The Outrage - Edge Series 3 Read Online Free PDF

fence opposite. Next were some large and elegant houses of two and three stories in their own hedge-bordered yards. There was a line of smaller houses without front yards on the north side for a while and opposite some homes that were like scaled down versions of the larger ones on this street that a sign named as Texas Avenue East. The commercial centre of Springdale was at an intersection with First Street that cut off to the north and River Road to the south.
    This was where the stage rolled to a halt and the driver repeated parrot fashion the name of the town and duration of the stopover like he had a full load of passengers. There followed a shouted exchange between the driver and a shirt sleeved and leather aproned man named Frank who came out of the stage line depot immediately across the sidewalk from where Edge stepped down from the Concord. Just a handful of curious bystanders waited nearby but many others were showing a keen interest in the arrival of the stage from a distance.
    The depot was on Texas Avenue’s north side with the telegraph office next to it on the corner of First Street. Its second immediate neighbour was the law office and on the other corner of First was a building that housed the Springdale News and Avery County Journal, the newspaper’s name neatly sign-written on each of its first and second story windows. Across from here on the corner of Texas Avenue West and River Road was the balcony facaded Grand Hotel. And on the other side of River Road and also with a frontage on Texas Avenue was the Springdale Cotton Company headquarters. Stores and other business premises supplying and providing many kinds of merchandise and services were aligned along each side of all three streets for a considerable distance. Then there were more houses flanking First Street and River Road while beyond the intersection on Texas Avenue West were factories and warehouses devoted to the processing and storage of cotton and the manufacture of cotton goods.
    ‘Howdy, Mr Quinn, sir,’ a tall, broadly built man showing a doleful expression leading a saddled roan gelding greeted as Edge’s fellow passenger came carefully down the step off the stage.
    Quinn blinked in the bright sunlight of midday and smiled in the slightly foolish way that was his wont as he continued to experience the effects of too much whiskey mixed with the high excitement and keen anticipation of the simple pleasures of homecoming.
    ‘Harry, it’s good to see you. This is Mr Edge: a new friend of mine. Edge, meet Harry Shelby, who’s the town blacksmith and liveryman.’
    ‘Glad to know you,’ Shelby said absently to Edge as he continued to look mournfully at Quinn.
    And Edge now noticed that the small knot of people who had come to meet the stage were looking toward Quinn with much the same degree of solemnity as Shelby: their dark mood totally at odds with the newly returned to town man’s own state of carefree happiness. While the people watching from further along the streets that met here also appeared to be weighed down by some kind of heavy emotional burden that made them often hang their heads and shuffle their feet like they were embarrassed by their interest in the newly arrived stage.
    ‘Something wrong here, Frank?’ the grizzled, squint eyed shotgun rider on the stage asked when the driver and depot man had completed the brief passing back and forth of company information.
    The question and the heavy silence it drew in response at last overcame Quinn’s exuberance and he looked hurriedly about himself. While the smile on his fleshy, pale complexioned face remained fixedly in place for a few more moments before it died. Then he clamped his lips tightly together as he recognised he was at the centre of grave attention.
    ‘What’s happened? Matt? Sarah?’ He looked first at a handsome, grim faced young man of twenty or so who had emerged from the barbershop across the street. Then at an attractive red headed woman of about