mister.’

Edge moved toward him as he made a beckoning gesture while he looked uneasily around.

The youngster was five feet ten and if he was still growing it was only upwards. For he was painfully thin, although there was about his tanned complexion and the clearness of his blue eyes no sign of under-nourishment.

His hands were scarred and ingrained with many days’ dirt from heavy manual labour and his battered hat, torn shirt, stained dungarees and scuffed boots signalled his hard work was for a meagre living.

‘I just seen you and Mr Straker in the office when I looked in the window. Sheriff North ain’t around, I guess?’

‘He’s out of town. Who are you, kid?’

Edge judged the boy was not overly intelligent. He had a slow manner of talking, there was a slackness about his mouth and his shining eyes had a disconcerting way of remaining fixed on the middle of Edge’s chest while he was speaking. Darting away to look mistrustfully around while he listened.

He shuffled his feet, blinked several times and furrowed his brow like he had been asked a question far beyond his capabilities to answer. Then he said: ‘Bob Frank Carter. My pa’s got a spread out along Mossman Road a-ways. Couple of miles or so off in the country.’

‘Something wrong at the place, kid?’

The boy suddenly grinned broadly and shook his head. ‘No, sir. Everything’s fine and dandy out at the farm. But I been sent by a couple of gents to come to Bishopsburg with a message for the sheriff.’