‘Seems time’s gone by for him,’ Edge murmured wryly. ‘Sam won’t ever play anything again.’
‘The time, it passes for all of us,’ Ramon said anxiously as the sound of angry voices faded inside the Four Aces. ‘Should not somebody do something? But not in my place, maybe? For I am with you and it is not good the restaurant should be broken up.’
‘He’s right about one thing,’ Martha Emmons snapped. ‘We gotta do more than just wait around in here for that Billin’s bunch to come and get us. If we can’t see anybody goin’ into the hotel we can’t see anyone comin’ out either.’
‘I’ll go watch out the rear door,’ Hayes offered.
“That’s no good!’ Willard told him. ‘We gotta do somethin’ positive.’ He hitched up his gunbelt and it immediately fell back to where it had been before. ‘How’d it be if I called him out? Billin’s? Settled it on a man-to-man shootin’?’
‘No, Willard!’ Abbie snarled, then eyed the half-breed with grudging admiration. ‘Your first idea worked pretty well, Edge. You got any more?’
The tall, lean, bristle-jawed man at the side of the window was directing the unblinking gaze of his slit ted blue eyes to an area of sloping pasture visible in back of and above the law office.
‘One,’ he answered.
‘If it’ll work, one’s all we need,’ Art Ely said with enthusiasm.
‘Spit it out, son,’ the Widow Emmons urged. ‘You can count on us.’
‘Long as you don’t count on my idea,’ Edge said with his lips curling back from his teeth in an ice-cold grin. ‘I don’t want anyone outside of the Four Aces to be caught napping.’
‘Another friggin’ riddle!’ the older of the two women in the restaurant snarled.
‘What d’you have in mind, mister?’ Hayes asked.
Edge shifted his gaze from the grazing meadow to the front of the hotel and said: ‘Sheep.’
Chapter Thirteen
‘You people in Alvarez’s place! And everyone else who can hear what I’m savin’! Includin’ you, Cochran! Mr Billin’s is willin’ to give Freedom one last chance! Killin’ can be all over if you all listen and do like you’re told! So you listen and you listen good!’
Perhaps five minutes had crawled into history since Martha Emmons and Abigail Clayton were left alone in the restaurant and bakery. Although the older woman, who stood at the kitchen and bakehouse doorway with Edge’s cocked Remington in a fist was not strictly alone. For the tightly gagged Bart Briggs was spreadeagled on the big table, his wrists and ankles lashed to the tops of the legs. Abbie stood against the wall between the door and broken window in the restaurant, holding her brother’s Tranter in both hands against her chest as she listened to Randy Leech’s shouted words. The metal barrel of the revolver became greasy with the sweat that oozed from her pores and ran towards the valley between her breasts.
She knew that Willard would be sweating, too. And Ely, Hayes and Ramon. Edge, as well. Though the impassive half-breed’s pores would be opened by exertion, not fear, she thought. Willard had the furthest to go. Out of the rear of this place, along the back lots of the buildings on the west side of First, across the street, over the street that forked to the left of the Four Aces and then turn to come back northwards. His first stop would be at the Sheepman to warn Cochran of what was planned. Then the two of them would go to Webb’s premises for handguns and shells.
Her brother had been assigned to undertake this part of the plan because he was the youngest and fittest. He also happened to be the smallest. So there was less of a chance of Willard being spotted by anxiously watching eyes in the Four Aces as he ran from one area of cover to the next.
Once at the gunsmith’s store, his part in Edge’s scheme was only partially completed. He then had to get the revolvers and ammunition back to where the half-breed, the Mexican, the blacksmith and the veterinarian waited, none of them sheepmen but three of whom had spent a long time in a sheep raising community and all four familiar with handling animals.
By the time Leech had finished calling attention to the Four Aces, and Billings began to deliver yet another ultimatum, Abbie Clayton had neither seen nor heard any sign of her brother. And she prayed that this was a good sign. Then added another prayer that the one-eyed man should make a long speech.
This is stupid!’ Billings yelled from one side of the batwings. ‘Stupid, senseless waste of human lives! Chris Wilkes, Grogan, Sheriff Gould, Sam Jordan – and Bart Briggs as far as I know! And to what end? The man called Edge began the trouble here. And for some reason known only to himself, the boy I hired to provide some much needed entertainment in this town wants to kill me! Jonas Cochran has allied himself with these two strangers! Why Jonas? Your business stands to gain as much as anyone else’s when people start comin’ to Freedom!
‘Same goes for your boardin’ house, Martha! And Ramon Alvarez, I figure you wouldn’t be with these people except it was your bad luck they chose to hole up in your place!
‘And, Art! Art Ely! Unless I’ve missed my guess, you’re puttin’ your life on the line only because of what happened when Wilkes pulled a gun on you!
‘Sherman Hayes – well, it’s the same with you as the Mexican, isn’t it? You had the bad luck to step down off the stage right into the middle of this mess! And you, Miss Smith, you’re
in there against your will! I know that!’
He paused to catch his breath.
‘You all through, Biilin’s?’ Cochran yelled.
And Abbie breathed a sigh of relief. The man was back inside his saloon and enough time had elapsed for Willard to reach the gunsmith’s store. He would be on his way back now.
‘No I haven’t! Hear me out! Like Randy Leech told you all, I’m givin’ you one last chance! I want those with guns to toss them out on to the street! Then I want to see Edge and the Clayton kid leave the restaurant, go across to the wagon, climb aboard and ride away from Freedom!’
‘The hell with that!’ Cochran snarled, and gained a few more valuable seconds.
‘Listen, Goddamnit!’ Billings roared. ‘And save some life instead of takin’ it! They do that, I give my word they’ll have safe passage out of town! And I also give my word there’ll be no recriminations against any citizen of Freedom for what’s happened here! The world’s a better place without Wilkes is my view! But I lost Grogan and Sam Jordan – you killed Sam, Cochran! But you people that are against me lost Huey Gould and I’m ready to call that quits!’
‘Shit on your word, Billin’s.’
Sheep had started to bleat. But it was a familiar enough sound in Freedom, so that people tended not to hear the animal noise.
‘I’ve already proved it’s good!’ the one-eyed man flung back at Cochran. ‘I could have had Edge gunned down when he came into my place. And the kid would have been as easy to kill as swatting a fly! But I gave my word they had until stage time! And I kept it!’
The cries of the sheep were louder than usual, except at shearing time when the flocks to the south of town were driven through the streets to the sheds of the large farm houses beyond the northern extent of Freedom.
‘And if they don’t do what you want?’ Jonas Cochran called.
‘Then we pour everythin’ we got at your place and at the restaurant! And any of you people that are left alive will stand trial for murderin’ Barny Grogan and Sam Jordan and Chris Wilkes! And you’ll hang from gallows I’ll have set up on the roof of the Four–’
He broke off as he realised he had to shout progressively louder to make himself heard, and suddenly became aware of the reason for this. The melancholy bleating of a vast number of sheep which were converging on the intersection from the streets to either side of the hotel.
‘What the friggin’ hell is goin’ on?’ he shrieked. Just as his uncovered eye provided him with visual proof of what his ears had already recorded. For the leading ewes trotted out on to the intersection. To be followed by countless more.
‘Sheep!’ Leech roared. ‘Bast
ard sheep!’
‘It’s a trick, Abi!’ Rose Pride yelled.
‘Sure pulled the wool over your eyes,’ Edge rasped, and rose from his hands and knees.
He was in the middle of First Street, opposite the side of the Four Aces. Ahead of him and to the right, Art Ely came erect. Two or three yards behind him, on his left, Ramon Alvarez showed himself.
On the street which ran past the other side of the hotel, Willard Clayton and Sherman Hayes emerged from among the bleating sheep.
All five of them were breathless and aching from the effort of crawling along the street in the midst of the rancid smelling animals. And they suffered more bruises from falling to the ground and being kicked by cloven hooves as they fought their way through the panicking animals to the sides of the Four Aces. The sheep frightened by these abrupt flurries of activity from the men they had come to accept – then terrified by a burst of gunfire.
The shotgun in the hands of Jonas Cochran sounded first, the .loads from both barrels spreading out across the intersection. Another hotel window was shattered and a number of sheep dropped to the ground, areas of their dirty white fleeces turning red.
Then Abbie Clayton fired the Tranter through the restaurant window.
Clayton tossed aside the empty shotgun and started to trigger and work the action of his repeater.
Martha Emmons ran into the restaurant and added the fire power of the Remington to the barrage of shots which rained against the front of the hotel.
The five men who had flanked the Four Aces under cover of the sheep reached side windows of the building. And saw the effect which the gunfire was having on the people inside.
Leech, Lee, Travis and the three drifters were flat to the wall beside or crouched beneath windows. Each with a cocked Winchester held ready to fire out of the windows as soon as the fusillade ended. Each face expressed a grim determination to give as good as he was taking, the moment the opportunity occurred.
Billings stood to one side of the batwings, his hands and his lower lip trembling: a grimace of flinching terror cutting deeper lines into his face as each gunshot cracked.
On the other side of the door, the booted feet of the dead Sam Jordan protruded from beneath the blanket which had been slung over his corpse. The blanket was stained crimson in a number of places.
The two bartenders could not be seen.
Some of the whores huddled on the stairway were shoved roughly to the side as Rose Pride raced up the treads.
All this seen in a moment. Before the barrel of a much-used Winchester rifle and four brand-new revolvers were smashed through panes of glass. And the five triggers were squeezed.
‘No!’ Billings shrieked, his plea sounding in unison with the fresh burst of gunfire. Which sent lead cracking across his once immaculate bar room – its walls now pock-marked with bullet holes, its floor spread with shards of broken glass, its atmosphere heavy with the stench of gunsmoke.
Edge’s bullet took Randy Leech in the centre of the man’s forehead. It made a small entry hole, but burst out of his skull at the back with a more spectacular effect. So that his corpse as it slid down the wall left a broad stain of bright red.
Ely shot one of the drifters in the leg and the man came upright in reaction to the wound. And a bullet from outside gained entry through a broken window and penetrated his back to lodge in his heart.
Hayes’s shot hit Travis, going in through the shoulder: on a downward trajectory that directed it into his heart,
Willard and Ramon were off any mark.
‘Don’t kill Billin’s!’ the kid yelled. ‘I want to do–’
Lee triggered a shot from his rifle and Art Ely was flung back from a window, droplets of bright crimson spraying away from his silver hair as he fell among the milling sheep.
The twin muzzles of a double barrel shotgun showed above one end of the bar and a black face appeared beside it. The negro drew a bead on the excited face of the shrieking Willard Clayton.
Both Edge and Ramon fired at the same target and the two bullets tunnelled into flesh, shattered bone and tossed the corpse of the bartender six feet beyond the point where he died.
At the same time, the boy and Sherman Hayes loosed two bullets: firing blind as they ducked from sight – away from shots exploded by the drifters.
Hayes was not fast enough and cried out as a bullet gouged a furrow across the side of his head. Lee’s yell grew louder, as he was hit in the shoulder and spun into a half-turn, the Winchester slipping from his hands.
‘Enough!’ Billings screamed, and thrust his trembling hands high into the air. ‘We’ll be slaughtered!’
‘We have won!’ Ramon blurted gleefully, and withdrew his gun from the window.
Hayes, with a hand pressed to the bloodied side of his head, and the excited Willard, looked tentatively in through the broken windows on the other side of the wrecked body-littered bar room. They, too, no longer aimed revolvers through the drifting gunsmoke.
Edge kept the Winchester levelled from his hip. Covering nobody, but ready at any moment to swing it to left or right – if either the men who were close to the front wall, the whores huddled on the stairway or the surviving negro behind the bar should ignore Billings’s order.
His eyes moved constantly in their slit sockets. As Billings, Lee, the two drifters and the whores stared at him. All of them aware that the lean faced man with ice chips for eyes was the decider of their fate.
‘Drop those guns, you men!’ Sherman Hayes demanded.
The two drifters looked from the Winchesters in their hands to the sweat-run face of Billings. As the injured veterinarian, Willard and Ramon brought their revolvers into view at the windows.
‘Do it!’ Billings ordered, his voice croaking.
‘We got them, Cochran!’ Hayes yelled as the pair of Winchesters clattered noisily to the floor.
‘I am–’
Edge’s rifle and the handguns of Hayes, Willard and Ramon swung towards the bar. Towards the sound of a voice and then the head of the second bartender.
‘–here,’ the hapless negro managed to finish in a quaking voice.
Before Billings shrieked, ‘Watch out!’
Four gun muzzles swept away from the terrified black man. To draw a bead on the crouching form of Lee. It was his left shoulder which had taken a bullet, the wound pouring blood to soak his sleeve. So he was able to draw the Colt from his holster with his right and take aim at Edge. Hatred shone through pain as he squeezed the trigger.
Jonas Cochran crashed through the batwing doors and whirled, the dead Huey Gould’s shotgun levelled from his hip. And he squeezed both triggers at the same instant as Willard, Hayes, Ramon and Edge fired their guns.
The half-breed’s bullet went wide and a curse ripped from between his clenched teeth as Lee’s shot struck the rifle barrel to wrench it off target.
Lee did not get to see this. For three bright crimson stains suddenly encircled black holes in his chest. At the same time as his head was blasted into shreds of flesh and fragments of bone. And his decapitated corpse was flung across the body of Travis.
Silence came, with a seemingly palpable presence, into the bar room of the Four Aces.
Outside, sheep bleated.
‘You won’t get no trouble from us,’ one of the whores on the stairway rasped.
The others made mumbling sounds of agreement.
Jonas Cochran’s ugly face was split by a grin that expanded to a laugh. Willard Clayton, Sherman Hayes and Ramon Alvarez smiled in relief and triumph.
‘Great plan you dreamed up, mister,’ the owner of the Sheepman congratulated.
One of the two drifters who had been unable to tear his horrified eyes away from the bloody pulp which was all that was left of Lee’s head, suddenly retched, fell to his hands and knees and vomited.
‘Seems that feller figures the plot sickens,’ Edge drawled.
Cochran’s expression saddened. ‘Shame about Art Ely. I seen him get hit.’
‘Art?’ Hayes croaked, suddenly aware that the blacksmith’s face was no longer at a window across the bar room.
‘He was a fine ombre,’ Ramon said mournfully.
‘You sure he’s dead?’ Hayes demanded.
Both Edge and Ramon shifted their gaze away from the interior of the bar room to look out on to the street. The sheep had scattered now, sufficiently for the inert form of Ely to be seen, sprawled on the hard-packed dirt among the aimlessly wandering ewes. There was a hole in his head and blood filled his open mouth.
‘Si, señor,’ Ramon reported. ‘Nothing is surer than that.’
‘Edge?’ Hayes insisted on confirmation.
The half-breed spat to one side. ‘Died in the wool, feller.’
Chapter Fourteen
‘Pick up the gunbelt and put it on, mister!’ Willard Clayton ordered, his youthful features set in a hard expression of grim resolve.
‘Why, for God’s sake?’ the one-eyed Billings pleaded, his voice still croaky with fear as he clenched his fists at his side to keep his hands from shaking.
They stood, facing each other, thirty feet apart, in front of the Four Aces Hotel. Billings with his back to the law office and the boy’s back to the restaurant.
The sheep were gone now from the centre of Freedom. The living animals making their own way back to the grazing meadows, while Sherman Hayes and Ramon dragged the carcasses of the dead ones off the intersection. As Edge and Jonas Cochran carried the body of Art Ely into the hotel, where it was draped by the Widow Emmons and Abbie Clayton with a linen sheet – like the bodies of Lee, Travis, one of the bartenders and one of the drifters, which had been left where they fell.
No one asked if the town undertaker should be brought to the Four Aces and nobody volunteered to go and fetch him. And, like the rest of the citizens of Freedom not directly involved in the recently fought gunbattle, the mortician himself chose to remain behind a locked door.
For, as the sun inched towards its midday zenith, those who were unable to witness what was happening in and around the hotel sensed that the killing was not yet over. For the hot air of late morning smelled of gunsmoke, sheep droppings, fresh death and impending doom.
EDGE: The Frightened Gun (Edge series Book 32) Page 12