Free The Deputy - Edge Series 2 by George G. Gilman Page A

featured, grey haired old man poured his own drink, began to sip it like it was high priced liquor and then he and Carr started a discussion about Washington politics with regard to how they affected the state of Texas.
    Edge ignored them as they did him while nobody else came in off the street that remained quietly busy with people and an occasional wagon but was never bustling. The clock on the wall had struck once more to mark ten thirty and Edge was halfway through a second cup of coffee, had finished smoking a first cigarette of the day when George North rode the piebald up to the law office, dismounted and hitched the reins to the rail.
    He was inside for perhaps three minutes while Edge took his time with the coffee. And Carr and Logan, having seen the sheriff return, altered the subject of their conversation to the killings at the Bellamy farm.
    Then the law office door opened and the tall, powerfully built but running to fat North strode purposefully toward the Dancing Horse.
    ‘Little early in the day for you, ain’t it, sheriff?’ Logan greeted as the lawman pushed between the batwings.
    Carr said: ‘Lousy job you’ve just had to do, I guess, George? Can I get you something to maybe help blot out – ‘
    The lawman grimaced, shook his head, waved a hand toward the two men at the bar as he crossed to where Edge sat and asked: ‘Do you mind?’
    Without waiting for a response he dragged out a chair and sat down on the other side of the table. There was an almost painful melancholy in the steel grey eyes of the darkly tanned man who had just visited the house where five people had been violently killed a few hours ago.
    ‘Pretty ugly out there, feller?’ Edge said.
    North sighed deeply and nodded curtly as he took out a cheroot. ‘At least Clyde Grover had been there ahead of me and hauled away the bodies. Just the bloodstains and the bullet scarred furnishing and smashed crockery and such like.’
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    He lit the cheroot. ‘Didn’t find anything of any use inside the house. But outside there was plenty of clear to read sign. Showed where two men rode in across the fields from the south west. Hobbled their horses and came up to the house on foot. Rode off at a gallop after the killing was done. Back the way they came from.’
    ‘Does that mean something?’
    North shrugged. ‘The Martinez hacienda is off to the south west of the Bellamy place. But I’m not going to draw any hard and fast conclusions from that yet awhile. It’s quite a way off – seven or eight miles, I’d guess. Tracks were easy to see in the Bellamy fields, but beyond the cultivated land the ground’s way too hard for somebody like me to do any tracking.’
    Edge nodded impassively and completed rolling a second cigarette. North said: ‘Okay, so now it’s your turn. Ted Straker tells me you got a note of some kind delivered by young Bob Frank Carter this morning?’
    He waved a hand in the direction of the bar where the owner of the place and the old man were blatantly eavesdropping on the exchange at the table by the window. ‘Otis Logan there saw the boy give it to you.’
    ‘I sure did see that right enough, George,’ Logan confirmed self-importantly. North continued to ignore him and the taciturn Carr as Edge drew the envelope from his shirt pocket, pushed it across the table and lit his freshly rolled cigarette. The lawman extracted the single sheet of paper and slowly read twice through what was printed on it, his deeply lined, five o’clock shadowed face expressionless. Then he refolded the letter, replaced it in the envelope and asked:
    ‘You mind telling me why you didn’t show this to Ted Straker?’
    ‘It’s meant for you and me, feller. Says so right at the start.’
    ‘But what if it got to be time to leave for the meeting tonight and I wasn’t back from the Bellamy farm or wherever? What – ‘
    ‘It says for either one of us to go, sheriff. I was being paid to ride herd on the woman when they snatched