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

greater pains that earlier to set his feet down soundlessly as he moved past the room where Julia continued to weep and her mother to offer reassuring words of consolation. Likewise on the stairs and along the hall, dimly lit by the single lamp in the kitchen that spilled weakly out through the part-open doorway. There were no sounds from inside so if McGowan had drunk himself into a stupor he was sleeping peacefully. The crystal clear night air had a bite of frost to it as he crossed the yard that was brightly illuminated by the glittering half moon. In the stable he saddled his gelding without hurry and felt vaguely like a sneak thief when he helped himself to some oats: enough to fill the carpetbag after he had transferred its contents to one of the saddlebags. He led the docile horse outside and across the yard then through the open gateway he thought he had closed when he returned to the McGowan house an hour or so earlier. Mounted up and rode at an easy pace along the track toward the intersection with First Street. In a perfect world for him he would have turned right and headed directly out of Brogan Falls. But even in the old days he doubted he would have done this in identical circumstances: abandoned a man and a woman he was convinced were innocent to face trial for murder without sparing a few minutes to make his point of view officially known. Now the only lighted window on First Street was in the law office and Edge turned to the left to ride slowly toward the splash of yellow from the building alongside the bridge over Stony River. He saw that Gene Hooper’s horse was no longer tied to the rail out front of the timber and brick building from which no sound came as he hitched the gelding there. Then he thought he heard an unidentifiable noise from Mann’s grocery store across the street and he hoped this meant the owner was still up - and in an even tempered mood, prepared to open his premises to fill a small order. But the fact that the store front was in darkness with not a glimmer of light reaching in from the living quarters at the rear maybe meant the sound had been of a sack inexplicably toppling over or the creak of a plank of warped timber. But, what the hell! If Mann got mad at being awakened, then he could handle the irascible storekeeper. As he turned back from looking across the street the door of the law office swung open and Gene Hooper stepped on to the threshold.
    ‘It’s you, damnit!’ The broadly built, ruggedly handsome man was tense as he tightly gripped the butt of his holstered revolver then dropped his hand away and nervously massaged the fingertips with the thumb.
    ‘Were you expecting somebody else, feller?’
    The lawman grimace. ‘I’ve been hearing some strange noises out here and I thought .
    . . ‘ He shrugged and gestured toward the horse at the rail. ‘You look like you’re about ready to ride?’
    Edge rasped the back of a hand along his heavily bristled jaw line. ‘It’s what I plan on doing, marshal. I’ve already told McGowan what’s happened so there’s nothing more for me to do around here except make the deposition.’ He did a double take at the exhausted looking Hooper. ‘If you can stay awake long enough to write it down?’
    The man in the doorway curtailed a wide yawn and rubbed a fist in eyes already angrily puffy from earlier efforts to counter fatigue. ‘Just about.’
    He moved back into the office and Edge trailed him into the stove-warmed interior. Their footfalls, heavy on the floorboards, did not rouse the snoring Vic Munro. If Hannah Foster was sleeping, she did so quietly. Hooper dropped wearily into the chair behind the desk, slid open the same drawer as before, took out writing materials and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘I already took down their accounts of why they were out where we found them. They claim they were heading for Brogan Falls to meet a guy on private business: hold-up business, would you believe? Not a local citizen.