‘Save your mouth for what it’s best at, Jase!’ he snapped.
‘Very nice!’ the man with the Derringer responded, speaking the words in a tone of pouting injury.
Edge had eased a folded stack of bills from his hip pocket and swung his arm wide so that his hand stayed clear of the Remington butt. He transferred the money to his left hand and resumed tugging at his ear lobe with the right. When the sack was extended towards him by the man next in line, he dropped the bankroll into it.
The masked man with the Derringer was still smarting under the taunt directed at him. His stride was as angry as his gaze as he approached the end of the line on a curving course, holding out his free hand to take the sack. The way he walked and the motion of his hips was as girlish as his tone had been earlier. The sack was pushed out towards him and he snatched at it angrily.
Edge moved his hand away from his ear and into the longhair at the nape of his neck, as if to scratch at the source of an itch.
Then, in a blur of speed, the hand streaked away from his shoulder.
‘Jase!’ the man backed to the door shrieked. ‘Don’t, Scott!’
Edge didn’t move his feet, because the petulant Jase made it unnecessary. He took the sack blind, his hurt and angry gaze fixed upon the man at the door. Thus, he was unaware of danger until it was too late. Both the man with the combination weapon and the one named Scott stared in horror at Edge, and this warned Jase where the threat lay. But, even as he whipped his head around to look at Edge - raking his tiny gun in the same direction - the half-breed fastened a grip on him.
It was Edge’s left hand that clawed on to Jase’s left shoulder. His right was already extended at the full stretch of his arm: to rest the blade of a straight razor against the man’s right temple - a fraction of an inch away from his eye. Then, even before the man at the door yelled the order - sounding more like a plea - to Scott, Edge jerked Jase towards him.
Jase was unbalanced and could not resist. He moved fast to the side, slamming to a halt against the towering leanness of Edge. The razor tracked him, pressed hard enough against the target of flesh to nick the skin without drawing blood.
It had all happened in less than a second and for half that time the half-breed had been exposed to a killing shot blasted from the Tranter of Scott. But Scott wasted his chance by thinking about it and, by the time he had decided to ignore his order, Jase was between the Tranter and Edge: and under threat of having his eye gouged out by a blade which had seemed to appear from thin air.
‘Oh, my sweet Jesus!’ a man rasped softly.
The Tranter continued to be aimed at the suddenly trembling Jase. The combination weapon had wavered during the flurry of activity, but now began to track up and down the line of still exposed hostages. Both these hold-up men had recovered from ‘the shock and their eyes above the masks were hard with grim determination. Jase was weak with terror and he dropped both the sack and the Derringer, the burlap and metal slipping from shaking, sweat-greased hands.
‘I’ll kill one for every second you don’t let Jase go!’ the man with his back to the door growled thickly, his voice having to rasp over the flesh of a dry throat and mouth before forcing a way through the mask.
Scott raised the Tranter to sight along the length of his rock-steady arm. His aim was at Edge’s impassive face above Jase’s left shoulder.
‘Surrender, please!’ the elderly woman in the line begged.
There was fear behind the unflinching face of the tall half-breed: far behind, buried deep in the pit of his stomach. He had faced death a thousand times in as many different situations and, long ago, he had been prepared to meet his maker without enduring the torment of such fear. But his youth had passed and with it had gone a naive belief in fate. A cruel fate that had appeared to map out a destiny for him - ensuring that he survived every danger so that he should live to suffer the brutal consequences.
They’re a couple of fruits, ma’am,’ Edge said evenly. ‘And this one’s ripe to be cut open.’
For a long time now he had regarded fear as a weapon: as essential to survival as his skill with gun and blade. For, if it was controlled, fear was a guard against recklessness and also acted to sharpen a man’s wits and reflexes. As he stood now, in the overheated office, it was the cold fear in the pit of his stomach that made the largest contribution to his icy calm.
‘Henry, he’s got me cold!’ Jase pleaded.
‘And a sneeze could be fatal,’ Edge warned.
Henry had halted the raking action of his strange gun to aim it steadily at the woman who had called on Edge to surrender. The knuckle of his trigger finger was white with the strain of holding first pressure.
‘I’m no fruit!’ Scott snarled, his revolver wavering slightly in its aim at the half-breed’s head.
‘But I figure you’re in the same jam as the others, feller,’ Edge replied evenly.
Henry reached his decision and pushed his free hand behind him to grasp the doorknob. ‘All right, we’re leaving! But you better see Jase gets arrested in one piece, mister! Beat it, Scott!’
He turned the knob and stepped forward: to avoid being slammed in the back as the wind folded the door inwards. His gun swept around to aim towards Jase and Edge.
‘Frigging freak amateurs!’ Scott snarled, anger and hatred doing battle for command of the exposed part of his face.
But he whirled and lunged for the open doorway as the wind howled and gusted, to billow a shower of snow into the office.
‘Only my money I want to keep,’ Edge muttered, and raised his knee as he shoved Jase forward with the hand on the man’s shoulder.
Jase yelled in alarm as he felt himself moving. Then the sound became a scream of pain as the knee was slammed into the small of his back to drive him faster towards the door.
Scott whipped his head around, his Tranter lagging behind. Henry swung his gun.
‘I’m all right!’ Jase shrieked, screwing his head around to make sure.
He saw the razor in mid-air, tossed by Edge’s right hand to his waiting left. The half-breed’s right was already fisted around the butt of the Remington and had the gun clear of the holster, his thumb cocking the hammer.
‘Two points loses,’ Edge growled as the Tranter’s muzzle drew a bead on him. He squeezed the trigger of the Remington.
Scott did not have time to alter his expression. He was enraged at himself, his two companions and Edge for the way the hold-up had gone wrong. The tire in his blazing eyes seemed capable of melting the snow that rushed in through the doorway to whiten everything in its path. And he died in the grip of the anger, as the bullet from Edge’s rock-steady gun exploded into his heart.
He took one step backwards, then fell. The Tranter slipped from his spasming hand. His eyes remained wide above the mask, and became misted with the dull glaze of death. He sprawled backwards across the storm-ravaged threshold of the office. The blossoming stain on the front of his coat froze and then, like the rest of his body, was spread with a concealing mantle of pure white. Then immediately this was sprinkled with a fine rain of bright crimson as a second gunshot blasted across the office.
Jase, thrust across the floor by the half-breed’s knee, banged into Henry. Both men cursed - Henry’s oath the shriller and more obscene as his attempt to use the revolver action of his weapon was spoiled by the collision. Then Jase died, as an area of his back from shoulder-blades to the base of his spine became an awesome crater: its sides a bright, fluid crimson against which chips of shattered bone showed as gleams of white.
The force of the blast threw the corpse against Henry and drove the living man out on to the sidewalk at a backward run. Jase collapsed then, his lifeless body crumpling to sprawl beside the inert form of Scott. Wind-driven snow had already masked the sprinkling of blood which had splashed the first man to die. Now it began to fill the great hole in the back of the second corpse.
As the bitterly cold air rushing in through the doorway cleaned the stink of burnt
powder from the office, Edge started forward and glanced to his right. He saw the clerk’s head appear above the counter top, the red blotches on his face more pronounced now that the rest of his skin was deathly pale with naked fear. Below his head, there was a jagged hole in the front of the counter, where the shotgun had been blasted out of cover.
Excited talk erupted and a woman screamed. Edge reached the doorway and stepped across both snow-covered bodies to rake his narrow-eyed gaze along the street. The shower ended and the flakes which had fallen were driven low across the broad intersection of Douglas and Fourteenth. Henry was halfway across the crossroads, running fast. He slipped and fell hard. His hat came free of his head and was claimed by the wind. As the fleeing man sprang to his feet, Edge caught a brief glimpse of his face. The mask had been wrenched down, but the half-breed captured only a momentary impression of pale skin and dark, red-rimmed eyes. Then the man was up and running again, but with less haste. His left leg was dragged and favored.
The horse in the shafts of the surrey eyed Edge balefully. Slack traffic moved slowly up and down Douglas. A few hurrying pedestrians showed no interest in the doorway of the steamship company office.
‘He’s gone?’ the clerk asked, and gulped, as the half-breed turned to step back over the bodies.
Edge pushed the Remington back into the holster as his boots crunched on frozen snow. Then eased the razor out of sight under the long hair at the nape of his neck. It went, still open, into a leather pouch that extended several inches down the line of his spine: the pouch held in place by a beaded thong encircling his neck under a kerchief.
‘Be in Nebraska City by noon if he don’t slow down,’ the half-breed replied as he stooped to pick up the burlap sack. He took his bankroll out and dropped the sack to the floor again. Then moved to take his former position at the end of the line.
For a few moments the clerk and ten of the would-be passengers continued to express varying degrees of shock and fear. The pretty brunette and the short fat man looked at Edge with unconcealed admiration.
Then a man broke from the line to go for the sack. The others who had property to reclaim did likewise. Edge moved forward to the counter.
‘One way to Bismarck on the first available boat, feller,’ the half-breed asked, his bankroll still in his hand.’
The clerk had moved to peer around the tall, lean figure: his blotchy face anxious as he watched people delve into the sack. His eyes were cracked against the wind which continued to rush into the office, through a door which could not be closed because of the rapidly stiffening bodies across the threshold.
‘The hell with that, mister!’ the youngster snapped. ‘I got company money to get back. And a crime to report.’
He started to move away, towards a section of the counter which could be raised and opened. But he halted abruptly, as Edge thrust out an arm and fastened a strong grip on his shoulder. Fearful some of the people might take more than they were entitled to from the sack, the clerk shot an angry glance at Edge and made to jerk free of the hand hold. But then he did a double take at the lean, dark-skinned face. And fear filled his eyes again: for the half-breed’s features were set in an expression of ice-cold anger - the eyes mere slits of glinting blue and the lips curled just fractionally to display the serrated line where his upper and lower teeth met. The grip on his shoulder tightened to a point where the clerk grimaced with pain.
‘One way to Bismarck, feller. On the first boat to leave.’ Edge’s lips hardly moved to repeat his request.
‘All right,’ the clerk rasped through his clenched teeth. ‘But what’s the damn hurry? Delta Dawn don’t leave until two this afternoon. Maybe not even then if the blizzard’s still blowin’.’
Edge nodded and withdrew his hand, ‘Obliged.’
‘No private compartments left,’ the clerk growled as he massaged his pained shoulder. ‘You’ll have to bunk in with the roustabouts or wait for the next boat.’
‘I ain’t proud, feller.’
‘Just in an all-fire hurry!’ The clerk avoided looking at Edge and concentrated on issuing the ticket.
‘Cold is all,’ the half-breed replied evenly, his face resuming its impassive set.
‘Right through to your heart, sir!’ an elderly man in stovepipe hat and Ulster coat pronounced emphatically, as he thudded the sack on to the counter. It was still bulky with steamship company money. ‘I am certain those three misguided souls would have retreated under the mere threat of your gun. There was no need for violence.’ He spun on his heels and held his hat on his head as he went towards the door. ‘And I intend to tell the authorities of my contention.’
He ducked his head into the gusting wind as he stepped gingerly over the bodies. The clerk handed Edge his ticket and accepted payment, then eagerly grabbed the sack. The half-breed refastened his coat as he turned and started for the door.
‘There are some of us who are grateful to you for what you did,’ the elder of the two women offered. ‘My husband and I could ill-afford to lose what they attempted to take from us.’
‘Nonsense, Hannah!’ the sour-faced man with her exclaimed. ‘We could all have been killed! He cared only about himself and his loss!’
That is beside the point!’ the younger woman argued, with some vehemence in her tone. ‘It was only the criminals who suffered and none of us lost anything.’
Edge was about to step across the bodies when his way was blocked by the man in a stove-pipe hat and a beefy deputy town marshal. The lawman was wearing a bulky topcoat, but had a gun belt slung around his hips on top. His badge of a star in a circle was pinned to his left lapel. He dropped a hand to drape the butt of a holstered Colt when he saw Edge.
‘That’s him, officer!’
The deputy ignored the man at his side. He stood as solidly as a marble statue in the forceful wind. His hard, unblinking eyes had taken in the scene at a single glance. ‘Where the hell you goin’?’
‘Bismarck,’ Edge answered and vented a low sigh. ‘Later, I guess?’
The lawman gave a curt nod and shifted a slower gaze around the people behind the half-breed. ‘Ain’t no one goes anyplace until the law’s business is done.’ He blinked now, as he refixed his gaze on Edge and waved a hand towards the two bodies. ‘You put these two guys in cold-store?’
The half-breed stepped to the side, out of the full force of the wind gusting through the doorway. ‘If you want to talk shop, feller - one bought it from my draw: the other got it from under the counter.’
CHAPTER TWO
The norther blew itself into extinction shortly before noon and a bright sun broke through the abruptly slow-moving clouds and pushed them into a bank over in the east. But with the brightness came a new low degree of cold. The still air had a static forcefulness of its own that pressed through the warmest clothing to chill the flesh and seemed to reach beneath and touch a man’s bones.
Standing on the Hurricane Deck of the stern-wheeler Delta Dawn, moored at a downtown Omaha wharf, Edge was able to ignore the intense cold. By the simple expedient of accepting it as one more passing facet of harshness in a life destined to be filled with suffering.
On all sides, there was noise and bustle. Aboard the steamship, roustabouts kept the cold at bay by stacking cargo in the forward hold. The capstan engine at the bow whined and the derrick swung back and forth. On the wharf, stevedores worked up a sweat of their own handling the freight designated to go aboard the Delta Dawn. Moored fore and aft of the stern-wheeler were other steamers preparing to leave, attended by the same hectic activity.
Beyond the wharf, Omaha was bustling again after the morning blizzard: busy with the business of making money from being a centre of both rail and river traffic.
The Missouri was calm and stained dark brown with mud again, flowing with slow majesty under the arches of the railroad bridge - except where side - and stern-wheelers, keelboats, yawls and mackinaws trailed white wakes or thrashed the surface into a bubbling turmoil.
T
he tall, lean man with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of the fur-lined coat did not ignore his surroundings. But anyone who studied him for any length of time might have thought it was sheer boredom which caused him to glance lazily around from time to time: breaking off from his impassive contemplation of the rolling Iowa countryside beyond Council Bluffs on the far side of the river.
Both the best times and perhaps the very worst of his life had been over there: further than he could see from the boat - in the state’s corn belt where the Hedges’ farm had been. The good times before the War Between the States, when his parents were alive and even after they were dead, continuing to work the place with his kid brother, Jamie.
His part in the war had been staged much further east: fighting for a cause and then for sheer survival on the battlefields of Virginia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Georgia. He went to war as a naive farm boy and became through his experience as a soldier, a hard and embittered man. But, as he rode westwards from Appomattox towards the farm and Jamie he knew he was capable of leaving the past and its harshest experiences behind him.
Until he found the farm a burnt-out shell, its fields charred black and the mutilated body of his brother providing a meal for buzzards.
At that time in his life, the man who was now called Edge had not learned how to cool burning anger. One of Jamie’s killers was also feeding the buzzards that day: and provided the clue that led south towards the Mexican border - where the man returned from the war expunged his uncontrolled anger by using the unforgotten lessons of war to take his revenge against the murderers of his brother. Five men who, like the one who died alongside Jamie, had served in the Union cavalry troop commanded by Captain Josiah C. Hedges.
Kansas had been crossed on the route of his vengeance ride south and a man had died there: because he misjudged the mood and skills of the tall, lean, revenge-hungry half-breed. And, when the wanted posters were issued, a Mexican mispronounced the name Hedges to provide a killer with a new one.
Edge: Echoes of War (Edge series Book 23) Page 2