Edge: Echoes of War (Edge series Book 23)

by George G. Gilman

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Echoes of War

  By George G. Gilman

  First Published by Kindle 2013

  Copyright © 2013 by George G. Gilman

  First Kindle Edition July 2013

  Names, Characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Cover Design and illustrations by West World Designs © 2013. http://westworlddesigns.webs.com

  This is a High Plains Western for Lobo Publications.

  Cover Illustration by Cody Wells.

  Visit the author at: www.gggandpcs.proboards.com

  For:

  D. d’C.

  Directly involved in my favorite pursuits.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A norther was blowing hard across the Iowa plains and over the Missouri. The sky was ugly to look at - gray with heavy black streaks. From time to time, showers of snow fell from the turbulent clouds and the wind seemed to howl with bitter glee at each shower, taking hold on the flakes and hurling them at anything solid that stood across its southbound route.

  Omaha was the major obstacle, crouching resolutely at the meeting point of the Platte with the Missouri: the first man-made hindrance of any size which the north-borne wind came across. To the east and south of the city the rivers raced and swirled, the brown surface of the waters scarred with angry white spume. On the streets and in the alleys, the white of drifted snow showed on the lee side of buildings. The instant it found shelter from the insistent tug of the wind, the snow became crusted with ice. Where there was no shelter, it slanted to the open ground only to be picked up again and hurled forward with even more force.

  Between flurries, people with pressing business which forced them to be out on the streets cursed the cruel wind, its biting coldness and the acrid taint of smoke from the stacks of buildings and Union Pacific locomotives. Then, when the snow showers were unleashed, they cursed with more venom as the flakes became liquid on their clothing and soaked through to chill their flesh.

  Some vented their feelings about the discomfort of the weather aloud. Some merely muttered. Others reflected their thoughts in expressions ranging from sullenness to anger.

  One man smiled into the howling wind, unconcerned by the alternate discomforts of icy wetness and the swirling downdraught of the smoke. It was a quiet, easy-going smile: a match for his gait as he strolled east along the broad sidewalk of Douglas Street.

  He was a tall man and the hunched shoulders and stooped heads of everyone else hurrying back and forth on the north side of the street emphasized his height. For, without any sign of strain or rigidity, he carried his head high upon squared shoulders against the constant buffeting of the wind. In fact, he stood three inches over six feet and the casual way in which he made progress through the embryo blizzard was an indication of the easy strength commanded by his two-hundred-pound frame. It was a lean frame, not burdened with even an ounce of excess fat: but that was difficult to see as he covered the five-block distance between the Astoria Hotel and the office of the Mid-West Steam Packet Company. For, from neck to knee, he was encased in a thick, fur-lined coat with the collar turned up to brush the underside of his low-crowned hat and buttoned from throat to mid-thigh.

  But the face beneath the wide brim and between the standing collar gave a clue to the well-proportioned build that was concealed by the bulky coat. It was a lean face, the features angular - arranged in such a way that the man could be considered either handsome or ugly. Dominating the face was a pair of hooded eyes of crystal-clear blue. The cheekbones were high and the jaw line was firm; the skin stretched taut between. His nose had a hawk like quality, the nostrils slightly flared. Even though he was now smiling, his thin lips curled back to display well-shaped, very white teeth, and anyone who examined him closely would judge his mouth line to have a look of cruelty about it.

  The frame of his face was comprised of thick, jet black hair which he wore long enough to brush his shoulders. The complexion was stained to a dark hue, the skin deeply scored by a network of lines: some etched by the passage of years to his present age, somewhere in the thirties but more cut by the harsh and bitter experiences he had endured over so many of those years.

  While the set and color of his face owed a great deal to the adult life he had led, his heritage had contributed more: for he was the result of a union between a Mexican father and a Scandinavian mother. The moustache which he wore, thick along his top lip and drooping to a point at each side of his mouth, emphasized the Latin bloodline. The crystal-clear blueness of his eyes made it obvious there was another strain running through his veins.

  His name was Edge.

  A new flurry of snow was hurled along Douglas Street as he approached the corner of Fourteenth Street. His eyes, never wide, narrowed still more against the coldness of the rushing flakes. Visibility had been reduced to only a few feet, but Edge knew the office of the steamship company was on the corner of the intersection immediately ahead: and that he was passing a bakery store with a doorway set between two display windows.

  As he drew level with the door, it was wrenched open and a middle-aged woman hurried out, a basket hooked over one arm as she struggled to open an umbrella. Edge caught a brief glimpse of her face beneath the brim of an oilskin hat: a gaunt, sour face made almost grotesquely ugly by a sprinkling of black warts and a moustache as thick as his own. Then the umbrella sprang open. The wind was gusting from behind her and she snarled an obscenity as the rush of air snapped the slats and ripped the fabric: but not before she had been lunged forward to slam into the solid bulk of Edge.

  The half-breed withdrew both hands from his coat pockets, kept the woman from falling with one and touched the brim of his hat with the other.

  ‘Long time since a woman threw herself at me, ma’am,’ he said evenly, injecting humor into the contentment which formed his mouth line into a grin.

  Anger emphasized the woman’s homeliness as she wrenched herself out of Edge’s firm grasp. ‘Why don’t you watch where you’re goin’,’ she snapped, fumbling with the ruined umbrella. ‘What are you, drunk or somethin’? And it not yet ten o’clock in the mornin’!’

  The narrow slits of Edge’s blue eyes had never contributed anything to the smile: until now, as the woman hurled away the wrecked umbrella and glared her rage at all that ailed her towards him. The thin lips of the half-breed remained curled back, but altered their set slightly: and there was a brand of ice-like glitter in the eyes that set the seal on the cruelty latent behind the expression.

  Fear emerged through the woman’s anger and she took a backward step as the snow shower ended as abruptly as it had begun.

  ‘That was two months ago in Frisco, ma’am,’ Edge said. ‘Guess you were just as ugly then. Today I’m sober.’

  He touched the brim of his hat again and sidestepped to go around the shocked woman.

  ‘Well, I never did!’ she gasped, raising both han
ds to clutch at her scrawny throat.

  ‘Nor never will, I figure,’ Edge muttered with a final glance at the warts and unfeminine moustache. ‘Something you got to face.’

  The woman snorted her disgust and now seemed to welcome the wind as it helped to speed her retreat down the street. Edge, his features re-forming into the expression they had worn before the encounter with the woman, reached the doorway of the steamship company office. As he pushed open the solid wooden door, a four-seater roofed surrey turned in off Fourteenth Street and stopped at the curb. He eyed the two passengers and driver with brief interest: in the way that he constantly maintained surveillance on his surroundings. But the trio posed no overt threat and he stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind him.

  The exposed flesh of his face immediately responded to the warmth of the stove in the office: losing the feeling of stiffness created by the biting coldness of the weather. A dozen people looked at him as he made his entrance: resentful that he had allowed a stream of icy air to sweep into the room. But it was immediately acknowledged that the discomfort was unavoidable and ten pairs of eyes ignored the newcomer. But a man and a woman merely pretended to lose interest in him: in fact, continued to cast surreptitious glances towards him as he unfastened the buttons of the coat and slackened the lanyard of his hat.

  Aware of the covert attention he was receiving, the half-breed looked around him with the same degree of casual alertness that he had displayed since leaving the hotel a few minutes earlier. The room was about twenty feet square, the rear third of its area partitioned off by a counter. There was a desk, a chair and a safe behind the counter. The shirt-sleeved clerk seemed disgruntled that he was not sitting at the desk: and his youthful, red-blotched face expressed more displeasure than anyone else’s on Edge’s arrival. For it meant that he had to stand behind the counter that much longer, issuing tickets and receiving payment.

  The would-be passengers stood in an orderly tine, along the counter and around the angle of a side wall. Their enjoyment of the warmth emanating from the pot-bellied stove in the centre of the public area of the room was marred by the steam rising from their wet top clothes.

  Pools of water lay on the bare wooden boards of the floor. The paint on the walls was peeling and the counter was scratched and burned. Dull looking timetables of the services between St Louis and Fort Bulford and over-colored paintings of scenes along the route were hung on the walls. On the counter, to either side of the clerk, were piles of papers. At one end was a model of a stern-wheeler protected by a smeared glass dome.

  The room smelled of dampness, old cigar smoke and fresh coffee. The clerk interrupted the issue of a ticket to delve under the counter and bring up a mug, which he drank from. It didn’t improve his mood.

  Under the fur-lined coat, Edge wore black pants, a gray shirt, black kerchief and a gun belt. In the holster tied down to his right thigh there was a slim butted .44-40 Remington revolver: as brand new as his clothing. But, after failing to see any sign of potential danger, he allowed his coat to swing back and cover the gun.

  Of those in the line ahead of him, two were women and the rest men. All of them were middle-aged to elderly with the exception of the woman who had been unable to conceal her curiosity about him. She was in her mid-twenties, an attractive brunette wearing a long coat belted tightly at the waist which hinted at a fine figure. The man immediately behind her in the line was the other party who had shown more than a passing interest in Edge. He was short and fleshy, with a freckled face and hair that was both graying and thinning. In his late forties, he was nervous and had taken off his derby hat so that his constantly moving hands could toy with it.

  His interest in the half-breed had been fearful, and remained so until he forced his attention away to concentrate on nothing. The woman had been startled, but only for a moment. Then she calmed and although she continued to shoot fast glances back along the line, the expression in her green eyes held an odd mixture of coyness and frank appraisal - until her gaze was fleetingly trapped by the glittering coldness in the half-breed’s eyes. Then she flushed crimson from the roots of her hair to the point where her slender neck plunged from sight behind the collar of her coat.

  Only a few seconds had elapsed and the room temperature had not yet climbed back up to where it had been before Edge entered. But he was beginning to relish the warmth and was amongst those who shivered when the door opened to admit a new stream of snow-chilled air. Every eye shifted towards the trio of newcomers: resentfully, fearfully and carefully.

  But there was nothing about the entrance of the three men to arouse suspicion. They came in backwards, taking off their hats and shaking them as if to rid them of snowflakes out on the sidewalk rather than inside. From their long black coats with collars turned high about their ears, Edge recognized them as the men from the surrey.

  ‘Shut out that damn weather!’ the clerk yelled irritably.

  Edge had started to lose interest in the newcomers as they backed into the office, banging into each other in their apparent haste to get out of the wind and snow.

  ‘Sonny, how would you like another hole in your head?’

  The threat was yelled, the opening words competing with the sound of the howling wind. Then the door was kicked shut and the voice was heard to have a muffled quality.

  The trio whirled, the man at either side moving to give room to the one in the middle. Each face was masked by a kerchief from just below the eyes. As if they were performing a well-rehearsed trick, the men replaced the Stetsons on their heads with their left hands while their right arms whipped down from under the hats and thrust forward. The man in the centre, who had snarled the retort at the clerk, was clutching a combination pistol, knife and knuckleduster with the blade extended and a finger curled around the trigger. The man on his right had an over-and-under Derringer: the one on his left an English .43 Tranter double-action five-shot.

  ‘Oh, no!’ the balding, graying fat man gasped, nearly collapsing into a faint of fear but managing to find the support of the wall.

  The clerk, who had been about to sip more coffee, vented a squeal like a hurt cat and dropped his mug. It hit the counter top spraying the papers with liquid.

  Only for part of a second did Edge consider going for his gun. But he got no further than curling the long, brown-skinned fingers of his right hand under the flap of his coat.

  ‘I wouldn’t, mister!’ the man with the Tranter snapped, raking the gun around to cover the half-breed.

  The eyes of the other two men covered the rest of the line and the clerk between them: and saw that fear swamped any inclination towards retaliation.

  ‘Gives us something in common, feller,’ Edge answered. ‘I wouldn’t either.’

  He started to drop his hand to his side. But then he raised it: slowly, to find the lobe of his right ear and tug at it.

  ‘Wise man.’

  The one with the Derringer moved forward, taking long strides towards the counter. The clerk seemed transfixed to the floor. Tears squeezed from his eyes and ran slowly over the curves of his blotchy cheeks as the small gun drew a bead on the centre of his forehead.

  ‘Every cent you have,’ the gunman said, his tone pleasant, perhaps even a little girlish. He drew a burlap sack from his coat pocket and dropped it on the counter. ‘In here.’

  The clerk flapped his mouth open and shut but made no sound. Until the double muzzle of the tiny gun was pushed forward to rest on the sweat-sheened skin of his brow. ‘Hole’ll be here,’ the gunman encouraged. ‘If you have any troubles, they’ll be over.’

  The youngster squealed again, snatched up the sack and whirled to stagger towards the safe.

  ‘You folks have your valuables ready,’ the man with the three-in-one weapon announced calmly. ‘Sack will be passed along. Just like in church, Sunday. Give generously, or give your all. You appreciate what I am saying to you?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, most certainly!’ the short, fat man spluttered. Now that the
hold-up was underway, he had overcome his nerves and recovered from the near faint. He looked and sounded relieved as he fumbled to unfasten his coat.

  ‘Appreciate your attitude!’ the man with his back to the door said quickly, his tone harsh as he swung the odd weapon towards the co-operative man. ‘But slow and easy. My friends and I are a trifle nervous. Be a shame to kill somebody for no reason.’

  Fear was like a palpable presence in the room, augmenting the heat from the stove to draw sweat from almost every pore: captors and captives alike. Body odor became the most pungent smell.

  ‘Something you should know, feller,’ Edge said to the man who covered him with the Tranter. .

  ‘Always willing to learn.’

  ‘We ever meet up again, don’t point a gun at me - unless you figure to kill me. I don’t like guns aimed at me. Always give folks one warning about that.’

  ‘Tall, broad and hardnosed,’ the man responded lightly. ‘I hope your bankroll is as big as your courage, mister.’

  Edge shook his head. The money’s not important. Warning is.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, mister,’ the man snapped, and inched the gun further ahead of him. ‘Give out the roll. Slow, with your hand wide of the gun.’

  The clerk had transferred money from the safe to the sack. Back at the counter, he took more cash from a drawer beneath and added this. When he tried to hand the sack back to the gunman, it was waved away, towards the first would-be passenger in the line. Then the little under-and-over followed the sack from person to person, halting when it did. Bills, coins and jewelry were dropped into the mouth of the sack.

  ‘Been nice up to now,’ the man with the Derringer said pleasantly. ‘Keep it going like that and there won’t be any blood on anyone’s hands.’

  The man with his back to the door was becoming increasingly nervous. His kerchief was black, but it showed the stains of sweat soaking through from his cheeks. His dark eyes moved constantly in their sockets, as his strange weapon raked back and forth along the line.