With so many fire-damaged areas in the plush car, Edge ignored the ashtray this time and ground out his cigarette into the carpet. ‘Didn’t kill you for one reason,’ he supplied as he stood up. ‘Four days to Omaha and I may need your help.’
‘When have you ever needed help, Edge?’ Spade muttered.
‘One of the lessons I learned. There’s always a first time for everything.’
‘And a last, tough guy,’ Shayne snapped, grimacing as Hammer continued to work on his injury. ‘When it comes to dying.’
The half-breed nodded as he turned to start for the front of the car. ‘Remember that - the next time you think about pulling a gun on me, feller.’
‘Next time I won’t even think about it.’
Edge curled back his lips to show an icy grin. ‘For you, that figures.’
‘Smart ass bastard!’ Shayne hissed.
‘Forget it,’ Spade advised with a sigh. ‘Ain’t none of us actin’ like it, but I reckon we’re all on the same side.’
Hammer grunted as he finished taping a pad of salve-smeared cotton lint to Shayne’s cheek. ‘That almost makes me want to cheer for the opposition,’ he said sourly.
‘Yeah, some team we got,’ Shayne growled as he was helped to his feet by his partner.
Edge paused with his hand on the door knob and the grin showing on the lower half of his face seemed - from a distance - to be injected with a trace of warm humor as he glanced along the fire-ravaged Pullman. ‘Could explain it.’
‘Explain what?’ Spade asked wearily.
‘Why the coach is a little burned up.’
Chapter Eight
Edge’s last night in San Francisco’s Palace Hotel had been exceptional, both while he was awake and while he was asleep. But today he had experienced nothing he could not recall: and now, as he slept, it was the kind of sleep that was totally characteristic of him. He lay on his back in the berth to the left of the Pullman’s rear door, fully dressed and with the Winchester rifle at his side. It was a shallow sleep, his mind sinking just below the level of awareness while his muscles remained just a sliver beyond the action of tensing. It was a good sleep that rested the mind and restored energy to power the muscles. But it was capable of being disturbed by the merest hint of danger - whether the menace be heard, felt, or even sensed. And Edge would come awake with instant total recall and be immediately prepared to counter whatever danger threatened him.
In the kind of war he had fought, most men became like wild animals in circumstances that demanded it - when the alternative was to die. Then, when peace came, most men reverted to what they once had been. But peace had never come for this man - and circumstances demanded that he maintain and. even develop the crafts, arts and skills that had kept him alive from the opening shots of the Shenandoah Valley campaign until the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.
But there was no threat to his continued survival as the train put night miles behind it, up into the Sierras and then down into the Great Basin. He slept through Dutch Fiat, Alta, Blue Canyon, the shelf of Cape Horn and Summit Tunnel. He almost came awake at Reno, where the train stopped to take on water and cordwood. But he remained asleep, his mind contenting itself with the certain knowledge that at least one of the conscientiously over-anxious detectives would be watching for new passengers to board.
And it was at sunrise that he awakened, when the first lancing shafts of bright light stabbed through the breath-fogged window to force up his eyelids. For a few moments he continued to lay there, listening to the clatter of wheels along track and to the snoring of a man still held in deep sleep. Then, feeling rested and alert, he reached out a hand to part the curtains - and tightened his grip around the frame of the rifle as he sensed somebody standing in the aisle. The Winchester was ready-pumped and he had only to thumb back the hammer. He did it fast, and started to lift the gun, as he wrenched aside the curtains.
‘It ain’t healthy to sleep in your day clothes, mister.’
‘That’s what Ma says, anyhow. I think it don’t matter.’
Edge squeezed his eyes tight closed, shook his head, and sighed as he opened them again. The two kids he had seen sleeping in their berth last night were now wide awake, a girl of about seven who had been first to speak and her brother who was about a year younger. Both had black hair, dark eyes and regular features now set in lines of childish severity. Still clothed in their nightgowns, they held hands as they surveyed the half-breed swinging his feet to the trembling floor of the sleeper car.
‘Ma’s know best,’ Edge answered, and the children backed away from him as he stretched, then rasped the back of a hand over his bristles.
‘But it’s good to get old so you don’t have to do everything they tell you,’ the boy said, running his wide eyes admiringly over the tall frame of the half-breed.
Further down the car, Zane Yancy pushed his head out through the curtains of his berth. ‘Hey, you kids!’ he called sternly. ‘You didn’t oughta mess with that man.’
The small girl nodded her agreement and made to pull her brother away. But the boy held his ground.
‘Ain’t enough Ma’s always telling me what to do and what not to do.’ He jerked his hand out of the grip of his sister’s. ‘You a gunslinger, mister?’
‘Somebody tell you that?’
‘Henry, come away,’ the small girl insisted.
‘My Pa’s a soldier. We’re going to Fort Russell. That’s close to Cheyenne.’
‘That’s fine, kid,’ Edge told him, and reached for the door knob.
‘You just look like a gunslinger. Me and Arlene saw one get shot down in Tucson four months ago. Three times Right here.’ He stabbed his thumb at his chest the same number of times. Then worked an agonized grimace on to his young face, and collapsed to the floor.
‘Henry!’ his sister shrieked. ‘Get up this minute!’
Henry glared angrily up at Arlene, then said: ‘Frig off!’
‘Henry!’ This a woman’s voice, shrill with shock. ‘Boyce!’
The captain’s wife was alone in her berth now. And, despite her distress at hearing the obscenity from her young son, she had the presence of mind to keep her nightgown-attired body concealed behind the curtains as she thrust her head between them. Her brown hair was still in curlers and there was white cream crusted on her face. But the ghostly mask of cosmetics did not hide the mixture of shame, anguish and anger that did battle for command of her expression.
‘What the hell’s wrong, Mary?’ her bearded husband demanded as he yanked back the curtains of his berth and climbed out. He was yawning and had his pants in his hands. He had slept in army issue long-johns.
‘Henry said a foul word, Boyce! To Arlene!’
‘I didn’t! I didn’t! I didn’t!’ Henry stayed on the floor and covered his face with his hands as he screamed the lie.
‘He did. Pa,’ Arlene countered with a gleam of viciousness in her eyes. ‘Whap him real hard, Pa.’
‘Shut up the both of you!’ the captain snarled, climbing into his trousers then fisting the grit of sleep from his eyes. ‘And Henry - get up off that dirty floor!’
The locomotive whistle blasted a shrill signal, the knob under Edge’s hand turned fast. The door sprang open and sent him crashing back into his rumpled berth. He vented an obscenity of his own as the Winchester was trapped between his chest and the bed linen - and he saw the door at the front end of the car swing wide.
‘The kid stays down!’
‘And all you others do the same!’
‘Except for you, mister! You get up. Slow, and leave the rifle.’
As everyone else in the car became like granite statues, Edge turned his head. The first man to speak had been the one who had sent him slamming down into the berth. Like the man who entered the car from the far end, he still wore the raincoat. But both of them had unfastened all the buttons to show the Western garb they had on underneath. Each held a Frontier Colt in a fist. The man at the front of the car tracked his gun
from side to side in a slow, short arc. His partner aimed unwaveringly at Edge’s temple as the half-breed turned his head.
‘Number three’s up at the locomotive, uh?’ Edge asked evenly, as the headlong speed of the train began to slacken.
‘Right, mister. And four and five are back at the baggage car.’ He grinned. ‘You didn’t count on that many when you took your evenin’ stroll, right?’
‘Number of things I wasn’t sure of,’ Edge allowed evenly, as his Colt was lifted from the holster by the raincoated man.
‘On the damn floor, I told you!’ the gunman at the far end yelled, advancing into the car. ‘Unless you want to get blasted down there!’
Edge’s captor backed away from him, pushing the confiscated Colt into a pocket of his coat, then crooking a finger to signal that the half-breed should get up.
‘But I’m not properly dressed!’ the captain’s wife protested as her husband and daughter complied with the order.
‘You came into the world naked, lady. You about ready to go out that way?’
‘Mary!’ her husband snapped, his eyes pleading with her as he stretched out to his considerable full length along the aisle.
As Edge eased erect, having left the rifle in the berth, the woman emerged nervously from behind the shielding curtains. She was covered from throat to ankles by a pink flannel nightgown, but had to clutch it together at her sparse breasts, where several buttons had been popped.
The train was now only crawling along the tracks and the noise of its progress entering the open doors of the Pullman was considerably less than when the gunmen had burst in.
‘You, too, grandpa!’ Zane Yancy was told in a snarling tone. ‘Out and down.’
The cattleman still had only his head poking out through the curtains. He had been smiling after his initial fear on the gunman’s entry. Now he expanded the expression, swinging his head to look at each raincoated man in turn. ‘I think maybe you guys are working for me. If it’s the da Vinci you’re aiming to get.’ His excitement found outlet in a brief, harsh laugh. ‘I’m Zane Yancy.’
‘Just do like Cal tells you, old timer,’ the man covering Edge ordered.
‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’ Yancy responded, suddenly anxious as he swung his head from one man to another more vigorously. ‘I’m Yancy. I’m in the market to—’
Cal timed his lunge to the split second. As Yancy looked away from him, he darted forward, raised his gun, and slammed the underside of the barrel against the crown of the Texan’s head.
‘Ain’t in nothin’ now, grandpa,’ Cal said. ‘More out.’
Yancy lost consciousness without making a sound, and slid almost gracefully from between the curtains and into a heap on the floor. His nightshirt was white silk with pearl buttons.
‘That was a wicked thing to do!’ the seven-year-old Arlene chided.
‘Keep quiet, child!’ her father instructed.
Her mother sobbed.
‘Cal’s like that, little girl,’ the man with a gun on Edge growled, speaking loud enough for everyone to hear as the train came to a jolting halt. ‘And me and some others aboard can match anythin’ he can do.’
‘What do you want?’ the captain asked. ‘I have hardly any money and—’
Cal aimed his Colt and squeezed the trigger. The captain’s wife and daughter screamed, but the bullet buried itself harmlessly in the floor. The man who fired it backed up to the door by which he had entered.
‘Want all you people to keep your lips buttoned,’ he snarled. ‘And listen to what Josh has to tell you. Josh is the guy showin’ the big bastard who’s boss.’
‘Wow, that’s a real bad word he used,’ Henry gasped.
Both his parents seemed about to rebuke him. But the hard eyes of Josh flicked away from Edge for long enough to scare them into remaining silent.
‘Just need this man,’ he said as Cal turned and went out of the car, stepping across on to the platform of the second day car. ‘All you people gotta do is stay right where you are. Cal and Junior are tellin’ the other passengers the same thing. Don’t reckon to delay the train long. Then everyone can be on their way again. Them that act sensible enough to stay alive.’
‘You won’t get no trouble from us, sir,’ the woman assured.
Josh grinned. ‘Surely won’t, lady. Won’t even be no trouble to us if we have to kill you.’
‘Don’t talk to them, Mary!’ her husband snapped.
‘How about that?’ Josh said, good-humouredly and rhetorically. ‘Some army gold braid talkin’ sense for a change. Outside, mister!’
The order was spoken in a suddenly harsh tone, as he backed out on to the platform and gestured with the Colt for Edge to follow him.
‘Some gunslinger you are!’ Henry hurled scornfully as the half-breed turned and stepped out into the sunlight.
‘I’m still ahead of the feller in Tucson,’ Edge answered softly as he followed another tacit command from the brandished Colt and went down the steps.
Behind him, Josh paused to look back into the car. ‘When the old timer wakes up, you tell him what I told you.’
‘Can we get dressed at least?’ the woman pleaded.
‘How can you do that without gettin’ up from the floor, lady?’ Josh snarled, and trailed Edge down the steps.
The rising sun was just beginning to make its warmth felt, but it would be several hours before it was hot enough to foreshorten the horizon with heat shimmer. As he raked his narrow-eyed gaze over the terrain to the east, south and west Edge saw scrub desert and distant mountains. The desert appeared to go on into infinity to the east and south but was blocked off in the far west by the jagged-peaked Sierras. The mountain range was black, relieved here and there by patches of sparkling white snow. The desert was yellow and brown and red, dipping into hollows and rising in low hills. Green cactus plants and grey mesquite trees grew in clumps and scattered isolation. Deeper shadows were thrown by a handful of mesas which had been the desert floor’s only substantial features until the railroad tracks had been laid across it.
‘Looks like hell, don’t it, Edge?’ Josh said from the lowest step of the platform.
‘Ain’t hot enough for that yet,’ the half-breed answered, glancing briefly towards the sun.
‘Nevada. North of where the old California Trail crosses the Humboldt Lot of people died around here in the old wagon train days. So you’ll have plenty of company if it turns out we have to bury you.’ He laughed and gestured with the gun again, for Edge to move towards the rear of the stalled train.
The half-breed complied, scanning the terrain in the immediate vicinity of the tracks. He spotted a number of points where small rocks had been piled up too evenly for the formation to have been made by nature. There was even what seemed to be a tilted wooden cross about a mile and a half to the south-east. Then he concentrated on the train.
Towards the rear, the side door of the baggage car was slid open with a protesting screech from the metal gear. First Spade, then Hammer, jumped down on to the crushed rock roadbed. Both were sullen faced behind their stubble. And the insurance company detective snarled angrily at Shayne as he helped his partner climb shakily out of the car.
The red-headed man seemed to have a heavier beard than the others, but it was an illusion. Most of the dark coloration on his lower face was due to the crusting of blood. For the dressing had been removed from his wound and the cut had been opened up again. The way he grimaced showed that he was in considerable pain. But it was probably loss of blood that made him so weak. He sank to the ground as soon as Hammer and Spade ceased to support him.
Edge did not recognize the faces of the two men who stood in the yawning doorway of the baggage car. But he recalled their hats, which had been tipped forward to cover their features as they slept in the second day car last night. When he had seen them board at Oakland, he had merely caught a glimpse of their broad backs and spotted that there were leather-cased rifles included in their baggage.
&n
bsp; They held the rifles now - good-looking Winchesters with oiled barrels and polished stocks, both brass-framed.
Although dressed like prosperous businessmen, their faces above the bootlace neckties were as hard and vaguely wild-looking as those of the three men in raincoats.
‘Went sweet?’ the forty-year-old one asked.
‘And smooth, Wayne,’ Josh answered with a hint of glee, waving the gun to order that Edge join the group formed by the sullen Hammer and Spade and the raggedly breathing Shayne.
The half-breed did so, his glittering eyes asking no tacit questions of the detectives, who glanced at him briefly and then looked away. As he turned to peer along the length of the train, he was in time to see Cal and Junior drop to the ground - Cal from the platform at the front of the first car and Junior from the locomotive cabin. The only sound made by the train now was a constant low hiss from a safety valve on the locomotive as the crew maintained a head of steam.
‘Yancy show any interest?’ the other man aboard the baggage car asked, in the tone and with the expression of a man making idle conversation to kill time. He was about thirty-five and looked enough like Wayne to be his brother.
‘Said he wanted to deal, Dale,’ Josh supplied. A laugh. ‘Cal’s answer went to his head.’
Cal and Junior reached the baggage car. The latter looked no younger than either Cal or Josh. All were about twenty-five, thin and hungry looking, with a sinewy strength apparent in their builds.
‘No sweat my end,’ Cal responded to the query in Wayne’s eyes.
‘Fireman’s plain yellow,’ Junior augmented. ‘Engineer’s got a wife and six kids.’
‘Okay, Edge. Secret-telling time.’
The half-breed had been making another survey of the barren wilderness in which the train had been halted. To the east, south and west again, then leaning back to get a restricted view of the north between the baggage car and the brake van. The Jackson Mountains fringed the desert in that direction, lower and closer than the Sierras.
He was looking to the south again when Wayne spoke his name: towards a small cloud of billowing dust still many miles away.
Edge: Slaughter Road (Edge series Book 22) Page 11