“Not so younger,” Edge allowed. “Close enough. It wasn’t murder.”
“The authorities don’t rate it very highly,” Gail said, pouring the reddened water away, getting some fresh and beginning to clean, up where the blood had matted into his beard. “They’ve put a bounty on you. Only a hundred dollars.”
Edge turned on his grin of ice. “Even I wouldn’t kill me to raise just that much. How’d you know all this?”
“I thought you might be back,” she answered evenly, with a toss of her long hair. “Didn’t want anyone to steal your belongings. I went to the office to get them. The marshals came while I was there. Asked me what had happened, I told them and then they showed me the wanted poster, wanted to know if I had seen the man called Hedges.”
“Obliged,” Edge said, getting to his feet as she finished cleaning his face. “Where’s my gear?”
“Out back,” she said, nodding to the door. “There’s a horse out there, as well. It’s mine. Fed, watered, saddled and ready to go.” She licked her lips and reached out a hand to touch his shoulder as he turned. “Edge?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m not going to ask to come with you. But if you ask me it won’t take long to saddle Honey’s horse.”
“Where I’m going, women ain’t nothing but something to screw,” he said harshly, saw her wince. His voice softened and he leaned forward, brushed his lips gentle across her mouth. “You’re a good screw, Gail, but you got other qualities.”
Tears welled into her eyes again, and her hand found his, pressed some crumpled bills into the palm.
“Twelve dollars,” she whispered. “It’s all I have.”
“I’ll repay it through the mail,” he told her and strode to the door.
“You won’t be coming back?”
He looked at her with hooded eyes. “What for?”
“I ... I guess nothing.”
“Nothing ain’t worth coming back for,” he said and went out.
The door slammed and she heard the sound of him mounting. The horse whinnied and then hoofs thudded into a gallop. Gail sat down on the still warm chair and threw her head onto the table, gave herself up to sobs that sent tremors through her entire body.
Honey and the two hard-faced marshals found her like that.
CHAPTER FIVE
EDGE had no idea how far it was to the Mexican-Arizona territory border. He just knew it was south and that was the way he rode, keeping the high, hot sun ahead of him when the trail petered out. It was desolate country, arid and irregularly featured by high outcrops of rock, dry stream beds and grotesquely shaped cactus plants. It seemed upon first impression to be a dead place, for even the giant prickly growths and infrequent patches of sharp-edged grass seemed to be formed of rock, so still were they in the unmoving air. But Edge and his horse were not the only living things that moved in the area of vast waste through which they passed.
When Edge was well clear of town and slowed the horse to conserve her energy he had time to look about him. He saw a diamond-back rattler almost as big as the one he killed that morning, coiled in the shade of a rock, a beautifully patterned copperhead on the move, and a bizarrely decorated gila monster which darted across his path, causing his horse to rear up.
But he soothed her into docility again and she fell back into her even gait, obediently responding to a tug on the reins that headed her towards a small canyon that split asunder the high solid face of a stretch of plateau country that stretched across the horizon. As he neared the canyon mouth, Edge saw that a wide slash of disturbed dust curved in from the west. As further evidence of the passage of a great many horses, dried dung sprinkled the ground. Edge could see how the riders had been heading directly into the sheer face of the towering cliffs, had made a broad, wheeling turn to go into the canyon which provided the only route south for many miles on either side.
“I figure my money came this way,” Edge muttered and the horse picked up her ears. The rider leaned forward and ruffled the short, tough hair between them. Then, when he heeled her into a gallop, she seemed to be as anxious as the man to reach the shade afforded by the canyon. It was mid-afternoon now and the sun, as hot as ever, was slanting its light and heat from the west, so that the western wall of the canyon threw a giant shadow. But not for any great distance, for although the canyon was narrow at its opening, it broadened almost at once, the boulder littered ground on each side sloping away fast like the sides of a shallow bowl. Ahead was an expanse of desert country as desolate as the plain Edge had just crossed, but featured with many more outcrops and sparsely vegetated hills.
Edge stayed in the shade for as long as he could see the tracks made by the Mexicans’ horses. But they were on the far side of the canyon, the Mexicans having taken advantage of the shadow of the eastern wall thrown out by morning sunlight. And soon he was forced out into the harsh glare again in order to keep on the trail of his quarry.
His horse died beneath him while still on all fours, the sound she made as she collapsed, throwing him clear, merely the whoosh of air venting from crushed lungs. The rifle crack that had sent a bullet piercing into her brain echoed between the canyon walls with such stark clarity that the sound stung Edge’s ears. He lay absolutely still where he had fallen, shielded on one side by the bulk of the dead horse, exposed on the other where there was just an expanse of open terrain scattered with small rocks.
It was from this side that the two men approached and Edge did not have to move in his bogus unconsciousness to watch them, for he had landed on his belly, head art the side and facing that way. He watched them with eyes cracked open the merest extent, seeing them through the dark curtain of his lashes. The sharp-shooter had been good or lucky. It had been a long-range, downwards shot from two hundred yards away, a hundred feet above the canyon floor. He saw them appear from each side of a huge boulder, stand for a moment looking down at him, then start forward. Even winded as he was, his head still ringing with the sound of the shot and the thud of his body on to the hard ground, Edge knew he could gun them both down in less than two seconds—if the Henry repeater was in his hands. But the rifle was still in its boot on the dead horse and Edge had no way of reaching it without revealing his awareness. He had to assume that the sharp-shooter was good, not merely lucky and if that was so he would be able to loose off any number of accurate shots before Edge had even rolled over to look for the Henry. So Edge merely moved his right hand—on the blind side from the men—and discovered the only weapon within reach was a jagged, fist-sized piece of rock. His fingers closed over it.
“Must of knocked himself out in the fall, Luke,” one of the men said excitedly.
“Damn rifle pulls to the right,” his partner replied with low anger. “Way the Government is so close-handed, sometimes the horse is worth more than the outlaw.”
“He’s facing this way, Luke,” the other said, refusing to have his enthusiasm quelled by Luke’s chagrin. “Recognize him? Wonder how much he’s worth?”
Luke was tall and thin to the point of emaciation. He had hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes; a chin that came to a point. He was dressed all in black, from high-crowned hat to boots, and walked with a casual looseness. His partner was shorter, fat by comparison, with a round, moonlike face decorated with a moustache longer on one side than the other. He was all in black, too. Both carried rifles, wore revolvers in holsters on the right hip, tied at the thigh. Edge didn’t recognize them as any of the many bounty hunters who worked out of Peaceville.
“Whoever it is, Chuck,” Luke said, raising his rifle, “makes no difference whether he’s dead or alive. Dead is easier for us.”