The Deputy - Edge Series 2 by George G. Gilman Page B

smile that bared his teeth but did not reach to his glittering eyes as he backed the horse away from the rail and recalled how he had been needled by Otis Logan’s use of the term as he murmured: ‘All the same, I’d guess he’d want you to watch your step, son.’
    It was full night as he rode under a sky of broken cloud to within sight of the house and barn that were all that had ever comprised the Brady place: the two buildings first seen as mere ill-defined black shapes on the sometimes moonlit, sometimes darkened landscape of scattered hills featured with rock outcrops, patches of brush, occasional stands of timber and the little used trail that followed the barely discernible course of the arroyo. Edge had not adhered to North’s instructions. Because once beyond the farmstead with a house showing no lights that he assumed was the Carter place he rode hard to what he judged was the point of no return.
    Then, taking care not to reveal to a possible lookout – or no North himself – that the sheriff had company, he veered off the east trail. And began to make steady but no longer headlong process that cut the corner between the east and the spur trails: made a rough check of his course by the stars whenever a break in the clouds allowed it. He neither saw nor heard anybody else moving through the low hills until he crested a final ridge and came within sight of the abandoned house and barn, about a half mile distant at the end of the Creek Road spur.
    Then he spotted the bulky form of George North astride his horse, making a cautious but not furtive approach over open ground toward the pair of adjacent buildings where no glimmer of light showed.
    Here Edge dismounted and led his horse by the bridle to the foot of a moon shadowed slope that put him on a level with the lawman.
    He neither saw nor heard anything to signal danger to himself or North as he waited for the sheriff to ride up to the barn and go from sight beyond it. 58
    He knew there were certainly living things in the night on all sides of him: snakes, lizards, insects, small animals and nocturnal birds. And surely there were men, too. But there was no sign of other human kind except for North: the lawman seen again, between the barn and the house.
    The clop of slow moving hooves was the only sound in the darkness while the moon was hidden by high cloud – until another horse whinnied softly, the sound coming from within the barn. Then the creak of a hinge and the crash of a door as it was thrown forcefully open to thud against the outside wall.
    ‘Right on time, sheriff,’ a Mexican said evenly and stepped out over the threshold of the house. ‘It is to be hoped that all else goes according to my plan?’
    The moon abruptly re-appeared as North reined in his horse thirty feet from the doorway where the man stood. He was the bearded, squint-eyed driver of the wagon at last night’s ambush. Although he packed a sixshooter in a holster on his left hip his hand did not hover near the jutting butt.
    North answered tensely: ‘I’m on time and I came alone. Just like your letter asked me to. If there’s going to be any double cross you people will be the ones to spring it.’
    The man held up both hands, palms to the front. ‘My name is Alvarez, but you may call me Raul, sheriff. Won’t you please dismount and step inside? Have a drink with us?
    Some light, Paco!’
    A match flared within the building then the glow of a lamp spilled out through the doorway and a window to the side of it.
    North swung wearily down from his saddle and replied sardonically: ‘If I’d known it was going to be a party I’d have had my daughter-in-law bake a cake or some cookies.’
    ‘There is no party, sheriff.’ Alvarez replied evenly. ‘We have some bad business to discuss, but this does not mean we must be bad friends. Bad friends can mean bad trouble, is that not so?’
    ‘Is it going to take long?’ North asked.
    ‘Why do you ask, sheriff? Have you arranged