‘Charge the same as Lloyd Day down at the Dry Springs stage stop who’s my closest competition,’ the man answered, taking the reins and dropping down on to his haunches to check on the mare’s shoes. He stood up and his smile was marred by a brief grimace as the move caused a pain in the small of his back. ‘And if you rode down there on this animal she’d be four-footed lame.’
‘You made a sale, feller.’
‘Do her in the mornin’ if that’s all right, mister. By the time I get your horse bedded down, be time for the magic show.’
‘No sweat,’ the half-breed allowed, working on the ropes which held his bedroll in place behind the saddle.
‘I’ll take care of all that, mister. No extra charge. Unless you want to take anythin’ along with you.’
‘Obliged. Just this.’ Edge slid the Winchester from his boot
‘Good food in the restaurant down the street?’
‘It’ll keep a man’s belly and backbone from touchin’. You’ll get better fed by the Widow Emmons that runs a boardin’ house on First next to the church – that’s the street that goes off Main to the right of the Four Aces. Three square a day comes with a clean room and no bugs in the bed.’
‘That better than the hotel?’
The grin evaporated and the broad shoulders were shrugged as the man took the saddle and bedroll off the horse. ‘Fancier rooms there and no bugs in the beds that I’ve heard about. But any man rents a room gets the bite put on him. On account a female comes with the bed and bureau and chair.’ He spat into the forge fire as he led the horse over to a stall. ‘Real fine lookin’ females. And Rosie Pride charges high for them. On account of she ain’t got no competition for her service closer than fifty miles any way you ride outta Freedom.’ He shut the mare into the stall. ‘That kinda hunger and the kind a man has for gamblin’ is all that’s catered for at the Four Aces.’
‘Obliged for the advice.’
‘No trouble, unless you put it around I steered you clear of that place. Abi Billin’s that owns it wouldn’t be best pleased with me if he knew–’
‘No sweat, feller,’ Edge cut in as he moved to the door, the Winchester canted to his left shoulder. ‘My stake wouldn’t run to cathouse comforts anyway.’
‘Hey, don’t you let that one-eyed, nose-pickin’ Abi Billin’s hear you call his place that! He’s got some mean muscle workin’ for him and–’
‘Obliged again.’
‘And one other thing, mister!’ the liveryman called as Edge pushed open the unlatched door. ‘Sheriff Gould don’t mind men totin’ handguns in holsters but he won’t take kindly to you walkin’ around Freedom with that rifle.’
The half-breed pursed his lips. ‘Be all right in this town to spit if I got a bad taste in my mouth, feller?’
This was greeted with a hollow laugh. ‘Sure ain’t never heard of anyone gettin’ beat up or arrested for doin’ that, mister. No, sir. This here town of Freedom is well named, long as you stay outta law trouble and don’t rub Abi Billin’s up the wrong way. Just about anythin’ goes.’
‘Good advice, stranger,’ a man on the street augmented as Edge stepped outside. A tall thin man dressed entirely in black, which made the brassy glint of the bullets in his gunbelt loops and the silvery glitter of the five-pointed star pinned to his vest seem more pronounced. ‘Comes from doin’ the work he does, I reckon. The way Art Ely talks so much horse sense.’
‘Evenin’, Huey,’ Ely greeted.
The lawman had a face to match his frame – long and lean. His bone structure was angular and he had deep-set eyes and sunken cheeks. He was somewhere between forty and fifty and all the lines engraved into his dark tinted skin had a downward tilt, suggesting that he seldom wore a smile to displace the morose frown he now showed.
‘Goin’ to be a good one, Art. What with the magic show and all. Providin’ we don’t have no trouble from unexpected quarters.’
His dark eyes gazed fixedly out from their deep sockets into the impassive face of the half-breed.
‘Arranged to have my horse taken care of, sheriff,’ Edge said evenly. ‘Now intend to eat, get cleaned up and sleep. Guess all that is like spitting in the street in this town?’
‘Uh?’
‘Ain’t against the law.’
There was movement on Freedom’s streets now. As people emerged from the houses and headed for the Four Aces Hotel. Men, women and children, wrapped up in warm coats and scarves against the chill of the night air. Varying degrees of eager excitement showed on their faces. Several of the men called evening greetings to the sheriff, who ignored the friendly words to emphasise his scowl towards Edge.
‘Just you bear in mind what I said about not wantin’ any trouble from unexpected quarters, stranger,’ Gould rasped.
‘Figure you do expect it from me, sheriff,’ Edge answered. ‘Only come, though, if anybody invites it. And not in quarters. Never do things by half measures.’
‘Won’t, if you take Art’s advice and keep the peace and stay out of Billin’s way.’
The lawman swung into a half turn and started along the street, now responding to the friendly words, tipping his Stetson to the women who smiled at him.
‘Reckon that crack about quarters and half measures was lost on the sheriff, mister,’ Ely said as he stepped out of the livery behind Edge and closed the door, shrugging into a sheepskin coat he had taken from a hook on the wall. ‘He ain’t the brightest lawman in these parts. Must’ve been someplace else when the good Lord was handin’ out brains.’
The half-breed pursed his lips as he moved along the street in the same direction as everyone else. Then he drawled: ‘Sounds like he might have been standing in line for a second helping of mouth.’
Chapter Three
The reception he had received from Sheriff Huey Gould was not a new experience for the half-breed. And he had learned to take in his stride such warnings from lawmen in small and peaceful towns. For he knew that to men with badges on their shirts and a conscientious regard for their sworn duty, he looked like trouble just waiting for a fuse to be lit. And in the case of the sheriff of Freedom, it sounded as if the man already had one such problem in the owner of the Four Aces Hotel.
That’s him, mister,’ Art Ely said in a rasping whisper. ‘Up there at the window of his room.’
Most of the people in the street had made faster progress than Edge and the liveryman towards the front of the Four Aces. So that the two men were at the rear of a large gathering of local citizens when they came to a halt and Ely spoke.
The half-breed directed his narrow-eyed gaze over the heads of the excitedly noisy crowd towards the lighted window on the second floor, immediately above the hotel entrance. A man stood there, against the lamplight in the room but illuminated by that which lit the sign on the roof.
A man of about forty-five, six feet tall and of slim build. Dressed in a white suit, the jacket unbuttoned to show the gold watch-chain that was strung across the front of his blue vest. His shirt was a slightly paler shade of blue and he wore a cravat at his throat that was striped white and blue. He was hatless so that his slicked-down black hair, thinning at the front, could be seen. His thin face was handsome in what might possibly have been a weak way had it not been for the black patch which shielded his right eye and gave him a somewhat mean look. The blackness of this patch and the band which held it in place was emphasised by the milky paleness of his blemish-free skin which was stretched taut over the prominent bone structure of his long face. From the distance over which Edge saw him, the man’s eye looked dark in the depths of its socket.
For a few moments as Billings looked down upon the crowd gathered in front of his hotel, moving his head slowly from side to side to ensure that he missed nothing and nobody, he had the bearing of some European aristocrat reviewing a throng of people who were beneath him in more than the literal sense. Then he raised a heavily ringed left hand and prodded the index finger carefully into his right nostril.
‘He�
�s got more pull in this town than Huey Gould and he likes trouble even less,’ Ely amplified.
Billings twisted his finger back and forth, located something, extracted it, rolled it between finger and thumb and flicked it off to the side. Then immediately looked aristocratic again.
‘Sure seems to keep his own nose clean,’ Edge answered as Billings’s eye located him and scrutinised him for longer than anyone else in the crowd.
Ely glanced nervously around. ‘Hey, mister, it ain’t done to comment on that habit he’s got. Most of the time he don’t realise he’s doin’ it and when somebody says he is–’
A burst of hand clapping and shouts of approval covered the liveryman’s latest advice: this applause greeting the appearance of Willard Clayton at the thrust open batwing doors of the hotel. A brightly smiling, much heavier looking youngster than the one Edge had seen out by the curved mesa north of Freedom. Dressed in a newer frock coat at least three sizes bigger than the one he travelled in and wearing a shiny top hat instead of the Montana peak.
The half-breed had to do a double-take before he realised that the boy’s bulk had to be caused by the tools of his magician’s trade concealed under the coat. And he also spotted, in a brief moment while Clayton was bowing in response to the fulsome welcome, a look of deep-seated fear in the brown eyes – too intense to be termed stage fright.
‘Ladies and gentlemen . . . and children!’ the boy shouted, raising his arms and lowering them to signal that the applause should end. And as the noise became subdued, his eyes, which no longer showed fear, swept across the face of Edge and he smiled more brightly in recognition. The two exchanged slight nods, then Clayton raised a hand to his jaw, opened his mouth, and an egg rolled out over his lower lip. Which produced a further burst of applause over which he had to shout. Thank you, thank you! I’m real pleased to be here in this delightful little town of yours and I’m overwhelmed by your welcome! Marvo’s my name and I sure hope you’ll think I’m worth callin’ great! What I aim to do here and now is demonstrate a few little illusions to entertain you! If they do, for the small price of two bits you can come into this fine establishment and witness some amazin’ feats of the magician’s art which I feel will truly astound you! So watch very carefully, kind people of Freedom!’
As he finished speaking he pressed both hands to his chest, threw them forward, snapped his fingers and two multicoloured lengths of silk fell from his previously empty fists.
Edge glanced up at the window above the hotel entrance porch under which Willard Clayton was performing. And saw that the one-eyed Billings had retreated from view. Then he saw the man again, standing with two others and three women at the batwings behind the young magician. The men were dressed city-style like Billings. The women – all in their mid-twenties – had heavily painted faces and showed powdered shoulders and the top swellings of their breasts above the bodices of vividly coloured gowns.
‘What the hell’s happenin’ here, Art!’ a man slurred.
He was one of three, dressed in work clothes, who had staggered across the street from the Sheepman Saloon. Stockily built with a leathery skin and a complexion mottled by heavy drinking. Like his two taller, less drunken-looking companions, he was about thirty.
‘Just shut up and watch, Chris!’ Ely growled at the man who tugged at his arm. He spared the man just a brief angry glance before returning his intent interest towards Clayton – who had removed his top hat and was pulling a vast array of small toys from it, tossing each one towards a joyful child in the audience. ‘Look and you’ll find out.’
‘How the hell can I see over this lousy mob?’ Chris snarled. ‘I ain’t no long streak of pi–’
‘Mind your language!’ the liveryman cut in bitingly without taking his fascinated gaze away from the beaming Clayton at the front of the cheering crowd. ‘There’s women and children present!’
‘Except that the women that interest me are inside the Four Aces!’ Chris came back in the same snarling tone as before. But louder, so that some of the people at the rear of the gathering heard his words and turned to scowl at the distraction. The man leered at the women among them. ‘You got nothin’ to worry about, you old strait-laced–’
‘Chris!’ the man on his right interrupted suddenly sobered by the look he saw on Art Ely’s face as the scowling people returned their attention to Clayton. These people were grateful they could join in the applause of the crowd as the young magician completed this part of his act, and thus withdraw from the centre of a potential arena of trouble.
The other tall man who was on Chris’s left also seemed abruptly untouched by the effects of hard liquor. ‘Yeah, Chris!’ he urged as he laid a hand on the short drunk’s shoulder. ‘Let’s go have a few more snorts. Rose’s girls’ll be just as beautiful and willin’ when all this is over–’
‘Leave go of me, frig it!’ Chris yelled, shaking violently free of the restraining grip and taking a backward step from between his two anxious companions. ‘I drink when I wanna drink and with a place like the Four Aces in town I screw when I wanna screw! And now I wanna screw!’
Once more a noisy reception for the performer as he drew a live rabbit from his hat kept the drunk’s words from reaching the ears of all but the back row of the audience. And these people pressed forward, which caused a chain reaction throughout the crowd and triggered a series of mild protests and automatic apologies to be voiced.
‘You’re drunk, Wilkes!’ Ely said forcefully. ‘And it ain’t the first time you got that way and tried to spoil other folks’ pleasure! Do what Lee and Travis want and go on back to the Sheepman! On account that if you don’t, old as I am, I’ll make it so women won’t interest you for a long time!’
Willard Clayton had faltered in his act as the crowd rippled and made sounds which were not in response to an illusion. And then all noise except for the voice of the angry and distinct speaking Art Ely trailed into silence. So that the words of his threat rang out loud and clear across the thickly peopled intersection of Freedom’s three streets.
‘Ladies and–’ the young magician called in an attempt to regain his audience as they swung their nervous attention away from him.
‘You mean like you, you shrivelled-up oldster?’ Chris Wilkes taunted with a scornful grin. ‘I hear tell that’s why that well-stacked young wife you had run off to Denver! Because you ain’t got what it takes to keep a woman–’
Just as Wilkes’s contemptuously hurled words had curtailed Clayton’s opening, so an animalistic snarl of rage from Ely brought the drunk to a premature full-stop. But whereas the magician on the hotel stoop froze and gazed helplessly around, the liveryman followed his venting of high anger with a fury-powered lunge into movement.
Wilkes was standing a full six feet away from Ely, who had turned only his head towards the younger man as the taunt was voiced. But in what seemed like less than a second, Ely whirled and threw himself towards Wilkes. Away from where Edge continued to stand in an attitude of casual relaxation, the Winchester canted carelessly to his left shoulder. As Lee and Travis sidestepped with grunts of shock and what was now the front row of the audience pressed against the people behind them and gasps and shouts rose from the crowd.
The grin of scorn remained fixed upon the liquor-sodden face of Wilkes until one of Ely’s tight-clenched fists struck between the arms he raised in defence and landed with a sharp crack of bone against bone on the point of his bristled jaw. Then, with a grimace of pain as he staggered backwards, tripped over his own feet and was sent sprawling down to the dusty street, he was gripped by a rage which matched that of his attacker.
The momentum of Ely’s powerful lunge almost caused him to go down on top of his victim. But, as he teetered, body bent far forward, he flailed his arms frantically and managed to pull himself upright.
‘Atta boy, Art!’ a man in the crowd yelled enthusiastically. ‘About time that loud mouthed troublemaker was taken down a peg or two!’
‘Cut it out! Let me through!
You men back there quit this! Let me through, dammit!’ shouted Freedom’s lawman who caused violent movement in the crowd of people as he forced a way through the press.
‘I’m all done if he’s done,’ Ely said breathlessly in a whispering tone that only Edge, Lee, Travis and the closest people in the crowd could hear.
Wilkes, too, if he had been in a receptive mood. But his all-engulfing fury allowed no opening to outside influence except the sight of the tall, silver-haired liveryman whom he saw towering above him as he started to raise his back off the ground. And the silent snarl he displayed on his unshaven, purple-tinged face was mute testimony to this.
Like Ely, his companions and most of the other local residents of this town in the centre of a sheep-raising area, Wilkes wore a fleece-lined-and-trimmed topcoat. But unlike the other men in general, Ely in particular, the man now seated on the street wore a gunbelt with a Frontier Colt in the holster.
‘Done!’ he shrieked at the now impassive liveryman. ‘I ain’t even got started.’
He twisted to the side and pressed a hand into the dust to lever himself on to his feet.
‘Your choice,’ Ely rasped. And lashed out with a kick, the toe of his scuffed boot connecting beneath Wilkes’s jaw.
The no-longer-drunk man half rose with a strength not his own. Then fell heavily again, too paralysed by pain to break the force of the impact.
‘Quit it, I told you!’ Gould yelled as he burst out from the crowd and came to an abrupt halt.
Men – and some women – in the crowd who agreed with the first cry of approval for what Ely was doing were now shouting encouragement for the liveryman to follow through on his success.
‘Get him!’
‘Stomp the bastard into the ground!’
‘Show him we don’t want his kind on the streets of Freedom!’
‘Please, ladies and gentlemen!’ Willard Clayton tried again. ‘Look, I can–’
He unfolded an arm from the front of his coat and a bunch of artificial flowers appeared to sprout from his palm. Mere anxiety and confusion about what was distracting his audience were replaced by moments of quivering fear. Just then Abi Billings emerged from the hotel and hooked a hand briefly over the youngster’s shoulders.
EDGE: The Frightened Gun (Edge series Book 32) Page 3