Edge 58: The Desperadoes by George G. Gilman

Author:George G. Gilman [Gilman, George G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: action hero, Adam Steele, Edge the Loner, Piccadilly cowboys, Piccadilly Publishing, pulp ficiton writing, Spaghetti westerns, Terry Harknett
Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing
Published: 2023-04-30T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

EDGE LENT A hand with the few chores that had to be done to break camp at Eagle Rock: helped Conrad Christie put the four-horse team in the Conestoga traces while Alice, nervously clutching her own rifle, kept watch on the trail to the west where the old-timer’s wagon had now gone out of sight into the distance and the darkness.

Without being asked, Christie showed Edge where the bulging gunnysack and the coin-clinking bags he had seen taken from the Munro bank had been stowed. They were in a drawer of an elegant rosewood writing bureau that looked to be the only quality item of furniture packed into the rear of the heavily laden covered wagon.

The half-breed told the eager-to-co-operate schoolteacher it would be all right for the stolen money to stay where it was.

It was not until they were rolling, the half-breed, the schoolteacher and the woman all crowded on to the high seat with Edge driving and searching for the sign that showed where Duffy steered the flatbed on to the trail, that Christie gave in to a nagging need to explain events at Eagle Rock.

‘We were completely staggered, and not a little afraid, at what we found back there, Mr. Edge. Those horses hobbled out behind the remains of the building. And the saddles piled up against the rock. It was totally unexpected, of course.’

‘You don’t have to sound so guilty about it, Con,’ Alice protested from where she sat on the far end of the seat from Edge. She linked her arm possessively through Christie’s.

‘I know, Alice. But—’

‘But nothin’, honey. We didn’t do anythin’ wrong.’

‘I know.’ He sighed, not fully in agreement with her.

Edge drawled: ‘You thought about it, I guess?’

‘I never ...’ He started to sound affronted, then vented a low sound of self-disgust, pointed out defensively: ‘You can see our circumstances, Mr. Edge. I have more or less admitted Alice and I are running away from commitments in Philadelphia, and we aren’t exactly flush.’

‘And we’re only human,’ Alice added softly.

Edge finished smoking the cigarette he had lit and let go out back at Eagle Rock, relit before they left. He tossed the butt off the side of the wagon, said on a trickle of exhaled tobacco smoke: ‘It doesn’t matter a damn to me, but you took a look in the saddlebags, found the money and were tempted to steal it. I can see how that could—’

‘No!’ Alice broke in vehemently. She leaned suddenly forward to look across Christie at Edge, her freckled, acne-scarred face set in a glower. ‘It didn’t happen at all like that. Did it, Con? Tell him, honey!’

‘It wouldn’t have happened at all in normal circumstances,’ Christie said grimly as he stared straight ahead, seemed oblivious to the change of direction as Edge steered the rig off the trail. Perhaps saw juxtaposed against the night-shrouded middle distance vivid images of Philadelphia and Eagle Rock. ‘Our team needed to be rested. We’d been pushing them harder than we should have through the mountains.

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