"Seems that Zach Irish and me had one thing in common that causes the fat man to figure I'm exactly like he was, feller. Zach's widow, too, come to think of it. He was a man without a price, same as me."
Irwin Kansler had calmed himself, content that nobody had seen through the facade of the angry outburst to the shameful sense of foreboding beneath. For the men he led merely nodded their agreement with his estimation of Edge's motives. While the half-breed remained impassive during the pause. And was just as emotionless as he spoke the rebuttal, in a way that provoked the bearded homesteader again, but on this occasion with justification, he felt.
"You ain't alone in that!" he rasped and made the effort to force down the lid on his urge to rage. Started to talk in the slow and even tone that was natural to him. "I already told you Elgin folks called a halt to the easy life Gray was givin' them at the beginnin'. Which is what led to the trouble.
"Pretty soon the word was spread about the money it cost to cross Elgin County and folks stopped visitin'. Which wasn't good for business in town. And next Gray's hard men started to charge for us homesteaders to use the trail to reach town. And townspeople to use it for leavin'."
"Had more men—" Gerry Sutton started to say, but was driven to finish in mid-sentence by the glowering look Kansler directed at him.
"Had more men to turn the screws by then, Edge," the bearded rider of the horse beside the buckboard said as the trail crested a rise and the fist of the isolated homesteads on the undulating terrain to the east of Elgin City could be seen—the darkened house with the cold chimney a mile or so to the right.
"That was Clay and Cathy Averill's place," Kansler said. And then hurried on, as if afraid he might become maudlin. "Had more men he paid big money to so he could work them like marionettes. And made his daughter woman sheriff and her four bitches of daughters the deputies." He waved a negligent hand gesture to the left. "House of the people work them fields is in the trees at the top of the hill. Was Charlie and Lil Bonham's place."
Both Averill and Bonham were in the grim faced bunch riding in the wake of the slow rolling buckboard. A group of men who, like Irwin Kansler and Gerry Saxon, were noticeably infected by a rancorous wistfulness for times past as they entered once familiar territory.
Their bearded leader shook his head vigorously, as if it required such a physical action to rid himself of futile nostalgia and growled: "Upshot was, us and a lot more folks cleared out. Fed up with havin' to pay up, or gettin' beat up or locked up in the jailhouse Gray had specially built for Pearl Irish and them bitch daughters of hers.
"Ain't none of us proud of pullin' out that way. But fact is, we done it. Because we couldn't afford to live in the kinda place Gray was runnin'. And we didn't have the will to try to change it. Not when Gray had all the right bits of paper that said he was entitled to do what he was. And hired hands like them back there to stomp on anyone that even looked like complainin'."
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the far distant shack at the county line in which the corpses of four of Earl Gray's men were stored.
"But we got the will now, Irwin," Saxon said with a note of excitement. And he gestured with his mutilated hand toward a homestead left of the trail. "That was Susan's and mine in the old days, stranger. Will be again after tonight."
On this occasion, Kansler made allowances for the intrusion. Said without a hint of irritation: "Some of us had the idea for this way back, Edge. When we used the money Gray paid us for our places to start over again up there south of Casper. But there was just Gerry and me and Seth Corey and Roy Washington then. Not enough of us and we were too busy gettin' our new start.
"But gradually more and more folks took the money Gray offered them and left the county. Townspeople and homesteaders alike. And they all came through Casper on the way out. Some to stay and some to head for parts more distant from Elgin County. Which was gettin' worse and worse by the day by all accounts. With shootin's and lynchin's and Gray actin' like God Himself."
"Satan more like, Irwin."
"Yeah, Gerry. Anyway, the more we heard, the more we started to think how lucky we was to get out when we did. Until we thought around in a full circle and realized how friggin' gutless we been. On account of we was in this piece of country first and was doin' real fine without Gray. And we'd let the bastard squeeze us off of good land and on to places that didn't produce near half as well. So he could rent out our places to folks that knew the score and was ready to play it his way.
"And that's the long and the short of it,
Edge. Prentice Gilmore, he's been keepin' us up to date with how things are when he visits in Casper to buy stock of feed and seed for his store. And he reckons the time is right to make our move—now that Elgin folks that have been here since before Gray came and them that have come to take our place are near the end of their tethers. Be ready and willin' to turn on the hard men and the women with badges. And Gray. If we start things rollin'."
"And we done that, Irwin," Saxon said in a tone of hushed excitement now, as the town came into view in the far distance. And he was afraid a raised voice would carry through the silence of this early morning hour to reach the shadows upon shadows that was all Elgin City appeared to be from this range. "Put four of his hired guns out of the way already. Just leaves a dozen more and two of them'll be out at the Sweetwater crossin'. Couple more line ridin' up in the north and down south, maybe. And the Irish crowd and the fat slob himself, of course."
The man's mouth formed into the line of a grin of exhilaration as he spoke. And then, as he finished, an involuntary laugh of high glee burst from between his exposed clenched teeth.
"And with Edge's life to bargain with, I figure we're home and dry. Way Gray was always runnin' off at the mouth about him like he was a long lost son."
The half-breed had inched close to the brink of an abyss of blind anger while he sat the gelding during the explosion of gunfire that riddled two men with bullets. But that brand of rage held on the shortest of reins had been directed inward: as he realized he had made a mistake by which he deserved to die. When he concentrated his entire attention on the shack where he sensed there was danger and, further, allowed himself to be fooled by the distraction of the creaking open door. Totally ignoring the timber as a place of possibly greater danger while he considered it only as a refuge.
For a long time, while preparations were made to leave the scene of violence and then during the return trip, Edge was concerned almost exclusively with calming his nerves which had been set to jangling by the error he made. So that he had only half-heartedly considered making a try for Irwin Kansler's rifle back at the shack. And had listened with scant attention to the man who sought to justify himself and the evil he had perpetrated and intended to commit by cataloguing the evil deeds of his enemy.
Perhaps, after a protracted period of self-analysis, the half-breed might have been able to fabricate an excuse for himself and next repaired his damaged self-assurance with a vow he would never be so careless again. But Gerry Saxon's blandly spoken assessment of how he rated simply as a helpless hostage served to jerk Edge from his near fugue state.
He revealed no clue to his change of attitude, though—gave no sign that a different brand of rage was reaching the ice cold point of explosion deep inside him. Not directed inward. And the movement of his right hand from out of his pocket to his face, there to scratch with all the fingernails at the bristles on his cheek, appeared as nothing more than the action of a man with a not very irritating itch.
The eastern fringe of the totally darkened Elgin City was still in the region of two miles away across the moonlit landscape. And daybreak was a lot further to the east than this. As Irwin Kansler peered for stretched seconds toward the town, then turned in the saddle to use as much time surveying the distant horizon at the rear—like he was making a fine estimation of a critical time factor.
"I ain't so sure, Gerry," the bearded man mutte
red doubtfully. "Maybe it wasn't such a great idea after all."
"What d'you mean, Irwin?"
"That maybe he told the truth, Gerry. Maybe he was ridin' away from the offer Gray made him. Which won't be settin' right with the fat sonofabitch. And so he won't give a damn about us havin' Edge as a hostage."
"So what's the difference, Irwin?" Saxon countered quickly, his excitement still high. "We didn't know he was gonna show up in Elgin when we planned this for tonight. And even when Prentice came out and told us he was comin' to town, it didn't alter not a thing. He was just one more hard man we had to take care of. It was only when you saw him ridin' out with Sterlin' and Antrim you switched the plan. So we can dump him right here and go ahead like we was goin' to at first, seems to me."
Edge shifted his right hand from his cheek to his neck. And altered its movement from a scratching to a massaging action—like he was rubbing at aching muscles.
"We still got the time, Irwin," Saxon went on eagerly. "Still far enough outside of town. Ain't nobody heard us comin'."
The half-breed's long, brown skinned fingers moved slowly back and forth against his skin under the ends of his hair at the back as he said in a weary tone that seemed to hold in a yawn: "I hope he don't mean by dump what he could mean by it, feller?"
"Well, you gotta see it from our viewpoint, Edge. Tales that been comin' to Elgin about you for so long, you ain't the kinda guy to let somethin' like this pass by without doin'—"
"Dump as in what folks do with garbage. The stuff that gets to stink when it's kept around too long. And the only thing to do with it is get rid of it—"
The half-breed tried to the limit of his capability to control his rage: to confine it to an ice cold ball—much like fear—at the pit of his stomach. But he failed, dismally.
And thereby survived.
Gerry Saxon was smirking to express the kind of triumph that only a man who knows he has beaten much greater odds can experience. Relishing every word he spat out, the sound of each one heightening his enjoyment of a situation in which it was impossible for him to conceive defeat.
Edge saw the look on the man's face for just a moment from the left corner of his slitted left eye. Then raked his eyes along their sockets to glimpse the apologetic look on the face of the bearded man riding the horse.
Gaped his wide, thin-lipped mouth open to its widest extent. Which Saxon thought was the prelude to a cry of despair and caused him to curtail his taunts. But instead, what was vented from deep within the half-breed was a roar like that of some gigantic wild animal that has found voice after a lifetime of anguished muteness. Which triggered panic in the minds of the horses and deeply shocked the men. Including Edge himself. But neither the traumatic experience of discovering he was capable of such an act, nor the abrupt lunge into a bolt by the two horses drawing the buckboard hampered him in bringing the straight razor out of his neck pouch. And arcing it, tightly clenched in his right fist, across the front of his body and toward Gerry Saxon.
Whose smirk of triumph was in process of altering to a mask of terror as he heard the animalistic bellow and saw the sudden move. Gaped his own mouth wide and abandoned the reins of the bolting team in a desperate attempt to bring up his hands and defend himself against his assailant. And quite possibly died without being aware that Edge was attacking him with more than just a fist. For the honed point of the razor penetrated his left eyelid, the eye itself and the tissue behind it to find the brain and kill the man all in just part of a second that allowed no time for even subconscious thought.
The buckboard was already picking up sudden speed as Edge jerked the length of the blade out of the head of the dead man, powered by the two terrified horses in the traces and unhindered by the pair of equally frightened animals hitched on at the rear. The momentum forced the limp form of Saxon back against the back of the seat. Then he was knocked sideways by Edge as the half-breed grabbed for and held on to reins just as they were about to slide off the knees of the corpse. First with his left hand and then with the right after the razor—its blade still darkly wet with blood—was back in the next pouch.
An opening shot cracked then, the report sounding trivial in the din of the galloping horses, the hurtling wagon, the snorts and hoofbeats of the mounts with riders in the saddles and the cries and curses of the riders as they strove to control the panicked animals. Edge, silent now and with an ice cold grin of triumph curling back his lips from his clenched teeth and narrowing his eyes to the merest slivers of glinting blue, was already hunched low in the seat, using the reins only to steer the team, for he knew the animals were incapable of being driven to greater speed. And so he did not alter his posture on the seat of the jolting and swaying rig as this first shot cracked toward him a bullet that missed by a wide margin.
Nor did he snatch a glance over his shoulder perhaps two seconds later when a whole fusillade of shots exploded a claim to predominance over all other sounds—as mounts and men were calmed in the wake of terror and shock. These shots fired in as hurried a manner as the first one: from guns in the hands of men who were gripped by varying emotions as powerful as that which had triggered Edge's killing move.
But the half-breed, under the influence of a not to be denied fury, retained control over his deadly skills—or perhaps such skills operated automatically in certain situations. And functions like a standby machine which was switched on to deal with the target for his rage when that target angered him to the point where he lost conscious control of himself. Whichever, he was again in full conscious possession of his thinking processes and abilities for physical actions as the bullets cracked through the air above and to either side of him. Knew he had to remain a clear target on the seat of the speeding rig to have a chance of reaching the relative safety of Elgin City. And aware that the men shooting at him—twelve farmers and one storekeeper—could not possibly share his instinct to kill coldly when apparently crazed by rage. And so the men, firing their revolvers and rifles from the backs of horses spurred to gallops, were reacting impulsively out of high emotion—whether it be dismay or anger or grief or hatred. Thus were more likely to trigger a fatal shock by luck than expert marksmanship. And in such a hell-for-leather situation on an open trail, Edge could do nothing more than trust to luck.
Which was not a state of affairs he relished and so the short-lived grin of triumph became a scowl as the hail of bullets sped on ahead of the buckboard and the crackle of gunfire ended: and for stretched seconds Edge could hear only the beat of hooves, rattle of wheelrims and creak of timbers. Then was about to glance over his shoulder—to see if the reality matched with the image that was imprinted in his mind. Of the bunch of riders reining their mounts to an abrupt halt, the riflemen among them preparing to take careful, rock steady aim at the target from bases that were now stationary. But Instead, he did a double take at the scene ahead of him. A quarter of a mile along the trail and closing by the moment.
First there was a single gleam of light that was momentarily blurred because his head had been moving as he made to look behind him. But then, as it came into sharp focus, so did many others: and within a second the entire length of Elgin City's main street was ablaze with light. Shafting from each undraped window and open door of every building. The brilliant illumination emphasized the eerie emptiness of the broad street on which not even a dust devil moved in the pre-dawn hours of the still night. Until Edge, committed to a course of action, drove the buckboard with no slackening of pace past the marker and into town. But even then the sound and movement of the hurtling rig with two horses hauling it and two trailing behind and a living and a dead man up on the seat produced the only noise and activity within Elgin City.
Until another barrage of gunfire exploded. But this time no bullets cracked in the direction of Edge. Hooves beat at the ground but the riders were not in pursuit of the buckboard. Voices were raised, bellowing in the tone of command or shrieking in anger and dismay. The sounds fa
ding in the ears of Edge relative to the distance he travelled along the street. For this new eruption of violence was staged out on the trail and to either side of it. And it was not a running battle.
Then, along both sides of the street, people stepped dispiritedly on to the thresholds of the brightly lit buildings: some to scowl balefully at the racing wagon, others to watch it with indifference or resignation and a few ignoring it to peer anxiously through the settling dust in its wake at the gunbattle in the moonlit night to the east of town.
Just one man smiled and raised a hand in welcome—Earl Gray who leaned his broad back against the front of the gallows platform on the courtyard formed by the law office and jail at the rear and the church and bakery to either side, the lantern with which he had signaled for the lights of Elgin City to be lit still clutched in one pudgy, many ringed fist.
Then the rig was beyond the mid-town area and Edge began to haul rhythmically on the reins to bring the team gradually out of the gallop. And the animals, the foamy lather of sweat gleaming on their coats in the bright light, responded immediately, more amenable to being calmed because the crackle of gunfire had now ceased. So that when the buckboard finally came to rest, almost at the extreme western end of the street, the snorting and wheezing of the nearly exhausted horses were the only sounds to be heard above a distant murmuring of many voices. Until the freckle-faced and baldheaded Sam Gower stepped across the sidewalk out front of his undertaking parlor and said:
"If Gerry Saxon is as dead as he looks, I appreciate you takin' the trouble to bring him all the way down to me, mister."
"Was no trouble, feller," Edge replied as he interrupted his survey of the scene at the far end of the street and realized he had rolled the buckboard to a halt right outside Gower's premises. "Accident."
"What happened to the deceased wasn't, I'd say," the mortician answered as he stepped down on to the street and stooped to look into the blood run face of Saxon whose head lolled off the side of the seat. "You put pay to just the one?"
Edge: Bloody Sunrise Page 10