The Outrage - Edge Series 3

1

3 • THE OUTRAGE

by

George G. Gilman

Terry Harknett

Spring Acre

Springhead Road

Uplyme

Lyme Regis

Dorset DT7 3RS

01297-445380

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An EDGE Western --• --93,000 Words

In memory of

Friends do not

come any better

CHAPTER • 1

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MARTHA QUINN was starting to feel much happier this hazily bright Texas morning
that had seemed destined not to be a carefree one before she set out to drive the buckboard along the Old Town Road to Springdale.

Firstly, Nicholas was still not home from his trip and she never liked to wake in the morning knowing she was alone in the big double bed, unable to hear her husband breathing beside her then open her eyes to see his head on the pillow. Also, Nancy was still sleeping off the effects of a late night at the Founders’ Day Dance and that meant Martha had to eat breakfast on her own which was almost as unwelcome as waking alone. For even though breakfast in the Quinn household was invariably little more than muffins and coffee, she did so enjoy early morning conversation with at least one member of her family. Either in the large kitchen or, maybe on a fine morning like this one, it was more than likely they would eat out on the terrace at the front of the house. But this morning it was not to be, so she set off for town without a cup of coffee even. Chose to take the elderly buckboard instead of the new buggy because she did not want to be the first member of the family to scratch the rig’s shiny paint work: and elected to go by way of the Old Town Road to Springdale instead of taking the main stage trail. For although it was the longer way, it was the prettier and she had plenty of time.

The disagreeable start of the day behind her, she had begun to relish the mere pleasure of being alive this bright and warm morning as she drove without hurry through beautiful countryside. Then, as the road went into a narrow defile like a miniature, six feet deep canyon with live oaks and spruce aligned along both rims, she saw Tod Bell’s distinctive buggy heading toward her from the other direction and she groaned.

Mr Bell was a wealthy widower and leading light in local fund raising efforts; a well liked and highly respected member of the community. But he was not the best driver in the world and invariably steered his ancient buggy inexorably down the middle of the road. Ever ready to direct a cheery wave and smile to anyone he happened to recognise, no matter the familiar figure was aboard another rig on a collision course with his own.

Mostly it did not matter: meant merely that other drivers sometimes had to steer off to the side and get a bumpy ride for a short while as old Mr Bell swept happily by. However, in the defile of the Old Town Road it was not so simple. But at least she had spotted the dilapidated vehicle at a distance and was able to steer without haste as far off the road to the right as she could. Then she heard a sharp cracking sound from the rear end of the buckboard and she registered it for what it most surely was.

Martha Quinn did not use cuss words as a matter of course and always regretted giving in to the impulse on those rare occasions when irritating situations conspired to get the better of her. For she hated not being in control of herself: endeavored to avoid circumstances in which she did not have total charge of her emotions.

She had the presence of mind now to think it fortunate that the acrimonious grimace that was her response to Mr Bell’s broad smile as the buggy careered on by would not have been seen by the myopic old timer. And she did not breathe a soft toned:
Oh dammit!
until after she counted to ten and by then was able to direct her anger away from the man who had forced her off the road so many times in the past without any dire consequences. Instead she cursed her ill-luck as she drove back on to the road’s hard packed surface, the buckboard tilted at a rear corner like an animal dragging an injured hind leg.

Although she had been aboard wagons that were disabled in the past it had always been in the company of a man – usually Nicholas – who changed the wheel. But she had watched the simple process and knew what to do and now set about doing it. First she went to survey the damage, which was an academic exercise since she was sure she knew what had happened. And so it was proved to be. Then resisted the impulse to aim a kick at the wheel with a buckled rim and splintered spoke because she had no desire to injure her lightly shod foot. Did not feel more than a mild, easy to resist inclination to pick up and hurl away the cause of the damage: a large piece of jagged rock that had been concealed until the wheel flattened the surrounding long grass to expose it. A glaze of perspiration began to show on her scowling face as she struggled to change the wheel: jacked it clear of the ground and loosened the hub fixing.

‘Drat!’ The pin came loose with a viciousness that took Martha by surprise and painfully wrenched her wrist. Then she eased the wheel off the axle and soon began to feel content that, apart from the over-tightened hub locking pin, removing the wheel had caused her little trouble.

And as she prepared to take the spare from its mounting beneath the rig she even began to anticipate a degree of satisfaction at successfully completing a task she would not ordinarily have to undertake. But as she dragged the spare wheel into view she saw that it too had a snapped spoke: recalled with another scowl that Nicholas had said some time ago he would have to see about getting it repaired.

Then she vented a more vehement curse between her drawn back lips as the perspiration of an anger of frustration erupted on her face and body and she dragged the heel of a hand across her forehead. Only then saw the filthy grease on her hands and realised there would be a dark streak on her brow.

Now fairly screamed the worst obscenity of all: but simmering rage quickly acted to numb the shame as she looked about her and saw the trail remained deserted. And in the relative stillness that her shriek had shattered she heard again just the fractious cries of a flock of birds foraging in a recently cut hayfield to the distant south. This was counter-pointed by some closer, less strident sounds from a herd of steers in the pasture beyond the trees to the north.

For a few minutes she considered replacing the broken wheel and driving the crippled buckboard carefully back to the side of the defile. But impulsive hot anger had given way to ice cold malice. An emotion which encouraged a spiteful wish that, since through no fault of hers the morning had gone so badly wrong, it could damn well go wrong for anyone else who had the misfortune to drive along the Old Town Road before she had arranged to have the buckboard fixed and moved out of the way. She even felt a taut smile form on her dirt streaked, sweat shiny face as she visualised old Tod Bell finding his way back blocked. She suspected, although she had never had reason to take notice before, that it would have been quicker to continue on into Springdale than to go back home. But she was disconcertingly aware she would feel even more dishevelled, hotter and stickier than she already did whichever way she went. And since she had no intention of visiting the town stores looking like something a dog had dragged in on a bad night she decided to return to the house.

So she took the horse from the traces and led him by the bridle because she could not comfortably ride the bay gelding bareback, attired smartly for shopping as she was. When she got back home she would drink a cup of coffee, wash up, change her clothes, take the new buggy out of the barn and continue her interrupted trip to town by way of the shorter route on the Austin Trail.

The wisdom of this decision was quickly apparent because after she had trudged no more than a couple of hundred yards back along a section of road that was not flanked by trees to shade her from the sun she began to feel increasingly hot and bothered. This despite a determined attempt to convince herself the milk of the incident had already been spilled and there was no sense in fretting over what could no longer be helped. Martha Quinn was forty four years old, could appear at the best of times to be in her mid-thirties and at any time was able to admit to forty without drawing unkind comments. Five feet seven inches tall in her bare feet she customarily wore heeled shoes to accentuate her slender but undoubtedly statuesque height.

Her hair, which was brown with some recent traces of grey, had always been a problem: naturally fine and with a will of its own. She had concave cheeks, a thin mouth line and deep set blue eyes that when she looked her best gave her a lean and hungry, somewhat erotic look. As a child she had been considered cute, during her adolescence she was pretty and since her twenties had developed into an almost beautiful woman with a shapely body. Now as she breathed raggedly, perspired freely and constantly scrubbed her sticky face with the back of a hand so the skin became inflamed and even more dirt streaked, she probably looked better than most classically beautiful women would in similar circumstances. But she was not concerned with how she looked as she crossed the intersection with the Austin Trail and neared the end of the strenuous walk from the disabled buckboard. Came within sight of the familiar red tile roof of the house visible through the oak, pine and beech trees in the two acres of trimly landscaped gardens that surrounded it. She knew she was just simply a mess: her newly laundered blue skirt streaked with dirt and her recently crisp white blouse embarrassingly marked with ugly dark patches of sticky dampness at the armpits and the small of her back.

She completed the final couple of hundred yards to the boundary of the property and the tantalising glimpse of home caused her to quicken her pace and tug hard on the bridle of the hapless gelding. While she inwardly cursed at her stupidly spiteful decision to leave the buckboard where she did: visualised a neighbour’s vehicle blocked in the defile when she could well have been riding on it.

At last she reached the wrought iron gate in the white ranch fence that marked the frontage of the Quinn land and her spirits rose. She took off her shoes and walked on the grass to one side of the curved strip of gravel that cut a wagon-wide path between the expanses of lawn, her priorities suddenly change now she could see the front of the house bathed in bright sunlight.

For she thought about the kitchen at the rear which was north facing and thus would be sunless and cool. Anticipated pouring a glass of lemonade and taking her time to drink it. And to hell for awhile with how she reeked of sweat or any urgency about attending to the abandoned rig.

The house was ten years old, constructed of fieldstone and timber. She and Nicholas had designed it themselves and paid to have it built out of the mounting profits of the expanding business her husband inherited from his father. Their plans based upon everything that had been right or wrong with the half dozen places they had called home during the early years of their married life.

Nicholas’s contribution had been little more than to insist upon materials that made the place easy to maintain. Everything else had been left to Martha and, to a lesser extent, a mostly disinterested Nancy. Who, her mother hoped, would by now be awake and functioning after sleeping off the effects of the late night in Springdale.

At the top of the drive that led from the gateway to the house was a flight of six broad, shallow steps that rose to a paved terrace on which several items of rustic outdoor furniture were scattered. But before Martha went up to the terrace she put the gelding securely in the stable and saw that the horse had feed and water.