Read The Deputy - Edge Series 2 for Free Online Page B

contained remnants of the scowl he had been directing toward Bishopsburg. Then he held out a hand with the palm cupped as he said:
    ‘You did all that I asked of you, mister. Deputy’s job is over, so I’ll take the badge back now. I’ll see to it you get the second half of your pay if you stop by my office. Corner of Main Street and Mossman Road. Down on the left. But not tonight, uh?’
    He dropped the surrendered badge into his shirt pocket and used the same hand to point along the street. ‘Where the crowd’s gathering is where I can usually be found.’
    ‘No sweat, sheriff,’ Edge said as he looked toward where several men were converging on the corner. ‘At the same time I’ll drop off this Winchester you borrowed for me from the marshal in Railton City?’
    The trail had become Main Street between a neat schoolhouse in a yard surrounded by a recently painted picket fence and a less than well cared for building with a weathered sign on the roof that proclaimed it to be WHITMAN’S LIVERY STABLE AND CORRAL. 33
    ‘Good luck to you, feller.’ Edge reined his horse to a halt out front of the livery.
    ‘Appreciate your help,’ North answered morosely, his mood a match for that of the twenty or so men who had formed a group to wait in melancholic silence further down the street.
    If the liveryman was in the crowd he did not consider attention to his business took precedence over whatever trouble awaited the sheriff.
    Edge dismounted, opened the stable door and led his gelding inside without hindrance. And from within the redolent with horses interior of the building, adequately illuminated by moonlight through a large window in the rear wall, he heard a sudden chorus of raised voices: men competing to tell the newly returned George North the cause of the unusual late night activity in Bishopsburg.
    Maybe that advance news of the abduction of Isabella Gomez had reached town, Edge wondered as he unsaddled and en-stalled his horse. A jailbreak by the Martinez boy?
    Or could it be . . ? He abandoned idle lines of thought because he knew little of anything concerning this town outside of the rape and killing of a young girl and the forthcoming trial of the young man arrested for the double crime.
    Tonight’s excitement could be totally unrelated to any of this and in any event whatever the cause it wasn’t any of his business. All that ought to concern him right now was finding a place to bed down for the night. Somewhere to sleep peacefully and wake up rested and ready to face the familiar challenge of another day with just a few dollars in his pocket and no prospect of a job to supplement his meagre stake. There was less noise from down the street when he emerged from the livery, saddle and gear on a shoulder and saw the crowd on the corner had shrunk to half of its former size.
    He headed in the direction of the cluster of hurriedly dressed, weary but agitated men huddled before the stone and timber, single story L-shaped building with a door set at an angle on the corner of two streets.
    ‘Be ten cents a night for stabling, five a day for feed and water,’ a broadly built, black bearded, bespectacled man of sixty or so announced tersely when Edge joined the fringe of the group.
    Some of the others glanced irritably at the speaker and then quickly returned their intense attention to the lamp-lit glass panel of the door and a window beside it in the section of the building that was on Main Street.
    Through these, George North could be seen: standing with his rump resting on the front edge of a desk. And the back of the head of a man who was in a chair before him. 34
    The seated man was talking while the dour faced sheriff listened and occasionally asked a question.
    Edge thought North had probably never looked so grave faced in his life. Nothing of what was being said in the office reached out to the intently interested group.
    ‘No sweat.’ Edge reached into a pocket. ‘You’re Whitman, I guess?’
    ‘Rex