Edge Meets Steele by George G. Gilman

Author:George G. Gilman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: western series, terry harknett, old west fiction, spaghetti westerns, piccadilly cowboys, piccadilly publishing westerns, ralph compton
Publisher: Piccadilly

Chapter Twelve

THE BLANKET-DRAPED Concord coach of The Central Western Stage Line Company with its decomposing cargo of corpses and its escorting riders at front and rear rolled past the town limits marker of Oro City as the short desert evening gave way to full night. The strangers to this part of the country came upon the community unexpectedly, because those who were familiar with the place made no mention that it was close by as the group of time-and tension-wearied travelers moved slowly up a long, pine-clad incline beyond the ridge of which the town was spread out over the north-west-facing slope of the low hill.

It was seen, in the light of a bright moon augmented by the glow of several kerosene lamps that were mostly clustered at the foot of the hill, to be a town of one main street that snaked across the hillside in a series of gentle curves: from the marker close to the crest to where it became again an open trail heading west beyond the railroad station out of which a single track ran due north.

Here and there along the main thoroughfare that veered to left or right to swing around areas of high ground or avoid depressions on the far from naturally featureless slope, side roads cut off. None of these were seen to be very long before they went from sight into timbered valleys or behind rugged outcrops of bare, element-eroded rock. Or perhaps the trail did not become a town street proper until it had meandered the best part of a mile and a half beyond the marker to reach the well-lit section of Oro City at the base of the hill?

If anyone contemplated this point, they did not do so for very long before they lost the inclination to care about something so inconsequential. For everyone was too wearied by the journey and drained by its violent events to be concerned with much else outside of the prospect this town provided of rest and food and, to an extent, safety. But, as they started to move along the first curve of street beyond the leaning over and almost bleached out marker, the new arrivals to Oro City began to sense and then see that all was not as it should be in this town.

On this first stretch the buildings were widely spaced and faced each other across a distance that seemed too wide to be termed, yet again, a street. These were large private houses set in extensive gardens bordered by fences. There were both single and two-storied houses, constructed of timber or stone or a mixture of the two in a number of different and not always identifiable styles. Here and there a house was in a good state of repair and its surrounding garden was well-tended. Most, though, were neglected and stood in weed-choked surroundings enclosed by leaning or fallen-down fences.

Just two of the houses not yet started toward becoming derelict showed cracks of light at draped windows and had woodsmoke rising from cooking fires below their chimneys.

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