Name On The Bullet - Edge Series 6 by George G. Gilman Read Free Book Online Page A

that brought me to these parts in the first place.’
    ‘That sounds fine to me. Night to you.’
    Edge lit the cigarette as he rose from his chair and raised a hand in farewell as he went to the door, pulled it open and paused when Munro called:
    ‘If me and Hannah get lynched before morning, I’d like you to know I appreciate what you tried to do for us, mister.’
    Hooper’s square featured face formed into a grimace as he looked set to snarl a caustic response to the man in the cell.
    Edge spoke first. ‘You know the people around here better than me, marshal. But there’s a first time for everything, uh?’
    Hooper took out his pipe and tobacco poke as he defended firmly: ‘This ain’t that kind of town because the people here ain’t that kind. Arnie O’Brian just got carried away for a moment or two, that’s all.’
    Edge stepped out of the office and closed the door on the indignantly glaring lawman. He unhitched his horse from the rail alongside that of Hooper and swung up into the saddle. Wheeled the animal and headed back down First Street toward where the track angled off on the right toward the McGowan farm. He did not feel at ease for he was troubled by conflicting thoughts. Thoughts that spanned the time from when he first accepted the invitation to attend the wedding through to when he agreed to ride with the posse then found Munro and Hannah Foster in the timber and brought them back to Brogan Falls. Was every decision he had taken a wrong one? Surely there was a good reason for him to be at the wedding - to show gratitude for how well he had been looked after by the McGowan family throughout the summer? And maybe he joined the posse for the same reason: as a more substantial way to express his appreciation than simply showing up to see Julia get married? But the killing was none of his business: that was entirely the province of the family and the town’s lawman. And the fact that he was the only witness to the shooting prepared to claim the couple locked up in the jail were innocent . . . Hell, Munro and the woman were old enough and had been around long enough to look after themselves. And if this time they couldn’t, they wouldn’t be the first people to pay the price for somebody else’s crime.
    He pinched out the cigarette and tossed away the butt as he rode up to the McGowan house that was at the front of five hundred acres of well kept crop fields behind a yard at the end of the track from First Street. It was an ugly, two story ramshackle mess of a place that had started out as a one room shack then was added to after McGowan took himself a wife, had a daughter and the family prospered modestly over the years. Built mostly of timber with a little fieldstone by McGowan himself, it was a comfortable enough home. Lacking in the style people with finer taste and more money would have enjoyed: but, more importantly from Edge’s point of view as a houseguest, McGowan, his wife and daughter were hospitable hosts and easy-going company. And Martha was a plain but generous cook who made up for what she lacked in imagination at the stove with the quantity of the food she piled on a working man’s plate.
    While he attended to his gelding in the stable at one side of the unpainted picket fenced yard, Edge saw no strange animal among the familiar horses in the stalls. In particular the piebald that had briefly been hitched to the rear of the McGowan buggy outside the church – that had surely been ridden into town by the worse for drink grandfather? But he put to the back of his mind the doubts he had about the killing of Wendell Quaid. And forgot about Robert McGowan who, if he was still in Brogan Falls, was seemingly not staying at the farm.
    He crossed the yard to the front of the house where just one window showed a chink of light from behind the tightly drawn drapes: to the left of the door, which was the parlour. To the right was the grandly named dining room where the family always ate