These people—men and women of all ages from about sixteen to perhaps ninety—had come out of the church, the meeting hall and the saloon. And were marshaled into the twin groups by the handful of people who emerged from the newspaper office. Six men—among them Gabe Millard and Bob Lowell—and three women. The stylishly attired gunslinger without a gunbelt very noticeable among the other men who were cast from the same mold as Hite and Tufts. And in their company the young Lowell looked tough and mean despite his round face and button eyes.
Likewise the women who wore six pointed stars on highly polished metal pinned to the left pockets of their shirts—as did the two escorts for the prisoners, Edge saw, when they moved away from the roped together men. Shirts were not the only masculine clothing the women wore, for the rest of their garb consisted of spurred boots, denim pants, kerchiefs and Stetsons. And all five of the female peace officers had gunbelts slung around their waists. Four of them with the butt of a revolver jutting from a tied down holster.
It was the oldest of the law-women—by at least twenty years—who was missing a handgun. For it was one of the Army Model Colts that had urged the prisoners out to the center of the street which she had dropped into the man's empty holster before moving away to play her part in the crowd control.
There was very little talk while the bizarre situation developed in the brightly lit midtown area of Elgin City. And it was obvious that the local citizens were familiar with such events-needed simply to be encouraged to take their places rather than instructed by the hard men and the women with badges.
Only to the impassive Edge and to the trembling, roped prisoners was this whole experience with evil anything new.
Then a door was swung open and what slight mumbling of talk there had been was abruptly curtailed. At the same moment as Edge reined in the gelding and turned his head to look to his right, and see a man step over the threshold of a military store called Hedda's Hats and greet effusively:
"It's Captain Joseph Hedges! There's no doubt about it, is there? The guy that ridded the world of that murdering sonofabitch Elliot Thombs! I'm right ain't I, Joe?"
"Just called Edge now, feller," the half-breed answered evenly as all attention reverted to him again.
"And I'm Mayor Earl Gray. Real anxious to get acquainted with you. Just as soon as I've attended to a little unfinished business."
Edge shifted his unblinking gaze from Gray to the fear-filled, roped-together men on the center of the street between the two groups of unwilling witnesses and growled: "Plain to see those fellers are bound to be dealt with first."
Chapter Four
EARL Gray was the big man of Elgin County in more than one sense of the term, for he was grossly, grotesquely fat. Was about five-and-a-half feet tall but weighed in the region of three hundred and fifty pounds—and looked as if not a single ounce of this enormous bulk was comprised of firm flesh. He was almost as wide as the doorway of the hat store from which he emerged, and the boarding of the sidewalk groaned with strain as he angled across it and stepped down on to the dusty surface of the street. He was only sixty or so, but obesity caused him to move like a man a great deal older than this—he needed to grip a sidewalk roof support to steady himself as he moved from one level to another.
His shoulders were of the same width as his hips and there was no indentation at his waist. His belly and breasts bulged excessively and his rump also accommodated more than an equitable share of the man's blubber—so that these areas of his anatomy tremored and bounced in a jelly like fashion as he moved. The animated bulges and the less pronounced flabbiness of his torso and limbs contoured by a yellow silk shirt with white fringes and black pants that may also have been of silk—were certainly of a sheened fabric.
His hat was a white Stetson with a tooled leather band and no sweat stains. Silver hair showed below its brim and he also had a straight moustache of thick-growing silver hair. His face under the white brim of the hat and between the long sideburns of silver hair was stained dark brown by the elements and was engraved with myriad lines that were not deep because his skin was stretched taut by the thick layer of flesh that caused not one plane of his features to be angular. There was something about his rounded face with the wide apart dark eyes, broad mouth and slightly cleft chin that suggested he would have been handsome in the classical manner if he were not so obese. But his fatness of face did not make him ugly above the series of double chins that stepped down from his jaw to his chest. Rather, the bloated features gave him a look of avuncular geniality, even when he was not displaying his very white teeth in a happy smile—an expression which Earl Gray dropped the instant he shifted his eager gaze away from Edge to direct a fixed stare toward the hapless-prisoners on the intersection. And moved carefully down off the sidewalk to waddle toward the terrified men, each of his pudgy, many ringed hands draped over the ivory gripped butts of matching Tranters in decorative holsters that hung from his silver buckled gunbelt.
The bite of night had firm hold in the air now, but the roped together men were oozing sweat from every pore on their bristled, dirt grimed faces. And Gray sweated too, but the moisture that Edge could see staining the back of the fat man's shirt was caused by excitement rather than fear—an emotion that was clear to hear in his voice when he came within forty feet of the men, halted, dropped his hands away from the revolvers and spoke into the silence that seemed to have a palpable presence in the chill, smoke smelling air pervading Elgin City.
"Okay, Magee. Figure I can plug you and Colly dead center from this range. But I guess a thief like you isn't in that class. So you get the chance you were promised by my girl. You told them both how we handle this kind of thing hereabouts, Pearl?"
"Don't I always, Dad?" the oldest woman with a star answered—the one who had given her gun to Magee. And as she responded to Gray, looked away for the first time from Edge who continued to sit on his stationary gelding some thirty feet in back of where her father stood. Then she returned her gaze to the half-breed, wearing the same expression of blatant appraised as previously.
"Mr. Gray—" the prisoner without a gun pleaded as tears began to run with the sweat beads across his quivering cheeks.
"Mayor Gray, runt!" the fat man snarled viciously. "I'm the mayor of this town and I own the whole frigging county around it! So you better act respectful or I'll see to it you die the hard way, Colly! With a slug in the gut and a lot of time to find out what that feels like!"
"I'm sorry, Mayor!" the dread-filled prisoner blurted. "But we weren't stealin'! Not like we meant to steal! Magee and me didn't know we was on private range when we—"
"I told them, Dad," the fat man's daughter answered. "And the girls was around when I did. Ain't that right?"
The four younger women with stars on their shirts were all between twenty and twenty-five, and as Pearl looked expectantly at each of them in turn, so did Edge. And he saw that they were all green eyed redheads—the same combination as the older woman—and that there were also other similarities shared by the group, in the makeup of their features but not their builds. So guessed that Pearl was the mother and Gray was the grandfather of the four young law-women who now all nodded emphatically to agree with what had been said. Excitedly eager for the killing to take place, while Pearl began to study Edge again, Gray sought to curb his anger, the hard men remained resentfully impatient and the reluctant audience expressed varying degrees of revulsion for the evil being enacted before it.
Everyone's expression was clear to see in the bright lamp light that illuminated the main street from every window.
* * *
THERE were less people present on the occasion he killed Elliot Thombs in the state of Kansas back in 1865. And the midsummer night was lit only by the flames of a fire on which he was cooking supper while he dried himself after an invigorating swim in the Smoky Hill River.
His name had been Josiah C. Hedges when he made that night camp, but he was no longer a captain of Union cavalry. For the war that had divided t
he nation was newly over, and he was riding on personal business. Along a violent trail that was destined to be the route he traveled for the rest of his life.
Not by choice.
When he left the battlegrounds of the East behind him after the peace signing at the Appomattox Court House it was his intention to return to the family farmstead in Iowa and pick up the pieces of the life he had left there at the start of the bitter war. But fate decreed another course for him and he arrived home to find the farm destroyed by fire and his crippled kid brother a mutilated corpse at the mercy of a flock of buzzards.
Jamie's was not the only body sprawled on the front yard and because the soldier back from the war knew the second victim, he was able to put names to the five men responsible for the carnage and destruction. And, using his war-taught skills, he was able to pick up their trail and follow it.
Was a long way from meeting up again with the five vicious killers who had served in his troop for most of the war when he made the night camp on the bank of the Smoky Hill River. And offered to share his fire and meager food with seven other former Union soldiers heading home after the fighting or in search of some place where the living would be better than it had been before.
He had not known their names, but one of the veterans had eventually recognized Joe Hedges as an officer—a class of men this embittered private hated on principle. And in a sudden kill or killed situation, the man who was Elliot Thombs took a heavy caliber bullet from a Remington revolver in the head. Then, moments later, a Mexican in the group mispronounced the ex-aptain's name and Joseph Carl Hedges became simply Edge....
* * *
THE prisoner named Magee snarled: "Cut it out for Christsake, Colly! Can't you see the whole friggin' family is nuts! And people who ain't got all their marbles ain't likely to listen to reason! Nor take account of you beggin' for mercy!"
The man without a gun had extended his free hand, palm upward and fingers splayed in a pleading gesture that was augmented by the expression on his tear run and sweat-beaded face. While his mouth worked, no words were uttered and he looked on the verge of collapse.
"You're not going to rile me, runt," Earl Gray countered, fully in control of himself again. Calm in voice and bearing as he started slowly forward. "Whenever you're ready, remember. You're not going to rile me, just like your buddy's whining isn't going to get him or you off the hook. You trespassed in Elgin County and you allowed your horses to feed on my range. And when two Deputy County Sheriffs told you you'd have to pay a fine, you figured to humiliate them because they're women."
Earl Gray moved in his waddling walk at a pace that suggested he was wading through chest high water—with his thick arms arced out to the sides like he was using his bejeweled hands to steady himself. His corpulent flesh moved against the restraint of his sheened clothing, but his slightly curved hands were rock steady where they hovered on a level with the ornately butted Tranters in the decorative holsters. And his head was also immobile as he stared fixedly at Magee.
"We thought they were kiddin'!" Colly managed to squeeze out harshly around the near choking ball of fear in his throat. "A couple of fine lookin' women like—"
"Fine looking women isn't what you called Laura and Joy, runt," Gray interrupted as he continued to slowly and relentlessly narrow the gap on the roped together men.
Colly wrenched his head from left to right and back again; and then directed his pleading gaze above and beyond the obese man to meet the glint-eyed impassiveness of Edge. Cried:
"We're strangers around here! What would any of you men do if you didn't know the set up? And a couple of young girls with tin stars say you gotta pay ten bucks apiece for grazin' your horse...."
Nothing in the face of anyone he saw offered him a trace of hope; and expanding terror totally choked off the words when his attention was drawn again to the bloated face of Earl Gray. Who allowed a second of silence to hang in the tension-filled night before he continued as if there had been no interruption:
" 'Pieces of ass' is what you called Laura and Joy. And you offered to pay the fines in kind. Reckon it was quite a jolt to you two when those girls got the drop on you and run you into town easy as if you were a couple of day old critters wandered off from the herd."
He had closed to within twenty feet of Magee and Colly now, his hands and head still not having moved even a fraction of an inch.
Colly now squeezed his eyes tightly closed and worked his lips rapidly but not emphatically as he prayed for a divine intervention.
While Magee wore a scowl of hatred that narrowed his eyes, flared his nostrils, and raised one side of his upper lip to expose a few tobacco discolored teeth.
"But you two have to have something more coming to you than a jolt. Unless you're faster than me, Magee?"
"Just keep on comin', you barrel of lard, and you'll find out!" the man with the Colt in his holster countered.
"I'll keep on coming until you go for the gun, runt. And then I'll do my level best to kill you. For insulting two of my girl's girls. In a fair gunfight."
"Fair my ass!" Magee rasped through the open part of his mouth.
Just fifteen feet separated Gray from the two prisoners now.
"It certainly is," the fat man answered evenly. "I'm a big target. Not because of any fault of mine. Have what's called a glandular defect, which is why I hate for people to needle me about my size. Not as if I overeat like lots of fat men."
Magee began to bring up his right hand while he stared fixedly at the fleshy face of Gray.
"But me being such a big target, I figure it only right that it's the same vice versa. Pearl told you all this, but I guess you were too scared to listen."
"We heard, you fat bastard," Magee rasped. "And Colly and me flipped a dime for the gun. On account of we're just cowhands, not gun-fighters. And it don't make much of a difference seein' as how you got two irons and—"
Now Magee looked to either side of the street and along it—even over his shoulder. Anywhere but at Earl Gray and perhaps seeing nothing and nobody clearly. The scowl still firmly set on his darkly bristle features as he talked for the sake of it—giving the impression he was vainly seeking sympathy from the unresponsive watchers, while in fact he was obviously trying to lull the fat man into becoming distracted.
"That's because there's just me against the two of you, runt."
Magee's elbow bent enough for his hand to be level with the butt of the Colt. This at the instant his scowling gaze returned to the face of Gray. And he blinked and expressed dread of death as his curved fingers fisted around the butt of the woman's revolver, knowing with greater certainty than anything else he had ever known before that he was doomed.
The Colt came halfway out of the holster and his thumb cocked the hammer. But by then— the move so fast it was seen only in a blur-both the Tranters were clear of the fat man's holsters and were cocked and leveled.
Some of the reluctant watchers gasped, a few squealed, and many averted their eyes. While the law-women and the hard men stared fixedly with bright eyed wonder or malicious jealousy at the double killing staged in front of them. And a woman just inside the doorway of Hedda's Hats said dejectedly to the only person within earshot:
"What a shit he is."
To which Edge, who had been aware of her on the threshold of the store for fully two minutes growled: "You said it, lady."
This spoken against the dual crack of the simultaneously fired Tranters, aimed from the broad hips of the fat man to explode the bullets on marginally differing trajectories. The revolver in his right hand triggering a shot to drill a hole in the chest of the praying Colly. While that in his left spat a maiming shell into the inner angle of Magee's right elbow—and out through the back. The impact swinging the arm to the rear as the shocked nervous system sprang open the man's hand so that the unfired Colt was pitched forward and down.
Earl Gray had halted for the part of a second it took to draw and fire the two guns. Now started forward ag
ain at the same slow pace as before, thumbing back both hammers without haste while smoke wisped from their muzzles. This as Colly died on his feet and started to fall backwards, his chin sunk to his chest like he was staring down in deep shock at the rapidly expanding stain of blood on his shirt front. And Magee, his face a grimacing mask of pain and dismay, ignored the limply hanging, bullet shattered arm to splay his legs and struggle manfully to remain erect. His teeth gritted between curled back lips, his eyes squeezed tightly closed, the veins in his neck standing out and his every pore squeezing sweat beads: while the dead weight of the man roped to him threatened to drag him down on to his back in the path of the advancing Gray.
His deep, desperate breathing was the only sound that reached the ears of the watchers as Magee's chest rose and fell in the same cadence as the relentless strides of his tormentor. Until one of the watchers heard another murmur:
"I ain't no lady, Joe. If I was, I wouldn't let myself be screwed by that shit."
Gray came to a halt three feet away from Magee and bridged the distance by raising and extending his arms. Until the muzzles of the Tranters rested against the shoulders of the straining man. Who opened his eyes in response to the double pressures, brought his lips together and shaped them to spit into the obese face between the revolvers. But Gray squeezed the triggers a second time—in perfect unison again. And Magee vented a roar that owed as much to a sense of defeat as to pain as he was sent sprawling backwards: blood spurting from the entry wounds and spraying from the larger holes where the bullets exited.
There was a more vociferous reaction from the main body of unwilling watchers now, but snarling rebukes from the hard men and the daughter and granddaughters of Earl Gray brought back a grudging silence. In time for two more shots to sound as one in isolation—both aimed to drill bullets into the crotch of the broken Magee, drawing a high-pitched scream of agony from deep inside him as more blood weltered to be thirstily soaked up by the arid street surface.
Edge: Bloody Sunrise Page 3