"You got them fair and square so I didn't do you a favor, feller. So nothing's owed. Night to
you."
Selmar backed away from in front of the bat-wings and his still outstretched arm forced Floyd to do the same—the older man looking a little irritated that his offer had been declined while the one twenty years his junior and a head taller expressed a worried frown—and attempted to direct a tacit message to the man he was concerned for. But Whitney was not about to be dissuaded from the course of action he had elected to follow from the moment the other two C-bar-S men backed off.
"Night to you, and sweet dreams," he rasped—and made as if to turn away so that Edge would have direct access to the saloon entrance. But instead, he started to swing in the opposite direction just a part of a second later—bringing up his right hand clenched into a prominently knuckled fist.
Clark Selmar groaned: "Oh, God."
"What do you want me—" Floyd started to ask shrilly.
Edge had not expected the smaller man to throw a punch and was momentarily caught off guard. Before he brought up both hands to his face—as if to protect it against the powering right uppercut. But instead, the move was offensive rather than defensive—and he swayed backwards from the waist to draw his jaw out of the path of the fist.
"Bastard!" Whitney croaked.
"You're too friggin' drunk!" Floyd yelled.
"You'll get what you friggin' deserve!" Selmar snarled.
Now the half-breed bent at the knees slightly, as his left hand streaked forward from his face while the right delved into the hair at the nape of his neck. Something glowed red in one hand, and something else glinted like silver in the other. Whitney snatched his right fist back down from out of mid-air and tried to knock aside one of Edge's hands while with his left he aimed a punch at the taller man's belly. But the hand with the tiny spot of glowing red between two of its knuckles came too fast and packed too much strength to be deflected. It did not impact with great force, though—just delivered a stab of excruciating pain as the cigarette butt burned the sensitive skin of Whitney's right eyelid. And the pain and the shock acted to take the power out of the blow he landed with his own left hand.
Instinctively then, terrifyingly unsure of whether or not the cigarette had been pushed into his actual eye, Whitney screamed and sought to explore the area of the agony with the hand that had failed to defeat the searing attack. But found the wrist of that hand suddenly captured in a brutally tight grip, was aware of Edge's free hand moving in a blur of speed and next felt a warm wetness on his arm as he was released—and had the chance he needed to explore the cigarette burn. But in so doing, with his good eye he saw the blood that was pumping from the bone deep cut across the inside of his right wrist.
"You sneaky bastard!" he shrieked. "That weren't fair! Clark, the sonofabitch burned me and stuck me! Look what he friggin' done!"
Whitney covered his burned left eye with his left hand while his right one frenetically shifted its terror-filled gaze from the slashed wrist, to Edge, to Selmar and back again. And his face was almost as white as his hair as he staggered back to lean against the wall to one side of the batwing entrance: where a bunch of stunned people had gathered to stare in silence at the doubly-injured cowpuncher and the man who had hurt him.
"That was one of the most disgraceful things I ever did see!" the rancher gasped.
"Look on the bright side, feller," Edge said evenly, and commanded the attention of the entire audience as he wiped spots of blood off the blade of the razor on to the sleeve of his sheepskin coat before he replaced it in the pouch. "You could have gone for your gun and got your throat cut instead."
"I didn't go for my gun on account of I figure I ain't no match for you in that kinda showdown!" Whitney said bitterly, sagging against the wall.
Edge nodded. "Yeah, I ain't never been much with my fists."
"You're a mean bastard and no mistake!" the tall and thin Floyd accused as he waited for Edge to pass, then moved across the saloon entrance behind the half-breed—ripping off his kerchief to use as a tourniquet on the injured man's arm. "If you'd fought fair, Whitney would have beat you real easy! He used to fight in the booths for a livin'!"
"Damn right," the smaller C-bar-S man said with a grimace as the kerchief was knotted tightly to stanch the flow of blood.
"Show's over, folks," Edge told the group at the doorway as he pushed the batwings open. And, as the people backed off to allow him across the threshold, he glanced over his shoulder to say: "In a booth, uh?"
"Right!" Floyd snapped, not looking up from his attentions to Whitney.
"Explains why he's so keen on fair fighting."
Chapter Twelve
The half-breed ordered a beer and a bottle of whiskey from the anxious-to-please bartender and carried them to a table in the darkest corner of the saloon. Where he sat down with his back to the corner and took the beer at two swallows. Then half filled the glass with whiskey and began to sip the liquor, seemingly oblivious to anything that was not in the middle distance of his surroundings as the violently interrupted social activity of the place got back to normal.
But, in fact, the newly bathed and shaved man in the damp and crumpled sheepskin coat and Stetson hat missed little of the sights and sounds that took place within range of his sensory awareness: as Whitney was hurried off by Selmar and Floyd to see the Fallon doctor while the talking and the drinking and the smoking and the card playing and, finally, the guitar strumming all got under way again. Tentatively at first, with many surreptitious glances toward the impassive-faced man at the corner table. But soon Edge was ignored and it was almost as if there had never been any trouble to disturb the nightly routine of the Fallon citizens who chose to take their ease at the end of a day's work in the Palace Saloon-there was just the arc of unused tables and empty chairs between the lone stranger and the rest of the patrons to reveal that all was not as usual tonight.
Edge did not sip too often at the liquor in the tumbler—drank little more than what amounted to a single shot while he waited for the woman and remained unsure of what he should do when she showed up. Certain only that it was the right thing to wait for her here in a public place rather than to go wherever Silas Reeves had taken her.
And so he was clear-headed, the cool beer and the fiery whiskey having honed a fresh sharpness on his mind by the time the couple came through the batwings. And to the glinting slits of his hooded eyes she looked even better than he remembered her—with her torso and even her arms provocatively displayed by the tightness of the bodice of her pure white dress while from the waist down to her ankles the fullness of the skirt was just as stirring to a man who had seen what was concealed. Her oval face with its blue eyes, snub nose and laughing mouth within the frame of the honey-colored hair was certainly more beautiful than he had ever seen it before. She even moved with more feminine grace. A woman fulfilled and so truly a woman as she was escorted between the crowded tables from the doorway to the bar. Joyfully happy on the arm of the man who had performed this transformation on her. A young man who was perhaps not yet thirty and so could well be ten years her junior. Tall and broad and muscular from his trade of blacksmith and wheelwright. With a head of curly black hair that hung down over the brow and encroached a little across the leather-textured cheeks of his round, handsome, dark-eyed, arrogantly confident face. The man looking a little ridiculous, the half-breed was tempted to think, in an out-of-fashion suit that he had outgrown and probably did not wear very often.
But then Edge checked such a thought because it was obviously triggered by a stab of soured jealousy he had no right to feel for Silas Reeves as the man relished the envious looks of several of his male fellow citizens and some recriminatory glowers directed at him by a few Fallon women who knew they were put in the shade by the aristocratic features and manner of Helen Rochford. And he, of all men, had no right to begrudge Reeves this woman—for had he not been given his chance?
"Set '
em up, pal!" the powerfully built blacksmith yelled raucously above the less strident sounds of the Palace Saloon. "Rye whiskey for me and champagne for the little lady! It's my lucky day and I'm in the mood for celebration!"
"Me, too!" the Englishwoman added. "Today is the first day of the rest of my life!
And what a bloody better life I intend to mak1 it than the last one! Everybody here will have drink! You and you and you and you and…”
The entrance of the couple into the saloon had subdued the noise and then the voice Silas Reeves had muted it further. Now Helen Rochford commanded utter silence as she started to yell the announcement, and the climbed on to a chair with the seeming intent stabbing a forefinger at every patron of the place. And gave the impression of being drunk already—but on happiness instead of liquor until she pointed and looked toward the dark corner where Edge sat; and did a double take as her voice trailed off into the surrounding silence of the warm, smoke-layered and abruptly tension-filled room. Her naturally pale face now looked drained and sick and she vented a low, strangled moan as she swayed—might well have toppled off the chair had not two men powered upright from a nearby table and| steadied her—each grasping a wrist and splaying a hand to her waist.
While Reeves was briefly unaware of Helen Rochford's near collapse—his entire concentration fixed upon the man who had captured her terrified attention—stared fixedly with hatred and contempt at Edge who continued to sit at the corner table, both hands around the tumbler in front of him. Until he heard the urgent sounds of the men lunging up to keep her from falling. And he snapped his head around to see what was happening. Saw the woman was in the strong and safe hands of two of the C-bar-S cow-punchers and bellowed at her:
"He's one of them, ain't he? He's one of the scum that took you by force and marked you up and—"
"No, Silas!" she shrieked, and wrenched her wrists free of the men's grip. Then leapt down off the chair as the Fallon blacksmith whirled around to face Edge again. This as one of the cowpunchers rasped an obscenity, and failed to snatch back the Colt sixshooter Reeves had slid from his holster.
And the second C-bar-S man realized the kind of mistake that was being made, so snarled: "You're wrong, Reeves!"
These words were spoken against a sudden upsurge of sound as other voices were raised. And footfalls hit the floor to the accompaniment of crashing chairs and tables and smashing glass as people struggled frantically to get clear of the line of fire.
Then two gunshots cracked out, exploded so close together they could not be separated. And in their wake there was a stretched second of solid silence while the acrid taint of black powder smoke attacked every nostril as nobody moved a muscle—even to breathe.
Until this brief period of time, elongated out of all proportion by the shock of this new and worse violence, was ended by Silas Reeves saying: "Wrong?"
There was blood on his suit jacket in the area of his heart. And a look of tragic disbelief on his handsome face as he stood with both hands down at his side—the revolver still held loosely in the right one—looking across a twenty-foot area of abandoned tables and overturned chairs at where Edge stood in the corner, a tumbler quarter full with whiskey in his left hand and a Frontier Colt still leveled in the other, thumb resting on the hammer and forefinger curled round the trigger.
"Right, feller."
"Oh, God!" Silas Reeves gasped, and released the gun that had exploded a bullet into the wall high and wide of where the half-breed| stood. Then the glaze of death came into his dark eyes and he crashed on his knees to the floor with a sound almost as loud as the! revolver had made. After which he started toll topple forward, but his chest hit a chair and he was sent sprawling to the side.
By which time Edge had swallowed the contents of the tumbler, set down the glass, thumbed open the loading gate of his Colt and extracted the spent shellcase. And then the tiny sound of the case pinging on to the table top triggered a wave of words surging from' almost every mouth. But nothing was said by either the impassive half-breed or the terror-stricken Englishwoman as they gazed fixedly at each other, until Edge had reloaded the empty chamber of the Colt with a bullet taken from his gunbelt and slid the revolver back in the holster. When, coming out from behind the table—and remembering to pick up the bottle of rye as an afterthought—he came close enough to her to be heard above the hubbub of other talk and asked:
"What's somebody like you doing in a nice place like this?"
With his free hand he gripped her upper left arm. She made a token effort to struggle, but realized it was a futile gesture and submitted to him turning her around and steering her back towards the door. This as the noise was subdued again and once more the press of curious and shocked people parted to leave a path among them.
"You really are a bastard of the first order, aren't you!" she said grimly, staring straight ahead.
"And you're a first-class bitch, lady," he countered evenly, needing to suppress the arousal he felt from merely holding her by the arm as her perfume drove the odors of the saloon from his nostrils. To an extent where the bite of the chill night air struck almost icy on his exposed flesh as it dried the beads of salt moisture that had squeezed from his pores.
"And they say it is opposites that attract," she said dully as the batwings flapped closed behind them, on a saloon that was suddenly filled with movement as the people clustered around the newly dead man on the floor.
"Seems to me," Edge answered as he headed across the intersection, aware of noise and activity and a higher level of light on the surrounding streets, "that anything in pants is different enough for you."
"If the time and the place and the mood right, why not?" she countered in the same lackluster tone as she continued to submit to the pressure of the pace and the direction he demanded. "Life is just too short to deny oneself the good things as the opportunity occurs. As poor Silas just discovered. Although by his own account he enjoyed more than his share of—"
"What about the four fellers who raped you, lady?" he asked as they approached the hotel with the disabled wagon parked out front, while the people made curious by the double gunshots gathered before the Palace Saloon.
"Where are they?" she demanded, and gave a first display of emotion since Edge brought her out of the saloon—came to an abrupt halt and turned and tilted her head to stare bitterly into his Stetson-shadowed face.
"I lost them."
She was momentarily deflated and dejected again. Then generated sufficient depth of feeling to spread a scowl across her face and put a rasp in her voice as she muttered: "That was different entirely. They took me without my consent. And even had they not hurt me physically they would still have caused me pain. Only a woman could understand how much."
He urged her on toward the sparsely lit Fallon House Hotel again and as she willingly complied, countered: "And maybe only a man who's loved a woman can understand how much another man can get hurt by the woman he loves putting out for any—"
"Geoffrey a man!" she blurted as they reached the rear of the jacked-up wagon and she suddenly wrenched her arm free of his grip and bolted up the steps on to the stoop of the building. "Do you think . . . didn't he tell you . . . why, Geoffrey Rochford is no more a man than a—"
"He told me, lady," the half-breed cut in on the shrilly shrieking Englishwoman whose face in the light through the glass panels of the double doors shone with tears. "I didn't ask. And I don't figure the town of Fallon has any right to know."
She grasped the knobs of the door and wrenched them open—snarled as she plunged into the small lobby: "I hate you, Edge!"
The half-breed started up the steps and called after her as he crossed the threshold: "He believes I'm the first man you tried to—"
She was on the stairs, and made an effort to keep her voice low and lacking in emotion as she told him: "Why don't you go about the business Geoffrey entrusted to you instead of meddling in that which you are too damn moral to truly make your personal concern?"
Helen Rochford ran up the rest of the stairs, but slowed and lightened her tread along the landing. And the sound of her opening and closing the door of room seven was no louder than Rosie Shay made in cracking open the door of her private quarters.
"I heard the shootin', mister." she called in a harsh whisper. "Trouble for you, I guess?"
"I had to kill the local ladykiller, lady," he answered as he stepped off the threshold and closed the door at his back.
"Oh, no." She sighed, then added: "An affair of the heart if I ain't mistaken?"
"He was and that's where he got it."
Chapter Thirteen
Rosie Shay extended a tacit invitation to Edge by opening her door a little wider, but after glancing indifferently at her as he crossed the small lobby he remained tight-lipped as he started up the stairs.
"Reckon I might as well lock up," she said disconsolately. "And turn out the lamp. Way business is, a person can't afford to burn oil when ain't nobody around to—"
"Figure your local lawman will be by soon, lady," Edge cut in on the rambling voice of the woman who was talking for the sake of it.
She sighed and closed her door as he reached the top of the stairs and entered his room, without giving a thought to the couple who were behind the door immediately across the landing. The cramped, spartanly furnished room was filled with cold air that was also tainted with damp from the saddle and bedroll he had earlier dumped on the floor just inside the door. He considered briefly eating some kind of meager supper from the diminished supplies in his saddlebags but decided against it.
"You're getting flabby in the gut as well as the brain, feller," he told himself as he went to the bed, sat on it, swung his legs onto it and leaned his back against the headboard. He was still fully dressed, from riding boots to Stetson.
Just for a moment—a shorter time than he had thought about eating out of his saddlebag —he held the bottle of rye in one hand while the other was draped over the top of its corked neck. And grimaced into the cold and damp darkness as he recalled the impulse that had gripped him when he swept up the bottle off the table after he killed the hapless blacksmith —when he had fleetingly envisioned the Englishwoman and himself in this very room. Which was not cold and damp. Nor were they fully dressed. The bottle was uncorked and soon was empty. And there was no feeling of guilt if he happened to recall his self-conscious act of checking that Geoffrey Rochford was comfortably unconscious before he set off to find the man's wife with a firm resolve to get her away from the local stud—and a lack of confidence in his ability to reject her again. Unsure, even, if he would be able to resist the compulsion to make the advances himself.
EDGE: The Blind Side Page 10