EDGE: The Blind Side Page 2

  "Fine," the half-breed acknowledged after allowing the woman time to voice a complaint —but she remained in tight-lipped silence after her husband had directed a plea rather than a glower at her. "You have a rig that looks to be near overloaded. And just one animal to haul it through the hill country that's between here and wherever you're going. Now it so happens that I'm heading through the same hill country, feller. On a rig carrying just me and my gear, hauled by two healthy mules. So it seems horse sense to me that we should join forces?"

  "Horse something!" the woman snapped.

  "Helen!" her husband snapped, genuinely shocked by the implied crudity.

  "No, ma'am," the half-breed countered evenly. "Horse sense it what it is, that it's to the benefit of your gelding. I'm like you, in one way. Much rather move on alone. But since I like most animals better than I like most people, I needed to speak on behalf of—"

  "How much will you charge for the hire of your mules, Mr. Edge?" the Englishman interrupted.

  "A ride aboard your wagon, feller."

  There was a gleam of mistrust in the green eyes of the man for a moment. Then he took a forward step and thrust out his right hand as he said: "We have a bargain, sir. My wife and I are making for the town of Tucson. But if there is an opportunity for us to purchase a replacement team animal before we get to our destination, I will so do and you may suit yourself what you do then."

  "Usually do," Edge replied as he shook the recently roughened, patently strong hand of the Englishman.

  "You'll regret this, Geoffrey, I know you will," the woman warned morosely.

  "You have a given name, Mr. Edge? Please call me Geoff. It's only Helen who insists upon referring to me by the full—"

  "Edge is the only one I have these days feller," the half-breed answered as he move away from the covered wagon. The Englishman was surprised by the move and had to hurry to catch up.

  "So, Edge it is then." Since the handshake to seal the deal and his decision to trust the half-breed, the man's mood had lightened to something akin to glee—like he welcomed the stranger for the company he provided as much as for the necessary help he was offering.

  "You will continue to call me by your odd pronunciation of marm, Edge!" the woman called after the men as they moved from the covered wagon toward the buckboard stressing the courtesy title and then his name to make sure it did not sound like a diminutive. "Or Mrs. Rochford, if you will!"

  "Helen!" Geoffrey Rochford tossed back over his shoulder, and he sounded like and won the expression of an indulgent and very patient father mildly rebuking an intractable but much adored offspring. Then he smiled wanly at the half-breed and lowered voice to a whisper as he excused: "I'm sorry. At times, my wife can get the very devil in her."

  Edge spat down at the trail as he halted at the side of the mules in the traces of the buck-board and then growled: "So maybe I'll call her Hel for short."

  Chapter Three

  Geoffrey and Helen Rochford lived in the county of Oxfordshire in England. And were taking what Rochford called a grand tour of the United States of America and her Territories. They were in coal mining, iron smelting and railroads—or rather, the man's family was in those businesses. Geoffrey Rochford was a self-confessed drone—which, the half-breed deduced for himself, was the English equiva­lent of a goldbrick.

  "My family pay me handsomely to stay away from where they make their fortunes in the north of England, Edge. And I am only too happy to do so—provided the fortunes con­tinue to be made so that they may afford still to pay me handsomely to stay away. If you get what I am getting at, sir?"

  "No sweat, feller."

  "Meaning what, Mr. Edge?" Helen Rochford asked, her sneering cynicism even more blatant when contrasted with her husband's jovial en­thusiasm in denigrating himself.

  The covered wagon was rolling through the low-ridged Gila Mountains now, and perhaps thirty minutes had elapsed since they had left the campsite at the waterhole—where probably the coyotes and the buzzards were already pre­paring to feast on the carcass of the grey geld­ing. And would maybe later rest to digest the meal in the shade of the abandoned buckboard.

  By adapting some of the harness from the buckboard, it had been a relatively simple and quick chore to attach the surviving horse at the front with the two mules at the back in the traces of the wagon. While this was being done, the woman climbed elegantly into the rear of the wagon, complaining about the increasing heat and glare from the sun and the nuisance of the flies which from time to time rose up from the gory eye wound of the horse to explore for pickings on the living animals and the exposed flesh of the humans. There in the shade and seeming coolness of the canvas stretched taut over the bows and tightly fastened at the rear behind her, Helen Rochford was silent.

  "She generally takes a nap mid-morning and in the afternoon," was how her husband ex­plained her withdrawal. He spoke this in a whisper and then, as he followed the half-breed's instructions and helped with the harness adaptation and putting the animals in the traces, took pains to mute everything he did, steeling himself for a snarled rebuke each time he made a clumsy sound or one of the team broke the silence. This while Edge made no concessions toward allowing the woman a period of undisturbed rest—but neither did he purposely cause any unnecessary noise. For quietly was how he did everything, unless the situation called for a different approach.

  When the wagon was ready to roll, Rochford hurried to be first up on the seat—and peered through the gap of the front opening to warn. "We're leaving now, dear."

  "I think it will be difficult for you to make any more din while we are moving than you did while we were still," she replied bitterly.

  Edge had been making a cigarette while Rochford checked the harness tension all around. Now he struck a match on the rim of the wagon's nearside wheel, hefted his saddle and bedroll off the ground to swing it up on to the footboard, lit the cigarette, dispensed with the dead match and climbed aboard. Dropped down on to the seat beside the Englishman and leaned against the backrest, his legs draped' over his gear.

  "You wish me to drive?"

  "Your wagon, feller. My mules by default, but being the kind of animals mules are, they'll let you know if you don't handle them right."

  For the first minutes, Rochford was tenta­tive in the way he used the reins—perhaps as much because he was aware of being under the watchful scrutiny of his passenger as from any self-doubt about his ability to drive the odd mules and horse team. But then the half-breed ceased to watch every move the Englishman made—having seen that he was no novice driver—and Rochford became comfortably at ease with what he was doing. And his good humor returned to animate his face and put lightness in his voice as he launched into a frank account of his wastrel's progress from the shires of England to every continent of the world and more countries than he could recall. Perhaps unaware that his companion on the seat appeared outwardly to be disinterested in what was being told him—the half-breed's prime concern seeming to be with the no longer flat and open country through which the wagon was rolling.

  "Ma'am?" Edge asked in response to the first words Helen Rochford had spoken since she bitingly bawled out her husband before the start from the waterhole.

  "The rather crude phrase you used."

  "No sweat, ma'am? No trouble is what it means. In understanding what he means right now."

  "I rather gather from your general attitude, Mr. Edge—and I have been studying you from in this wagon—that you are completely indif­ferent to us and everything about us. So I would not expect you to go to any trouble to—"

  "Helen, this fellow is our guest and I think you should treat—"

  "Don't tell me what I should do or how I should behave, Geoffrey Rochford!" she snarled. "You are in enough trouble with me al­ready. Don't think I've forgotten that you called me stupid and ordered me to be quiet!"

  She was speaking very precisely, clearly making an effort to keep her temper—or prevent herself slurring her words.
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  Edge corrected her: "What he said, ma'am was for you to shut your stupid mouth. An unless you do that—which still allows you to open it when you have something to say that ain't stupid—you and I will fall out."

  "We have never fallen in, mister!" she snapped.

  Edge swung around on the seat and pulled the front flap open wider, to peer into the shaded interior of the wagon for the first time He glimpsed enough of what was in there to form a good general impression of the degree o luxury in which the Rochfords travelled, the concentrated his attention on the woman, who gasped and snatched the glass down from her face as the shaft of sunlight from the opening in the canvas bathed her. She cupped the glass in both slender hands and held it tight into the shallow valley between her meager breasts, as if attempting to conceal it from the glinting eyed gaze of the half breed.

  "Geoffrey!" she called weakly.

  "No sweat, ma'am," Edge said evenly, allowing the ice coldness of his eyes narrowed lits to add weight to the threat of what he told her. "You have a pretty mouth. And I'd really hate to mess it up with a fat lip. It wouldn't be polite. So best you just stay quiet in there and keep taking your medicine, uh?"

  He jerked the flap closed and turned around on the seat to face front—but did not confine his attention to what lay ahead of the slow rolling wagon. Surveyed, also, the terrain to either side and every now and then leaned out to look back the way they had come. For the five minutes or so it took him to look back­wards three times and scan the rest of the land­scape perhaps a dozen times, Helen Rochford maintained a steady monologue of what had the tone of invective—audible to the men on the seat but indistinct. While for this same period, her husband remained tight-lipped and rigid with tension: offering no clue in his taut silence to who was the object of his suppressed anger—himself, his wife or the man beside him.

  Then he sucked in some air through his nostrils and allowed it to be released between his clenched teeth and just opened lips as a half hiss-half whistle. And continued to stare unblinkingly over the backs of the mules and the horse to the trail they were following as he said, masking and quickly causing her to cur­tail her drunken ramblings through the vocab­ulary of the gutter:

  "It will perhaps be better for all concerned, sir, if we free each other from the bargain we struck?" His tone seemed to make this a query, but he went on before Edge could say any­thing: "Of the two horses we had, the gray which you so kindly put down for me was the better animal with a saddle. But I have ridden the chestnut successfully, while my wife rode the gray, during a number of side trips. So my suggestion is that you should take the horse to ride. In exchange for the two mules, which I sure will get us safely to Tucson in due course. While you will reach your destination far sooner than if you remain with us. Naturally, if you feel such an exchange is not equitable, I shall be happy to make up any reasonable difference with cash money."

  Now he shot a brief sideways glance at Edge, his crooked nose face showing an expression that indicated he more than half hoped he would be given an argument.

  "Us pay him, you fool?" the woman blurted with a jerky, derisive laugh. "For those two mangy apologies for animals? And do you actually consider he helped us without self interest, Geoffrey? Did you not see the state of his wagon? Why, if he was not riding with us now—as our guest, according to you—he would no doubt be attempting to saddle one of his mules, so that he could continue his journey after his wagon became unserviceable."

  "Sir, if you try to carry out your threat against my wife, I shall be forced to do what I can to prevent it," Rochford said dully, obviously not eager to get into any kind of fight with the half-breed.

  "The mules don't have the mange, feller," Edge said. "Everything else your wife spoke about is true, I guess."

  Helen Rochford vented an unladylike grunt of satisfaction in triumph.

  "And what I was saying, Edge?" the Englishman posed, his tone still woeful as he continued to stare morosely along the trail.

  "Ain't no denying that it's one of a husband's duties to protect his wife from—"

  "I was meaning my suggestion that, if you felt it wise and more convenient for your purpose, you should take the horse and ride on alone?"

  It wasn't what he had said at first, and Edge allowed time for the liquored-up woman in the back of the wagon to point this out to her husband. But for several seconds there was just the steady clop of hooves, the chink of harness rings, the creak of moving wagon timbers and the clatter of turning wheel-rims to keep silence out of the arid valley with its bare rock slopes through which the party was headed. Until Edge added the sound of his drawling voice.

  "That's my way, feller. Said it back at the place where we met up—like to travel alone, more or less told you awhile back, too, that I wasn't riding the buckboard as a muleteer from choice. But, like I said, your wife was talking some sense just now. The mules ain't sick as such. But the feller who owned them before me didn't take care of them too well. They're old before their time and so they're not up to the kind of heavy work they should be."

  “You are saying you think the animals would break if they were asked to pull the wagon without the horse to aid them?" Rochford asked.

  "Just listen to the man, Geoffrey," his wife advised sourly from the back, not sounding drunk now: eager for Edge to finish what he was saying and impatient with her husband for interrupting.

  "You got it, feller. Which means they aren't fair exchange for a good, sound horse. Which is what your gelding is."

  "And you don't have the money to cover the difference?" Helen Rochford said quickly.

  "Figure that's my business, ma'am."

  "Helen, it is immaterial," Rochford said grimly. "Since even if Mr. Edge could see way clear to paying what he considers Titus be worth, we would soon after be in much the same predicament as we were at the start the day."

  "Precisely!" his wife said, and there was smile in her voice. "I agree. So Edge must remain with us. But not as any guest, Geoffrey It seems obvious that he is destitute. So surely this offers us the opportunity to repay him for the kindness he has done us in rescuing us from the Lord knows what terrible fate?"

  The redheaded Englishman with the reins shot a nervous sideways glance at the glinting eyed half-breed who shared the seat with and asked of the woman behind them: "What mischief are you hatching now, Helen?"

  "Mischief?" she countered in an overstressed tone of injured innocence. "I just have it in mind to suggest that we pay the man for what he has done. And will continue to do for us?'

  Once more there was a lengthy verbal silence as the wagon started up a long and gentle slope that veered from west toward south at the head of the low sided valley. This as the sun shifted through the high point of its noontime arc. And the men squinted against the glare, but were not uncomfortably warm—the furnace heat that could be clamped down over his region long gone in the late fall. Now it was Rochford who waited for Edge to snarl an angry retort—instead of the half-breed allowing the woman time to say something. And, when Edge dug out the makings and began to slowly roll a cigarette, the Englishman found it impossible to wait any longer.

  "That is a fine idea, sir! Irrespective of horses and mules, the condition of your wagon and all similar considerations, you should undoubtedly be recompensed for what you are doing for Helen and I. This is your country and we are strangers here. I have seen the way you have constantly remained vigilant. I know you are not boasting when you intimated your ableness with a gun at the moment of our first meeting. And that should you see a threat to us, you will know precisely how to deal with it. Also, you are far more skilled than I in the handling of livestock, Edge. So, what do you say, sir? For as long as it takes us to reach Tucson or some other town where circumstances allow us to part company with safety and amicability, you will act as our guide and mentor, and guard and helper? For an emolument of, let us say, ten shillings a day? I'm sorry—that is two dollars a day. All found, of course."

  Edge struck a match on t
he side of the seat and lit the cigarette, which continued to dangle from a corner of his mouth as he tossed away the dead match and held out both hands to invite the reins.

  "What do you say, Edge?" Helen Rochford demanded, still emphasizing the name so that it was certain not to sound familiar.

  "Try never to look a gift horse in the mouth feller," the half-breed said to the Englishman, who seemed uncertain of why the hands were extended toward him. But now smiled his relief and passed over the reins.

  "Very well, then Edge will take over the driving now, Geoffrey," Helen Rochford instructed. "And you will join me here in the wagon, if you please. Come along, hurry up. It is after midday now and time for an aperitif before the luncheon stop."

  The smile went from Rochford's face, to be replaced by an expression that was a confused mixture of apology, strained patience and entreaty. To which Edge responded with the slightest of shrugs and not an iota of change; the impassive set of his features. Until the Englishman had turned on the seat, swung leg over the backrest and then dragged his trailing leg after him—to enter the covered rear of the wagon and jerk the flap closed behind him. When he drew back his lips from his teeth to display a smile that failed to inject warmth into the glinting slivers of his eyes and murmured for his own ears only:

  "Have to try now to keep from slugging an old nag in the same place."

  Chapter Four

  The Rochfords' before-lunch drinking—and rapping—session lasted for over an hour: and would maybe have continued for a lot longer had not Edge located a suitable spot for a stop. At a place a little way off the trail in the fold of two low hills, where an outcrop of rock offered some early afternoon shade and there was a patch of scrub grass on which the animals could graze. And there was adequate kindling and fuel in nearby clumps of brush along the bank of an arroyo to provide a fire.