EDGE: Violence Trail (Edge series Book 25) Read online

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  VIOLANCE TRAIL

  By George G. Gilman

  First Published by Kindle 2013

  Copyright © 2013 by George G. Gilman

  First Kindle Edition December 2013

  Names, Characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Cover Design and illustrations by West World Designs © 2013. http://westworlddesigns.webs.com

  This is a High Plains Western for Lobo Publications.

  Cover Illustration by Cody Wells.

  Visit the author at: www.gggandpcs.proboards.com

  For N.P.B.

  who welcomed us to a far

  plusher place than the one

  in Amity Falls.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ISABELLA MONTEZ watched the lone rider’s slow approach and wrinkled her nose against the smell of herself. Her body had been wet with perspiration all morning but she had been aware only of the discomfort. And she had become used to this as one of the many inconveniences and rigors which must be endured on the long and open trail. But never before had her body released the odor which assaulted her nostrils now.

  She recognized what it was, though. For her mind was on the brink of panic, her legs seemed about to collapse under her and her hands trembled unless she kept them clenched into tight fists. So, although the blazing sun was close to its midday peak of intense heat, she knew it was the sweat of fear that was drenching her flesh.

  The rider was still a half-mile out across the Colorado Plateau country, a dark silhouette astride his horse, the outline of man and animal blurred by the shimmering heat haze. The girl crossed herself quickly and even this slight movement seemed to unbalance her. But she reached out a hand to lean on the side board of the canted-over Studebaker farm wagon.

  ‘He has seen me and is coming,’ she said softly and fearfully in Spanish.

  There was no answer.

  The rider had seen her - the distant figure and the tilted covered wagon beside which it stood as fuzzed by heat shimmer to his eyes as he and his horse were to hers. The man’s eyes were blue: the lightest shade of that color, like ice on an ocean at dawn. And their expression upon seeing the girl beside the broken-down wagon was as cold as bleak winter. It had not altered by a part of a degree from when he was on the other side of the mesa, out of sight of what might have been the only other human being in a thousand square miles of otherwise lifeless terrain.

  The eyes were representative and the predominant feature of the man’s face as a whole. It was a lean face, the eyes mere slits beneath hooded lids. The nose had a hawk-like quality between high cheekbones. The jaw line was firm and above this, beneath the slightly flared nostrils, the man’s mouth was broad and thin. The skin, stretched taut over the bone structure, was darkened by more than exposure to every kind of weather condition: and the lines inscribed deeply into it were not entirely caused by the passing of close to forty years. To each side of the face there was a shoulder-length fall of thick, jet black hair.

  His build was also lean, for his near two hundred pounds of muscular weight was hung on a rangy framework that reached to a height of six feet three inches

  Despite the coldness of his expression and the constant watchfulness of his narrowed eyes - which saw the girl and the wagon as just one other composite feature of the vast landscape stretching away on every side - he rode easy in the saddle of the black mare. It was a good, serviceable Western saddle, cinched to the strong back of a good and serviceable Western horse. The man’s clothing and gear were equally suitable to riding the high Colorado country and whatever lay beyond: where extremes of weather might be just one brand of danger. A wide-brimmed low-crowned Stetson; a sweat-stained gray kerchief loosely knotted and not quite concealing a beaded leather thong that encircled his neck; a gray shirt, also sweat-stained, buttoned at the wrists; and black denim pants with the cuffs outside unfancy, down-at-heel riding boots. No spurs.

  Around his waist there was a worse-for-wear gun belt slotted with shells. The holster, tied down to his right thigh, held a .45 Frontier Colt. A lariat was hung on one side of his saddle. On the other was a rifle boot in which rested a Winchester repeater, a standard model, like the Colt.

  Lashed in place at the rear of the saddle was a bedroll. On top of this was a shabby but warm coat. Inside the roll were the few essentials a man needed to prepare, cook and eat a meal.

  Inside his saddlebags and canteens there was enough of what he needed until an opportunity came for him to replenish his supplies.

  Isabella Montez could see him more clearly now, moving slowly against the slick mirage of heat shimmer rather than through it. She saw details - the dust clinging to the clothing of the man and the coat of the horse. The darkness of bristles on the man’s lower face, more pronounced along the top lip and at each side of the mouth to suggest that he favored a moustache.

  The girl’s fear heightened. She was sweating so much that she felt as if her fully clothed body was immersed in a pool of warm water. The air she breathed seemed to scorch her nostrils and sear the delicate lining of her lungs. She wanted to reach out for the support of the wagon again, but discovered she could not move her arms. She had to will her legs to remain rigid.

  She saw the face of the man as ugly - her panicked mind rejecting the basic structure of the features as a whole, seeing only the glittering, dispassionate eyes and the thin, cruel line of the compressed lips.

  He halted his horse fifteen feet away from her, level with the rear of the wagon. She caught her breath and terror misted her vision so that the heat shimmer seemed to swoop in and make the figures of the man and his horse indistinct again.

  It was a slight movement of the man’s left hand, releasing the reins, which startled Isabella. The hand continued to move, travelling up to grip briefly the brim of his hat with a thumb and forefinger. The lips were no longer pressed together, had parted to display very white teeth in a smile that drew nothing from the eyes.

  ‘Buenos dias, señorita,’ he said in perfect, unaccented Spanish.

  Just as she had seen the latent menace which lurked beneath the nonchalant facade of the man, so he had become aware of her much more obvious fear of him. He did not reveal his surprise that the use of Spanish served only to expand her terror. He dropped his hand back to the reins and closed down the smile.

  ‘Guess it’s one lousy day for you, lady,’ he growled in English. ‘Real frightful, uh?’

  The girl continued to stare up at him, the expression of alarm frozen on her dark-skinned, very pretty face. Perhaps there were tears mixed in with the beads of sweat crawling across her cheeks. He neither knew nor cared.

  He tugged gently on the reins and tapped his heels against the mare, to steer the animal around the petrified girl.

  Perhaps it was a sudden shift of her eyes away from his face. Perhaps it was a sense of the presence of a third party. Perhaps it was a slight creaking sound just discernible above the clop of the hors
e’s slow moving hooves. Whatever it was that warned the man of danger came too late.

  He had time to streak his right hand from the reins and fist it around the butt of the holstered Colt. As part of the same action, he turned from the waist to look at the rear of the canted wagon.

  He saw the head and shoulders of a man. No, a boy. Mexican features, showing a strong family resemblance to the girl. In the same youthful age group as her. Afraid, but controlling his jangling nerves. Using the adrenalin to give extra impetus to his move, allying it coolly with his skill.

  The lariat was already snaked out against the pure blueness of the midday sky. The coil was held loosely in the boy’s left hand while his right gripped tightly around the main line. The loop was wide enough to take account of any move the man on the horse had time to make.

  For the shortest instant, the scene seemed as frozen as the terrified expression on the girl’s face. Then the braided rawhide loop dropped. The boy chose precisely the right moment to jerk on the main line. The spliced honda hissed along the rope and the loop dug hard into the flesh of the man’s forearms, trapping them against his hips.

  There was no chance to draw the Colt. Just time enough to kick his feet clear of the stirrups. Then the boy braced a shoulder against the rear bow of the wagon and hauled on the rope.

  The man was tipped backwards out of his saddle.

  ‘Es formidable!’ the boy yelled, baring yellow teeth in a broad grin.

  The black mare scuttled forward. The man was wrenched backwards. The horse halted and looked around balefully. The man hit the ground hard on his rump, the impact at the base of his spine transmitting the jarring effect to every bone in his body.

  The boy jerked again on the main line and the man was forced to go out full length on his back as his captor leapt over the tailgate of the wagon. The boy kept the rope bowstring taut.

  ‘Yeah, you’re terrific, kid,’ the man rasped through teeth clenched in a scowl. ‘But I hear tell the good die young.’

  The boy’s grin became a sneer as he shortened the main line into the coil, advancing quickly and never allowing slack in the rope.

  ‘El fusil, Isabella!’ the youngster ordered, halting three feet away from his prisoner, leaning backwards to keep the rope in a rigid line.

  Terror ebbed from the girl. But her hands were trembling as she fumbled to draw the Winchester from the boot.

  ‘Either kill me with it or don’t point it at me, lady,’ the man warned evenly. ‘Give folks the one warning. You’ve had yours.’

  The boy moved with agile speed. He took a step forward, stooped, released the lariat with one hand and crashed a fist into the point of the man’s jaw.

  The man experienced agony. The sky changed from blue to black. The girl, the boy and the crippled wagon were gray shadows against the blackness. Somebody voiced an obscenity. It took two seconds for him to realize he had cursed. Color came back to the world. The pain diminished but was still there. His right hand was cupped over an empty holster.

  No, much longer than two seconds. The colors were the same, but the figures had changed position against the land and sky. He was sitting upright, his back against the spokes and rim of a wagon wheel. His arms were held to his side by more than one loop of rope. Spare rope held him fast to the wheel. His ankles were tied together by a kerchief. All this could not have been achieved in two seconds. The boy threw a punch as effectively as a rope.

  The man cursed again.

  ‘I give you a warning, hombre,’ the boy snarled. ‘Isabella is my sister and I do not like for her to hear such language. You say once more, and I cut out your tongue. I lose no sleep over such a thing.’

  They were squatting on the ground some ten feet in front of him. With the time to survey them at greater length and in close proximity, the man thought they were twins. Nineteen or twenty years old, matching heights at about five feet nine inches and both weighing around a hundred and thirty pounds.

  Isabella was growing out of youthful prettiness towards mature beauty and the transition stage was easy on the eye. Her dusky features were perfectly formed within a framework of highly sheened black hair that reached way below her shoulders in a series of natural waves. Her forehead was high, her eyes dark and clear and large, her nose petite and her mouth poutingly full. She was dressed in a Stetson, denim shirt and pants and high-heeled riding boots. All blue and the worse for wear. The shirt and pants fitted snugly to a body that was a little heavy - full, but firm looking.

  ‘And do not look at my sister like that, hombre,’ the boy snarled.

  He seemed slim by comparison with Isabella but his tight-fitting garb - identical to that of the girl with the addition of a black vest and a gun belt - contoured a build that contained a great deal of strength. But, even when he glowered in deep-felt anger, his handsome face retained an impression of callow youthfulness.

  The man’s Colt was in the boy’s holster. There was a sheathed knife on the opposite hip. The man’s Winchester rested across the boy’s knees.

  ‘Or you’ll cut out my eyes, kid?’ the man asked evenly.

  He was sweating hard. So were the two youngsters. But fear, defeat and triumph were things of the past now. It was simply the heat which squeezed salty beads from wide pores, to trickle across exposed flesh and paste clothing to skin.

  The sun had inched just fractionally beyond its highest point. It blazed down with blistering intensity - dazzling yellow against bright blue - on the muted reds, neutral grays and somber greens of rearing ridges, dusty soil and sparse vegetation. At the centre of this barren landscape on the Continental Divide, its borders veiled by the shimmering heat haze, was the covered wagon with a broken off-side rear wheel. Two oxen were still harnessed to the draw pole. The man’s black mare - saddled and with the bedroll in place - was hitched to the tailgate. The animals flicked their tails at the irritation of buzzing flies. The captors used their hands as ineffective swats. The captive endured this additional discomfort without any sign that it bothered him.

  ‘That, too, I might do, hombre!’

  ‘Pedro will do nothing of the kind,’ the girl said wearily and ignored his glower as she continued to look at the man. ‘But he will kill you if he has to.’

  Perhaps she had been close to exhaustion before the lone rider approached. Or maybe the experience with terror had drained her of vitality. The dullness in her eyes and her soft spoken voice acted to add extra menace to the simply stated threat.

  Pedro forgot the put-down and spread a grin of triumph across his face again. ‘It will be very easy, hombre.’

  The man parted his lips to show the thinnest of wry smiles as he made a token attempt to strain against the tightly tied rope. ‘Figure I’m bound to agree with you, kid.’

  ‘He is not afraid of us, Pedro,’ Isabella said in the same dull tone as before. But there was a faint expression in her eyes now as she continued to watch the lean, darkly bristled face which was only partially shaded by the hat brim. Curiosity and doubt or a mixture of the two. ‘He simply accepts that he has lost and we have won. Why do you not accept this without crowing like the victor in a rina de gallos?’

  This drew another angry glower from her brother and again she did not look at him. She merely sighed, as if she was used to rebuking him in vain.

  ‘Perdon!’ the boy snapped with heavy sarcasm and thrust upright. ‘Voy a—’

  ‘He speaks our language as well as we do,’ his sister interrupted.

  Pedro made a sound of disgust. ‘And I have no wish to speak to him in any language! I will keep watch. You do whatever you want to!’

  He began to amble in a slow, ill-tempered patrol line around the canted wagon, peering into the shimmering distance and gripping the Winchester tightly in two hands across his flat belly.

  ‘Does he have enough guts to kill a hog-tied man, señorita?’

  ‘I do not know. And it does not matter. It will be the decision of our father when he returns from Amity Falls with the new
wheel. And our father will do whatever it is he feels is necessary.’

  There was no defined trail in any direction across this strip of high country. The wagon had left signs to show it was heading due south. The black mare had impressed hoof-prints in the dust from the north east. Other signs showed that two horses had been ridden away from the crippled wagon, their destination lying south west.

  ‘He as short-tempered as his son?’

  ‘As determined to return to San Parral, señor. But a good man and wise. Pedro is good. One day, perhaps, he will learn wisdom.’

  The boy heard this and muttered under his breath.

  ‘No, lady, the name means nothing to me,’ the man rasped, catching the sudden intensity of the girl’s gaze when she mentioned San Parral. ‘Same way you and your brother meant nothing until he roped and clipped me.’

  Isabella, weary and dejected again, shifted her eyes to peer out along the tracks left by the mare. ‘I saw you come around the mesa. Pedro was inside the wagon. We agreed the plan. He was excited. I wanted you to leave us alone. You rode directly to us. Perhaps to offer help. But we trust no one.’ She returned her attention to the lean, deeply-scored faced with the cruel mouth line and slitted, glittering eyes.

  ‘There is some blood of Mexico in your veins, señor. It can be seen in your features. And you speak the language of Mexico better than many full-blooded Mexicans.’

  ‘When did they make that a crime, lady?’

  She chose to ignore the wry comment.

  ‘You have the look of a man not to be trusted, señor. And it is not only the weapons you carry which make you appear a pistolero.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. A man cannot help the way he looks.’

  ‘Or the way he looks at a woman like you.’

  She came erect, and winced as a small bone in her leg cracked. ‘You are not stupid enough to believe you can win my sympathy with flattery, señor.’

  ‘Just telling you the way it is with me, Isabella. Been a long, tough ride, uh? And still a long way to go? San Parral’s in Mexico? I ain’t out to win anything. What are you and your folks betting on?’