‘That’s right!’ a man ten years older and with a bulging belly that threatened the fastenings of his coat agreed. ‘And don’t you pretend you ain’t glad there won’t be no more trouble from Wilkes, either.’
Gould glowered at the two men who had spoken and the others who, from the looks on their faces were obviously in agreement with the opinions expressed. ‘I already stated clear and plain this stranger didn’t commit no crime. Way it was with Art Ely unarmed and all. But there ain’t been no gunplay on the streets of Freedom since I was elected sheriff. Until tonight. And if this stranger wasn’t present, I reckon I could have taken care of the quarrel without no one gettin’ shot.’
‘I ain’t so sure–’ somebody started to say.
‘I am!’ the lawman cut in grimly. ‘Chris Wilkes was trouble, but I could handle him. Could’ve tonight, without any help from this fast gun. You men go on home now.’
Gould came purposefully up the steps, brushed past the half-breed and went in through the batwings as the group of men parted to allow him access.
‘Huey means well for the town, mister,’ the man with bug eyes said. ‘And it’s true what he says about keepin’ gunplay off the streets of Freedom.’
The youngest of the group, who was also the thinnest and tallest, cleared his throat with a nervous sound. ‘That don’t mean Mr Tuttle here thinks you’re the kind that causes that brand of–’
‘No sweat,’ Edge replied as the man with prominent eyes swallowed hard at the realisation that his defence of Sheriff Gould might have been misconstrued. ‘Ely hadn’t been the blacksmith, it wouldn’t have been my business.’
‘What is your business?’ a man with a deep voice asked as Edge started down the steps.
His companions made shushing noises at him. And when the half-breed halted and looked back up at the stoop, it was obvious that the others were looking at the middle-aged man with red sideburns and chin-whiskers and it was he who had posed the question.
‘It’s just that I’m the gunsmith here in Freedom,’ the man who was the centre of anxious attention said. ‘And if you...’
His voice trailed away to silence under the steady, slit-eyed gaze of Edge.
‘Guess you carry a stock of shells, feller?’
An eager nod. ‘Yes, sir. For that Winchester and your Remington revolver both.’
‘Then you are a–’ the bug-eyed Turtle began.
‘Man who makes an honest dollar any way he can,’ Edge interrupted.
The one with the red whiskers cleared his throat again. ‘Whatever, sir, we’re mighty grateful for what you done. Most folks in Freedom will feel the same, ’cept for Lee and Travis and Jonas Cochran over to the Sheepman. We’re all glad to see the back of that troublemaker Chris Wilkes.’
The half-breed shook his head and sighed. ‘Gratitude’s the same as money, feller. Only accept it when I earn it. Was on my own account that tonight I did some trouble shooting.’
Chapter Five
The Claude R. Emmons Boarding House was a two storey building of frame construction between the Freedom Elementary School and the Episcopalian Church. There was a wooden shingle nailed to the door, with the paint which formed the lettering peeled and faded. This door set between two windows, one of which showed light beyond the drape curtains, was reached by a cracked and crumbled cement walk which ran between neglected flower beds. A few uprooted paling which had once formed a fence between the property and the street were scattered across the hard-packed soil of the garden.
‘Who is it?’ a woman called, shrill and nervous, in response to the sound of the half-breed’s knuckles against the door. ‘It’s late.’
‘Four Aces’s still open to rent rooms, ma’am,’ Edge drawled. ‘But Ely the blacksmith said your place is better. For a man that wants to eat and sleep.’
‘You the travellin’ dentist man or the other stranger?’ With each nervous word she spoke she came closer to the other side of the door.
Edge sighed as a slight but very cold breeze sped down the main street from the north and shifted the long hair at his shoulders. ‘It matter, ma’am?’ he wanted to know.
‘If you’re the tooth-puller, I hear tell he’s got rabbits. I don’t take in no animals!’
‘Only thing I pull out of my hat is my head, Mrs Emmons.’
‘Then you’re the other one!’ There were sounds of bolts being pulled and a chain being rattled. ‘The man that put paid to Wilkes after he said bad things about my Emmylou.’
The door was folded inwards and she held a lamp to see her caller, but the cone of light also fell upon herself. She was closer to fifty than to forty. Short and heavily built, her thick, almost figureless frame wrapped in a crisp grey coverall. She had a round, pale face with dark button eyes, a snub nose and a pouting mouth. Her hair was held in a severe drawn-back style, mostly grey so that only a few streaks of its former blackness could be seen. She smelled fresh and clean. Like the interior of the house in back of her, in sharp contrast to its exterior.
She was still wary of her night-caller until he touched the brim of his hat. Then she set her lips into a firm line and nodded.
‘Art told me about you. About what happened. You can stay. Two dollars for a day and a night. That includes three meals. No money back if you don’t take any of them. Take a bath in front of the range in the kitchen if you’re in need. And you look in need. There’s heavy curtains at the window and a lock on the inside of the door. You want to eat tonight, there’s only cold from supper. When I got a man boardin’ here, women is the same as animals. I don’t allow none in. Terms and conditions suit, mister?’
Edge smiled with his mouth. ‘In spades, ma’am.’
She smiled in response, and the expression transformed her face from that of a soured woman who looked her age to one of good-humoured youthfulness. ‘Good, young man. Then come in and treat this house as your home.’
With a guest under her roof – she soon made it known that they were alone together in the big house – Martha Emmons launched into a cheerful bout of chattering that should have left her breathless but did not. First while she showed him the spartanly furnished but spotlessly clean upper-front bedroom. Then as she served and watched him eat a meal of cold meat and salad. Next standing outside the kitchen door while the half-breed took a bath in the hip tub filled with water which had been heated in a half dozen pans while he ate supper. Finally during the time it took him to share coffee with her in the parlour of the house.
So that it was three hours after he crossed the threshold of the boarding house, and close to midnight, when he was able to strip down to his underwear and climb under the more than adequate blankets on the single bed.
Over-anxious to take advantage of having a quiet if not always apparently attentive listener, Martha Emmons tended to change the subject frequently, as if dragging from the back of her mind a series of topics which might recapture the half-breed’s interest whenever it seemed to wane. But always she returned to pick up the threads of half-finished stories. Not always telling everything in chronological order but never missing out any detail of consequence.
Edge listened to her in conscious appreciation of the comfort he was enjoying, which he considered was worth more than the two dollars rent he was paying. Her food was good, the inside of her dilapidated house was warm and clean, there was a soft bed awaiting him upstairs and Martha Emmons accepted him for what he was. After the money had changed hands, she asked for nothing and – on the surface anyway – expected nothing.
But later, as he lay sprawled out under the blankets, the Winchester resting by habit against the wall close at hand, he began to have his doubts about the motives of the gregarious and motherly Widow Emmons. For almost all her talk had been about the town of Freedom which, he had judged for himself before he entered the boarding house, had more sources of potential trouble than the late and apparently un-lamented Chris Wilkes. And, in retrospect, the sum total of what the woman told him had confirmed this.
Freedom had started out as a last-resort settlement community for sheepmen who had been driven off prime grazing land by cattle barons. A small, poverty-stricken town for the first few years. Just the houses on First Street, a single store and a frame church. But the families who founded Freedom knew the sheep business and by fencing of the pasture, careful use of available grazing and irrigation with water supplied from two deep wells the people prospered and the town grew.
The Emmons family were among the first to settle here, with Martha doing most of the work involved in raising sheep. Then, when the stage-line came through and Martha saw the need for catering to travellers, she also did her own and her liquor-addicted husband’s share of the chores in running the boarding house. Ten years ago Buddy Emmons had taken every cent he could find in the house and left town on an early-morning stage. On the same stage was Jean Gould, wife of the town sheriff and, according to the way Martha told it, she and the lawman were the only people in town who did not consider it a coincidence. Gould rode out of town at noon that day and a week later news was received that the runaway pair were found tortured and mutilated – horrifically murdered – in the foothills of the Funeral Mountains. All Gould had said when he returned a few days later was that he had heard the same story. An Apache attack, everybody said.
Freedom continued to thrive and to expand. The stone church was built and Art Ely and Emmylou Emmons were the first to be married there, with the wedding feast held in the decorated but dingy surroundings of the Sheepman Saloon, the men who played the dancing music having to compete with the din of men working around the clock to build the Four Aces Hotel.
‘Folks around here said they was an ill-matched pair, mister,’ Martha Emmons had murmured miserably. ‘And the way it turned out, there ain’t no denyin’ that. But at the time of the weddin’, I figured Art was just the man for my Emmylou. A good deal older, a steady man and a hard workin’ one. Just the kind to keep Emmylou in check. Way she was so wild, she was gettin’ a bad reputation. But she up and left him a month after they was wed. Lit out on a stage, just like her father did. Which figured, her bein’ so much like him.’
The Four Aces Hotel had opened its doors for business by then and the single men of Freedom – and not a few of the married ones, too – had no need to try their luck with local fun-loving girls. Because, for a price, they were guaranteed to score at the hotel. Those with nothing to fear were able to enjoy the other pleasures and luxuries offered by Billings and those who needed to be discreet were allowed to enter and leave via a rear door.
For a while, Billings and Rose Pride did a roaring trade – at the expense of the other merchants and businesses in town. For prosperous but previously austere-living local farmers and trail-weary stage-line travellers chose to indulge themselves amid the luxury of the Four Aces, rather than accept the more modest facilities offered by the Sheepman Saloon and the Emmons Boarding House. Even the town’s stores and the Freedom Bank suffered a decline in business as money for essential provisions was cut to the bone and hard-saved cash was withdrawn from many accounts.
But the boom for the Four Aces was not long lived. The novelty of its newness wore off and the sheen of its attractions grew dull. And, over the past three months, the hotel had become just one other business providing non-essential needs to the town and to the bulk of visitors and passing-through travellers; for most of the stage line passengers were regulars who came and went on business.
Thus it was obvious, to all who understood the basic economics of running any enterprise as expensive to set up and operate as the Four Aces that Abi Billings was not even paying his costs, let alone getting a decent return on his investment.
And Billings was not a man who took philosophically the loss of anything – especially money. It was particularly galling for him in this instance, since he knew there was a profit to be made. For he had made it, handsomely, during his initial period in business. Before the longer established competition won back its errant customers. The drinkers to the Sheepman, boarders to the Widow Emmons and women chasers to their wives and sweethearts.
In fair competition, the Four Aces retained a portion of the available trade. But not a large enough portion. And it was suspected by many in Freedom that a recent fire which destroyed a back room of the Sheepman had been set by one of Billings’s henchmen. Certainly he had tried to buy out Martha Emmons. It was also a fact that he had vigorously lobbied prior to a recent town council meeting – offering cash and the free favours of the Four Aces girls as bribes – for votes on a proposition to advertise in big city newspapers for new settlers to come to Freedom. The vote had been narrowly lost.
That had been a week ago today and, in a drunken rage the night of the meeting, Billings had threatened dire consequences for all who stood in his way to making a success of the Four Aces. Since then he had hardly been seen, except for occasional glimpses of him at his room window, gazing viciously down at the main street of Freedom. Until tonight when his engagement of the young Willard Clayton had shown promise of attracting big business into the batwing doors of the Four Aces.
Why had the Widow Emmons told him so much? The potted history of the town and her personal opinions in regard to the characters of many of its citizens all seemed designed – in common with her direct references to the owner of the Four Aces – to make Abi Billings sound like the rotten apple in an otherwise choice barrel of fruit.
To give another viewpoint to the one she suspected he had heard from Billings (unaware that the half-breed and the hotel owner had not yet exchanged more than a dozen sentences)? This was likely – but to what end?
He slept, having used his recollections of what the woman said and attempting to guess at a reason for her talk as a means to attain sleep. Which was something he could usually do merely by closing his eyes. But then he did not usually take his rest under clean linen and blankets beneath a warm roof. The last time that had happened was in a New York City hotel.
The sound of a fist on the front door panel roused him.
‘Who is it?’ Martha Emmons called in a loud whisper.
‘Art.’
‘All right, but keep your voice down. He may not be asleep.’
Edge sighed and listened to the sounds of the bolt and chain being slid and lifted so that the door could be opened. Then:
‘Come in. Quickly.’
The door was closed and the fastenings were fixed. Footfalls in the hallway. The two of them went into the parlour and their voices became a constant murmuring sound. The half-breed had no need to check that the Winchester rifle was still in place against the wall beside the head of the bed. And he sank again into a shallow but restful sleep, confident that he would trigger awake in full command of all his senses should danger threaten.
But it was simply the grey light of pre-sunrise dawn pressing through the lace curtains at the room window which caused his eyelids to spring open. For no longer than five seconds he listened to the total silence which pervaded the town, then disturbed it himself by getting out of bed and dressing. Fully dressed for going out into the chill morning air, from the window he looked down on the deserted length of First Street, lined with a random selection of houses and stores on the opposite side. They were all time-stained and weather-ravaged, suggesting that First predated Main in the development of Freedom. Behind and above the buildings, sheep were stirring on a grassy hill slope which was sub-divided by barbed wire.
As he turned from the window he thought briefly of the events and talk of the previous night, but did not try to guess at why Billings should have intruded a big-city style house of pleasure on to such a peaceful and pastoral scene.
The landing was long and narrow with doors at regular intervals along both walls and the head of the stairway close to the rear end. As he moved unhurriedly towards the stairs, he heard the snores of a man and the deep breathing of a woman. Both from behind one door.
‘Hear tell the older ones are so grateful, Art,’ Edge murmured with
a wry smile as he started to descend the stairway.
He checked the case clock on the mantel in the parlour and saw the time was not yet six. Warmth from the range crept out under the kitchen door and he considered making some coffee and shaving off a night’s growth of bristles while he drank it. But, despite all he had become, lacking so many of the normal human virtues, he was always reluctant to do anything that might be termed an abuse of hospitality.
So he used the privy out back of the house – having to slide two bolts and unfasten two chains to open the rear door – and then stepped through the gateway in a high fence which gave on to the unwalled churchyard humped by grassy mounds, each of these guarded by a wooden or stone marker.
As he went between the boarding-house fence and the side of the steepled church, he heard a wagon moving on the street. It was a buckboard drawn by a single horse, with Travis driving and Lee sitting beside him. As the rig was halted at the start of the walk which led to the arched entrance of the church, the two men looked down at the half-breed with nervous and hungover eyes. Like Edge, they were unshaven and it looked like they had slept in their clothes.
‘We have to dig Chris’s grave,’ the thinner, paler, more anxious Lee muttered.
Travis vented a growl as he swung down from the buck-board, reached into the back and took out two long-handled spades. ‘We don’t have to tell him what we’re about!’ he rasped.
Edge spat out the final taste of a night’s sleep and yesterday’s cigarettes. The globule of saliva made an ugly stain on the hard-packed dirt of the street beyond the limit of the churchyard grass. ‘You fellers and your plans are about as interesting to me as that,’ he said evenly and swung away from the wagon to amble in the direction of the midtown area, the Winchester canted easily to his left shoulder.
One of the men started to rasp a soft but venomous retort. But then, like Edge, both of them looked up at the boarding house as the window of the half-breed’s room slid noisily open. The Widow Emmons, a nightcap awry on her head and a blanket draping her shoulders and clutched at her throat called:
EDGE: The Frightened Gun (Edge series Book 32) Page 5