‘Edge,’ she whispered at length, then shuddered from shoulders to feet. ‘God, I’m so cold.’ Then she started to lick her lips, tasted the salve and looked as if she was going to be sick.
‘Easy,’ he said. ‘Just some ointment for what the sun did to your face. Too much sun will do that. Burn you up and then make you feel cold.’
She shuddered again, squeezed her eyes closed and turned her head to the side. A woman in pain but instinctively aware of being a woman as she groaned: ‘God, I must look awful.’
‘Be best if you don’t go near any mirrors for awhile, lady,’ he confirmed. ‘What did they get?’
‘What?’
Edge sighed, rose from beside her and went to sit on the rocker. Took out the makings and began to roll a cigarette. She continued to keep her face turned toward the canvas of the tent side.
‘I’m thirsty, Edge.’
‘Canteen right beside the bed.’
‘I feel bad. I need help.’
‘You’ve known me long enough, lady.’ He struck a match on the butt of his holstered Colt and lit the cigarette. ‘Favors are just a line I trade in. Way things stand right now, you owe me.’
She made a sound that was like a sob. And shuddered again: whether with emotion or the effects of too much sun it was impossible to tell. Time slid by and the sounds of the miners loading the train were all that disturbed the silence within the tent. They seemed to come from much further away than the railroad depot.
‘Nothing,’ Crystal said at length. And snaked one arm out from under the blankets, the fingers splayed to explore the ground for the canteen. She found it, lifted it across her body then had to use her other hand to take out the cork.
‘Not too much right away,’ he advised as she began to drink. Awkwardly with her head to the side, spilling more on to the pillow than she sucked down her throat.
‘You went back?’ she said.
‘Yeah.’
She sipped some water. ‘I didn’t think you would. That’s why I… God, I wish I’d waited, Edge.’ Another few drops of water from the canteen. ‘Those men, I thought they were going to…’ She shuddered again and this time it was obviously triggered by remembered terror. ‘But they didn’t… didn’t touch me in that way. They just wanted the canteens and the food in the saddlebags and my horse. And they tied me to the railroad and waited for a train to come. But when it didn’t come, they rode away. One of them, tall and very big, he wanted to shoot me. But the other two said no.’
Either she gulped too much water at once or the memory of fear constricted her throat. She choked and the pain caused a groan to follow it. Her voice was husky when she added: They said that if the train didn’t come through before nightfall, I’d be dead anyway. That the sun would have killed me. Bullets cost money.’
‘Which they didn’t have, lady: even when they’d taken your horse and everything that was on him?’
Now she jerked her head over on the pillow, but the grimace of pain this brought to her unsightly, salve-smeared face remained there for no longer than a second. Was replaced by an expression of indignation. ‘What are you saying to me? Are you accusing me of something, Edge?’
The half-breed fixed her with a glinting, narrow-eyed gaze through the layer of blue cigarette smoke that shifted lazily between them. She stared back with equal intensity and did not roll her head on the pillow and switch her attention to the roof of the tent until he started to reply.
‘I told you I went back to old man Attinger’s place,’ he said coldly. ‘And I didn’t just take off after you when I saw your horse was gone. I checked inside the shack.’
He paused and a moment before he was about to end it, she spoke: her voice as cold and hard as his had been. But with the added ingredient of bitterness.
‘Whatever you found in there has nothing to do with me. What I said to you about waiting for Mr. Attinger to come back was just an excuse, Edge. I wanted to test you. To see if you’d come back for me. But after awhile I figured out I was being stupid. Ever since we met in Irving I’ve been just two things to you. A woman when you needed one and a burden for the rest of the time.’
Now her voice cracked and the hardness and coldness was driven out by the overpowering weight of bitterness. ‘Dear God, when the old man’s son and grandson showed up out there I even considered making up to the kid so that you’d be rid of me without feeling any guilt. Then, last night, when I was sure you wouldn’t come back, I realized how much of a fool I was being. That if you didn’t give a damn about me, you sure didn’t feel any obligation toward me. So I just up and left. And kept off the trail because I didn’t want to go to Ventura if you were still there.’
Edge dropped the cigarette to the hard packed ground and crushed out its embers beneath a boot heel. Then, when he stood up, she looked at him again. And he saw the teardrops glistening in her eyes.
‘I wasn’t wrong, was I?’ she asked in a pained voice.
‘About what, lady?’
‘You wanting to be rid of me. It wasn’t me you went back to the old man’s place for. It was something else. But I swear to you, Edge. Whatever it was you found there and didn’t like, I had nothing to do with it. All I wanted to do was to get back to where I belong. And when I found that railroad I thought I was all but there. That I could stop a train and…’
The words were drowned by tears and she again wrenched her head to the side to hide her face from him.
He turned and ducked to go out of the shade of the tent into the dazzling glare of the sun.
‘Where you going?’ she asked, shrill and afraid.
To take care of my horse.’
‘I don’t even know where I am.’
‘Ventura.’
He went outside and Vince Attinger came to an abrupt stop.
‘I heard you and Miss Dickens came in on the train, mister. And that she was hurt.’
‘A little burned is all,’ Edge answered evenly.
The youngster remained anxious. ‘She’s inside the tent? She doesn’t need anything?’
‘She’s inside, kid,’ half-breed confirmed. ‘Lying down right now. Or maybe just plain lying.’
Chapter Seven
THERE was a livery stable out back of the combination saloon and store run by the grey moustached, almost bald Pat Regan. And Edge put his horse in a stall and saw to it the animal had feed and water before he went around to the front and entered through the batwings.
The place was empty and remained so for more than a minute after the half-breed had sat at a table closest to the bar counter, his impassive face revealing no sign of the conflicting trains of thought which ran through his mind. The voices of the men loading the freight cars drifted across the street and into the saloon. From closer came the talk between Regan and a customer in the store section of the building. The customer left with his supplies and Regan appeared through the arch in back of the bar counter. The man looked surprised to see somebody at a table - unpleasantly so when he recognized the half-breed.
‘Something you want, stranger?’ he asked sourly.
‘Tell you I’ve put my horse in your livery, feller. And a beer.’
‘Half a buck a day for the stablin’,’ Regan said as he drew the beer and placed it on the counter within reach of where Edge sat.
A dollar bill was given and change was received before Edge picked up the beer and drank half of it at a swallow.
‘Owe you anything else?’
‘For what?’
‘You brought McArthur in here last night. I don’t see him now. Or smell him.’
Regan grimaced and wiped sweat off his forehead with a bare arm. ‘The kid who rode in with you buried his Pa and Gerry McArthur, too. Him and Millicent.’
Footfalls had rapped on a stairway and now the young whore came out of the arch behind the bar. Attired in a store bought black dress that was old but clean. And she had washed up, brushed her hair and applied fresh paint and powder to her face after her exertions in the
makeshift cemetery of Ventura.
‘No charge, mister,’ she said grimly. ‘I done what I did to help Vincent.’
Edge acknowledged this with a nod as the girl came out from behind the bar counter and went to sit at the table where, the night before, Edge had poured the pail of dirty water over McArthur. For awhile, Regan wiped glasses and shared tacit rancor between the whore and the half-breed. In equal measure. Then a bell on the store doorway jangled and he went through the archway.
Millicent stood up, approached the table where Edge sat and asked: ‘Can I join you, mister?’
‘Long as you ain’t selling. On account of I ain’t buying.’
She pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down. ‘I’m through with all that. It was never supposed to be that way and I want to leave this place and forget everything I ever did here, mister.’
‘Telling a moving story never got anyone any place,’ Edge answered.
She pouted. ‘I ain’t askin’ you for anythin’.’
‘Then no sweat.’
‘Except about your friend.’
‘Friend?’
‘Vincent.’
‘He say he was that?’
She pouted again, then sighed. ‘I just figured … hell, I don’t know from anythin’, mister. That’s the trouble. He ain’t said a lot. Too upset about his Pa gettin’ killed, I guess. But I kinda think that if I asked him, he’d let me go with him. When he leaves Ventura.’
Edge finished his beer as the bell on the store door sounded again. ‘It’s him you should be talking to, not me,’ he said.
Now Millicent licked her lips and her eyes showed anxiety. ‘But I need to know I won’t be jumpin’ outta the fryin’ pan into the fire, mister. After what’s happened, it’s plain Vincent ain’t his usual self. If I ask him and he takes me, maybe when he’s got over losin’ his Pa he’ll turn out to be a. . .’ She shrugged. ‘Hell, I don’t know.’
‘Think on what I told you girl,’ Regan growled as he came out through the archway. ‘Best you stay here with someone who can take care of you. That Attinger ain’t nothin’ but a wet behind the ears kid who’ll likely dump you soon as some other piece of ass that interests him shows up. Or take a powder at the first sign of trouble.’
Millicent eyed the morose Regan with deepening concern, obviously once again mulling over this thought which had been implanted in her mind earlier.
‘Another beer,’ Edge asked as slow-moving hoofbeats approached along the street from the north.
‘Anythin’ for the girl?’ Regan said as he refilled the half-breed’s glass.
‘Advice is free and I ain’t even handing out that.’
Three riders halted their mounts outside, swung down from the saddles and hitched the reins to the rail.
‘Sure hope these guys are bigger spenders than you are,’ the bartender growled as he made change for Edge and the newcomers crossed the crumbling stoop.
‘Figure they’ve got what it takes to be,’ the half-breed answered evenly after glancing at the trio of strangers who came through the batwings.
A man in his mid-forties who was six feet tall and broadly build with muscular flesh. Followed by two in their late twenties. One of them also as tall as a grave is deep, but the thickness of his frame was due mostly to flabby fat that bulged out his clothing. The second one medium in all things.
Men dressed Western-style for riding long trails over rough terrain. Unshaven and dirty from many days of not washing up. All of them packing Frontier Colts in tied down holsters, with knives in sheaths on the other hip.
Not a trace of a smile between them as they surveyed the spartan saloon and its three occupants with red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes.
‘Afternoon, strangers,’ Regan greeted dully. ‘What’s your pleasure?’
‘Three beers, three shot glasses and a bottle of rye,’ the eldest man responded as he dropped into a chair nearest the doorway and facing it. And set down a pair of saddlebags on the table at his side.
His partners slumped wearily into chairs across the table from him. The fat one rested his elbows on the tabletop and tried to ease his fatigue by massaging his ballooned cheeks and brightness punished eyes. While the other one gazed with arrogant insolence at Millicent, spared a glance for Edge and saw nothing that looked like a challenge in the half-breed’s expression. So asked: ‘You with him or you available?’
The girl answered dully: ‘Neither.’
Regan delivered a tray with the drinks and spare glasses to the table and set them down. The solidly built man did not shift his steady gaze from the doorway as he delved a hand inside a saddlebag, drew out a bill, checked the denomination and gave it to Regan.
‘Cover it?’
‘Change to come, stranger.’
‘Need more beer when the whiskey’s gone. Let me know when the money’s through.’
All three raised the glasses of foaming beer and emptied them without pause.
‘Do the honors, Stu,’ the eldest of the trio growled and the fat man uncorked the whiskey bottle and filled the shot glasses.
This while the medium in all things man continued to survey Millicent. And Regan, back behind his counter, leaned across it and lowered his voice to hiss: ‘Either you go to work, girl, or you’re out on your ass. And maybe the kid’ll want you like a cold in the head.’
The erstwhile whore looked set to snarl an angry retort at Regan. But swallowed her initial feeling about the threat and chewed on her lower lip. Then her worry filled eyes found the unresponsive ones of the half-breed.
Edge finished his beer and pursed his lips as he rose to his feet. Said: ‘Life’s full of problems. Only death solves them all.’
The obvious leader among the trio of men snapped his head around to look at Edge as he heard movement. Saw the impassive half-breed heading for the doorway and found nothing menacing in the way Edge ambled, left hand tugging at the lobe of his left ear. And returned his attention to the doorway as the cloud bank which had been building in the north got extensive enough to mask the sun and cast a dull shadow over Ventura.
The fat man was alternately sipping his whiskey and rasping a pudgy hand over his jaw. The third member of the trail-weary trio was staring at Millicent again while Regan spoke words of anger softly to her.
When he had drawn level with where the leader of the bunch sat, Edge was close enough to see out over the batwings and confirm he had not been mistaken. There were four horses outside: three hitched to the rail and one held on a lead line tied to the saddlehorn of another. This was Crystal Dickens’ black stallion.
Across the street, the train crew were starting to raise and fix the sidegates of the freight cars which were loaded with sacks of ore-bearing rock.
Vince Attinger was approaching the end of the street from the direction of the tent in which Crystal Dickens was suffering.
The horny man said: ‘I reckon you’re available if you want to be.’
‘Damnit, all right!’ Millicent snapped at Regan and came fast to her feet.
‘Okay, Max?’
The leader looked sourly from the man to the whore and back again. Growled: ‘If you’re that desperate, Johnnie. You never did have any taste.’
‘Hell, I ain’t gonna eat it,’ Johnnie countered eagerly and started to spread a broad and lustful grin across his bristled face.
Edge halted and half-turned, arousing the suspicion of the solidly built Max seated within arm’s reach of him. And as part of the same move, the half-breed drew his Colt, thumbed back the hammer: squeezed the trigger.
The range was no more than four feet and Johnnie took the bullet in the centre of his forehead as he got to his feet. He was dead in an instant when the lead penetrated his brain. And there was just a small spurt of blood from the wound. Much more dramatic was the way he was impelled backwards by the impact of the bullet, knocking his chair over and then draping himself across it. Limbs and torso and head limp, while his belly was arched upwards by the seat of the overturne
d chair. His death mask was the look of lust, but there was no longer any sign of sexual desire bulging the crotch of his pants.
Max, like Johnnie, never made it fully to his feet. He heard the gunshot, smelled the acrid smoke of the firing and knew one of his partners was dead without needing to see the hole in his head. And was certain he could avenge the seemingly motiveless and callous killing. For the Colt in the hand of the tall, lean, coldly grinning man - cocked again - had swung to aim at the obese Stu. And Max had his own revolver clear of the holster, hammer clicked back.
But the big built Max took note only of the Colt. He had failed to see the half-breed’s left hand as it moved from tugging at an ear lobe to delve into the long hair at the nape of the man’s neck. To come clear, at the moment of the killing shot, fisted around the handle of the straight razor slid from the neck pouch. Then, in a blur of speed which Max took to be a punch, was directed at his face. Half-risen and half-turned, Max was unable to back away because of the table. But he instinctively threw his head back to avoid the fist. An action that totally exposed his heavily bristled neck and throat.
Edge half-turned his left wrist and felt just a slight resistance as the blade of the razor cut into the tough skin of Max. Then experienced the wet warmth of gushing blood on his hand and wrist as the blade opened up a deep gash in the side of the man’s throat. Long enough to sever the jugular vein and the trachea.
The gun in Max’s hand exploded a shot, but he was already fighting for life-giving breath and the squeezing of the trigger was caused by a nervous spasm. The bullet smashed into the frame of the batwings and the recoil tore the revolver from the hand as it was brought up, fingers clawed, to clutch at the lips of the fatal wound.
Stu had hurled away his whiskey glass and made to go for his gun as soon as Edge shot Johnnie. But then froze when the Colt in the half-breed’s hand covered him. Now could only stare in horror as Max began to crumple with both hands clasped to his throat and blood oozing between his filthy fingers. A moist moaning sound was vented through the compressed lips of the dying man. Then the mouth was forced wide to give exit to a great splash of bubbling crimson. And Max was a falling corpse, his weight crashing against the table to send glasses, the whiskey bottle and the saddlebags to the floor. Bills spilled out of the saddlebags and Max collapsed across them and the rest of the mess his death had caused.
EDGE: Vengeance at Ventura Page 7