Free Return to Massacre Mesa - Edge Series 5 by George G. Gilman

with the prospect of selling the store he went to the town of Eternity, Kansas where the business was located.
    There the only potential buyer wound up as dead as Nicholas Quinn. But there was a local woman who made a brief stay in Eternity pleasant enough for a time. This in the wake of a run of more of the kind of violent trouble that had started to play such a large part in Edge’s life again since his attempt to turn over a new leaf had failed. There were whispered innuendoes about Sue Ellen Spencer’s husband hunting propensities but these did not trouble Edge at first: while he began to have tantalising ideas of his own about entering into a second marriage. Considered the state of wedlock might be the key to the kind of stable, trouble free life he sought to achieve. But then this vision of marriage to a fine looking woman while he made a living out of the tailoring store or some other kind of peaceful business in the less than bustling railroad town of Eternity began to slowly change in his mind. Alter from a rose-tinted dream to something much more mundane.
    Then came the morning when a drummer carrying a line of fancy tie-pins and collar studs happened by the store: and in response to Edge’s usual query to newly arrived strangers, reported that he had come across a man named Andrew Devlin at a stage line way station. This man was seen by the drummer as he took a meal break with a travelling companion while the team or horses was being changed over for the final west bound leg of a journey to a community called Lakewood in the Territory of New Mexico.
    ‘Hey, mister!’
    Edge had only just left the barbershop and had paused for a few moments to relight the pinched out cigarette on the north-west corner of the planned intersection that was now bustling with people on foot and horseback and driving wagons and buggies. He turned to the side and saw that the trooper named Monroe had followed him out of Shaw’s establishment, his shoulders still draped with the cape and the barber’s comb 53
    trapped in greasy hair at the side of his head.
    ‘Yeah, feller?’
    ‘I just thought of something. And I figure I can maybe help you with that guy you’re looking for.’
    Edge removed the unlit cigarette from the side of his mouth. ‘Be much obliged if that’s so, trooper.’
    ‘The guy you’re looking to find has the name of Andrew Devlin? Did I hear it right?’
    Passers-by who had shown brief overt interest when Monroe shouted to Edge were now going about their business. Even the intrigued Shaw had withdrawn into his parlour.
    ‘You heard it right.’
    The uniformed man nodded enthusiastically then grunted in disgust and scowled.
    ‘Four months back, the Lakewood bound stage was held up a few miles out along the El Paso Trail. Ambushed by Mountain Lion and his bunch of renegade Comanche.’
    His scowl became more ugly and more firmly fixed. ‘They killed the driver and one passenger and badly wounded two more. Them murdering sonsofbitches . . . We just can’t catch up with the bastards no matter how many patrols are sent out looking. I’m assigned to another one tomorrow, damnit!’
    He whistled out a long breath and shrugged. ‘Well, one of the passengers that got shot up real bad but wasn’t killed is living with the squaw out along the Farm Trail, mister. I heard tell he’s real sick. The post sawbones couldn’t do nothing for him but the squaw knows a whole lot about Comanche medicine, it’s said.’
    He shrugged. ‘Anyway, mister, the name of the wounded guy off the stage is Lyndon Andrews. But it could be that’s just a name he goes under? And it is kinda like the one that you . . .’ The trooper with the dull-eyed, dumb looking face abruptly appeared sorry he had got started on this. ‘Look, if the guy had good reason to switch

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    names and you’re that reason and . . . Hell, I’m just trying to help. I don’t want to cause no trouble for nobody, mister?’
    Edge showed an easy grin, shook