Abbie Clayton was as fine a looking woman as Hayes had said. This was clear to see, even though she was as ravaged by the effects of long, fast, gruelling travel as he.
She was about thirty, close to six feet tall and yet had a body which made her look almost petite. Her blonde hair fell to her shoulders in a series of elegant waves, framing an oval face which had a flawless complexion. Her eyes were the lightest blue and she had full, very red lips. There were lines in her skin, but they served to add maturity and character to what would otherwise have been mere empty beauty. She wore a wide-brimmed red hat trimmed with white lace and a low necklined dress of the same colours – tight fitting around her upper body and arms and flaring dramatically from her narrow waist.
To Edge, who had heard from Willard that his sister worked in dancehalls, she looked like a high-priced whore. But, he realised, with a stab of cold anger in the pit of his belly – the emotion triggered by the association with his first impression – she also looked like something else. Somebody else. Which was perhaps something he should have expected, since Willard bore a resemblance at certain times to Jamie. Abbie Clayton reminded Edge of his long dead mother.
‘You don’t know her, kid!’ the half-breed rasped as he came up out of the rocker. And moved quickly towards the woman.
‘What?’ Willard blurted.
‘You crazy or something?’ Abbie snapped, her bright smile dropped in favour of a frown that was half angry and half puzzled.
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ Hayes blustered.
Even Bart and Jake were distracted from their unloading chore by the perplexity Edge had caused.
‘Listen to the man!’ Martha Emmons rasped. ‘We got trouble here. And so far this is the only man who’s done more than talk about it.’ The driver, Hayes and Abbie dragged their gazes away from Edge to look to left and right. The Widow Emmons added wryly, ‘Though not much.’
‘What kinda trouble, Jake?’ Bart wanted to know.
‘Hell, the streets sure are empty for this time of day,’ Hayes put in.
‘Willard?’ Abbie asked anxiously.
‘Huey Gould’s dead,’ Jake said. ‘So’s Barny Grogan. Chris Wilkes got it last night. Billin’s has taken over Freedom. Made Randy Leech sheriff. Got some of the local big wheels seein’ things his way.’
‘Billin’s could be our man, sis,’ Willard urged. ‘I figure we got nothin’ to lose by playin’ this the way Mr Edge wants it.’
The woman swallowed hard. ‘Act like we’re not brother and sister? I don’t know if I could–’
‘Sure you can, lady,’ the half-breed put in, taking her arm and steering her across the sidewalk to the locked doors of the restaurant. ‘I just saw you come off the stage.’
Chapter Nine
The locked door of Ramon Alvarez’s premises burst inwards with a crash of splintering wood as Edge’s boot heel hit it.
‘Buy you a cup of coffee and tell you all about it,’ the half-breed said as the woman tried to come to a sudden halt on the threshold. He could still smell her perfume despite the cooking aromas which filled the place.
‘Trust him, sis, he just saved my life!’ Willard augmented.
‘What you do to my place, señor?’ the Mexican yelled as he ran across the street.
Other, heavier footfalls sounded. Less hurried.
‘Whose side are you on?’ Martha Emmons hissed as Ramon came around the front of the sweat-lathered horses in the stage traces. Then glowered at the rifle-toting Leech who appeared at the rear of the Concord.
The newly appointed sheriff ignored the woman to gaze at the shattered door, the couple on the threshold and then at the angry and anxious Alvarez.
‘Damage to private property,’ he proclaimed. ‘You want to press charges, Mex?’
Edge appeared at ease, but during the stretched second Ramon hesitated, his muscles bunched and his mind raced behind the cold, unblinking blueness of his slitted eyes. His rifle was out of reach and his right hand was clutching Abbie’s upper arm. Leech was far out of range of the razor. And he knew the man with eyes as blue as his own and the same disregard for human life would react violently if he got the answer he wanted from the Mexican.
‘It would seem there has been an accident, señor,’ Ramon said at length. ‘Perhaps it was not realised my door was locked.’
Leech vented a grunt of frustration. Then: ‘Bart, you get this rig ready to roll as soon as you can. We got a stranger here who ain’t welcome.’
‘Sure thing, Randy,’ the bearded driver acknowledged. ‘But the team’ll have to be rested awhile.’
‘Not too long,’ Leech said and turned his head to nod to the sweating veterinarian. ‘Mr Hayes. Guess you’ll be told by the Mex and the Widow Emmons what’s happened in town today. You want to throw in with Mr Billin’s, you’ll be welcome over to the Four Aces. They’ll likely tell it different, but Mr Billin’s wants things run peaceable – soon as the troublemakers are run outta Freedom.’
Now he raised a hand away from his Winchester to touch the front of his mop of hair as he looked admiringly at Abbie. ‘And if you’re lookin’ for work, there’ll be plenty over at the hotel once the word gets around.’
He spun on his heels and swaggered back across the street. Then, in response to a call from Billings, he changed direction and forsook the law office for the Four Aces.
Abbie Clayton wrenched herself free of Edge’s grasp. ‘Word about what?’ she demanded. ‘Will somebody tell me what this is all about?’
She allowed herself to be steered through the doorway and to a table by her brother, who began to talk excitedly about his belief that Billings was the one-eyed man for whom they had been searching for almost two years.
Hayes, the Widow Emmons and Ramon also entered the restaurant, listening intently to the fast-spoken words of the boy but having their curiosity satisfied only to an extent when Willard began to outline the violent events of the morning.
Edge remained on the threshold but turned his back on the anxious group as he rolled and lit a cigarette. And then, while he smoked it slowly, he watched the town come to life again, restarting the daily routine which had been earlier curtailed by gunfire and sudden death.
Few of the townspeople still wore mourning, but there was a funereal quality in the way they moved about their business, many of them casting surreptitious glances towards the hotel and the restaurant. Soon after the first of the women had appeared with shopping baskets and the sheepmen had begun to ride or trudge out towards the pastureland spread over the hills around Freedom, Art Ely led the exodus from the saloon. Behind him were the bug-eyed Tuttle who crossed to his drugstore down the street beyond the stage-line depot, the be-whiskered man who did not need to cross over to reach the premises where he sold guns and shells, a fat-gutted old man who entered the dry goods store and then another man who looked like he might be the most prosperous sheep farmer in the area.
The bank remained closed. As did a row of stores on the street which forked to the south-east side of the hotel. Feed and grain, a butchery, the barbershop, a hardware merchants and a drapers. Beyond these was a long, single storey building which had several signs jutting from its roof. The Freedom Weekly News was housed in the building. Also a land agent. Edge could not read the more distant signs. There seemed to be little activity in the premises beneath the signs.
But, he thought as he raked his glinting, slitted eyes over the scene, if Abi Billings proved to be the wrong man, the whole town could be back to normal in a few days – even hours. For it was just an ordinary town filled with a broad cross-section of ordinary people. Decent people, most of them, who had struggled hard in the early days of their town to build it and to achieve whatever ambitions they had individually aimed for. And now they had it – had been enjoying the fruits of their labours for the easy years Edge and Martha Emmons had spoken of.
Would the lives of these ordinary people alter to any great degree if Billings was allowed to become entrenched in his pos
ition of power? Back in Iowa, the Hedges family – the mother as beautifully blonde and blue-eyed as the dancehall girl in the restaurant – had lived their daily lives unaffected by the power struggles for local, county, state and national office.
Most people did. willingly sacrificing principles or simply lacking interest in events they considered beyond their control. Until somebody who felt more strongly made a stand and demanded or forced others into a commitment. And when that happened and the comfortable peace was shattered by gunfire who could say with authority, after the cost was counted, that it would not have been better to compromise?
Be it to prevent a war fought to keep one nation from splitting into two. Or to condone the taking over by violence of a dull sheep-farming community in order to change it into a wide-open mecca of vice and gambling.
‘Very well, Mr Edge,’ Abbie Clayton announced. ‘We are all now familiar with what happened this morning.’
‘And with the reason for this couple’s interest in Billin’s,’ the Widow Emmons added.
‘So maybe you’d tell us why Abbie and me gotta make out we ain’t brother and sister, sir,’ Willard said.
‘You may trust me,’ Sherman Hayes assured. ‘And count on any help I’m able to give. I have absolutely no intention of taking up Leech’s invitation to join forces with the Four Aces crowd.’
‘Be awhile,’ the half-breed answered, dropping his cigarette end to the sidewalk and crushing it out under a boot heel. ‘Like for Ely the blacksmith to hear what I have to say.’
The group in the restaurant spoke words and showed expressions of impatience. But Edge had already moved out of the doorway, to saunter north along Main Street. As he went past the window and entrance of the stage-line depot, he glanced inside. There were four women in front of the counter, waiting eagerly for the reedy-voiced Jake to sort through the contents of the mailbag which was one of the items unloaded from the stage. The bearded Bart was nowhere to be seen, although he had left his rig and team to go into the office with Jake as soon as the unloading chore was finished.
Edge had to walk on beyond Tuttle’s drugstore before he was able to make a left turn into an alley beside the fire station, where he halted to check if anybody was watching him.
Leech was still in the Four Aces, which was again filled with the noise of people celebrating victory.
Shopping women and storekeepers were for the most part busy trading.
Only the short, pot-bellied man with red sideburns and chin whiskers was having a slow day in his gunsmith’s store. And it was obvious he had been watching the progress of the half-breed – from the way he suddenly and nervously turned his back on the street and hurried into the shadowed depths of his premises when the slitted eyes of Edge located him.
The back lots of the premises on the western side of Main Street were littered with crushed cardboard cartons, broken open crates and weathered items of merchandise which had been discarded for one reason or another. Beyond the strip of dumping ground there was a rutted track which gave access to storage shacks and, in the case of the fire station and the stage-line depot, stables. In back of these buildings there was a barbed-wire fence which kept the sheep from wandering off the grazing land and into town. Up on the hillside which rose gently away from the fencing, a group of men were engaged in replenishing a number of water troughs.
As far as he was able to judge, Edge reached the rear of Ramon Alvarez’s premises without being seen by the sheepmen. The rear door through which Grogan had apparently gained entry earlier that morning was not only unlocked. It was ajar. The smells which came out through the crack between door and frame were stronger and more appetising than those which filtered into the restaurant. This was because, the half-breed discovered as he eased open the door wider and stepped through, Remington drawn and cocked, he was closer to their source. For the door gave directly on to the kitchen and bakehouse.
Immediately opposite – beyond a large table with a row of big ovens on one side and two over-sized ranges on the other – was a second doorway, its door also ajar. He could not hear voices until he was at the door. Then only as a distant murmuring, coming from beyond the archway with the bead curtain at the end of a fifteen-feet-long hallway with closed doors to either side.
The man who stood tensely in the hallway, close to the bead curtain, was hearing every word clearly. It was the bearded Bart, who had shown no sign that he was pretending a friendliness he did not feel when Randy Leech spoke to him. And who had directed several less than friendly glances towards Edge while the half-breed stood in the restaurant doorway and he was unloading the stage freight.
‘Dispense usted,’ Ramon Alvarez said. ‘I must take the bread from the–’
Bart vented a low grunt and turned, grimacing at the effort to move silently. Then fear displaced mere anxiety as he saw the tall, lean, gun-toting form of Edge framed in the doorway.
‘I...’ he croaked.
‘Como se llama?’ Ramon gasped as he parted the strands of beads, saw the broad back of the stage driver.
‘I come to throw in with you people,’ Bart blurted. ‘The back way ’cause I didn’t want the Billin’s bunch to see me.’
He remained rooted to the spot as Edge advanced along the hallway. Then screwed his head around when he heard a disturbance on the other side of the archway. The scrape of boots on the sawdust strewn floor and a cry of alarm from the Mexican.
Then a hand chopped hard through the beads, its straight edge cracking heavily into the side of Bart’s neck. The man groaned and crumpled to the floor like a loosely packed sack of potatoes. The sweating features of the square-faced Sherman Hayes were pushed through the beads. They were formed into an expression of satisfaction.
‘Most humane way to put down rabbits and such like,’ he said. ‘Never tried it on a man before. Sure hope I didn’t kill him.’
‘You put him to sleep is all,’ Edge answered as he stepped over the raggedly breathing man. ‘The kind he’ll wake from.’
‘He was lyin’, Edge,’ Martha Emmons said.
‘If I had been sure of that, I would have acted quicker than Señor Hayes,’ Ramon claimed, trying hard to sound convincing.
‘You’re as big a liar as he is,’ the grim-faced woman accused.
‘You know as well as everyone else in Freedom that Bart Briggs spends every spare cent he has on whorin’ at the Four Aces whenever he’s in town!’
The Mexican was crestfallen. ‘Is true,’ he admitted. ‘I am a coward.’
‘But you can make yourself useful,’ Hayes pointed out. ‘Take care of Briggs so he won’t be able to pass on to Billings what it was he overheard.’
‘Si, señor,’ Ramon agreed with an eager-to-please smile. ‘This will be well done.’
‘Like your bread, feller,’ Edge drawled.
The Mexican wrinkled his nostrils and then struck his forehead with the heel of a hand. ‘Dios mio!’ he exclaimed as he ran between Edge and Hayes and lunged through the bead curtain, leaping over the unconscious form of Briggs.
Edge pushed the Remington into its holster and glanced around the hard-set features of Sherman Hayes, Martha Emmons and the Clayton brother and sister before he scanned the sections of street visible through the open doorway and greasy windows of the restaurant. ‘Seems,’ he drawled, ‘there’s something in this town that ain’t half-baked.’
Chapter Ten
‘You’re not so damn hot!’ Abbie Clayton snarled, and in anger looked nothing at all like the woman from whom Edge had inherited his ice-blue eyes. ‘Telling Willard to just walk up to Billings in his own hotel and shoot him! With God knows how many kill-crazy men like that monster Leech looking on!’
‘Sis, I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to just do it like that and not–’
‘Be quiet, Willard!’ Abbie snapped. ‘You seem to think this man saved your life. Seems to me he almost got you killed. It was Ramon who–’
Her brother was sullen, ‘I wouldn’t have done nothin�
� until you got here and said Billin’s was the man.’
Martha Emmons stamped her foot. ‘All this is beside the point.’ She glared at Abbie and Willard and then expanded the expression as she directed her attention to the half-breed. ‘We ain’t even half-baked, mister. Because we got nothin’ at all cookin’. On account of we’re waitin’ for you to finish what you started when the stage reached town.’
‘It certainly appeared to me that an idea crossed your mind,’ Hayes augmented.
‘That wouldn’t have taken long,’ Abbie growled.
‘You be quiet, Abigail!’ Willard told his sister.
Edge looked from the Claytons to the older couple and then lowered Himself into the seat at the table he had occupied twice already today. ‘I told the kid what he asked. What I’d do if I was him. Don’t know how good Billings’s guns are, but even if they’re the best there are, it was sound advice. Putting myself in his shoes and that means I’d be a lousy shot.’
‘Mr Edge–’ Martha Emmons started to interrupt.
‘Let the man finish, my dear,’ Art Ely said as he turned in off the sidewalk. ‘If he figures he has the time to talk, we oughta have the time to listen.’ The blacksmith nodded to the veterinarian. ‘Sherman – good to have you back in town.’
‘Carry on, Mr Edge,’ Willard urged.
‘Best gunslinger in the world doesn’t fear the second best,’ the half-breed continued as Ely dropped into another chair at his table. ‘It’s the worst that worries him, on account of he’s likely to be unpredictable.’
‘Words,’ Abbie growled. ‘Adding up to an excuse. You’ve said them now. But you still haven’t explained why Willard and me need to pretend we’re not related.’
‘I reckon that’s clear enough to see, young lady,’ Ely countered. ‘Billin’s knows this town and everyone who lives here. He knew that once he’d got rid of Huey Gould there wouldn’t be anyone with the wits and guts to whip up a stand against him. And that was how it happened. It was ... how’s that word, mister? Predictable, ain’t that right? Only chance we got is to spring a few surprises on that bunch at the Four Aces.’
EDGE: The Frightened Gun (Edge series Book 32) Page 9