Edge listened patiently to the short, powerfully built, eye-straining liveryman and when he was through opened a hand to show that he had the bill ready to pay for the stable service.
"Appreciate it, sir," Devine said, his lens-magnified eyes and the set of his slack mouth expressing misery as he passed the reins of the ready-saddled bay gelding to Edge. "Only wish I never had to charge so high." He raised and lowered his broad shoulders as he stepped off the threshold to survey the street. "But like I told you, Mr. Gray takes a big part of—"
"That's right, feller, you did already tell me about your stable economy," the half-breed growled as he straightened from checking the tautness of the cinch. Then he swung up astride the saddle and directed his glinting, narrow-eyed gaze along the street which just a few minutes earlier had been in near darkness: and was now bright with the glow of countless lamps.
"Wiley Reece that runs the wagon shop next door was only sayin' this mornin' how it's wrong we do all the heavy chores and the Mayor just sits back and collects the lion's share of the reward. And that didn't oughta be, did it, mister?"
"It's because he knows a good ground rule, feller," the half-breed answered as he tugged gently on the reins to head the gelding eastward.
"Uh?" the liveryman grunted.
Edge jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the brilliantly lit street stretched out behind him and explained: "That many hands make light work."
Chapter Ten
“EDGE, you sonofabitch!"
The slow riding half-breed had not looked back as he took out the makings and rolled a cigarette: while the peace of Elgin City was disturbed only by the clop of the gelding's hooves and a distant murmuring of talk at the centre of town. Then the shrill, bitterly shouted words caused him to rein in the horse beside the marker just beyond the grade school that was on the north side of the eastern end of the main street—isolated by several vacant lots from its saddlery neighbor and the only building not illuminated. Where he struck a match on the stock of the Winchester jutting from his boot and lit the smoke before he turned in the saddle to show that he had heard Bob Lowell's commanding words.
And saw that the citizens of Elgin were being herded into an audience again and that once more the area where the two streets met was the stage for this new tableau of evil. The progress of which was temporarily halted by the shouting of the injured man and the tacit response of the mounted one at the end of the street.
Earl Gray was alone on the buckboard now, the wagon parked crosswise in front of the law office set back behind the gallows which were hidden to Edge's view by the bakery. Between the two horse team in the traces of the buck-board and the out of sight gallows stood the pretty Gloria Irish and her skinny sister, Joy. Each grasping a wrist of the hapless youngster who they had dragged, leaving a trail of blood, the seventy some feet from the point out front of the public baths where the half-breed shot him down. Pearl Irish and her other two daughters were not to be seen. The section of the crowd gathered on the eastern side of the intersection had split to open up a gap through which Lowell, having forced his head up, and the turned in the saddle Edge, could see each other.
"They're gonna hang me, you cold as ice bastard!" the young gunman with the dark bruise on his temple shouted hoarsely. "So I'm gonna be like Gabe! All our troubles'll be over with! But I hope you live to be a friggin' hundred and seventy, Edge! And I hope you never find what you're lookin' for and you go through friggin' livin' hell every—"
He was forced to end his tirade of sinister wishes for the half-breed when, at a snarled command from Earl Gray, the two female deputy sheriffs stepped forward and into a turn. Triggering a fresh bolt of fiery agony from his gun-shot crotch. And then, at the bidding of the grossly fat man, too, the audience which had split was abruptly melded into one again. And the sight of Bob Lowell being hauled toward the gallows where he was doomed to die was hidden from Edge. But the sound of the condemned man's suffering carried the length of the main street's eastern stretch and out on to the open trail where the half-breed rode—calmly smoking a cigarette and expressing a total lack feeling that was a true reflection of his thoughts.
Then either the pain became too much for Lowell's nervous system to continue to function and he was plunged into a merciful unconsciousness again, or the physical torture ceased and he was able to accept his fate stoically as he stood on the gallows. For the strident venting of his suffering was abruptly curtailed and for several seconds no sound in Elgin City was loud enough to reach out along the trail and compete with the even cadence of the gelding's easy moving hooves on the moonlit trail.
And the unshaven, travel-stained man who rode easy in the saddle continued to be stone faced as his eyes raked back and forth along their glittering slits under the hooded lids—maintaining a cautious and yet effortless watch on the shadowed terrain he crossed.
A voice, too distant for words and therefore sense to be decoded from the mere sound of the man speaking, reached the half-breed. But he could guess from the tone of exhortation discernible in the far off voice that a preacher was pleading Lowell's case to a higher authority than that of Earl Gray. But the fat man had total control over the immediate situation and his voice rang out clearly into the night as he bellowed across the prayer and ended it.
"Shit to all this spoutin' about souls, preacherman! I heard about souls already tonight and I don't wanna hear no more! Assholes is what they all are! Pull the lever, girl, and let's get it done with!"
There was a stretched second of utter silence in the chill Wyoming night. Then the steady clop of hooves sounded against a body of sound comprised of the gasps, sighs, subdued cries, and small movements which were the responses of the watchers to the sight of Bob Lowell dropping through the suddenly opened trap and swinging at the end of the noosed rope.
Edge drew back his lips then, to display a cool smile of satisfaction that the man who had drawn twice against him and tried to kill him was now dead. But he did not gloat—even before the captive audience for the execution was ordered to disperse, the smile that never touched his eyes was gone and he was impassive again, calmly smoking and cautiously watching the trail ahead and the country to each side of it. Occasionally and absently moving his left hand across his body to massage the aching areas at his right shoulder and hip which were bruised by his premeditated tumble from the country wagon. He did not look back.
The terrain to the east of Elgin City was more undulating than that which stretched westward toward the Sweetwater valley. Rockier and with more extensive stands of mixed timber. Maybe the soil was as rich, but the contours of the land made it more difficult to work and to keep tabs on livestock. And there was just an occasional isolated homestead within sight of the constantly turning, rising and falling trail: in darkness and with a cold chimney at this hour. The places lightly fenced to mark property lines rather than to keep animals out of the fields. The trail over which the rested horse was sometimes eager to move at a faster than walking pace was more heavily used than that which connected the Sweetwater River crossing with Elgin City.
And covered a broader area of land to the county line than did the western stretch. For the half-breed had been two hours in the saddle—having ridden from the end of one day into the start of the next—without seeing anything to suggest he was off the property of Earl Gray, when he heard a familiar sound from some way behind him, muted by intervening high ground. And angled the gelding to the right, down a slight, fifty-feet-wide incline and into the deep shadow of a wooded ravine mouth at the base of a twenty-feet-high, sheer-faced bluff. There wheeled his mount into a half turn and stayed in the saddle, both hands holding the reins and draped over the horn as he waited and watched the point on the trail where the wagon hauled by two horses would first show.
It was another buckboard—this one not smelling of fresh creosote like that which had carried Chris Hite and Sam Tufts out to the Sweetwater crossing—but apparently
employed for a similar purpose this side of town. For the rig, being driven at an unhurried pace, had two men in their mid-forties up on the sprung seat. One of them was tall and broad and the other, who drove, was tall and lean. Wrapped in thick coats against the chill bite of the night air and wearing low-crowned, wide-brimmed Stetsons. But riding toward the moon so that its light fell across their faces and Edge was able to recognize them—had seen both of them on the main street of Elgin City and between times engaged in a card game at the newspaper office on the mid-town intersection.
The both of them wore expressions of soured disillusionment, which hardened into scowls of fear-backed aggression when the half-breed heeled his horse forward and greeted:
"Morning."
The thin man jerked the team to a halt and both of them snapped their heads around to stare at Edge. But were experienced enough at their trade to be aware that their holstered revolvers were inaccessible under the thick coats they wore. And so did not move their un-callused hands. In the next moment recognized the moonlit man on the horse and expressed relief that he posed no threat of immediate harm before the former soured looks took command of their scrubbed and shaved features again.
While, during this same period, Edge verified his initial estimation about the men's purpose and decided it was no part of their early hours mission to cause him trouble.
The broadly built man growled: "Go to hell, mister!" Shifted his gaze to the trail ahead and ordered: "Move it out, Jesse."
"Yeah, Edge or Hedges or whatever your name is," the driver added in a complaining tone as he flicked the reins over the backs of the two chestnut geldings, "you stirred up enough shit in town. Least you can do is keep clear of me and Cleve out here."
Edge gave a slight nod of acknowledgement as the buckboard rolled away from him and he moved on to the trail behind it—the driver and passenger facing front again. The team and the saddle horse making the same easy pace as before the meeting.
"One thing?"
"Yeah?" the powerfully built Cleve asked without turning around.
"Far to the county line?"
"No more than fifteen minutes at this speed, mister. You could make it a whole lot faster ridin' a horse."
"Obliged."
He did not swing to the side and demand a faster pace from the gelding. And after he had been trailing the buckboard for another hundred yards or so, Jesse found the vocal silence disconcerting. Allowed:
"Reckon you can't help what happened, mister."
He drew no response as Edge took out the makings to roll a cigarette and Cleve continued to scowl sourly between the gently nodding heads of the team horses.
Jesse went on: "Killin' the guy that knifed Zach Irish and bein' like Zach is just somethin' that happened—"
"He don't look like the picture Pearl Irish has got of the guy she was married to," Cleve said, and glanced over his shoulder as Edge heeled his mount closer to the buckboard, angled to the side of it and extended a hand toward the offside rear wheel. So that the match he held was ignited by the slow turning rim and he was able to light the cigarette.
"Guess Irish didn't lick the fat man's ass," the half-breed said evenly on a trickle of smoke.
"Jesus, I bet you didn't call Mr. Gray that to his face when—"
"What the frig does it matter, Jesse?" the forward facing bigger man cut in dully on the driver who had wrenched around on the seat to hurl the challenge at Edge. "And we'll have the last laugh on this guy, anyway. When we've all made our piles and are sittin' pretty some place. And he's still saddletrampin' around worried about where his next bite to eat is comin' from."
In its own, less direct way, this was also a verbal gauntlet thrown down for the half-breed to pick up. Edge gave no indication that he had heard what was said and after several seconds of vain waiting, the man went on:
"Sure Jesse Antrim here, and me and the rest of the boys on his payroll let Earl Gray treat us like we're no better'n them Chinese he's got workin' for him at the house. But pride slides down easy when the money's so friggin' good, mister. And when everyone's treated the same. Say what you like about Earl Gray, he don't play no favorites. Hands out the high price shit to everybody the same. So everybody knows where he stands."
"It's how he falls where the surprises come," Edge said now. "Down dead."
Cleve shook his head without turning around as he corrected. "No, mister. There's rules about that in Elgin County. Strangers that get outta line have to go up against Earl Gray the way you saw it happen with them two cow-punchers that didn't buy a pass and bad mouthed two of the Irish girls. Local folks are usually strung up the way that crazy kid was tonight."
"Crazy is right," Antrim put in balefully. "If Bob Lowell had bushwhacked you out in the country and told his tale, he could've got away with it, Cleve. I figure. But he had to try for that grandstand play." He looked over his shoulder at Edge. "Prove to everybody he was good enough to take over the top spot from his dead buddy, Gabe Millard. The kid told Mr. Gray that when Mr. Gray said that if he didn't get the truth, he was gonna pour salt on the wound where you shot his balls to bits, mister.
"Course, even if the kid had pulled it off, he wouldn't have been paid so much as his buddy was," Antrim went on after a sniff and he concentrated on the trail ahead again. "Gabe Millard got top money for not wearin' his gun except when Mr. Gray told him. On account of Mr. Gray likes to be the fastest around."
There was another pause in the talk with which all three men seemed comfortable. Until Cleve revealed that something had been irking him, when he said malevolently:
"It's the business people in town and the homesteaders and hands on the Triple X range that suck up to him, mister! To stay in business or keep their jobs. Cleve Sterlin' ain't never licked no man's ass. Sells his gun to the highest bidder, that's all. Because that's the quickest way he knows to get a stake to take care of him in his old age. And in this business, a man gets old quicker than in any of the others."
"And I figured you were in the newspaper business," Edge said as he ceased his broad, wide ranging survey of the landscape to either side of the trail and peered directly ahead. Beyond the few yards in front of the team horses where Jesse Antrim was morosely gazing. And while Cleve Sterling delved a hand into a deep pocket of his coat to bring out a bottle—which he uncapped and raised to his lips, tilting back his head to drink.
"The Mayor had a shoot out with the guy that wrote the County Herald and the guy that ran the press, mister," Sterling answered as he paused in sucking from the bottle and did not recap it. "Crazy sonofabitch of a newspaperman tried to stir up folks against us. So him and the guy that printed the garbage got blasted into the cemetery. And me and Jesse and most of the boys started to bunk in the newspaper buildin'. Whole lot cheaper than the hotel. For nothin', you see."
The bigger built man on the buckboard had held his liquor well until he took the long swig from the bottle. Now with fresh whiskey hitting and mixing with old, he began to slur his words and to sway from side to side and back to front. He raised the bottle again but this time tilted it instead of his head—to sip rather than gulp the liquor.
Edge remained aware of what was taking place close by while he continued to rivet a large part of his attention on a shack at the side of the trail that had been perhaps a half mile away when he first saw it. The frame building, that was about the same size as the one on the bank of the river at the western extent of Elgin County, sited on the south side of the trail across from an extensive stand of cotton-woods. A few strand barbed wire fence strung on six feet high poles spaced thirty feet apart stretched south from the far rear corner of the shack.
The building, the trees and the ugly fencing that marked the Elgin County line in the east were at the narrow end of what had started out as a broad valley with gently sloping, lushly green sides patterned with many stream beds that were mostly dry at this late fall time of year. Then, as the flanking slopes steepened to narrow the valley, so th
e bottom land between became more rugged and the vegetation more sparse. And in many places, the slopes had been scoured by rain and melt water and eroded by wind down to bare rock.
Beyond the county line at the mouth of the valley was a high plain that looked as barren and desolate as an arid south western territories desert in the cold, blue light of the early hours moon.
"You didn't oughta drink so much, Cleve," Antrim warned, almost diffidently.
"I gotta have somethin' to get the taste outta my mouth, buddy," the bigger man excused between sips. "I should've got the top spot. Not that creep Hite!" He made sure he had emptied his mouth of whiskey before he worked some saliva up from his throat, and spat as forcefully as Hite usually did. "With that kinda money I could've looked forward to hookin' them big fish outta the Gulf off my own boat before this friggin' year was through!"
The shack showed no light at either a window or the crack at the foot of the door. No smoke curled from its chimney on the far side. And no sound emerged from inside as the gap was narrowed between the newcomers and the building. Which was apparently normal for it did not arouse any apprehension in Cleve Sterling or Jesse Antrim. But one of them was in a state of liquor sodden depression while his partner appeared to be solely concerned with talking him out of it.
Edge sensed a threat and became increasingly more certain that something was wrong with each yard he closed in on the darkened and silent shack. But from the moment he first tensed to respond to whatever danger proved to lurk in the area of the eastern entrance to Elgin County, the only cover close at hand had been the insubstantial buckboard. Then the shack itself on one side of the trail and the expanse of cottonwoods on the other got invitingly closer by the moment.
Edge: Bloody Sunrise Page 8