The Deputy - Edge Series 2 by George G. Gilman Read Free Book Online

Whitman’s the name, stranger. And since you rode in of your own free will alongside the sheriff, payment when you pick up your animal will be okay with me.’
    ‘Much obliged.’ Edge looked along Main Street and then Mossman Road that cut off in front of the jailhouse section of the building. Nobody was in sight and far fewer lamps burned in this part of town. ‘You know a place I can rent a room, feller? Where I’ll be as comfortable as my horse for a reasonable price?’
    ‘The Hyams Guest House down at the start of River Road,’ Whitman supplied. ‘I live there myself and – ‘
    ‘Quit the sales pitch, Rex,’ one of the other men growled. ‘Or move someplace else to make your spiel.’
    Whitman looked ready to start an argument, but confined himself to a scowl. Then he spit forcefully at the ground, gestured for Edge to follow him and started across the intersection.
    On the other side of the start of Mossman Road he directed another scowl back at the half dozen men still gathered outside the law office and complained:
    ‘Bunch of no account, strait-laced . . . ‘ He couldn’t come up with a suitable epithet and shrugged. ‘They hate it because I got my feet well and truly under Doris Hyams’ table. Jealous as they can be about that.’
    ‘Uh-uh.’ Edge cast a backward glance of his own at the opposite corner of the intersection. Then he did a double take at one of two barred windows that looked out on to Mossman Road after he caught a fleeting glimpse of a man’s face between a pair of fists wrapped around flanking bars.
    It seemed to him like the prisoner in the cell – probably Jose Martinez – was showing gleaming white teeth in a broad grin. Then the bearded Whitman recaptured his attention.
    ‘You’re sure to like it at the guest house. Doris will take real good care of you. Runs a clean establishment and cooks fine.’
    Edge said: ‘The place sounds to be just what I’m looking for.’
    ‘Hell of a thing, what’s happened out at the Bellamy place - if Billy Injuns to be believed.’ The liveryman looked over his shoulder and seemed on the point of coming to a halt, like he was reluctant to leave the centre of town.’
    35
    Edge, who continued to move at the same easy pace after the subject had been abruptly changed, asked evenly: ‘How’s that, feller?’
    Whitman quickly moved up alongside him again, the less than fulsome interest shown by Edge’s terse response sufficient for the suddenly garrulous local man to launch into a rapid fire explanation of why the people of this quiet town were so troubled tonight. And based upon his scant knowledge of the recent rape and murder of a young girl and the frustrated intention to put a rich man’s son on trial for the crimes tomorrow, Edge could work out a reasonably well informed impression of tonight’s events. Learned that the man doing so much talking to Sheriff George North in the law office was a half breed named Billy Injun. A not too reliable local handyman who had stumbled on the scene of a mass murder at the Bellamy family’s farm a couple of miles out along River Road.
    Billy had been promised some work at the place that afternoon but had forgotten about the offer until the evening. And in dire need of the few cents he would be paid for some fence fixing chores, he went to the small spread to assure the farmer he would come by first thing the next morning.
    But what he saw when he looked through the open doorway into the lamp-lit kitchen had brought him racing hell for leather for Bishopsburg to report the massacre. Ward Bellamy, his wife and two young sons had been gunned down around the supper table. Along with Hiram Miller, the circuit judge who was staying the night with the family before coming to town to preside over the trial of Jose Martinez.
    ‘Pretty damn hysterical, Billy was. Woke the whole town, near enough. Everyone figured at first he was drunk out of his skull. He’s a part Navajo and likes the taste of rye but