“I’m coming,” Edge said, kicking his horse into action, the flying hoofs leaping over the body of the dead man as Pete shoved him clear and slid into the saddle.
A few wild shots were pumped after the escaping riders, but with neither Sheriff Hammond nor his deputy able to lead a posse, no citizen of Anson City saddled up to give chase.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE Brady gang was holed up in a deep gully cut by some great primeval river through low hill country. The four riders were challenged by a lookout concealed behind a boulder at the mouth of the gully, his warning shot whining through the still air and the bullet thwacking into a tree trunk before the crack of the rifle reached the riders. They reined in their horses with great neighing and sliding of hoofs on loose shale.
“Hold on you stupid bastard,” the leading rider flung at the sharpshooter. “It’s us. We sprung Pete from Anson jail.”
“You ain’t carrying no sign,” came a shout of response. “How’d I know?”
The man at the head of the column curses softly and set his horse trotting down into the gully. Edge allowed the others to follow, then brought up the rear. He had carefully retained his position at the back of the furious five-mile ride from Anson City, very much aware of Pete’s knowledge of the two thousand dollars (less five for Annie) stashed in the saddlebags. The gully made two sharp curves, one to the right, the next left, before broadening into a wide bowl with a shale bottom and curved rocky sides, as if an enormous shovel had been used to scoop a massive indentation out of the gully. At the other side, it narrowed again.
There was a crude wooden shack in the center of the bowl, with a hitching rail along the side to which a dozen horses were tethered. Bales of hay were stacked on the other side of the shack. Other bales were being used as seats for a group of men who lounged in front of the shack, four playing cards, two apparently sleeping, another idly picking at his nails with a curved blade knife while three more talked, their heads close together. On a horse count that meant two more in the shack, Edge figured, maybe only one if the lookout and not rode to his position.
The Brady Gang was a big one.
All the men outside looked up with interest at the approach of the horsemen and one or two shouted ribald remarks of welcome to Pete, who waved back at them like a visiting dignitary, enjoying the limelight enormously. But when the men realized the fourth rider was not a member of the gang the banter ended abruptly.
“Brady,” one of the card players shouted as the newcomers dismounted two figures emerged from the shack, a man and a woman.
He was of indeterminate age, anything from twenty-five to thirty-five, vastly overweight with arms that threatened the seams of his shirt, thighs that made his pants skin-tight and an enormous body that overhangs his gun belt, drooping over to conceal his buckle. His face was round with cheeks that ballooned out as if stuffed with uneaten food and above these he had small, round, pig-like eyes, which warned the world that weight was not all he had an excess of. They were the eyes of a man whose middle name was HATE.
Beside him the woman was almost girl-like: slim and frail looking, with a mere hint of feminine curves under the dirty, once white dress. But when Edge looked again at her face, dull-eyed and etched with lines of bitterness, framed by long matted, greasy black hair, he could see she would be at least forty on her next birthday.
“Hi Brady,” Pete said, excitedly.
“Who’s the new critter?” Brady said, ignoring the rescued gang member and locking his mean eyes upon those of Edge, who returned the gaze without blinking.
“Name’s Edge,” Pete said, refusing to have his mood of jubilation quelled. “Hadn’t been for him I might not have broken out. Carved some foreign word on the sheriff’s face. Real mean cuss.” There was a tone of respect in Pete’s voice as he spoke his last.
“What happened to Chuck?” Brady demanded, and it was he who now lost out in the staring match.
“Somebody blasted him out of the saddle back at Anson City,” Edge answered. “Obliged for the loan of your horse.”
He led the animal to the hitching rail and lopped the reins over it, removed his gear and the Henry. All eyes were on him, and several hands went to guns as they saw the rifle held loosely in Edge’s hand.
“Don’t let the priest’s outfit fool you none,” Pete said, his voice cutting across the moment of tension like a keen edge through soft cheese. “He ain’t no priest. Why he’s got ...”
Edge poised himself to loose of a shot and leap back upon the horse as he realized Pete was about to shoot off his mouth about the money in the saddlebags. But it was not fear of Edge that caused Peter to halt the flow of words. The expression that flitted across his face told of a thought that had suddenly struck him. And Edge knew what that thought was.
But nobody else in front of the shack showed any suspicion at what had happened. Truth was, Edge suspected, Pete always talked too much and the rest of the gang had learned to ignore most of what he said; probably didn’t listen half the time.
“Let’s get to Linmann,” the woman said suddenly, her voice gruff, almost as deep as that of a man. “We waited long enough.”
Brady made a sound from deep inside him, causing his mass of flesh to shake like jelly and it took Edge a moment to realize the big man was laughing.
“You really itching to have some sport with that bastard, ain’t you, Stella?” he said between chortles.
“Ain’t we all itching to see it?” Pete said with glee, grinning at everybody, and triggering them all into gusts of laughter. Then Pete looked at Edge who was standing in stony silence, gear in one arm, Henry held loosely in his other hand. “Linmann’s the guy I told you about. Sold us out to Hammond.”
Brady stopped laughing and his dark eyes found Edge’s face again. “Like you to stick around for awhile, Mr. Edge. Might be we have a spare horse to sell you later. Don’t figure Linmann will be wanting it anymore.”
His laughter exploded the excess of flesh into a paroxysm of movement again as he put a meaty arm about the woman’s thin shoulders and urged her around to the back of the shack. The rest of the gang, noisy with eager anticipation, rose to their feet to follow. Again, Edge held back so that he could bring up the rear.
At the back of the shack was a broken down float bed wagon from which several planks of wood had been torn, to be fashioned into a roughly made gallows and driven into the hard ground nearby. Two bales of hay were placed directly beneath the hanging noose of stout rope. More hay was stacked untidily a few feet away, and these burst into immediate flame as Stella ignited them. A man of thirty or so years lay in the shade beneath the sagging wagon, his body arched by a length of rope that bound his ankles together and was pulled tight to bind his hands behind his back. The lower half of his face was concealed by a wide gag that cut deeply into his cheeks and above this his pain-filled eyes watched with naked terror as the flames and black smoke rose from the newly lit fire.
“Tie that rat to the post,” Stella commanded, snatching up a branding iron from the bed of the wagon as two of the men dragged the prisoner from beneath.
They cut the rope at his back, leaving his hands and feet still securely tied and dragged him to the gallows, used another length of rope to tie him to the upright, binding him at ankles, knees, chest and throat so that his weakened legs did not have to support his weight. Standing, watching as the gang lowered themselves to the ground, making themselves comfortable for the show, Edge was reminded of Jamie, of how his young body had been secured to the live oak back at the farmstead in Iowa. But his disinterested expression revealed nothing of his thoughts.