Edge 54 by George G. Gilman

Author:George G. Gilman [Gilman, George G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: American westerns, Best western ebook, Edge, Piccadilly cowboys, Spaghetti westerns, Steele, Terry Harknett
Publisher: Piccadilly
Published: 2022-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Nine

EDGE LEFT OTHER sets of tracks in the frost-crusted yard early the next morning. First his own, then those of his horse after he led the animal out of the stable and swung up into the saddle.

He made no attempt to muffle the sounds of his preparations to leave and he knew as he rode the horse at an easy walk toward the corner of the yard where Mrs. Peppercorn had gone from sight last night that he was being watched from the slightly cracked open door of the house: could see the misted breath of the silent observer escaping out into the dawn air of what was going to be a glaringly bright day if the sky remained as cloudless as it was at this pre-dawn hour.

Until he had ridden between the corners of the house and the barn he expected to hear Louisa Lee call out to him. And when the morning stillness continued to be disturbed only by the clop of the gelding’s hooves he wondered if it was Olive Mitchell who had been watching his departure. For the owner of the place would certainly not want to stop him from leaving after her reluctance to have him stay in the wake of last night’s trouble.

Then, as he started to roll a cigarette, he put all thought of the women out of his mind. And displaced his usual impassivity with a smile of quiet pleasure at the turnabout in his circumstances that had put money in his pocket. Sufficient money to make him independent of other people for many weeks: so long as he did not get involved in any more games of five card stud in which high stakes and the fickleness of fortune played a part.

The cigarette lit, he relished the harsh bite of the smoke against the back of his early morning throat. And the sensation it spread throughout his body as he sucked it deep into his lungs, allowed it to stream out through his nostrils.

He began to take notice of the terrain he was riding through, rather than simply to watch instinctively the high cliff tops to either side where, conceivably even at this early hour of the morning, someone with a fresh or a long held grudge against him might be positioned. Waiting an opportunity to bushwhack him while he reflected upon how his initially unpromising ride into this piece of Wyoming had turned out far better than he had hoped.

There had been little chance during his explosive arrival at the gorge, the bolting gallop down it and his coldly angry walk back up it, to register an impression of the Mitchell farm. This morning, brightening by the moment as the first rays of the rising sun shafted down through the eastern mouth of the gorge, he saw the fields were in keeping with the house and the barns. Outside of the fine condition of the Mitchells’ horses and equipment, nothing here was as neat and well-tended as it was at the Peppercorn place.

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