Edge: A Town Called Hate (Edge series Book 13)

by George G. Gilman

  “How far are you taking her?” the big man demanded.

  “All ready, Mr. Edge!” Billy called from outside. “The black gelding.”

  “Obliged,” Edge replied. “Now beat it, feller.”

  He had kept his back to the bystanders on the slow, shuffling route to the doorway. But he knew there was nothing to fear from that direction: aware that only the danger of reprisals held the men from doing more than willing him to escape Corners’ vengeance.

  “How far are you taking her?” the big man repeated, snarling, almost trembling with rage.

  Edge halted in the doorway and spread a thoughtful frown across his lean features. “Used to be a fine-looking woman,” he said reflectively. “Might have been different then. Now, I don’t reckon I’d like to go all the way with her.”

  “Give me an answer, man!” Corners ranted his anger putting a high pitch on his voice.

  The half-breed nodded. “Don’t want no excess baggage,” he said, curling a leg around her ankles and releasing his arm from around her. Then he withdrew the razor from her throat and shoved hard against her shoulder.

  With a shriek of alarm Dorrie tripped over Edge’s leg and crashed down across the threshold: plunging her head into the sticky heap of fresh horse droppings.

  Corners bellowed like a wild animal and the deputies lunged and crashed between the tables and chairs to retrieve their guns. Edge whirled and reached the black gelding in two strides. As he swung up into the saddle he saw a large crowd of people gathered in front of the courthouse, silent and wan-faced in the silvered moonlight. He plunged the razor back into the neck pouch and reached for the Winchester jutting from the boot.

  “No sweat, mister!” a man called tonelessly from the rear of the crowd. “About time somebody dropped that bitch in it.”

  Edge- heeled the gelding into a full-stretch gallop. He headed west because that was the way the horse was facing and was clattering across the trestle bridge as the four deputies lunged out of the saloon. Their Colts crackled, but the bullets decayed into the dust long before reaching the out-of-range target of the half-breed.

  “Mr. Edge!” a voice called from out of the moon shade of-range target of the half-breed.

  Edge hauled on the reins to bring the gelding to a skidding stop as the panting Billy stepped out on to the trail ahead of him.

  “Two up’ll slow me,” the half-breed told the man harshly.

  “Ain’t all that much rush, Mr. Edge,” Billy said with a grin, forcing out the words between gasps for breath. “I ain’t all that bright. But I ain’t all that stupid either. I fixed it so you’d have more time.”

  Billy drew a knife from the back of his belt and showed it to Edge. The half-breed eyed the glinting blade, then snapped his head around to look back across the bridge to the front of The Last Drop Hotel. He was in time to see three of the deputies leap towards their horses. Then, as they tried to lever themselves up, the stirrups plunged under their weight, dragging the saddles from the backs of the horses.

  “Guess that ought to slow ’em up some, Mr. Edge,” Billy yelled as the deputies collapsed hard into the dust of the street.

  Edge cracked lips in a humorless grin as he reached out a hand to haul the man up on to the horse behind him. “Guess you could say that’s a clear-cut cinch, Billy,” he replied.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  EDGE and his simple-minded passenger were long gone by the time the three deputies had commandeered new saddles and the fourth lawman had replaced his stolen horse. While the near-insanely enraged Corners used his mare to carry the hysterical Dorrie to the lumber mill, the quartet galloped over the bridge and out on to the trail. Corners bellowed a warning to them - not to come back into town unless they had the drifter with them. Then he carried the sobbing woman up the long stairway to the living quarters on the top floor of the mill.

  The grim-faced deputies had clear sign to follow on the trail through the scattered tree stumps for the gelding with two men up left deep impressions in the dust of the long summer. But amid the towering pines on the rising ground, deep shadow cloaked the trail. The deputies were a half mile into the trees, nearing the crest of the rise, when they realized their quarry had veered to the side. The tracks left by their own horses obliterated those which had been imprinted by the gelding and it was a tediously slow chore to find the point at which Edge had spurred away from the trail. And even when they found the traces they were looking for, the near dense blackness within the forest made further tracking impossible before morning.

  Fearful of catching the backlash of Corners’ residual anger, the four men smoked several cigarettes in tense silence: stretching out the wasted time to a duration that they hoped would appear reasonable to the big man. Then they started back along the trail to town: breaking into a gallop when they saw the unmistakable silhouette of Corners outlined against a lighted window on the top floor of the lumber mill.

  “He looks mad, even from here,” one of the men called above the beat of hooves.

  “The hell with it,” a red-headed man responded. “It’s worth a balling out.”

  “How’s that?” the deputy with the cleft chin wanted to know.

  “Seeing that stuck-up bitch of a niece covered in horse-shit.”

  The squint-eyed man who had commented on Corners’ appearance at the window spat into the slipstream. “That weren’t nothin’ to what’s gonna be flying around ’til the boss sees the drifter dead,” he predicted.

  “Which ain’t gonna be one easy thing to see,” the fourth galloping rider muttered to himself, with a grimace that emphasized the livid knife scar under his left eye.

  Edge was not thinking of either life or death as Billy McNally slid to the ground and pointed towards the cabin crouched at one side of a small clearing in the pine trees.

  “Ain’t nobody but me knows about this place, Mr. Edge,” the man announced proudly, a broad beam on his moon face.

  The half-breed was thinking about food and sleep and before he slid from the saddle he had decided that the simpleton’s hideaway offered good prospect of fulfilling the latter need.

  “You sure of that, feller?” he asked.

  He raked his eyes around the clearing and settled his hooded gaze upon Billy. The man’s smile faded fast and he hung his head and shuffled his feet.

  “Well, Mr. Edge ... I guess it’s just ’cause I figure it for my special place than I tell myself no one else knows about it.” He looked up suddenly and started to speak fast, his dark, normally placid eyes shining. “But I ain’t never seen no one else up here ’cepting my Pa, Mr. Edge. When he comes lookin’ for me after I’ve been missin’ for a couple of days.”

  Edge looked long at Billy, then cracked the kind of smile that came as close as he was able to display amusement. “No sweat, feller,” he placated gently hanging the gelding’s reins forward across the animal’s head. He slid the Winchester from the boot and started towards the cabin. ‘It’s just got to be safer than a room at The Long Drop, I guess.”

  There was no lock on the door and just the single window at the front. It had been built a long time ago and showed many signs of inexpert repair. The roof and walls had been patched in several places by nailing odd lengths of timber over the holes.

  “See how I fixed it up to keep it warm and dry, Mr. Edge?” Billy said excitedly, proudly.

  “You did a good job,” Edge allowed absently as he pushed open the door. He struck a match on the jamb and held it aloft. There was just the one room furnished with a table, chair and bunk. The furniture looked as ill-used as the cabin. On the bunk was an ancient mattress that seemed to have lost most of its feather guts before several rents were roughly stitched together. There was a pot-bellied stove against one wall.

  As Edge crossed the threshold, Billy darted around him and crouched down beside the bunk. He dragged a cardboard carton out from underneath and Edge saw the shine of several cans before the match went out.

  “Supplies,” Billy announced.
“You’re welcome to use ’em, Mr. Edge. Ain’t got no labels on ’em, so don’t know what’s in ’em.”

  “It’ll make meal-times fun,” Edge replied not bothering with another match.

  The first one had shown that the door and window at the front of the cabin were indeed, the only means of entry and exit. And when the effect of the match flare had faded and his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, enough moonlight penetrated the dirt-grimed window to show him the layout of the single room.

  “All right I leave now, Mr. Edge?” Billy asked, “Long way to go.”

  “Where?” Edge wanted to know.

  “Trasker. Thirty miles west of Corners.”

  The simple-minded man had no horse or gun. And no more than a dollar and a half in loose change. All he had going for him was the weather and determination.

  “Luck to you,” Edge told him, turning to go out through the door.

  Billy came out of the cabin as the half-breed was starting to unsaddle the gelding. “I’m gonna make it this time, Mr. Edge,” he said.

  “You gotta believe it,” Edge replied as he unbuckled the cinch.

  “Tried it better than ten times already. Best I did before Pa caught up with me was fifteen miles. But this time I’m gonna make it.”

  He sounded confident but his unintelligent face betrayed a kind of pathetic need for something. Edge slid the saddle from the back of the gelding and carried it into the cabin. When he re-emerged, Billy was still standing on the same spot.

  “Reckon I’ll be movin’ on now, Mr. Edge,” he said.

  Edge nodded catching hold of the reins on the horse.

  “Wished I had a gun,” Billy said. “Ain’t easy to catch food on the run with just a knife.”

  “Keep practicing,” Edge told him, and led the gelding around to the rear of the cabin.

  There was a water barrel there under a down pipe from the roof gutter. It was filled with old rain that looked dirty. But the horse drank gratefully after Edge had ground hobbled him. When the half-breed returned to the front of the cabin, Billy McNally was standing in the middle of the clearing.

  “I figured we was friends, Mr. Edge,” he called his tone heavy with sadness. “You got a rifle and a handgun both.”

  “It’s that kind of unequal world, Billy” Edge told him.

  “Pa always says a friend in need is a friend indeed,” the simpleton challenged.

  Edge sighed. “Your Pa ain’t so bright either,” he responded. “A friend in need is the kind to stay away from.”

  Even across the distance that separated them, Edge could see the anger twisting Billy’s features. I’m sorry I ever helped you, Mr. Edge,” he snarled, and whirled around. His stride was purposeful.

  “Billy!” Edge called.

  The man halted and turned happy relief flooding his features. “Yeah, Mr. Edge?”

  “One favor deserves another.”

  “That sure is right, Mr. Edge.”

  He started forward, on the point of breaking into a run. But Edge halted him abruptly by raising a hand, palm outwards.

  “You said Trasker’s west of here?”

  Billy nodded, Edge’s stance, expression and tone of voice causing his delight to abate rapidly. Edge folded his raised hand into a fist then jutted out his index finger and swung his arm to point in the opposite direction to the one Billy had been headed for.

  “West is that way” the half-breed said.

  Billy was bewildered for a moment, then he turned again, and started off in the direction Edge was indicating. “Real sorry what I done for you!” the simpleton shouted back. “You ain’t no better than Corners and his men.”

  “I’m better,” Edge muttered, low so that only he could hear the words. “I’m still living.”

  Then he went into the cabin and closed the door. He moved to the window and watched the tall, frail-looking Billy until the simpleton had gone from sight into the trees. then he moved along each wall of the cabin, testing the strength of the timber with the butt of his Colt. There was an area of damp rottenness at the rear, but it was not extensive enough for anything better than a jack-rabbit to burrow through. In the rear slope of the low pitch roof there was a patched hole large enough for a man to gain entry or exit. The table was stronger than the chair and gave Edge sufficient height to reach the roof with ease. It needed only slight pressure to force up the timber repair, the nails creaking free. He allowed the boarding to slide down the slope into the guttering. Then he climbed down to the dirt floor, leaving the table beneath the hole, and dragged the bunk across to the window.

  The humidity seemed to get higher as the night grew older and he sweated a lot. More salty moisture coursed his flesh as he hammered open two of the cans from the carton, using the butt of the Colt. Then the sweat dried as he sat on the side of the bunk and ate a meal of cold beans and salted beef, scooping the food from the jagged cans with his fingers. He felt no sense of loss or regret about the spartanly comfortable room at The Last Drop or the restaurant on the other side of the doorway in the saloon. A combination of circumstances outside his control and his reactions to them had removed such relative luxuries out of reach. He accepted such events as the facts of his kind of life.

  The meal over, he drew the Winchester from the saddle boot and leaned it against the side of the bunk. Then he stretched out on the slack mattress, fully-dressed to the extent of not removing his gun belt. He pushed his hat forward over his face to hide the pale moonlight from his eyes. Then he went to sleep: taking the kind of rest that was just as much a heritage of the violent years as everything about the man when awake. Sleep came fast, to make the most of however little time he would be allowed to rest. And it was shallow, his brain and body drawing refreshment without being fully relaxed. So that his mind was constantly alert to pick up signs of threatened danger and his physical responses were poised to take avoiding action.

  Thus it was that he heard the approach of the rider and snapped open his eyes. For only a part of a second he stared into the pitch dark of the underside of his hat: his waking mind sliding smoothly into action from the trigger of the danger warning. He strained his ears to pin-point the direction from which the man was coming, then began to rise: tipping the hat on to his head and reaching for the Winchester.

  He had so positioned the bunk that as he sat up, he could see the entire clearing from the window. It had been the snap of a dried twig under a hoof that had penetrated into his state of sleeping awareness. Now he heard the pine needle-muffled progress of the horse for several seconds before animal and rider came into view. The high moon shone a gentle, silvered light across the clearing and showed the man as a black silhouette against the less solid darkness of the pine. The barrel of the rifle he was holding gleamed with a dull sheen.

  Edge watched from the window as the man dismounted and hitched his horse to a tree branch before stalking towards the cabin. Then the half-breed swung his feet to the dirt floor, rose and reached the table in two strides. He climbed up, reached through the hole in the roof and hauled himself out. He was as silent as a shadow and his movements were just as soundless as he inched up the slope of the roof and peered over the peak. The intruder was half-way across the clearing and had halted, some thirty feet from the front of the cabin. The eyes of the half-breed flicked to left and right, checking that the intruder was alone.

  “Hey!” the man called softly, nervously. “Mr. Edge? You in there, Mr. Edge?”

  The half-breed did not reply and, in the pause, the surrounding forest seemed to throb with the tension of silenced nature.

  “I don’t mean you no harm, Mr. Edge!” the man went on, his voice louder. His fear was more apparent.

  The heavy, expectant silence clamped down again and the man seemed rooted to the spot. Edge sensed he was torn between turning and fleeing on the run or striding towards the cabin. But when he moved it was to shuffle forward : in the awkward manner of a tall man forcing himself to take short steps. His rifle was canted across
the front of his body, pointed to the sky.

  “I was sent by the Citizens Committee, Mr. Edge,” he called, on the verge of stuttering as fear tightened a grip on his throat. “Name’s Maclean. I got picked. Didn’t want to come out here. You in there, Mr. Edge?”

  Silence for a reply as he came within twenty feet of the cabin.

  “Honest, Mr. Edge. You ain’t gotta worry about me.”

  “What are you worried about, feller ?” Edge drawled.

  The man was rooted to the spot now, held by a bolt of terror in an awkward posture of mid-stride. Unevenly balanced as if a mere breath of air would topple him. He tilted his head to look up at the roof and the moonlight bounced off a thousand beads of sweat standing out against his face. His wide eyes and gaping mouth looked like depthless pits against the wet, pale surround of the skin. Edge recognized him as a member of the second group of men who had entered the saloon.

  His mouth closed and opened several times before he could force out the taut words. “Hell, you near scared me to death!”

  “Ain’t a reliable method,” Edge replied, pulling the Winchester up from his side and drawing a bead on the man. “Never replace this one.”

  The man began to quake. “Please, Mr. Edge!” he begged. “I didn’t want to come. We drew lots. I’m just a dentist for Christ sake.”

  “We’re in the same business, in a manner of speaking,” Edge said.

  Maclean gulped. “What?”

  Edge didn’t take his hooded eyes off the man below him. He pursed his lips, then sucked them in and spat. It was a direct hit into the gutter at the front of the cabin. “You don’t drop that rifle I might just drill you, feller. Filling’ll be the lead kind.”

  Maclean stared at his rifle for a stretched second, then hurled it away from him as though it were hot. “Only brought it in case I was spotted leaving town and they trailed me,” he explained hurriedly.

  “Careful men lead longer lives,” Edge told him, maintaining the aim of the Winchester. It was pleasant up on the roof, a little cooler than inside the cabin. “But there are exceptions to every rule. How’d you know I was here, feller?”