Chapter Four

 

RANCOR WAS ALMOST a palpable presence in the sunlit morning air that now smelled only of woodsmoke as Edge rode down half the length of the cross street, then turned south, toward the far off California line.

The eyes that gazed fixedly at him showed undisguised condemnation for what had happened to Eddie Noon and he felt certain he could read the kind of thinking that generated this brand of dislike for him.

Noon had been the local braggart, but he was harmless. He had never done anything to anybody outside of riling them when he got drunker than he usually did on a Saturday night. Universally disdained, but nonetheless a local man. A son of Ross who deserved better than to end up with his dead ass in a water trough on a bright spring Sunday morning. Shot down by a sinister-looking, cold-eyed, passing-through stranger who flaunted a six-gun on his hip and looked like he did not have a good deed in him.

Of course, Edge could not know for sure if this was the line of anybody’s thinking as they watched him ride a half-length of one street, the full length of the other. But as he headed his horse between the saloon and the church and out on to the open trail, he figured that he was not too far wide of the mark with the surmise.

For he had heard similar things said about him in enough small towns not unlike this one in the Oregon timber.

Towns, maybe, where he would have liked to settle down if the circumstances had been right for it. And become an adopted son of the community. Where he would never be like Noon, or Ray Grogan or ...

Or anybody, Goddamnit! He would always be himself, with as many faults as some people, probably fewer virtues than most.

But where he would belong. And where, in the event of an outsider causing him trouble, he would have the townspeople on his side. Not actively helping him if it was the kind of trouble in which lead might fly, maybe. But in spirit.

And if he should die, violently or from a natural cause, there would be people there who had known him for long enough and well enough to mourn his passing.

He mouthed an obscenity, spat more forcefully than had Sheriff Pascall, cursing himself for allowing his mind to lurch along this morbid line on such a fine Sunday morning as he left the grim little town of Ross behind him.

He reacted in this way as he rode past the gated entrance of the McAllister Lumber Company, where an old-timer sat out front of a small shack, smoking a pipe, drinking coffee and basking his leather-textured face in the morning sun.

You mind tellin’ me what the shootin’ was in town, young feller?’ the lumber company watchman called, and obviously it was shortsightedness rather than his seventy-some years of living which made him refer to the half-breed as young.

Yeah, I mind,’ Edge growled as he rode on by the sawmill entrance with just a fleeting glance at the man slumped on a chair before the shack on the other side of the gates.

‘Well, you can go to hell, you miserable sonofabitch!’ the old man snarled back.

Been a lot of places I’d guess are a lot like it, feller,’ Edge answered, probably not loud enough for his voice to carry to the watchman. ‘Looking for somewhere better now.’

Then he made a conscious effort to erase from his mind any kind of reflection on the painful past or wishful thoughts about a brighter future as he rode without haste along the trail that rose and fell, first curved one way then the other through a once densely forested area which was now patch worked where many sections of timber had been felled by the McAllister Lumber Company.

He stayed on the main trail that led inexorably southward despite its many swings in other directions. Ignored the spurs that cut off to areas of felled timber on either side, in which the deep wheel ruts and churned-up earth witnessed how teams had struggled to haul heavily laden lumber wagons through the worst kinds of weather, back to the sawmill at Ross.

As he moved through the fine Oregon country, by turns enclosed by densely growing trees on either side, then getting distant vistas in many directions from hillcrests where the elements or the destructive hand of man had stripped the land of timber, he endeavored to find contentment in the sights and sounds and smells of the forested mountain scape.

But he doubted he could achieve this.

There were few parts of the United States and Territories where he had not ridden trails that cut through spectacular scenery, took him past many natural wonders. Often, he had to allow, when even if he were the kind of man to see beauty in a landscape for beauty’s sake, he had been disinclined to take note of it. Because circumstances forced him to think of more mundane considerations, like his survival.

But he had never, anyway, developed that kind of sensitivity to his surroundings, good or bad, while he was required by events to exist where the whim of destiny or the need to raise a dollar had taken him. And it had always been an advantage that he could eat, sleep, make love or kill against whatever backdrop there happened to be, in the worst as well as some of the best of places.

And now he had taken the conscious decision to turn his back on that kind of life, he felt sure it was too late to try to develop any kind of affinity for the wonder of nature. So he would never choose where to put down new roots because of some breathtaking view of rolling hills, rushing rivers, rearing mountains or everchanging ocean. The place where one day he would make his home might equally well be among close-packed buildings lining crowded streets filled with the sights and sounds and smells of the city.

He could only hope that when he found it, he would recognize it as the place. Which was a risky way for a man to plan for the rest of his life. But it was his way and he knew of no other: had survived for almost half a century by following his instincts. How much happiness such a way of living his life had gotten him was not something he was prepared to get into.

By midday, when he paused, he had ridden far beyond the southern extent of the lumber company’s operation and was relishing the sense of isolation he drew from this knowledge.

He ate cold out of his saddlebags, the stale food unappetizing but adequate after the fine breakfast Maud Grogan fixed for him. His bay gelding, a relatively new purchase after he was forced to shoot his wounded horse in Winton—another town which had not appealed to him—fared better by equine standards than he did: grazed on succulent spring grass on the bank of a clear, slow-running creek.

The afternoon was much like the morning, except that the new-found sense of being so completely detached from his fellow man was not so strong. And it irked him.

Because he was the kind of man circumstances had made him, he constantly looked about him, saw the beauty of his surroundings only in a peripheral way while he sought to detect a threat before it materialized. And since it was unavoidable, he also saw the signs that showed other people were moving down the trail ahead of him.

There was a wagon hauled by a four-horse team, ridden by two men: one who smoked a pipe, the other cigars. This would be the lumber company rig driven by Ray Grogan. Not a heavy wagon and certainly not one laden with timber, for the tracks of the wheels were not deep on the grassy areas where Grogan had twice called a halt to eat and rest.

There were also clear to see signs that three saddle-horses were being ridden southward. One of them had a broken shoe on the nearside hind hoof. One of the riders was a cigarette smoker, another chewed tobacco.

Edge looked no further than this, for it was purely an academic exercise after he recognized that he was a considerable distance behind the other travelers on the trail. But he could not help but register the sign, like other people noticed that the sun was shining, that a bird was perched on a branch or that a neighbor had started to build a new barn.

It was late in the afternoon but the sun was still bright and colored yellow when he rode around an outcrop of rock on a hillcrest, and for the first time since he left Ross saw something he could not instantly forget because it was of no concern to him.

Because the people camped halfway down the gentle slope into a long valley stretching southward meant he had to make a decision. Whether to continue riding the trail, or to make a wide detour through the virgin forest: avoid one of the two groups of travelers he had known were moving south ahead of him.

He did not consider the alternatives just because he had had his fill of other people for a while. There was a better reason than this for him to contemplate taking the time and trouble to ride around the night camp which had been set up so early.

For he could now see it was not three riders he had been following all day: acknowledged his mistake without any form of self-rebuke. For they rode only three horses and he had never felt any necessity to look closely enough at the hoofprints to see that one animal was carrying a double burden. Nor to search for any sign of a fourth traveler at the points where they rested. A fourth member of the group who was a woman.

She was instantly recognizable over a distance of a half mile from the hillcrest to the camp because of the combination of her blonde hair, red shirt, floral skirt and battered hat that hung down her back by the neck strap around her throat. And once he recognized Ruby Red, it was then easy to differentiate between the gray-haired Prentice Harper, the fleshy Cecil Wyler and the emaciated Seymour Singer.

The men sat on one side of a newly laid fire just beginning to give off smoke, their horses hobbled on the other side. While Ruby Red squatted a little way off, peeling vegetables and tossing them into a pot.

The woman was not shackled by any physical restraints as far as Edge could tell from such a distance. And there was nothing in her attitude as she prepared the evening meal to suggest she undertook the chore against her will.

There was even, he thought after watching the scene for more than a minute, some good-natured banter between Ruby Red and the three men who were engaged in another card game, using a flat-topped boulder for a table.

In fact, the half-breed allowed as he swung down from his saddle, it was an idyllic scene of peace and contentment as three totally relaxed men took their ease while a woman willingly prepared an evening meal for them. And maybe if he had not witnessed how this woman joined these men, Edge might have been persuaded by the domesticity of the scene to ride openly down the trail, introduce himself to the people at the camp, expect them to extend to a stranger the hospitality of their camp, as was customary among innocent travelers on the frontier.

But he did know how this woman came to be with these men, so he was aware that all was not as it seemed. And since he was familiar with the kind of people who comprised the group, he found himself presuming that the choice of the campsite was not a random one.

It was a hundred feet off the trail to the west, in a small clearing exposed to view from the hilltop where Edge stood beside his horse, absently stroking the animal’s neck as he swept his gaze the length and breadth of the valley which stretched several miles southward, the trail to California following the long curves of a stream that had its source at the foot of this hill.

From his higher vantage point, Edge could not see if the campsite commanded a similar but truncated view down the valley. But it was clear that Harper and his partners and their newly-acquired female companion could have, from the top of the hill, seen at least a score of places more suitable for a night camp. Along the valley bottom, close to the fresh water in the stream, hidden from watching eyes once the need of a fire had passed.

And since the sun only now began to take on a reddish hue as it eased down on the south-western horizon and the camp had obviously been pitched some time ago, urgency could not have been a factor in calling the halt here.

But, Edge allowed with a grunt, maybe the place was chosen simply because it took their fancy at a time of day when they had all had enough of being in the saddle since early morning. They were four free agents, drifting through the Oregon mountains and forests, three looking for another card game to strengthen their joint stake, the woman going where the luck of the draw of life took her. Not one of them with the experience or the plain commonsense to pick any of many better places available for a night camp. So they had settled for the first one they happened upon ...

Edge now rasped a soft-spoken curse as Seymour Singer threw down his hand of cards, rose from where he squatted beside the flat top rock. But it was not the move by the tall and thin man in the out of fashion city suit that triggered a reaction from Edge. It was a sound of self-rebuke.

For it was no concern of his why the four men and a woman were camped where they were, he told himself with a scowl as he watched the skinny man go around the fire to the woman, say something to her. It should not matter to him if they were truly innocents abroad, drifting where the fancy took them or if ...

Over a distance of a half mile, as the sun turned completely red and its leading arc touched the horizon, Edge was unable to discern the slightest hint of reluctance in the way Ruby Red interrupted her chore, extended a hand so Singer could help her to her feet. Then she walked behind him, without any further physical contact, to the side of the clearing, while the other two men continued to play cards. They did not even look up from the card game and Edge found himself wondering, with another scowl fixed firmly to his features, how often one of the men had demanded the submissive services of the woman during the day.

He tried to convince himself he felt shame as he watched the man and the woman, not hidden from the card players if they elected to look, clearly visible from the top of the hill in the fading light.

Peg ain’t never allowed no loose women in our place, Edge heard repeated in memory as he found himself compelled to gaze fixedly at what was taking place: tried to tell himself he experienced no emotion.

Ruby Red is no whore! he heard Vincent Mitchell’s voice counter the accusation of the Ross saloon keeper.

But she was sure acting like a whore now: complied without protest to the orders of a man who had been a stranger to her this time yesterday. One of three men who had been such strangers, Edge was forced to acknowledge as an acidly rancid taste suddenly rose out of his throat, and he told himself this was caused by the awful midday meal mixing with the good home cooking of Maud Grogan.

Seymour Singer stopped and turned to lean his back against a pine trunk. Took out a plug of tobacco. Said something to the woman who immediately went down on her knees before him. Singer bit off a chew of tobacco as she reached out both hands to unfasten his belt buckle, then fly buttons.

Next, without revulsion or passion, her movements as calmly deliberate as when she had been preparing supper, Ruby Red eased his pants down his skinny thighs and caressed him briefly with her hands. Until he hooked both his hands around the back of her head and she dropped her arms to her sides, took him into her mouth.

Edge wrenched his gaze away from the couple then, and felt no kind of taste in his own mouth. Instead, experienced in his throat a brand of almost palpable sound that he was sure would explode free of his compressed lips, roar from this end of the valley to the other if he continued to watch: even did not direct his mind to something outside of what the woman was doing to the man. The man not forcing himself upon the woman who Edge had found strangely attractive in a situation when she had been as unattainable as now.

He drew back, along the side and then behind the outcrop of granite, to place a solid barrier between himself and the scene below. But it was not so easy to rid his mind’s eye of the vivid image as he hitched the reins of his horse to a low branch of a tree, leaned his back against the rock and dug for the makings. Was aware his hands shook a little as he carefully rolled and lit a cigarette, blew out a stream of smoke and told himself he was reacting like an asshole.

He was not looking for women.

Women were readily available in the right places if a man was not looking for a particular one.

And if he were to find a place where he could settle down, the kind of woman that Ruby Red obviously was would never be anything other than a female body on which to relieve frustration. In the manner she was serving the lustful purpose of Singer, or in any other way a whore was willing to sell herself.

He half smoked the cigarette as the red light of the setting sun extended from the far west to halfway across the heavens, met with the darkness encroaching from the east. Only then was able to think of something other than the half-breed woman: be she satisfying the sexual desires of another man or staring at him with the kind of pleading she had conveyed to him in the Golden Edge Saloon last night.

And in the gathering darkness of night crowding out twilight, he was able to reach a logical conclusion about why Harper had picked a particular place to make night camp so early in the day. And it would be Harper who made the decision, he felt certain, for he was the undisputed leader of the bunch.

They had been strangers in Ross who had broken camp and left town early, he had been told without asking by Maud Grogan. And Edge had then been inclined to think of them as opportunists who got lucky, happened to meet up with a gambling fool who was also a passing-through stranger.

By luck, judgment or maybe Mitchell was right and cheating had played a part, they had collected a bundle of bucks and the company of a half-breed woman who perhaps lacked beauty but was experienced in supplying what every red-blooded man required from time to time.

Maud Grogan, who endeavored to find out everything there was to know about events in Ross, had not said the men had left because the strong-willed but fair-minded sheriff had ordered them out of town. Like he certainly would have done if Harper had gunned down a local man in a similar situation.

So why had the men with their newly-acquired woman companion left the vicinity of Ross so early? And made only slow progress down the south trail?

At some time during the day they would have been overhauled by the McAllister Lumber Company wagon driven by Ray Grogan who had somebody riding with him.

Had there been a passing of the time of day between the men aboard the wagon and the horseback riders? Or had the Harper bunch purposely avoided being seen?

The wagon could have rolled on down the trail during one of many times when the men had taken the woman into the timber to enjoy her as the fruits of victory in ...

Edge took the cigarette out of his mouth, cursed softly again and spat into the darkness relieved by moon and starlight. Maybe these were not ordinary men by the standards of the kind who lived in Ross, for instance. But they were mere men. And their capacity for screwing was governed by the basic laws of human sexuality.

Also, Harper, Singer and Wyler were men of the world: no strangers to drifting around the frontier towns of the west. And having ready access to a woman of easy virtue was no novelty.

So Edge reached the conclusion there was a sound reason why this group headed up by a cool-thinking, intelligent man like Prentice Harper was dragging its feet on the ride south. And had chosen to call a halt for the night so early, halfway down a hillside at the head of a valley.

By instinct, intuition, a gut feeling, or whatever else caused a man to have a hunch, Edge was certain this bunch were up to no good. Further, he felt sure their plans were somehow connected with the departure of the McAllister Lumber Company wagon from Ross early this Sunday morning. Sunday was not a usual working day and the wagon did not carry any of the usual stock-in-trade of the company. Which maybe meant ...

Beyond this, Edge was not prepared to delve into the realm of conjecture. Because by now there was no further need to flood his mind with conjured-up lines of thought to blot out stark images of reality.

Night was full born and the native creatures of the timber country were making themselves heard more forcefully than in the daytime, like the night air held a quality that gave extra clarity to sound. A distant wolf, an owl that was in the trees much closer, even the tiny living things of the forest floor, made themselves heard distinctly as they went about their business of seeking out whatever it was they needed to survive. Many of them predators, the others prey.

Edge had been at the side of the rock for perhaps an hour when he straightened up and moved forward to look down the hillside again. Saw that the entire valley was a black mass under the moonlight, except for the sparkling river, the pale strip of trail beside it and the red glow of the fire at the campsite below him.

The fire had obviously blazed while supper was cooked, was now allowed to die down, its heat not needed and its light perhaps dangerous to whatever the men had in mind.

He could smell the woodsmoke, and was grateful he had not caught the aroma of the food Ruby Red had cooked. For that meant it was easier to squat down and eat a supper as unappetizing as the midday meal had been without envying the men down the hillside.

The night that fell while he was forcing his mind to think along lines that barred other notions made it difficult to get around the camp below without the people there being alerted that somebody was nearby. Unless he were to swing into a wide, time-consuming detour which took him beyond earshot of the three men and a woman.

But he knew it would be no hardship to stay where he was for the night. And despite being a little riled at himself for his curiosity—he was not prepared to admit it was anything other than this that triggered his interest—he felt a compelling need to see how things were going to turn out.

And if nothing of any consequence happened, well ... All he had lost an hour or so of daylight traveling time. And he had foregone the opportunity of ready access to the fresh water from the stream and some hot food cooked on afire that would have been possible had he pressed on, made camp way off down the valley.

But, he rationalized, the water in his canteens was still pretty fresh, taken from another mountain stream not so many hours ago. And he could get by on the basic chow he had eaten without suffering malnutrition. Sleep without a fire and not freeze to death among these low mountain tops in the spring time of the year.

And, anyway, he had spent so damn long trying to convince himself he was pausing here out of mere curiosity, it was now too late to have any other option.

So what if bedding down under the stars in a remote piece of country not of his choosing was no longer any part of the kind of life he was looking to make for himself? Experience of doing just this so often in the past meant he could handle its minor discomforts without ill effect.

And as a bonus it also served to delay yet again the time when he would come face to face with options he knew he would have to choose between for good and honest reasons: or forever regret the lost opportunity.

He knew as he stooped to unfasten the cinch beneath the belly of the gelding that it was only a trick of the moonlight striking the animal’s eye, but it certainly seemed like the horse gave him a cynically censuring look. And as he came upright and hauled the saddle off the back of his mount, he felt moved to rasp sardonically:

‘Yeah, I know it. Curiosity’s killed more than cats. And I guess a whole lot more men have gone down for pussy.’