EDGE: The Blind Side Page 3

  It was Geoffrey Rochford who built and lit the fire, while his wife prepared and served the meal and the half-breed attended to the needs of the animals.

  The meal was cold, served on a folding table spread with a crisp white cover and laid with silver cutlery and china plates, crystal wine glasses and linen napkins. And the only use of the fire was to boil the water with which the woman made tea—that Edge agreed to taste; but after a few sips he placed his own coffeepot among the red embers. He declined a glass of red wine.

  During the stop, Geoffrey Rochford was the only member of the trio to show any sign of strain—undertook his share of the chores and then ate his lunch with part of his attention always directed toward his wife or Edge. Obviously concerned that something could happen or be said between them that would trigger a fresh eruption of ill-temper. And, whenever he suspected this was about to take place he was quick to intercede, eagerly allaying trouble before it could get stirred up. The half-breed thought the Englishman had probably drunk too much too fast and had failed to achieve the desired effect of easing the tension he was under.

  The man's wife had reached, it seemed to Edge, a plateau of drunkenness on which she gave the impression of being totally in com­mand of everything she did and all she said —provided she concentrated hard. And concen­trate she did, to the exclusion of taking ac­count of her husband and the half-breed unless one of them spoke to her or it was absolutely necessary to call their attention to something.

  While, for his part, Edge remained as detached as the woman but had no need to work at it. And so felt refreshed by the meal and rested by the pause in the shade of the rock outcrop. Ready to face a long afternoon as driver of the wagon, irrespective of the moods and behavior of the Rochfords—but admitting to himself that his contentment was enhanced by the fact that the English couple elected to ride in the back of the wagon again.

  "Helen has to stay out of the sun," Geoffrey Rochford explained in the manner of a man offering an excuse for something that should not have been. "And I'm afraid that I must have eaten something at lunch that disagreed with me."

  "No sweat," was all Edge said in reply, with no intonation nor flicker of expression to reveal that he had seen the woman signal to the man that he should join her inside the wagon. For they both had done their share of the chores in breaking the camp.

  Neither did he, after the rig had been rolling a few minutes, show to the empty sky, the near barren mountains and the bobbing backs of the three animals in the traces that he could hear the gasps, cries, moans and muted screams of desire and released which were escaping the full-lipped mouth of the blue-eyed, blonde, pale-skinned, slender-bodied woman who was quite obviously sprawled in some attitude of impassioned abandon no more than a dozen feet in back of where he sat.

  Sprawled out beneath her husband on the full-size double bed, complete with brass-railed head and foot, that used up such a large part of the wagon's stowage space. Beside the five-section oak chest of drawers with brass handles and the matching wardrobe. And two steamer trunks. A cast iron stove, a half dozen kerosene lamps, several crates of wine and liquor, three chairs, the folding table, a harpsichord, a grandfather clock, cartons containing china and crystal and silverware, a heap of books and two marble statues of rearing horses fashioned to approximately half size scale. The entire freight surely weighing far in excess of the two thousand pounds or so the wagon was designed to carry—and ideally needing four strong draught horses or six good mules to haul it over any kind of terrain that was not flat.

  Dammit, they even had four oil paintings on heavy gilt frames hanging from two of the bows. Without revealing anything of what he was thinking, Edge sought to fix his mind on the merely glimpsed subjects of the paintings as Helen Rochford achieved a breathless orgasm and sighed into the weariness of ecstasy. Then, as all became quiet within the wagon behind him and he acknowledged with resignation that he had failed to recall any of the four pictures, the half-breed resumed his vigilant watch over the Gila Mountain land­scape.

  All his life, it seemed, he had need to be on his guard against the unexpected. As a farm boy in Iowa when, in retrospect, it was always he who sounded the alarm when the bands of hostile Indians approached or a bunch of white no-gooders came by the Hedges place intent upon causing trouble. In truth, it probably had not been that way at all. His father, his mother and his kid brother Jamie—even Patch the dog-had doubtless given the warning as many if not more times than Josiah C. Hedges. But since he had become a drifting loner, the man who was now called Edge found that increasingly he was recalling the past and its events in strict terms of how it and they affected him.

  After the farmstead there was the War Be­tween the States in which hundreds of thou­sands of men and women had been caught up. Josiah C. Hedges had started out as a lieu­tenant in the Union cavalry, then soon was promoted to captain. And as such, was always in command of a troop of men—in particular be­cause of the course his destiny marked out for him to follow, was in command and close con­tact with six men whose actions immediately after the end of the war were to dictate the pattern of the rest of his life. And yet now, on this warm afternoon of an Arizona fall day, the half-breed was able to recall events of the Civil War only with the backdrops and the other pro­tagonists blurred and muted while he stood out in clear and stark isolation at the forefront of each remembered scene.

  It was back then, on the bloodied and scarred battlegrounds of the east and the south and the midwest that he had learned to be on his guard as a practice of habit in order to survive. And had learned much else, too, which was to stand him in good stead when he returned to Iowa, eager to pick up from where he had left off with his kid brother on the farmstead they had in­herited from their peacefully dead parents. But Jamie was dead, too, and his corpse was being torn at by the buzzards on the yard out front of the burned house when Josiah C. Hedges got back home. The men he had commanded—and who were responsible for the brutal murder of Jamie—were not shadowy forms on the far reaches of memory then, when the half-breed went in search of them—using his war-taught skills in the hunt—and in making the kills. Get­ting his new name of Edge in the process, and stepping across the narrow line to put himself outside the law.

  But it was not so much the men of the law he had to keep watch for in the years between the slaking of his thirst for vengeance and a time on the crowded streets of New York City when he was given an amnesty on that old Kansas killing. Then, as now, and out along the many trails that had led from New York City to these Gila Mountains in the Territory of Arizona, the half-breed needed to be on his guard against whatever new threat a malevolent destiny elected to direct at him.

  He vented a low grunt of self-annoyance, then busied himself with the rolling of a cig­arette as he continued to steer the team along the little used trail at an energy conserving pace. Lit the cigarette and smoked it as he sought to achieve the mood of contentment he had enjoyed at the start of the afternoon drive —before he found it necessary consciously to blot from his mind the series of images that the sounds in back of him were capable of conjur­ing up.

  It should not have been this way. He was a man alone, even in the most crowded of places —able to remain apart from other people and oblivious to who they were and what they were doing, provided they meant him no harm. Yet, increasingly of late, Edge had found himself unable to reach that stage of detachment from his surroundings at which he was dispassion­ately removed from those of his fellow men with whom his destiny dictated he should be­come involved. This, despite the lessons of the distant past when he had formed attachments, invariably against his better judgment but always under a compulsion too powerful to resist—and been made to suffer in the way that no man who is truly alone can be punished. For if a man does what he has to do in order to sur­vive, uncaring of the consequences for others, and is then able to ride away from the wreck­age without the need to force any sort of buffer between himself and the world beyond his own selfish needs, then
surely he is the most com­plete of men.

  Edge took the cigarette from the side of his mouth, spat at the trail and replaced the cig­arette. Glowered toward the dipping sun in the south-west sky and then became impassive again. As he decided that those days were gone. He was younger then, much more resil­ient and packed full with smartass confidence in his own ability to fight the world if the world was looking for a fight—and to beat it.

  He was still pretty damn confident, although he was not so brash as he used to be. Certainly he was not so young. And, maybe, he was lack­ing in resilience nowadays. Being a drifting loner was a life for a man of fewer years than...

  "The hell with that!" the half-breed rasped through clenched teeth abruptly bared between drawn back lips, the sentiment barely audible to his own ears. Why did he always have to search for an explanation about his thought processes at times when images he had not consciously called upon began to sneak into his mind?

  Helen Rochford was not his kind of woman, but she was a fine looker and she was the first woman he had clapped eyes on since he left the town of Calendar a lot of days before. He had needed to kill a woman in that town. A woman who ... he forced himself to abandon that line of thought and was satisfied he had good reason for this. Just as there was a good reason why, as a man in the present circumstances, he should have experienced a vicarious pleasure tinged with more than a little envy, when he heard the wife being taken by her husband almost within touching distance of where he sat.

  "Mr. Edge!" Geoffrey Rochford said sud­denly, as he jerked open the front flap of the wagon canvas. And the half breed felt another stab of self-annoyance—that he had failed to be aware of stirrings within the wagon. But then, as he dropped the tiny butt of the cigarette to the trail, he ridded himself of this feeling, too. If a new danger was hovering just out of range of his sensory perception, the Englishman was not it. And during the period of introspection that Rochford had interrupted, Edge had main­tained his constant surveillance over the barren and arid mountain country through which he was driving the wagon. "Yeah, feller?"

  "Helen and I usually pause for tea at about four each afternoon."

  The Englishman was minus his hat, his red hair was tousled, his green eyes had the grit of sleep in them and his tanned skin looked a little puffy. Then the gap in the canvas was abruptly made wider and his wife appeared at his side, looking more disheveled than him from the liquor and bed. She had taken off more than just her hat, but was careful not to reveal any­thing other than the paleness of one shoulder as she clutched a blanket together with both hands at her throat.

  "Figure it's way past five now," Edge answered after a brief glance at the couple who squinted in the sunlight.

  "Six even, do you think?" the woman asked, sounding brighter than she looked.

  "Not far off it, ma'am."

  "Then we shall not bother with tea. At six, we always halt to make camp. Then have a before-dinner aperitif. Kindly be on the look­out for a suitable place to stop while I get dressed."

  She withdrew into the rear of the wagon as her husband fished a watch from a pocket of his vest and then had difficulty in bringing the face into focus.

  "You know, it is fifteen minutes to six o'clock, Mr. Edge," he said, impressed. He re­placed the watch with the precise actions of a drunken man determined to do it right. "And I think the only timepiece you have is the sun, is that not correct?"

  "Never known the sun to gain or lose," Edge answered, and glanced again at Rochford: realized the Englishman was a good deal drunker than he looked.

  "Geoffrey!" his wife called.

  "You know what I mean."

  "Yeah, I know."

  "Ah, but what do you do on dull days, sir? When the sky is clouded over?"

  "On those days, neither the sun nor me are so hot."

  "Geoffrey, come help me with the fastenings on this dress!" Helen Rochford demanded sharply. "And allow the driver to attend to the task I have given him!"

  The Englishman ducked back into the rear of the wagon. And the half-breed remained impassive, the set of his features an honest repre­sentation of his lack of inner reaction to the woman's imperious scorn. Some ten minutes later he tugged on the reins to steer the team off the trail as it emerged from a narrow ravine, to halt the rig at the base of a fifty-foot-high bluff where some scrub grass, brush and stunted cottonwood grew. A place where the animals had a little spartan forage to graze on and which would provide shelter in the event of a sudden norther blowing up. In other respects offered little as a campsite, but then the Rochfords were equipped to make the best of the most spartan surroundings. And within an hour of the wagon rolling to a halt, the area be­tween the rig and the face of the cliff, the hob­bled animals and the cottonwoods was like a cozy parlor which lacked only the walls, the ceiling and a stove to contain the fire. Then, a little later, when night settled over the Gila Mountains, it was easier still to experience an eerie sense of unreality—when the kerosene lamps were lit to dim the moon and black out the world beyond the limits of their fringe glow. While within the confines set by the light of the lamps and the fire, there was spread much of the clutter from the wagon—the table and the two chairs, the chest of drawers with some of the china ornaments on its top, the harpsichord, the grandfather clock which had been put right and started, and even a rug that was unrolled on the ground between the fire and the table.

  Thus, the chores in setting up the night camp were more numerous than those when the lunch stop was made, and the Rochfords were sobered by the work involved. Even though they each sipped at a whisky from time to time. Edge did no more at this camp than at the earlier one and was aware as he did what was necessary that the Englishman became tense again while the woman's mood was one of con­tentment on the brink of excitement. Some­times she even hummed tunelessly, which served to heighten her husband's obvious fore­boding.

  The meal was a beef stew with sweet pota­toes and there was red wine to go with it. And there was brandy to go with or into the coffee after the food was eaten. The Rochfords had all of this, and then had several refills of the brandy into their crystal balloons after the woman had moved her chair from the table to the harpsichord which she could play more mel­odiously than she could hum.

  For his part, the half-breed ate the meal and drank two cups of coffee: passed on the wine and the brandy. Just as at lunch time, he sat at the table on his saddle. After this meal, he dragged his saddle closer to the base of the bluff and used it as a pillow when his bedroll was unfurled and he slid under the blankets—sharing the cover with his Winchester rifle.

  He had removed only his gunbelt, which he draped over the horn of the saddle: and his hat which he placed over his face to blot out the fire and lamplight. There was no way by which he could cut himself off from the music, but it had, in combination with some languid thoughts, a pleasing soporific effect on him—to an extent where he was unaware of when Helen Rochford stopped playing the instrument, and heard nothing of what occurred between his final conscious reflection and the time when a hand gently shook his shoulder and she asked with deep feeling:

  "You didn't mean what you said, did you?"

  As always happened, Edge came awake to in­stant total recall. Knew it was still night be­cause of the darkness under his hat—and that the meager light which did get in below the brim to tease his eyes was from the dying fire. The lamps had been turned out. He knew, also, from her tone of voice that the woman was drunk.

  "What did I say that I didn't mean, ma'am?" he asked, using both hands to lift his hat off his face, then place it on his head as he folded up into a sitting position.

  "When you said you didn't like me."

  She remained kneeling at his side, her hands gripping her thighs which, like the rest of her from ankle and wrist to throat were enveloped in a nightgown that looked to be made of many layers of diaphanous fabric that in a lesser quantity would be both revealing and clinging.

  Her husband was nowhere to be seen in the
merest of glimmers from the embers of the fire—the moon was hidden behind cloud that com­pletely blanketed the sky. But the Englishmans' presence in the bed aboard the wagon was signaled by the regular sounds of his whistling snores. Briefly, Rochford's snoring was in competition with the grandfather clock as it chimed the hour of three in the morning.

  "Well, I'll tell you, Mrs. Rochford," Edge said as the final chime receded out along the valleys and curled over the ridges of the sur­rounding mountains. "I figure you have to be one of the worst bitches the Lord ever created."

  She gasped her mouth wide and it and her eyes were the sole areas of darkness about her from head to toe, for her skin was as pale as the white nightgown. But instead of the shrieked abuse he expected, Helen Rochford laughed—softly and not for long.

  "That all?" the half-breed asked.

  "Meaning?"

  "You woke me up to ask me a question. My answer gave you a laugh. All right for me to go back to sleep now?"

  "You expected me to do anything but laugh, I think?"

  "Understanding women is something I've decided to give up trying to do, ma'am."

  She nodded, the smile that had spread across her pale and beautiful face in the wake of the terse laugh becoming more firmly set. "I do not wish to be understood as a woman, Edge. Just to be made to feel like one."

  Slowly, she moved her hands up from her thighs to her throat. Without shifting them away from the frothy fabric of what she wore—her actions unsubtly erotic as her pale fingers trailed up and over her body. To locate the tie fastening at the neckline of the garment. Which she suddenly released, then shrugged her shoulders and spread wide her arms. And the nightgown was seen to be more like a coat than a dress, without any fastening except at the neck. So that the woman was at once naked at the front from her throat to where her knees were on the ground. Her slender body as pale as her face, except for the darkened areas on the crests of her small breasts and the not quite so pronounced triangular patch at the base of her belly.