The elderly woman tourist from San Francisco was slumped on the boarding outside the broken window of the millinery store. She was on her side, knees folded up to her belly, both hands spread across the dark stain on the bodice of her dress.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said softly as he dropped to his haunches beside her. She looked shocked, but as yet there was no pain from the bullet in her chest. The man with the gun at the corner told me you’d come this way. When I could not find you, I shouted. That was rather foolish, wasn’t it?’
Wilde, Love and Warford came to a halt beside where Edge squatted.
‘You said they, ma’am,’ the half-breed hissed. ‘Who are they?’
‘Not the strangers. That’s why Miss Dickens didn’t shoot at them when they came in. Some who were on the jury. And some others I’ve never seen before. Women as well.’
‘Obliged,’ Edge said as he rose to his feet. And didn’t know if he imagined it or if he actually caught the smell of smoke in the dusty air.
‘Easy, mister!’ Wilde snapped.
And made to draw his Remington.
Then he and everyone else on the sidewalk froze. Hearing running footfalls on the street. A part of a second later swung their heads to look toward the source of the sound. Saw Crystal Dickens sprinting along the centre of the street. At the same moment she saw them, her terror widened eyes recognizing the half-breed. She angled toward where he stood, mouth gaping wide to vent a cry of relief.
Edge lunged off the sidewalk, took three long strides toward her, then hurled himself at her. Terror gripped her face again and sounded in the shrill scream which was uttered at the moment of impact.
She went down with a sickening thud and he had to roll to the side in mid-air to keep from crashing on top of her. This as a fusillade of gunshots exploded. And bullets dug divots around them and cracked over them.
The familiar harsh laughter sounded in the wake of the gunfire.
‘Edge, they’re burning the saloon,’ she croaked. They blame us for—’
‘I already got the message,’ he rasped as he rose into a crouch, gripped the neck of her shirt and dragged her to the south side of the street.
She groaned as her bruised body endured more punishment from the wheel-rutted and hoof-patterned surface.
‘They hurt you?’ he asked as he released her in the gap between two adobe stores.
‘Not as much as you,’ she growled, sitting up and exploring the small of her back with both hands.
‘You rather be dead, lady?’
She looked up at him and became meek under the steady gaze of his ice-cold eyes. ‘No, they didn’t hurt me at all. They just took Mrs. Mortimer and me outside and set fire to the saloon. Let me go after it was well alight. And after telling me how you and I are the cause of all this.’ There were tears in her eyes, not caused entirely by pain. And she bit on her lip before saying: ‘I’m sorry, Edge.’
‘For what?’
‘Making you stay here.’
‘You didn’t make me do anything, lady,’ he answered, ripped the cigarette off his bottom lip and tossed it to the wind. ‘I’m still around because I made you.’
Chapter Fourteen
HOOVES hit hard ground and Edge and Crystal Dickens swung their heads around to look along the gap toward the back lots of the Mexican stores. And the woman sighed when Moses appeared through the swirling dust, leading the half-breed’s gelding by the reins. The horse was saddled.
‘I couldn’t do nothin’ to stop them crazy folks burnin’ you out,’ the Negro said morosely. ‘But I got your animal outta the stable, mister.’
‘Obliged,’ Edge said. And could definitely smell smoke in the air now. Air that was clearing slightly of dust, as the sun showed brighter in the afternoon sky with the lessening in intensity of the norther.
‘If you and the lady want to leave, you let me know where I can send it and I’ll see you get the money I owes you, mister.’
‘Take it in kind, Moses.’
‘Uh?’
Edge thrust the Winchester at him and the Negro took it automatically: seemed surprised and then frightened when he realized what he was holding.
‘Stay here with her and the horse. Anyone even looks like giving you trouble, shoot them.’
‘But—’
‘Edge—’
Moses and the woman started their objections at the same time. Then looked at each other with deep anxiety in their eyes when they realized that the half-breed had left without waiting to hear them, going in the direction from which the Negro had come with the horse.
He was shrouded by the constantly moving dust-cloud before he reached into his hair at the nape of his neck and drew out the straight razor. This as he swung to the right to head west across the back lots of the buildings on the south side of Lone Star Street.
Although visibility was improving, there was still a great deal of eye-stinging dust swirling about his head and he had to feel as much as look for the way toward the rear of the grocery store and funeral parlor. Then allowed himself a tight smile when he picked out the unmistakable shape of the glass-sided hearse which showed that he had reached his objective.
He went down on to his hands and knees then, to crawl under the parked hearse which covered him to within ten feet of the rear wall of the funeral parlor. From where he was able to see what he expected: a man standing on the threshold of the open doorway, gripping a rifle double-handed.
‘Reckon the storm’ll be blowed out before long,’ a man said. Inside the parlor, beyond where the watcher stood in the doorway.
‘Sooner the damn better,’ another man growled. ‘This has been one lousy trip to one lousy town. Faster I’m out of it, better it’ll be.’
‘Clem won’t ever get out of it. Nor Ed, I bet. I reckon he got a different kind of shot than he was after when the stupid bastard went to the saloon.’
‘Curly Blake and his partners neither. They sure got more than they bargained for.’
‘Bet it was that Shaft character stirred the shit that caused the trouble for Curly. Never did understand why they let him run with them.’
Three men were talking in the funeral parlor. Plus the guard in the doorway. There had been nine hard men aligned on the street when the Howling Coyote hands rode off. Clem was probably the man Hal Crowley sharp-shot out on the trail so he didn’t count. Ed had to be subtracted. So that left four. All of them in the grocery? Or all or some of them in the funeral parlor and like the guard not contributing to the sour-toned conversation.
‘Jack Savage takes the friggin’ cake for shit-stirrin’,’ the man anxious to leave snarled. ‘If that headcase hadn’t got the hots for the girl it would’ve been easy money for us.’
‘Quit beefin’, Chase. I ain’t done anythin’ hard here. And neither have you. That was the youngest, tenderest piece of ass I ever had. Sure did a lot to relieve the monotony.’
‘Sure enough did,’ came enthusiastic agreement.
Savage was not in the funeral parlor and was either the self-appointed or elected leader of the hard men, Edge decided. Both conclusions arrived at from the way the men spoke of him. And the half-breed drew back his thin lips in another tight smile. For this meant he did not have to deal immediately with the smartest member of the group.
Professional gunfighters were, on the whole, not the smartest of men, for it was a stupid trade to be in. And normally they were not herd animals. There were exceptions, such as Curly Blake and his partners. But it was likely that the men who rode into Irving today were individualists. Known to each other, but following the trail from San Antonio in two groups simply because they were all headed in the same direction.
Once in town, all there to do the same job, it had been inevitable that a leader would emerge. Not the hardest of the hard men because by the very nature of their trade, there was only one way to decide who this could be. So the one who, by majority consent, was the smartest. Who, when the assignment went too smoothly for the men eager for a
ction, had correctly judged the temper of the townspeople. And created a little interest.
So far, only the man named Ed had paid the ultimate price. And that as a result of his independent action in splitting from the group to go in search of liquor. While just one man holed up in the funeral parlor was resentful of Jack Savage calling the shots; but he confined himself to voicing his disenchantment with the situation. Was apparently not prepared to do anything more than bemoan it. The inevitable griper that was a part of every group.
And a group was how Edge wanted them to remain, with Savage in control. For, if the leader was taken out or they fragmented for any other reason, the natural cunning that was an integral factor in their trade would come to the surface. And since he could not rely on anyone else in the locked-up and battened-down town to move against the hard men, he preferred to handle them as a single unit following instructions than as scattered individuals acting on their own initiative.
‘All quiet out there, Vic?’
‘Like it’s a friggin’ ghost town,’ the man in the doorway growled with a glance over his shoulder into the parlor. ‘Ain’t nothin’ out here but the friggin’ wind and the friggin’ dust. I’m with Chase. Can’t wait to get the hell away from this place.’
Then he muttered something softly to himself and Edge tensed to respond when Vic came off the threshold. But he did not come far. A step out, then a swing to the left. Where he halted, leaned his rifle against the wall and used both hands to unfasten the front of his pants.
The half-breed was taken by surprise at the move, but wasted just a second before bellying from under the hearse and rising to his feet. The abating storm masked the sounds of his footfalls, but not the splashing noise of Vic’s urine which he directed against the wall.
The man’s bladder was only partially emptied when three gunshots exploded in quick succession. Triggered from close by. At the front of the grocery store. And glass-panes shattered. Across the street.
‘That’s it, let’s go!’ Chase exclaimed.
Vic cursed as the signal-shots caused him to interrupt the jetting, acrid-smelling water. Then caught his breath when the blade of the straight razor penetrated his skin below the right ear; and in part of a second was driven for its entire length up and into the vital tissues of his head. Edge used his left hand on top of Vic’s head to hold the target steady. Then, when the man was a limp corpse, he hooked his left hand under the armpit to keep him erect for the moment it took to withdraw the blade. Which was when the blood spurted in a great, arcing splash.
‘Come on, Vic! What the hell you friggin’ doin’?’
‘Leaking,’ Edge rasped softly as he wiped the bloodied blade on Vic’s vest before thrusting it back in the neck pouch. Then he transferred the dead man’s Colt to his own holster and snatched the Winchester up from where it leaned against the wall. Stepped in front of the open doorway where he knew he would be seen only in blurred silhouette amid the swirling dust.
Just one man saw him. Glimpsed him briefly as he rose from where he had been seated on a coffin and started toward the front of the long, narrow room. Where two others were at the door, which was swinging open.
‘San Antone, here we . . .’
The man halted, curtailed what he was exclaiming and started to bring his head around for a double-take at the dust-veiled figure who was taller and leaner than Vic.
Edge pumped the action of the Winchester and triggered a shot from the hip. Rasped through teeth bared in a killer’s grin; ‘Tough, feller. You almost died happy.’
Chase took the bullet in his back, for there had not been time for his feet to move and turn the rest of him as far as his head. And he went down like a felled tree under the impact of the bullet which was fired over a range of no more than ten feet.
There was another shell jacked into the repeater’s breech by the time the two men at the front doorway whirled to stare across the falling corpse, both clawing for their holstered Colts.
Edge fired again and lunged to the side as another hard man was hit in the chest, and was forced into an awkward backward stagger through the doorway. He was dead with a punctured heart before he thudded to the sidewalk outside. By which time the survivor of those in the funeral parlor had triggered three shots through the open rear door.
‘Savage!’
‘You people!’ a man roared from the grocery store. ‘You better hold your friggin’ fire! You hear me? We got us hostages!’
A stack of planed timber had enabled Edge to climb on to the roof of the funeral parlor after he leapt out of the line of fire. And now as he bellied toward the front of the building the gunman’s revelation came as no surprise to him. From what Wilde had said, Mary-Ann’s parents had been in the store when the men took turns at raping the girl. And during his approach to the funeral parlor Edge had seen no sign of Joel Pepper and Charlie Corwin the druggist who were supposed to have attacked the hard men from the rear.
‘It ain’t us!’ Irving’s lawman yelled. ‘It’s gotta be Edge! He ain’t one of us!’
‘I don’t give a frig who or what the hell the sonofabitch is!’ Savage snarled. ‘If he fires one more shot, four of your people are gonna get blasted to hell!’
‘Show ’em a sample, Jack,’ a man growled.
‘Yeah, why not,’ Savage agreed. ‘Outside, kid. And stand by the horses. Run and maybe you’ll make it. Your girl and her folks won’t. Move your ass!’
Joel Pepper was obviously shoved through the doorway of the grocery store. For his footfalls were fast and heavy on the sidewalk and he almost fell as he plunged down on to the street, his balance further hampered by the fact that his wrists were bound at his back. A length of fabric had been tightly tied at the back of his neck, to hold a wad of something in his mouth.
‘That’s one and we got three more here!’ Savage yelled.
‘He means it, Edge!’ Wilde shrieked ‘Joel’s out on the street. If you do anythin’ to make them—’
‘No time for speeches!’ Savage cut in. ‘We’re comin’ out and we’re ridin’ out. That’s all anyone needs to know.’
‘What about the hostages?’ Joseph Love demanded. ‘What guarantee you offering that they won’t be harmed?’
Another Texas blue norther had blown itself into virtual extinction and now the sun was glaring down out of a cloudless sky again. With just a small eddy of dust rising here and there along the street under the impetus of stray tendrils of breeze that were the death-throes of the storm.
From his prone position in the cover of the roof-sign of Barlow’s Funeral Parlor, Edge was able to look along the whole length of the street to where it turned at the timber-lined bank of the stream and became White Creek Road.
Immediately below him was the body of a man who had almost reached the front of the building before several bullets had drilled holes into his chest and torn chunks of flesh off his face. Then, to the right, the carcass of a horse killed in the crossfire. Eight other horses were still on their feet, hitched to the rail out front of the grocery store. Joel Pepper, bound and gagged and trembling stood at the end of the line of horses. Another body was sprawled in the centre of the street. Which meant that Jake Huber was the sole survivor of the jurymen who had rushed from the courtroom after Joel shot Estelle Donnelly.
Doors and windows remained firmly shut and blinded.
Winnifred Mortimer lay in the utter stillness of death on the sidewalk in front of the millinery store’s broken window.
Wilde, Love and Warford showed themselves in the gap between the photography studio and the ruined adobe shack. Revolvers drawn but not aimed.
Even over such a distance. Edge could see the beads of sweat on their foreheads gleaming in the harsh sunlight. This as stretched seconds of silence clicked into history and tension seemed to infiltrate a physical presence along Lone Star Street. And black smoke rose in an ominous column from the saloon at the far end.
Then footfalls hit the sidewalk below.
‘Hear what
I say, Edge!’ Wilde yelled. ‘You cause any more killin’ in this town and you’ll hang, so help me!’
The Green family were bound and gagged in the same manner as Joel Pepper. The dazed Mary-Ann wore a torn and tattered white dress and her blonde hair was in disarray after her ordeal. She was no more than seventeen and her parents looked little more than twice her age. Her father had an ugly bruise on his right temple but otherwise he and his wife looked neat and tidy in their storekeeper’s aprons.
Edge recognized the girl from seeing her amongst the choir who had peered horrified into the saloon after Rusty Donnelly was killed. And her father as one of those who had come with the town preacher to protest at Moses acting as bartender.
Three of the hard men had revolvers pressed into the backs of the Green family while the fourth unhitched four horses from the rail. Which meant that one had died in the grocery store, his violent end from a bullet fired by a local citizen unknown to the group who had waited in the funeral parlor.
All four survivors shifted their heads constantly to survey the street in both directions. They saw corpses, building facades which showed not a sign that there were watching people behind them, and the trio of men gripping unthreatening revolvers beside the derelict adobe building beyond the mission church.
Mary-Ann and her mother were roughly helped astride horses first, while guns were held to the heads of Joel Pepper and Dale Green. Then, with a rider in the saddle behind each woman, the two men were swung up on to mounts.
‘What about this Edge character, Jack?’ one of the gunslingers growled. ‘We oughta get him out into the friggin’ open.’
‘No friggin’ chance,’ the tall, broadly built, Mexican-style mustached Savage answered when he and the other three gunslingers were in their saddles. One hand on the reins and the other pressing a revolver into the necks of the hostages. ‘That bastard is like us. And would you show yourself to bastards like us to save the lives of no-account cruds like this?’
EDGE: Town On Trial Page 13