“Reckon the stink of you won’t bother your boyfriend,” Edge told the woman.
Dorrie’s high excitement nose-dived into a fit of rage as she dragged her wide eyes away from the mutilated face of Bradbury to glare at Edge. “You ain’t won yet, mister!” she snarled.
She grabbed the bottle of champagne, leaned forward and shook it violently with her thumb over the top. Edge sidled back to his former position at the bar. Nobody watched him. All eyes were on the woman as she directed the neck of the bottle towards Bradbury and removed her thumb. A white gush of foam jetted into the face of the deputy and sprayed away, tinted red by the blood. Bradbury shook his head and groaned as he tried to dodge the vicious pounding of the wine against a new seat of agony.
“Get up you yellow rat!” Dorrie screamed as the bottle was emptied. “A bum insults me and you take a dive as soon as he touches you.”
“Dorrie, he’s had enough!” Ernie implored, staring in horror at Bradbury as the injured man rolled over on to his stomach.
“Shut your mouth, Bucher!” the woman ranted. “Or go get the bum yourself.”
Ernie Bucher looked fearfully across at Edge. The half-breed was leaning against the bar, drinking his beer: left-handed, so that his right could caress the holster with long, brown-skinned fingers. The deputy clamped his lips tightly together and pressed himself hard against the back of his chair.
“Come on get up!” Dorrie shrieked.
Bradbury forced himself on to all fours and rested.
“Not only smells like one,” Edge muttered into the hot silence punctuated by the deputy’s pained breathing. “Sounds like a latrine digger, too.”
“You hear that, you yellow rat?” Dorrie taunted Bradbury.
The man pushed up with his hands and held a kneeling position for long moments, raking his agony-misted eyes around the faces of the men at the bar. His vision cleared and his gaze zeroed in on Edge. With agonizing slowness, he extricated a foot from under him, stayed kneeling on one leg for a moment, then pushed himself upright. The pain in his crotch would not allow him to stand fully erect and he swayed, leaning forward from the waist.
“He can’t take any more, mister!” Bucher implored.
“Go get that bum, George!” Dorrie yelled.
Now that the worst of the blood had been washed from his face Bradbury’s nose could be seen as a misshapen pulp with the white of bone and gristle showing amid the ghastly redness. He lumbered forward, feet dragging and arms hanging limp.
“She’s making a monkey out of you,” Edge called softly.
Just as he had sensed the high excitement of the preacher out on the street in the afternoon sun, so now Edge felt the anticipation generated by the men at the far end of the bar. Men who sensed he was being pushed too far: that asked to finish the fight for a second time, he would leave no opportunity for another comeback. Men who smelt death in the stiflingly humid air of the saloon.
“Slaughter him, George!”
The woman’s words were like a physical force slamming into Bradbury’s back. The deputy planted his feet firmly on the floor and leaned forward hard, bringing up his arms. The hands were not even clenched into fists. Edge released the glass and it crashed to the bar-rail, shattering and splashing beer across the floor. His boots crunched the shards into sparkling dust as he stepped sideways. Bradbury fell past him, scrabbling up his hands to clutch at the bar counter. Edge’s right hand moved as a blur streaking upwards then powering down. The heel of the hand chopped into the hirsute flesh just above Bradbury’s shirt collar.
The speed of the man’s fall was increased fourfold and his throat smashed into the angle of the bar top and front with the spatter of burst flesh and the crack of fractured bone. Utter silence accompanied the slide of Bradbury’s body to the floor. When he was motionless blood oozed from the split skin of his throat. His head lolled at a grotesque angle.
Footfalls sounded on the other side of the bar and Edge looked up to see Billy McNally coming through a doorway. The simple face wore a creased frown as he leaned over to look down at the crumpled body of Bradbury.
“That one always was lookin’ for trouble, Mr. Edge,” the mentally retarded man said, nodding knowledgeably.
“Then I guess he had to win either way,” Edge muttered, stretching out a hand. The elder McNally pushed the Winchester towards the half-breed. “He either married it or got it in the neck from me.”
CHAPTER THREE
“GEORGE!” Dorrie screamed, lunging from her chair and racing across the room. She halted abruptly to stare down in gaping horror at the unmoving, grotesquely postured form of Bradbury.
“He ain’t listening,” Edge said. “Should have done that while he was still alive.”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” the woman moaned, and looked up into the moon face of Billy McNally and the nervousness of his father; then towards the tense expressions shown by the audience of men at the end of the bar. “I didn’t mean for anyone to get killed!”
Her voice rose and she whirled around to face Edge her blue eyes blazing against the paleness of her blemish-free complexion. Suddenly, she flung up her hands, fists clenched. Hoof beats clattered against the street outside. Dorrie lunged at Edge.
The half-breed pushed the Winchester towards the woman, sideways on, to form a bar against her plunging arms. A moment of silence in the sticky heat of the saloon was ended by the unmistakable click of a revolver being cocked. Dorrie gave a cry of pain as her forearms crashed against the rifle. Edge remained facing her, but his ice blue eyes swiveled along their hairline slits. He saw Bucher half raised from his chair, in process of snapping his ready-cocked Colt from its holster.
Edge drew, flicked his wrist to aim in the gap between his own and the woman’s body, and fired. The shot was meant to kill, but the deputy lunged upright from his chair at the moment he leveled the revolver. His finger was already squeezing the trigger when the bullet from Edge’s Colt burrowed into the flesh of his thigh. The impact of the lead turned him a fraction before he started to topple. His own gun cracked.
“It’s Mr. Corners!” Billy shouted.
Dorrie screamed and Edge felt the warm wetness of blood splash across his cheek. Bucher groaned and crashed over a table and on to the floor. Luke Corners ducked his head and rode a white mare into the saloon. He was carrying a double-barreled shotgun.
Edge’s glinting eyes changed the direction and focus of their stare to look at Dorrie. Both her arms were hanging over the bar of the Winchester and her chin was hooked on to the clenched fist with which Edge gripped the rifle. Her eyes were screwed tight shut and a curtain of running blood masked the lower part of her right cheek. It issued from a deep furrow that cut across the flesh from under her hair to her upper lip. She was conscious, but draping all her weight on to the powerfully held gun.
“Dorrie!” Corners roared. “What happened to you?”
He had halted his snorting mount on the threshold and completed a rapid, glowering appraisal of the scene before him. Now, as his eyes were captured by the mutilating wound in the woman’s face, concern and quivering rage did battle across his ill-used countenance. Hot silence followed the demand for information.
“Guy with the bum leg shot her” Edge replied easily.
Bucher had struggled into a sitting posture, using both hands to try to stem the gush of blood from his thigh wound. “I meant to blast the drifter, Mr. Corners!” he pleaded through teeth clenched against the pain. “Bastard plugged me.”
Corners’ shifted his gaze from the drunkenly-leaning woman to the pain-wracked Bucher, then settled on Edge.
“Mr. Edge shot in self defense,” Billy yelled, resolutely holding his position as his father scuttled out of the line of fire.
Corners released his hold on the reins and tilted up the shotgun, gripping it in both hands. Edge, his hooded-eyed, thin-lipped face set in an expression of rock-like impassiveness stepped backwards and turned his body slightly making sure the massive
man on the white horse could see the pointing Colt. Without the Winchester to support her, Dorrie fell hard to her knees. She yelled in pain and toppled forward to drape her body across the corpse of Bradbury. Holding on to consciousness, she struggled to rise. But pain and shock had drained her strength and her scrabbling hands slithered in the mixture of her own and the dead man’s blood.
“There’s been nothing but trouble in this town since you got here!” Corners snarled, careful not to aim the ugly twin muzzles of the shotgun at Edge: canting the gun so that it pointed at the floor a few feet in front of the half-breed.
Edge cracked his lips into a frozen grin. He thrust the Winchester gently across in front of his legs to nudge the struggling Dorrie in the shoulder. “One of those days, I guess,” he drawled. “Just one lousy thing on top of another.”
The sardonic comment fed fresh fuel to the fire of Corners’ rage and he snatched his glaring gaze away from the calmly detached features of Edge. He stared into the faces of the audience of men at the end of the bar and spotted massed scorn for his frustration in the instant before they cowered away from his rage.
Every watching eye saw the unique sight of the powerful Luke Corners facing up to the defeat which would be marked by inaction. But the big man on the horse refused to surrender as more hoof beats sounded on the street.
“You blasted my only kin, Bucher!” he roared, swinging the shotgun around and raising it to thud the stock into his shoulder.
“Mr. Corners!” the helpless deputy shrieked, struggling pathetically to get to his feet. “I was—”
Corners squeezed both triggers at once. Bucher had half-risen, hauling himself up by a two-handed grip on the table. The double load of shot went high as the gun bucked. But not high enough. The lower sections of the scatter gouged into Bucher at eye level and went deep, tearing loose flesh and shattering bone. The man died instantly, smashing back to the floor as a great stream of blood, bone, gristle and pulpy brain matter gushed from the jagged hole in his skull.
“Holy cow what a way to go!” Billy yelled gleefully.
“Mind blowing,” Edge muttered as Dorrie made it back up to her knees.
Corners’ four surviving deputies raced their horses up to the front of the hotel and leapt from their saddles. They ran into the saloon with revolvers drawn, two on each side of the mounted man. They pulled up short, their tough exteriors concealing every other emotion except surprise as they raked their hard-eyed stares over the blood-stained saloon. Then they glanced up at Corners for an order.
The big man turned in the saddle and thrust the still-smoking shotgun into a specially made boot. He glanced first at the knot of men who formed the audience for the slaughter and gave a grunt of satisfaction when he saw the fear they displayed through their horror.
“Keep the drifter covered,” he instructed, his voice pitched at a normal level again. “I’m going to get my niece.”
He started to dismount as Dorrie hooked blood-dripping hands over the top of the bar and hauled herself upright.
“Don’t you trust him, Mr. Edge!” Billy warned.
“Billy!” his father cried.
Corners stepped to the floor. “It’s okay McNally,” he placated. “He’s too stupid to know any better. And I make allowances for stupidity.”
His glowering eyes did not support his easy tone as he moved across the saloon, with his deputies side-stepping to have clear shots around him at Edge.
“Your allowance is an hour, drifter,” the big man continued as he approached the half breed. “Only one man could have killed George Bradbury. That’s you. Murder in the first degree I’d say.”
Edge’s gleaming teeth and glinting eyes seemed to generate a physical force that brought Corners to a halt six feet away from him. The Winchester was still held low pointing at the floor. The Colt aimed at Corners’ flat, hard-looking belly.
“You’re still in town after an hour, I’ll arrest you,” the big man challenged.
Beads of sweat coursed down the freshly-shaved faces of both men. Neither raised a hand to brush away the moisture. The droplets splashed from their jaws to their shirt fronts.
“You’re gonna just let him ride out?” Dorrie gasped. “After what he done?”
The blood had dried in a sheet on her lower face. As she twisted her features into a look of hate a thousand tiny cracks appeared in the slick red covering.
“Keep quiet, Dorrie,” Corners said with soft-voiced anger that was no longer directed entirely at Edge. “I’ve no doubt you had a hand in starting the trouble here.”
“Wouldn’t say that,” Edge drawled.
“She did too! “Billy yelled.
“Not a hand,” Edge told Corners. “It’s that mouth of hers.”
The half-breed released the Winchester and the clatter it made against the floor caused an instant of startlement within everyone in the saloon. Dorrie was frozen in mid-stride as she took her first step away from the bar. In that moment, Edge was the only man to move. He went forward, clear of Bradbury’s body. Corners leaned back in alarm, mouth springing open to yell an order. The cold grin was still carved on Edge’s face.
“Your offer sounds a good one sheriff,” the half-breed said, and holstered his Colt.
The action of apparent surrender extended the moment of surprise caused by the unexpected noise. Then Edge began to raise his hands and instead of a command, it was a hiss of amazement that issued from Corner’s mouth. The deputies’ trigger fingers were white with tension as they crooked around the metal.
“Mr. Edge!” Billy muttered in disgust.
The half-breed sprang to the side, his left arm forming into a wide hook and his right hand flashing to the back of his neck. His splayed feet thudded to the floor behind Dorrie as she started forward again. His left arm hooked around her body just beneath her thrusting breasts. His right hand rested across her shoulder, clenched into a fist around the handle of the razor. The blade, gleaming brighter than the lawmen’s badges in the lamplight, was laid against the woman’s throat.
“Don’t!” Corners implored with a roar.
“Like I say” Edge responded evenly as the deputies leaned forward, pushing out their guns but not daring to tighten their curled fingers. “Sounds a good offer. But I’m overbidding, feller. Putting up the dame’s life for what it’s worth. You get to keep your hour. I’ll ride out now.”
“You didn’t trust him!” Billy yelled, filled with joy again.
“Not on your life, Billy,” Edge replied, “which won’t be a long one if you stick around in Hate.”
“Uncle Luke?” Dorrie pleaded breathlessly as Edge’s tight grip constricted her lungs.
“What’s the deal?” Corners snarled from the depths of his angry frustration.
“The muscle toss their guns out of the door,” Edge instructed.
“Do it!” Corners barked, not taking his dark eyes off the lean face of the half-breed, still sweat-run and speckled with the spots of blood which had sprayed from Dorrie’s wound.
The tacit excitement generated by the group of men at the far end of the bar seemed to vibrate in the hot air which reeked of exploded powder from the shotgun blast. The deputies hesitated only a moment before reluctantly turning to toss their guns out into the street.
“Now what?” Corners demanded.
Dorrie began to tremble against Edge. A pulse started to work frantically in her throat and then she struggled to hold her breath as the honed sharpness of the razor dug into her flesh.
“Billy?” Edge said.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Edge,” the simple-minded man replied at once his moon face breaking out into a smile. He had been sunk into a slough of depression since Edge had warned him of the repercussions of his participation.
“Pick up the money I left on the bar” Edge told him. “That’s your stake.”
“Couldn’t do that, Mr. Edge,” Billy replied ruefully, shaking his head.
Edge could not see the expression or the negative action
. But he picked up the tone and an icy anger showed in his hooded eyes. “Why the hell not?” he demanded acidly.
“Ain’t done nothin’ to earn no money Mr. Edge.”
“Advance payment,” Edge told him. “To earn it, you come out from behind the bar, pick up my rifle and take it outside.”
“I can sure do that” Billy announced, gleeful once more. He began to shovel the loose change into his pocket.
“Then you hook the rifle on to the saddle of one of the deputies’ horses, Billy,” Edge went on. “Don’t matter which one. Mr. Corners wouldn’t let any of his help ride a broken down nag, I guess.”
“After murder, horse-stealing’s nothing,” Corners muttered grimly as Billy climbed over the bar and scooped up the fallen Winchester.
Edge formed his lips into a tight line to hide his teeth, then pursed them and spat. The globule of moisture hit the floor between the big man’s highly polished boots. “I’m a real mean bastard,” he rasped, and cracked the smile again. “Guess I got to hang now.”
“Billy, don’t do it!” the elder McNally croaked as his son moved fearfully between the docile mare and tense deputies to reach the doorway.
Neither Billy nor anyone else paid attention to the old man’s plaintive plea.
‘‘You won’t hang, drifter,” Corners snarled. “You’ll die a lot slower than that when I catch up with you.”
The white mare emptied her bowels. She lifted her tail and the dung exploded from her. Steam rose from the heaped mess in the doorway and emanated its nauseatingly sweet stench into the saloon.
“Not exactly from the horse’s mouth, feller,” Edge replied, taking a step forward and forcing Dorrie to move ahead of him. “But she sure enough said it for me.”
He steered the terrified woman on a curving course, swinging wide of Corners. The big man turned to watch Edge and his captive every inch of the way. The deputies barring passage to the door held their positions for a few moments, then stepped aside. All four flicked their expectant gazes from Corners to Edge and back again.
Edge: A Town Called Hate (Edge series Book 13) Page 4