It ain’t often I see eye to eye with Fay,’ Stanton said as Edge poured himself a drink and knocked it back in one. He refilled the glass. ‘Speak your piece, stranger. I’m the sheriff. Jethro Lovejoy’s the mayor and Maggie Woodward’s the town treasurer - for a couple more days they are, anyway. That’s an important audience in Democracy.’
‘And who the hell are you?’ Nugent snarled, still scowling and squinting.
‘Nobody important. Except to me.’
‘A killer, for one thing!’ Forman growled. ‘He already admitted that, Gene.’
‘You certainly implied that, sir,’ the plump Maggie Woodward muttered.
Edge sipped the whiskey, set the glass down and nodded. ‘In self defense, ma’am. The reason I came to town. So there’d be no misunderstanding about that point.’
‘Who?’ Lovejoy asked nervously.
‘Couple of fellers with badges,’ the half-breed supplied evenly and saw the anger deepen on the faces of Nugent and Forman as Stanton drew in a sharp breath. ‘Hogan and Danvers.’
‘You what?’ Nugent rasped.
‘Sonofabitch!’ Forman croaked. ‘Arnie and Luke!’
Conrad broadened his grin as Lovejoy and Maggie Woodward were jolted by shock.
‘Just your word that I shouldn’t hang you, stranger?’ Stanton said flatly. ‘A deputy named Robarts was ridin’ with Hogan and Danvers. He still around to prove you ain’t lyin’?’
Another sip of whiskey, accompanied by a shake of the head. ‘He got his first, feller. I figured to give him some pain for killing my horse. Dan Warren got in his shot first. He’s good with a rifle. Or lucky.’
There was life in the green eyes again. A dull light of interest. ‘They caught up with the Warrens?’
Conrad was suddenly sad. The two deputies continued to suffer the anger of frustration. The mayor and town treasurer were again rocked by shock. Fay Reeves listened with indifference.
Edge finished the second shot of whiskey and eased the bottle away from him. Then he explained what had happened at the derelict way station. He told the story dispassionately. Just the bare facts. He did not lie, or even bend the truth. He even told precisely how he had tricked Hogan and Danvers into having guns in their hands when he shot them.
That’s it, feller,’ he concluded.
‘Crazy, like I said,’ the whore muttered.
Stanton’s eyes were dead again. They had been since the half-breed revealed that Dan and Laura Warren escaped unscathed from the gun battle in the way station. He grunted with dissatisfaction and waved irritably at the woman to be quiet. Then his lips folded back to display the false dentures in a sneer.
‘Nice try, stranger. But I ain’t buyin’ your innocence just on account you rode into town on the horse of a man you murdered. I figure there’s more to it than that.’
‘Damn right,’ Forman agreed.
‘Weren’t no call for him to blast Luke and Arnie that way,’ Nugent added.
‘It certainly appears to have been wanton killing, Jethro,’ Maggie Woodward said shrilly as the elderly mayor continued to stare at Edge in horror.
Then Lovejoy gulped and nodded. ‘I agree,’ he said throatily. ‘We’re sorry we attempted to interfere, sheriff. You may be assured you have the backing of the present administration in dealing with this ... this trigger-happy...’
‘What d’you suggest, Mr. Mayor?’ Stanton growled sardonically. That I ask him nicely to surrender his guns and walk down to the jailhouse with me?’
‘For the record,’ Edge said, ‘the answer to that question is no. Had my drink. Said what I came here to say. Intend to take a bath now. Then bed down. Kill anyone who tries to stop me.’
He reached across to pick up the Winchester with his left hand and then got to his feet. His chair toppled over backwards.
‘Cool as they come,’ Conrad said in a loud whisper, moving away from the wall beside the entrance.
Edge canted the rifle to his shoulder and dropped his right hand from the revolver butt. As he went around one side of the table, the Negro approached from the other side.
‘I still ain’t buyin’ it!’ Stanton snarled. ‘Not with seventy-five thousand of town money missin’.’
‘And Arnie, Luke and Ed dead!’ Nugent reminded forcefully.
Conrad picked up the bottle and glass and took them to the bar. He went around behind the counter to place them out of sight beneath it. The whore moved away from him, still seeming totally indifferent to what was happening.
‘That’s how many adds up to three, feller,’ Edge told the squint-eyed lawman as he stepped out of the saloon and into the lobby.
His back was towards the whole group and he sensed their eyes staring at him. His requirements as he had outlined them were simple. But it was not going to be easy to meet them. Or, if it was, the deferred price would be high.
But he had already committed himself to a course of action and had completed what he set out to do thus far. The same fate which had caused Dan Warren to take a shot at him had a free hand again. The man called Edge was ready to select from whichever new courses of action were offered him.
‘Hold it, you murderin’ bastard!’ Forman barked. ‘Or get it in the back!’
Edge was midway across the lobby, angling towards the foot of the stairway. He halted and brought his trailing foot up alongside the other one.
‘Don’t kill him!’ Jethro Lovejoy squealed. ‘He has to go on trial!’
‘Hangin’s the right way!’ Stanton agreed, the legs of his chair scraping on the floor as he pushed it back and powered upright.
‘Drop the rifle, deputy killer!’ Nugent ordered.
Edge glanced back over his shoulder, turning only slightly from the waist.
Forman was still in a crouch, thrusting out at full arm’s stretch the little .22 Smith and Wesson he had drawn from inside his boot. Stanton was immediately behind him, displaying a smile that was only a shade different from his customary sneer. Nugent was advancing fast into the lobby, moving in a half circle to give Edge a wide berth on his way to the stairs. Both deputies glowered hatred at the half-breed. Lovejoy and Maggie Woodward showed just their heads around the doorframe: and trembled at the prospect of violence at close quarters. The section of bar where Conrad and Fay Reeves had been standing was outside Edge’s field of vision.
The half-breed unfisted his left hand and the Winchester slipped through and clattered to the wooden floor.
‘Now the gunbelt!’ Forman ordered.
He started to straighten and his partner broke into a short run for the foot of the stairs.
Edge moved both hands to the buckle of his belt. There was a strange expression of weary sadness on his lean, bristled face. It had been in place since he stepped out of the saloon: and did not alter by a single line as he powered into a whirling turn.
‘Get him!’ Stanton yelled.
Edge swung out his right foot: and his right hand moved to the butt of the Colt in a blur of speed.
Maggie Woodward screamed and was jerked into cover by Lovejoy.
The swinging foot hooked around a leg of the chair with the palette on it. Forman cursed and fired his small revolver. The crack of its report was almost masked by the thud of Edge’s shoulder and hip against the floor.
Nugent froze for an instant at the foot of the stairs as the bullet whined over Edge’s falling form and exploded splinters from the banister rail.
Forman cocked his gun, but wasted a vital second in sidestepping to avoid the chair tumbling towards him.
Edge fired from the hip and rolled over on to his back.
Forman announced his death with a gurgling sound. Then fell to his knees with just a small bloody hole in his throat. But there was massive bleeding from his severed jugular vein. The bullet remained lodged in his windpipe for a moment, but the power of his final exhalation was too forceful. He spat out the bullet as he toppled forward. In its wake came a great gush of bright crimson that inscribed a two-yard-long splas
h on the floor in front of him.
Nugent was moving again - taking the stairs two at a time. Then he threw himself full length to the steps, a hand far out ahead to reach for one of the discarded Colts.
Edge had to move his arm to adjust his aim.
Maggie Woodward started to scream - a long, strident, shrill sound on one constant note.
The half-breed’s elbow was in a pool of green oil paint spilled from the palette. As he turned his arm to draw a bead on the squint-eyed deputy, his elbow slithered in the wrong direction. His expression changed then, his eyes narrowing to glittering threads, his nostrils flaring and his lips pulling back to form his mouth into an animal snarl.
But the hatred which emanated from the contorted features with a seemingly palpable force was not directed at Nugent. Even though the deputy had scooped up a revolver, cocked it and thrust it between the banister rails.
For Nugent was just the instrument of the violent death that had always been inevitable. It could have been any finger curled around the trigger and taking first pressure to blast a .45 bullet into the body of Edge.
Frank Forrest had never done it. Nor Hal Douglas, Bob Rhett … John Scott … Billy Seward. During the war or after it. Nor any one of many Indians. Nor a Mexican bandit called El Matador. Nor Jonas Pike, who considered he should have married Beth instead of Edge. Nor any one of countless men and several women who had had good reason to be the instrument of his death in the violent past.
For fate had selected a man named Nugent. And had decided that the place of his death should be the lobby of the Palace Hotel in a Nebraska town called Democracy.
But the half-breed did not simply submit to the inevitable. Although he knew he had no chance of getting his gun back to the aim before Nugent fired, he made the attempt.
And, just for an instant, he thought the explosion that sounded in his ears was some dreadful portent of eternal damnation. But this momentary lapse into the useless abstract of imagination was corrected by the awesome evidence of his eyes. It was the deputy on the stairway who was dead. A jagged hole had been blasted in the banister rails and through this could be seen the mutilated remains of what once had been a man. From the waist down he was still in recognizable human form. But his torso and head were a crimson, featureless parody of what had existed a moment ago. At the instant of impact, the deputy was lifted and slammed against the wall. He seemed to remain there for a long time, frozen into immobility. Then the sheened covering of blood flowed. And shiny white bone could be seen. The skull with its eye sockets and the tobacco browned teeth. The rib cage and hip bones. The heart was revealed then, to be a darker shade of red than the tissue around it. The bunched intestines were a yellowish color. There was a ragged hole in the stomach and half digested food ran out, looking like vomit.
Time was warped, for all this was seen in only part of a second: before gravity forced the shattered corpse to tip forward on to the stairway then slide down, leaving a slimy crimson trail on the plush carpet.
A hand cracked against flesh and the shrill screaming was curtailed.
Edge powered to his haunches and then came erect, whirling to track the Colt towards the saloon entrance. But death had paid its grim visit and left.
Mayor Lovejoy was sagging against the doorframe, his once ruddy complexion the color of dirty snow. Fay Reeves was backing away from Maggie Woodward, the younger woman as indifferent as before while the older one glared angrily at her and rubbed the side of her jaw.
‘You’ll hang, stranger,’ Sheriff Stanton croaked, absently wiping the clean paintbrush with a soiled rag as his dead eyes watched the half-breed holster the Colt. ‘For murderin’ a peace officer in the act of resistin’ arrest. Three counts. Forman here in town and Hogan and Danvers out at the way station.’
‘Mrs. Woodward and me saw it with our own eyes,’ Lovejoy rasped. ‘It was the most cold-blooded, disgusting…’
The older woman forgot her pain and the whore to nod her agreement as the mayor’s voice trailed away.
‘And you’ll swing for committin’ the same crime, Power!’ Stanton went on, hurling away the brush and rag as he snapped his head around to fix the Negro with an unemotional stare. ‘One count. Nugent, while aidin’ and abettin’.’
Conrad Power was grinning as he broke open the double-barreled shotgun and used a thumbnail to eject two spent cartridges. Acrid smelling smoke curled out of both breeches. ‘I hear you talkin’ to me, but I don’t see you doin’ nothin’ about it, gent.’
‘Because he’s fresh out of helpers, the bastard!’ Fay Reeves spat.
Edge retrieved his Winchester, went to the foot of the stairs and stepped across the crumpled remains of Nugent.
‘Edge!’ the wan-faced mayor called shrilly, and the half-breed came to a halt, close to the top of the stairs.
‘You want something?’
Lovejoy was frightened by the weary tone of voice and the total lack of expression on the bristled face - the complete indifference of a man who had escaped death by a split-second and been responsible for the violent endings of two other lives. No more than half a minute ago.
‘Whatever Conrad Power told you, he was speaking as an individual. The present administration of this town will never condone the use of violence to achieve its aims.’
‘Didn’t tell him nothin’, Mr. Lovejoy,’ the Negro supplied, still grinning. ‘Exceptin’ that the gent here don’t never say nothin’ he don’t intend to do.’
Stanton moved out of the saloon and into the lobby. Whatever emotions he was experiencing behind his dead eyes took the easy-going attitude out of his gait and he walked on stiff legs, his body held woodenly erect. ‘Call a meetin’, Lovejoy!’ he ordered. ‘Fine words don’t do nothin’ to keep our town clean of filth!’
He shot a final glance towards Edge before he wrenched open the double doors and marched out.
‘Come, my dear,’ Lovejoy urged, taking Mrs. Woodward’s trembling arm. ‘We never thought we would see the day, I know - but necessity makes for strange bedfellows.’
He steered her carefully around the slumped corpse of Forman and made sure he blocked the shattered body of Nugent from her view. The double doors remained open after the couple had gone out into the cold night. Fresh, damp air continued to stream in, neutralizing the final remnants of gun-smoke.
‘I got the same aims as the mayor and them that back him, Mr. Edge,’ Conrad Power said, replacing the grin with an expression of grim determination. ‘But in a dirty fight a man that only punches clean is just bound to lose. Wouldn’t you say that?’
‘I’d say you aim high, feller,’ the half-breed answered, with a dispassionate glance down at the dead Nugent - just a pair of obviously human legs splayed out from a heap of blood-soaked pulp. Two hits and both above the belt.’
Chapter Five
From the windows of room seven, Edge could see several lights gleaming in the darkness. And a number of people were moving on the streets, heading for a building sited on the north-east corner of the intersection. He spent only a moment looking at the scene, illuminated by a brightening moon that was fast beginning to dominate a star-sprinkled sky as the clouds fled into the east. Then he used a blanket from the bed to drape the smashed window and turned to watch Fay Reeves come into the room, a pail of steaming water in each hand.
‘Conrad’s gone to get Amos Meek to take the corpses away,’ she announced. ‘He says you can move to another room if you want.’
‘Trouble enough in Democracy,’ he told her. ‘I wouldn’t want to put anybody to any more. This room’s fine.’
She righted the tub from where it had been kicked over by the deputy and emptied the pails into it. Then she went out, leaving the door open. Edge waited until she had made two more trips and the tub was half full before he stripped off his clothes. The town streets were deserted again by then, all those who had been roused from their beds now assembled in the town meeting hall on the opposite corner of the intersection.
He had used a bar of soap to lather himself by the time the whore returned with two final pails of water and a towel. She appraised his lean, hard body with a coldly professional look as he lowered himself into the tub and she tipped the new water over him.
‘This and the others…’ she said, trailing gentle fingers over the scar tissue on his left shoulder. ‘…from times when there wasn’t anyone like Conrad around.’
The other wounds she had seen were on his hip, thigh and arm. Most were indelible relics of the war. The most recent - a livid, puckered groove in his left arm - was the result of a life or death gunfight on the burning sands of a Nevada desert just a few short weeks ago.
‘Didn’t ask him to blast the deputy, ma’am,’ Edge answered, as he lathered his face and drew the razor from the neck pouch.
‘If he didn’t, you’d be dead.’ She backed away from him to stand by the undraped window. ‘Don’t you care about that, feller?’
Edge removed the long bristles with smooth, rasping strokes of the razor. Another relic of war time, more useful than the desultory conversation pieces of his wounds.
‘Yeah, I care. Because it means I owe him.’
She shook her head without looking at him. ‘He doesn’t think of it as a debt, feller. Maybe he even thinks that he owes you. Because you gave him an excuse to hit back at that bastard Stanton.’
Edge continued to shave, hearing movement in the lobby below. Footfalls on the polished floor, low-voiced talk and dragging sounds. He guessed that the town mortician had come to collect the bodies.
‘The sheriff’s pride was hurt, that’s all.’
‘Sure was!’ the whore muttered in a tone of grim satisfaction. ‘And he’s one proud bastard. Kill a man and he don’t feel anythin’ any more. It’s the livin’ that suffer, you know what I mean?’
‘For a while,’ Edge answered as he finished shaving and reached for one of his boots. He stropped the razor on its leather to hone the dulled blade.
Down below, the talk ended and the double doors banged close. Footfalls marked the progress of a man up the stairway.
EDGE: The Day Democracy Died Page 5