"Guess they took the other girl with them," Edge grunted as he halted in the gateway and peered across the desolate terrain of south-east Arizona Territory.
The horse whinnied, as if in agreement and waited placidly for the wish of its rider. Edge took the makings of a cigarette from the pocket of his shirt and rolled a neat cylinder. He lit it and sat smoking, with a look of quiet contemplation, for several long moments. He was a tall man who rode ramrod stiff in the saddle, deceptively lean, for his frame was clothed in a muscular hardness that gave him a strength many men had found surprising: some had died for the simple mistake of underrating his power. In repose, his face could be handsome, a mixture of Scandinavian blood from his mother and Mexican blood from his father combining to form features which were regular, with pale blue eyes surveying the world from a background of darkened skin-tone burnt to a deeper shade by countless hours of working and riding in the hard glare of the sun. But those who took more than a passing look at the man could see that his face was a mere mask: that beneath the rugged exterior burned a fire, kindled by pain and fed with hate, ready to flare up to dangerous proportions at the slightest breath of ill-wind.
Sitting astride his big horse, smoking the cigarette, his face in shadow from the wide brim of a low-crowned hat, Edge drew the back of a hand across the two-day growth of beard on his jaw and nodded to himself, the decision taken. It had been a hard year in Sonora, bounty-hunting the bandits in the hills and sometimes getting paid a fair price if he could find a Mexican army officer not totally corrupt. But it had served its purpose, giving the US wanted posters time to fade: the memories of lawmen north of the border to become clouded: the hurt of Jamie's death to diminish. Time, too, to realize that he could not expect to recover what was his and the life of a gunman, although it was not of his own choosing, was his destiny. (See Edge: The Loner and Edge: Ten Thousand Dollars American.)
He tossed the smoked butt away and spat after it, scoring a direct hit on the growing red end with a soft, sizzling sound. Then he dug his heels into the flanks of the horse and started off at an even walk, going north with the afternoon sun behind and to the left of him. He raised his left hand up to the back of his neck and ran his fingertips over the smooth handle of the cut-throat razor which protruded slightly from its pouch. The thick black hair, which hung long from. beneath his hat, brushed against the back of his hand and he grinned, his eyes, shining through slits of blue and white, his thin lips curling back to display even rows of white teeth. “Figure I need a haircut, feller,” he muttered as the horse pricked up its ears. “Hope the nearest town's got a better barber than the one that called back at the farm.” The horse got nothing explicit from its rider's words and continued at its measured pace, content now that the scent of violence was left behind. Night had fallen before there was further cause for alarm.
CHAPTER TWO
DESERT country had given way to low, bleak hills featured with mesas and smaller outcrops of rock so that sometimes, as Edge followed the little-used trail which had brought him all the way from the ravaged farmstead, it was as if he rode over the scarred bed of a canyon, with deep ravines cutting off at frequent intervals. As night fell, he rode with caution sitting on his shoulder, prodding upright the short hairs on the nape of his neck. For there was no longer any Indian sign on the trail. Once out of the flat desert territory the braves had split up from the bunch and scattered to left and right. It had always been a cold trail and the pace set by the lone rider had not been fast enough to make it any fresher. He had no wish to close in on the raiding party, for whatever had led to the uprising—whether an isolated incident or part of a territory-wide campaign by the Chiricahua Apaches—it was none of his business. At least, it wasn't until he found out the going rate, in dollars, for dead Apaches.
But he couldn't guarantee the Apaches felt the same way about any white man who happened along, and the country he was in might have been ordered and built for the purpose of ambush. So Edge was wary, his narrowed eyes constantly raking the ground ahead, one hand curled around the stock and trigger of the Spencer which was resting across his saddle-horn, beneath the blanket he had wrapped around his body to keep out the night cold.
The moon was low and in only its first quarter, its meager light throwing great areas of terrain into shadows of grey, blue, purple and dark, impenetrable black. The silence, whenever Edge halted his horse to peer ahead at a possible hiding place, was absolute. Then, just as the trail took on a steeper incline, starting to rise toward the ridge of a high bluff which cut across the northern horizon, Edge saw the flash. He felt the rush of icy air close to his ear and was falling toward the ground before he heard the crack of the rifle. He was rolling, the Spencer held high and away from his body as the echo of the shot was still diminishing into the distance down the funnel of the surrounding rock faces, the sound counterpointed by the thud of hoofs from the escaping horse.
Edge lay absolutely still, ignoring the pain of the bruises raised by the fall, slitting his eyes to stare ahead, searching for a landmark with which to pinpoint, the rifleman's position. But his viewpoint was different; perhaps ten feet lower than when he had seen the flash and the profile of the skyline had altered. He waited, knowing that shadow provided his only cover that the merest movement could give the marksman a target.
“You out there!”
The voice was distorted by echo and offered no clue to where the speaker was located. But it did tell Edge he wasn't involved in Indian trouble. He also got from the voice the fact that he was dealing with a man, probably quite old, certainly not afraid. Edge didn't answer.
“I know you ain't no redskin,” the man continued, slowly and evenly. “Not unless you stole a shod horse and a white man's hat. I know, too, I didn't plug you. I could have, but I didn't. I don't kill, not unless I have to.”
The words bounced between the sheer cliff faces and rebounded over Edge's head and back down the trail. Up ahead, on the left, Edge thought. Then changed his mind: the right. “You understand what I'm saying. Or you a Mex, maybe?” The man paused, then in bad Mexican Spanish: “You're not hit. This is my mountain. I don't allow no trespassing.”
Something was digging into Edge's stomach and he raised his body slightly and reached a hand underneath, his fingers closing over a weather-smoothed piece of rock. He pulled it out and with the slightest of wrist actions tossed it in a shallow arc some thirty feet across the other side of the trail. It clattered noisily and the rifle flashed, the sound of the shot cannoning like a minor thunderclap. Before it had been swallowed up by distance Edge was on his feet and pressed against the outward sloping wall of a high mesa that bordered the trail on this side. He let out his breath in a long, slow sigh of satisfaction. The rifleman had been as disorientated as he, but the telltale flash of the exploding rifle had, swung the advantage over to Edge. The man was two hundred feet ahead, in an area of black shadow on Edge's side of the trail—with no dangerous, open ground between them.
“I didn't hit you then, either,” the man shouted, and Edge used the sound of his voice as a cover for any noise he might make in moving forward. “Why don't you just back off and catch your horse, mister?” He was speaking English again and now, despite the distortion of echo, Edge could detect a change of tone: the man was beginning to get nervous. “You go back down the trail about half a mile. There's a gully goes off to the east. Another trail through there'll take you into Rainbow. Easier ride than this way—and you won't be trespassing none.”