Eve Gilmore was now infected by the tension that demanded silence and curtailed her grief stricken wailing.
Edge began to unhitch his gelding from the sidewalk roof support post and Laura Irish shrieked:
"Stay back or I'll blow his rotten head off, creep!"
The reins came free and Edge clucked to the horse and began to lead him along the street. This as Earl Gray completed his painful turn so that he was facing the half-breed, his complexion paled by agony and weakness so that his hair and moustache did not look quite so silvery now.
"Joe don't give a shit for anybody's head but his own, girl!" the Elgin City mayor said, his voice remarkably strong as all the stains on his shirt front merged into a single, enormous patch of crimson. "Ain't that right, Joe?"
Edge distrusted certain of the hard men who had now all recovered from their amazement at the turnabout and the stamina of Gray. His ice blue eyes moved back and forth along the narrow tracks between the hooded lids. And his whole apparently relaxed being was poised to retaliate to the first act of aggression against him.
"Anybody's anything, feller," he said evenly. "Especially when they make me do something I don't want to do."
The fat man executed the briefest of nods, like he was afraid a more emphatic movement of his head would upset his balance. "I know I made a bad mistake when I didn't give you any choice."
He was within fifty feet of the man who was dying on his feet now. The two pairs of prisoners, the Irish sisters and the eight hard men were all from seventy to a hundred feet away from him when Gray asked:
"My daughters and two of her girls are already….?" He grimaced and rocked in his rigid stance as a bolt of pain seared through his excessively fleshy frame.
"Chris Hite knifed the sheriff and I drowned the deput—"
"Mom!" Laura Irish shrieked. And dragged her Colt away from the head of the homesteader: brought up her free hand to fist it around the one already clutching the revolver butt. And tracked the gun to aim it waveringly at Edge. Triggered a shot toward the tall, lean, slow walking figure of the impassive half-breed. With a negligible chance of hitting the target over such a range with such a gun. And the bullet went high and to the left, to shatter an upper floor window in the front of the Delaware Saloon.
Some of the people crowded into the lower floor barroom vented their shock in the wake of the crash of glass, and hurriedly withdrew from the windows and batwinged entrance doors.
"You pointed a gun at me once before, lady," Edge said.
"Mom's dead!" the oldest of Pearl Irish's daughters snarled as she thumbed back the hammer of her Colt. "And Anne and Joy!"
Despite the powerful emotion that had a firm hold on her, the woman was aware of the ominous circumstances that faced her—the Colt was useless and the man at who she had fired it intended to avenge the act. And she snatched a look at her sister, who had already streaked a hand to her holster to grab at air. Only then recalled with horror that it was her sixgun Clay Averill had used to pump bullets into the massive form of her grandfather.
Laura abruptly remembered this, too. And now raked her anger and fear-filled gaze over the hard men scattered across the intersection. All of them with handguns in their holsters and the experience and skill to judge when Edge would be close enough to be within range. Two carried rifles which did not yet threaten anyone.
"A thousand dollar bonus for everyone that draws against him!" the woman deputy roared.
And Edge came to an unhurried halt now. Dropped his right hand away from the reins so that it hung close to the jutting butt of his holstered Colt. While his left hand fisted a little more tightly around the frame of the Winchester canted to his shoulder. Only the Army Colt in the now rock steady grip of both Laura Irish's hands was aimed at him. But every eye was on him, the study overt by the people on the street and surreptitious by those who had fled into the flanking buildings. The fully risen sun took just a little chill out of the air that smelled of smoke from the chimneys of the bath house.
"Can you top that offer, mister" a blond-headed gunslinger with a knife scar along his jaw asked flatly.
The Mayor of Elgin City, looking not tanned at all now—almost dissipated by the strain of staying alive on his feet, managed to force out: "I'm the only one around here buys men!"
"Seems to me you got outbid on Chris Hite, Mr. Gray," a short, stockily built hard man who at fifty plus was the oldest of the bunch growled. And spat in the way the dead top hand used to.
Earl Gray looked questioningly at the half-breed, who supplied evenly:
"Gabe Millard, Cleve Sterling, Jesse Antrim and the other two fellers that got killed at the east county line. Maybe Bob Lowell, too."
"So?"
"A bunch of corpses."
"What's those guys got to do with anythin', mister?"
Edge waited until the hard men's rasped queries had dried up. Then growled as he shifted his sun glinting gaze over the intrigued face of every hard man and ended the survey on the sick looking countenance of the painfully suffering Gray: "Hite figured he'd sold only his life to the fat man. And that there wasn't any money big enough to buy the time and manner of his death."
"What the frig is that suppose to—"
"The Mayor pays us high but reckons our lives ain't worth that," the scar-faced man cut in on the oldest one. And clicked the thumb and small finger of his gun hand. Then nodded.
"You creeps!" Laura Irish screamed, and lunged forward as she squeezed the trigger and cocked the hammer of her gun. Sprinting toward and aiming at Edge.
Who allowed her just this second wild shot before he brought the Winchester down from his shoulder, and fired it in a one handed grip from his hip. Blinked once in response to the report and again worked the lever action of the repeater as he canted it back up to his shoulder. By which time the woman had been halted in her tracks alongside the fat man, the Colt slipped from her hands as they fell to her flanks. Then her head drooped as if she tried to look at the blood-letting hole in her chest, but maybe died before she saw it. And fell hard to her knees, then tipped forward in sight of her grandfather. Who moved his dark eyes just briefly to look at the woman.
Only the surviving Irish sister made a sound—gasped out her pent up breath as she corkscrewed to the ground in a faint.
"You reckon the thought of comin' into all the money was too much for her?" a gunslinger asked. And turned his back on the center of the intersection to go toward the office of the Elgin County Herald.
"I don't work for no woman!" another growled and went in the wake of the first.
"Especially no slip of a girl like she is!" the oldest hard man added. But held back from leaving the street as he and a lot of other people saw Earl Gray's lips move as the fat man struggled to say something.
The two pairs of roped-together homesteaders were behind the dying man, so were not in a position to see his wan, excessively fleshy face. And Jacob Astor spoke first. Asked:
"Won't one of you men please cut us loose?"
The scar-faced hard man rasped sourly: "Nothin' is for nothin', sodbuster. And I don't do nothin' for pretty pleases!"
Earl Gray now managed to find his voice, as his head tilted forward, making his series of double chins more prominent than was usual. Stared down at his elongated, early morning shadow and complained:
"It's gettin' dark. Light the lamps, you runts."
"The fires'll be burnin' real bright where you're goin', fat man!" a woman shrieked from within the crowded meeting hall.
This as Edge, still watching and waiting for the first sign of a move against him, backed away to get alongside his gelding. And reached across the saddle to slide his rifle in the boot—not pushing forward the hammer until the muzzle was in the leather.
The Mayor of Elgin City was rocking back and forth again now. Still rigid except for his lolling head. The jewels in the ring settings on his pudgy hands draped over the holstered Tranters glittering brilliantly in the sunli
ght with each small movement. And, also with each small movement, a tiny spurt of fresh blood appeared at the bullet holes to add to the great stain which stretched from the shirt collar to the silver buckled gunbelt.
Edge swung smoothly up astride his gelding. And the fat man caught a glimpse of this out of the corner of his eye. Perhaps was delirious and saw the move as one of aggression. Or maybe was able to think rationally in the midst of his pain—and was determined to stop the man who was responsible for his downfall. And he drew the matched Tranters, his very white teeth gritted with the effort this required. Then altered the expression to a grin as he squeezed the triggers, cocked the hammers, squeezed the triggers again and cocked the hammers. Blasted two shots with each gun and then died as he was about to explode two more. And fell with a rush of expelled air to cover the bullet holes he had drilled in the street just a few inches in front of the toes of his boots. Had not had the strength to level the two guns.
Silence came to Elgin City in the wake of the enormous bulk of its mayor hitting its main street. And lasted only a few seconds before Edge heeled his gelding into a slow walk and the hard men moved off the intersection. And not until the gunslingers were all in the newspaper office and the half-breed was well advanced along the eastern stretch of the street, did the townspeople emerge into the sunlight.
There was Pop, the white-coated bath house attendant, Wiley Reece who rented wagons, the preacherman, Fred Garner the saloon owner and Indian expert who used to walk out with Pearl Irish, Joshua Morrow the banker and Horace J. Hargrove the doctor. And Eve Gilmore, a scared new widow, Devine with the thick-lensed glasses from the livery and Sam Gower, undertaker.
Some of these and many others continuing to be resentful of Edge who had been forced by the power for circumstances to change things for all time in their community. But who could tell if it would be for better or for the worse now that they could determine their own future instead of being ruled by the fat man in the big house on the hill? Even the freed homesteaders who had taken a hand in the ending of Earl Gray's tyranny had only hope in what was to follow the brand new dawn. Just as did those other citizens who clustered around them, pumping hands and thumping backs.
Edge rode out beyond the marker sign and lit the cigarette he had rolled. Nobody shouted at him on this occasion and he did not turn around for a final look at Elgin City, which had given him nothing for his time there—unless it be a strengthening of a basic belief. That a man who possessed nothing but his life and desired no more was the only man who was truly free.
He was at the start of the valley that narrowed toward the eastern boundary of Elgin County when he met another lone rider. A mean-eyed, thin-faced, tension-taut man in dark clothing who watched Edge like a prowling animal as they closed. And asked from fifteen feet away:
"There's a charnel house of new dead back by the fence—that mean the man that runs this piece of territory is hirin' on new help?"
"No, feller," Edge answered as neither he nor the newcomer moved to halt their mounts.
"Reckon I'll check that out for myself, mister," the grimacing hard man growled. "Seein' as how I know Earl Gray from way back and—"
"Go ahead," the half-breed allowed with a slight shrug as his gelding and the stallion of the other man moved slowly on by one another. "But you'll be flogging a dead horse."
"I'll need to hear that from Earl myself, mister. Since he owes me a favor."
"What he figured he owed me," Edge said. "From way back. But the old Mayor Gray, he ain't what he used to be."
Edge: Bloody Sunrise Page 13