Free Killing Time In Eternity - Edge Series 4 by George G. Gilman

of breakfast and next when he acknowledged it would be crazy to write off the financial gain he was 42
    due. And some three miles or so out along the trail he reined in and wheeled his quivering mount to start an easy walk back west. This time chose to follow the railroad, which was the straight, shorter route back to Eternity. He was about halfway back to town when he saw another rider emerge from out of one of the hollows around which the trail curved. The distant rider halted his mount and remained in the saddle for several seconds, peering toward Edge.
    Then the man in the distance dismounted and led his horse to a telegraph pole to hitch it. Stood as still as the pole, no longer peering toward where Edge continued to narrow the gap at an unhurried pace. A few minutes later when he came to within a hundred yards of where the newcomer stood, he saw he had been mistaken. It was not a man. And less than fifty yards away, he reined in his new mount, recognised the woman and had some idea of why she was out here in this barren piece of open country. Closer still, he saw that fixed to the pole to which she had hitched her horse was a wreath of winter flowers, their naturally less than vivid colours dulled further by exposure to many days of Kansas November weather. Another pointer to this being the spot where the mutilated body of Billy Childs had been found was the manner in which the woman stood beside the railroad: her head bowed as she gazed down at the track bed with fixed intensity. Hands clasped low in front of her.
    ‘Mr Edge,’ Sue Ellen Spencer greeted dully before she turned her head to look at him. He tipped his hat, dismounted and led his horse by the reins.
    ‘Do you think it’ll last for a couple more days without falling apart?’ She gestured with a gloved hand toward the bedraggled wreath.
    Edge glanced at the weather beaten token of mourning and saw it carried a card, the hand written message smudged and all but obliterated from being drenched by the heavy rain since it was first hung there.
    ‘I reckon so.’
    ‘Maybe it’s best to just let it rot away into nothing, do you think? Or maybe it’s just plain stupid anyway – leaving it out here where Billy was found? Instead of on his grave?’
    ‘Whatever eases you grief best, lady,’ he told the brown haired, slim bodied woman he had found so attractive at first, second and now third sight. She shook her head. ‘It was the doc who put it here. He said he did it because it was the last place where Billy was a whole person as he remembered him. What was buried in the cemetery in town, that was nothing like . . . Well, the train ran over him and did some awful – ‘ She caught her breath, grimaced and snapped her head away from Edge’s level gaze.
    ‘I heard. I reckon I can understand how the boy’s pa felt about it.’
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    ‘Now Doc Childs is dead, too.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Yes, of course you do.’ She was irritated with herself. ‘You saw who killed him and his friend from New York City. And then he tried to kill you?’
    Edge nodded as his attention was drawn toward the west. Where on the horizon two more riders had come into indistinct view, following the straight line of the railroad track. Sue Ellen Spencer looked in the same direction when Edge said:
    ‘Getting crowded out here. More mourners, maybe?’
    She shrugged inside the heavy coat. ‘I worked for Doc Childs, you know?’
    ‘Somebody mentioned that.’
    She turned away from the track, went to her horse and unhitched the reins. ‘I took care of his paperwork – the medical records of his patients and such like. And sometimes I could be a sort of nurse, too. Because of how he trained me. Although he was the town doctor – or maybe because of it – he didn’t have many close friends in Eternity.’
    Edge swung up into his saddle and showed a faint smile as he said: ‘Wasn’t he a very good doctor?’
    She was in no frame of mind for light humour and quickly sprang to