Edge: Ten Grand

“They rode in an hour ago,” she said as she pressed the hot, soaking cloth against Edge’s wound, angry at herself for feeling a stab of satisfaction when he winced.  “They’ve got a wanted poster on somebody called Josiah Hedges.  Captain Josiah C. Hedges.  Picture looks like you a lot younger. Hedges ... Edge. A man you killed called you Captain. Close enough?”

“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.