"Cleve wants to be a boat fisherman outta Texas and I wanna buy me a—"
The door in the trail facing front of the shack swung open on creaking hinges as the driver of the buckboard prepared to haul on the reins and halt the rig and his passenger tilted both head and bottle to suck the last of the whiskey down his throat. And Edge shifted his feet, took a tighter grip on the reins and tensed his muscles to the limit as he made ready to demand a half turn and gallop into the trees.
"Hey, you guys!" Antrim greeted the unseen occupants of the shack after he broke off from the earlier topic. "Have we got some hot news to tell you! Get the lamp lit and the stove fire started! Tell you all about it while we're eatin' supper ... Aw, Jesus!"
"Christ, Jesse!" Sterling groaned.
The driver had stopped the buckboard and finished winding the reins around the brake lever and his passenger had lowered the drained empty bottle into his lap before they spoke the blasphemies. Their gasping shock triggered by what was hanging on the inside of the shack's door—not seen until it had swung all the way open to fold against the front wall of the building. Into a position where the moonlight shone on two corpses. Which hung upside down and side by side on hooks designed to be draped with hats and coats. But tonight they were draped with the ropes which bound the ankles of the men. Who were obviously dead, because of the bloodied holes in their shirt fronts and the glazed stares in their eyes.
For perhaps one complete second there was total silence, as if the heartbeat of the entire world had suddenly stopped. Then a barrage of gunfire exploded out of the cottonwoods. The spray a hail of bullets at the buckboard from the muzzles of at least a dozen repeating weapons. The lead ripping into and out of the flesh of the bulky Cleve Sterling and the lean Jesse Antrim. Catching the men as they started to rise in a desperate and doomed attempt to escape. Flinging them back down on to and across the seat, huddled together. Both killed by the first volley, but the ambushers in the timber not satisfied by the stark act of a double killing, needing to pour more bullets into the unfeeling flesh of their victims, until their guns rattled empty or they were drained of the emotional stimulus that powered their vengeful hatred. And so the shooting came to a faltering end—the crackle of the reports, the stabs of the muzzle flashes, and the acrid intensity of the black powder smoke lessening by degrees. Until a final shot sounded in isolation, to point a streak of flame at the huddled bodies into which the bullet drove, and to add for a moment a stronger pungency to the drifting, dispersing smoke.
After which, in the seemingly unnatural peace and quiet of the mouth of the valley, the team horses ceased to struggle in the traces of the buckboard with the brake on and Edge remained in his frozen attitude astride the gelding. His right hand fisted around the Winchester half drawn from the boot and the no longer smoking cigarette angled from a corner of his mouth—in all other respects still tensely poised to lunge his mount toward the shadowed timber in which so many gunmen were hidden. While his ice cold gaze shifted back from the trees to peer at the dark entrance to the shack beyond the fully open door with the men hanging upside down on it.
Where a man appeared, a tuneless whistle trickling through his pursed lips as he stepped across the threshold into the moonlight, a Winchester rifle in a one-handed grip aimed from his hip in the general direction of the half-breed. His left hand was down at his side, holding something that was in the shadow of his tall and broadly built body.
"The boys and me don't mean any harm to anyone who don't mean us harm, mister. Have to figure that if you don't let go of the rifle and get down of the horse that you've got evil intent toward us. In which case, you'll make five."
The man began the tuneless whistling again as he moved the rifle to use it as a pointer—to indicate the dead men on the door and aboard the wagon. Then angled it up at the mounted half-breed again. While this mime with its almost musical accompaniment was taking place, the men in the timber thumbed back hammers and worked the actions of their revolvers and rifles, or cursed the emptiness of their guns and hurried to reload them.
Edge waited until the metallic sounds were ended and there was just the whistling of the man out front of the shack to disturb the silence. Then he unclenched his right hand to allow the rifle to slide fully back into the boot. While he drew his booted foot from the right stirrup and said:
"Have this thing about guns that are—"
"Aimed at you," the man who had been whistling put in. "You're well known for killin' men who do it twice after you've warned them the once. You wanna get off the horse or you wanna be dead?"
The half-breed swung easily out of the saddle, tracked by the Winchester of the man who had tired of his whistling. While other sounds came from the timber—of booted feet disturbing the rotted leaves of many falls and sometimes snapping a dried, long dead twig.
"Match," Edge announced flatly as a line of men materialized on the trail from the inky black backdrop of shadow beneath the cottonwoods and he brought up his right hand toward the lapels of his coat. Delved through and into a pocket of his shirt to bring out a match.
"German sausage," the man at the doorway of the shack countered. And brought up his left hand to his face. Bit off a mouthful of meat.
Edge struck the match on the rear wheelrim of the buckboard and touched the flame to the half smoked cigarette. His eyes in their slits glittered coldly in the flaring light as he surveyed the line of thirteen men who covered him with revolvers held out at arms length and rifles leveled from the shoulder. Then blew out a stream of tobacco smoke through clenched teeth bared in a mirthless grin and rasped:
"Yeah, feller. Looks like the worst is yet to come."
Chapter Eleven
THE man who liked to whistle but could not carry a tune was named Irwin Kansler and like twelve of the thirteen men who emerged from the stand of timber he was a farmer who once worked a homestead in Elgin County. The odd man out was Prentice Gilmore who owned the feed and seed store in town.
Gilmore was the oldest of the bunch at something over sixty. And wore glasses with lenses not near as thick as those needed by the Elgin City liveryman. But a weakening of his eyes appeared to be the only debilitating process of advanced years that affected him. For he was as powerfully built and looked as capable of taking care of himself in a tough situation as the others, who ranged in age from the mid-thirties to early fifties and were of mixed statures, not one of them suggestive of any weakness.
Kansler was about fifty: a thick bodied, short necked, neatly black bearded man who was the undisputed leader of the group. He was introduced himself and Gilmore after he instructed the older man to take the Frontier Colt from the half-breed's holster. Next named each of the other men—all attired in warm coats and hats with earflaps—as Edge unfastened his coat buttons and allowed the scowling Gilmore to take the revolver. They all scowled too, although some nodded at the prisoner as the introduction was made. Their guns never wavered from the aim until after the sallow skinned Gilmore backed away from Edge with the confiscated Colt in his pocket.
Then, as the rest of the men made preparations to finish what he had so lethally started, Kansler gestured for Edge to step to the side of the trail and ambled over to join him. The still cocked Winchester held in a negligent attitude down at his side as he chewed with relish on the sausage and explained with his mouth full that one of the men was a storekeeper while the others were homesteaders.
"Prentice is the only feller still has actual connections with the place now," the calm speaking, totally unruffled man who was a head shorter than Edge went on as he leaned against a corner of the shack. "Me and the rest of the boys, we been gone from Elgin County for five, six, seven years. Dependin' on how long each of us put up with havin' the fat man bleed us white."
He finished the last of the sausage, licked his lips and asked: "Don't guess no one around town told you about the boys and me?"
The bodies of Sterling and Antrim had been hauled off
the buckboard and into the shack. They left a trail of blood from their multiple wounds. Gilmore was one of three men who used handfuls of decomposing leaves from among the trees to clean the blood off the seat of the wagon.
"Guess they all had more important things on their minds, feller," Edge answered as he watched his horse being hitched to the tailgate of the buckboard and heard another mounts being brought from deep in the forest of cottonwoods.
Kansler grinned as he produced an already filled pipe from a pocket of his coat and leaned his rifle against the front wall of the shack as he lit the aromatic tobacco in the bowl.
"Always was the idea since we first started to plan this, Edge. You like Edge better than Hedges or what?"
The half-breed still had the razor in the sheath at the nape of his neck. And the Winchester propped against the wall on the other side of where Irwin Kansler stood was temptingly accessible. But the odds were too much against him and, he felt certain, these men were fanatical in their aims—would not hesitate to sacrifice the life of one of their own kind if it were necessary. So not even Kansler would serve as a hostage and thus the half-breed had to submit to remaining one—for now.
"Josiah C. Hedges doesn't exist anymore, feller," he answered. And harbored a brief memory of five days he had spent on the shore of Mirror Lake in the north of Montana. Working the claim of a dead man with just the dead man's dog for company. A period of peace and contentment before violence shattered what was close to being an idyll and set him riding the trails that brought him to Elgin County. A time during which Josiah C. Hedges almost was reborn, as he had been when the man called Edge met and married Beth many trouble filled years before.
"Okay, so Edge," Irwin Kansler agreed readily as the half-breed dropped the long butt of the cigarette and stepped on it—like it had suddenly started to taste bad. "Me and the boys are gonna get back what us and our families was forced to give up when Earl Gray got land hungry. And I guess you don't need no tellin' that you're gonna lend a hand. Or the borrowed time you been livin' on for so long is gonna get called."
"Set to leave, Irwin!" one of the younger men, named Gerry Saxon, announced as he hauled himself up on to the buckboard seat and unfurled the reins from around the brake lever. His moves adroit despite the fact that all the fingers and part of the thumb on his left hand had been sheered off in a long ago accident.
"You ride up alongside Gerry," Kansler instructed, gesturing with the stem of his pipe as he retrieved the Winchester and used its barrel to swing the shack door with its appendant corpses closed. Explained for anybody who cared to listen as he went to where Gilmore was holding his horse: "Wouldn't want to scare any passin' through folks who come by. Fat chance."
He was the last of the bunch to mount up, as Edge climbed aboard the wagon and lowered himself on to the seat beside the sullen faced driver whose horse was also hitched on behind the rig.
"Okay, Irwin?" Saxon asked while the buck-board remained at a halt, facing east toward the group of grim faced mounted men who were all headed west.
"Somethin' you should keep in mind, Edge," Kansler said in the same slow and evenly pitched voice as always. "You're an extra we never counted on havin'. So if you try anythin' tricky, it won't make much of a difference to anybody that you'll be a dead duck. Except to you, of course."
He showed a brief, sardonic smile but everyone else continued to express varying degrees of bitterness as the stem of the pipe was rotated in the air and Saxon set the buckboard moving, steering the team into a tight turn. To lead the way back along the trail toward Elgin City. All the riders save one staying in a loose knit bunch behind the rig. Kansley spurred his mount forward to ride alongside the buckboard, level with Edge. Who, together with the morose and taciturn driver, gazed fixedly ahead.
"It's my opinion that Gray's insane now," the man astride the horse said through his teeth clenched to the pipe. "He wasn't when he first came to this part of the country. Was a rich man and a good neighbor. Helped a lot of folk in troubled times. But wanted too much in return. Not money. Never charged no more than the goin' rate in interest for loans. Wanted what he called respectfulness. And what we simple folks reckon to be bowin' and scrapin'. You know what I mean, Edge?"
"If I don't, I also don't give much of a damn, feller."
"You don't have to take that from him, Irwin!" Saxon snarled.
"Why don't I, Gerry?"
"Why? Because we got the upper hand here and he didn't oughta treat us like we're so much friggin' dirt, is why!"
"To Edge that's what we are," Kansler answered evenly after taking the pipe from his mouth. "If I ever do any thin' that earns me a higher opinion in his eyes, fine. But even then I won't lose no sleep if he don't kiss my ass."
Saxon considered he had been quietly bawled out and he sank into a deeper ill humor when he faced front again. This as Kansler knocked burnt ash from the bowl and put the pipe back in his pocket before he took up his story again.
"Gray settin' up his ranchin' business outside of Elgin did a lot for the town in the early days and anyone that denies it is a liar. It was him paid for the buildin' of the new church and the meetin' hall. The baths and the school-house, he had built from nothin’. And it was a pretty damn good town to live in. Or for us that lived outside of it to come visit for business, pleasure, churchgoin' or whatever. And lotsa folks from way outside the county used to visit, too. On the Western Stage Line stages that used to run from Casper to Fort Bridger and Ogden. Good for business and good for folks in general to see other folks."
He broke off to spread a pensive expression over his bearded face and to give a rueful shake of his head. "I'll tell you, Edge, back then we was all of us eager for you to come ridin' into Elgin just to make Gray happy. Why, any one of us who had to take a trip would always make a point of lookin' at strangers to see if they matched up to the likeness Earl Gray showed all of us.
"But then it all turned sour. Wasn't no sudden, overnight change. Happened gradual-like. And I can see the man's point-of-view. A little. Nobody wanted his help anymore. All the loans were paid back and the folks that wanted more than they had didn't want to get it on credit. Wanted to work for it and earn it. And Earl Gray was just a bloated rich man who lived in the mansion on the hill. Without any power over anyone except his chink flunkies and the punchers that ran his herds on the Triple X spread. And that didn't set well with him. Bein' the kind of man he is."
The buckboard with the two saddle horses hitched to the rear and its escort of riders was rolling through the broad section of valley now, over even ground between gentle slopes of lush pastureland. The stink of black powder smoke, freshly spilled blood and hours old death was not present in the clear, cold, early morning air that was totally still upon this moonlit landscape. Elgin City was more than an hour and thirty minutes away at this unhurried pace and Irwin Kansler was in no rush to get his tale told. During this pause, he seemed to be taking the time to relish the pastoral scents and scenes, and to be listening with pleasure to the creak of wagon timbers, the rumble of the turning wheels and the clatter of many hoofbeats on the hard packed surface of the trail.
"First he got feisty with everyone over the least little thing. Then he started to stay at his house for days at a time. Then he took off on the Casper bound stage and was gone a month. When he came back, had title to every square inch of Elgin County that wasn't already settled. Includin' even this trail that we're ridin' over now. It was right about then he started to go off his rocker, seems to me. Power mad, like. Can you understand how the men that run the Territory can let one man get so friggin' much for himself?"
"There's a word for it, feller," Edge said.
"There is?"
"Money."
"Didn't come back with just a box of land titles, stranger," Saxon put in, proving he had not been entirely wrapped up with introspective thoughts while he peered intently ahead. "Had four mean lookin' and mean actin' hard men along with him."
&n
bsp; He spat forcefully off the side of the buckboard.
"Started to get back whatever it cost him," Kansley said in a slightly miffed tone, like he was irritated the younger man had tried to take over his position as the teller of the tale. "To charge strangers a toll to use the trail."
"But you didn't have to pay no toll?" Saxon growled. "Seein' how that barrel of lard figures the sun shines outta your ass?"
"No help, feller. Yesterday I had to buy a ticket to ride across Elgin County. Was planning on it being just the one way."
Kansler had started his tuneless whistling again, the set of his eyes revealing his impatience with Saxon. When the half-breed was through with answering the younger man's point, he grimaced and rasped:
"It don't much matter what you think about what me and the boys are doin' tonight, Edge. But I don't hold nothin' against you on account of what I've heard about you and what Earl Gray's opinion of you is." Abruptly he hardened his tone and snapped his head around to peer at the moon shadowed, heavily bristled profile of the half-breed. Snarled: "Don't hand me that one way crap, mister! Prentice told us about the hundred grand Gray deposited in your name at the town bank! And that'd be just the start for the men that killed the one stuck a knife in Zach Irish! Whatever you was doin' out at the county line tonight with Sterlin' and Antrim, it sure as hell wasn't ridin' out on a hundred grand down payment on—"
His voice was getting louder and its tone shriller. But he abruptly realized he was losing control of himself, ended what he was saying and licked his lips, blinked several times, and glanced furtively about—like he was ashamed of the outburst and anxious that only the two men closest to him had heard it. More importantly, did not want anyone to realize that the strident diatribe was a symptom of fear: a humiliating dread of what was to come that he was only able to suppress with talk. Needing to concentrate his entire attention on a quiet discourse that allowed for no unasked for interruptions.
Edge: Bloody Sunrise Page 9