“Cyrus McNally’s on the Citizens Committee, Mr. Edge. Lot of folks saw you ride off with Billy up behind you. Cyrus told us Billy often come to this old place when he’d done somethin’ wrong. We figured it was worth a try.”
“Try for what?”
Maclean still seemed incapable of moving his feet. But he was able to raise an arm and wipe away most of the sweat on his face with a shirt sleeve. “Find you and warn you Luke Corners ain’t the kind of man to forget a grudge, Mr. Edge.”
Edge nodded. “Obliged. Be obliged again if you’d beat it and let me get back to sleep.”
“Weren’t all I come for, Mr. Edge,” the dentist hurried on.
“Talk’s almost as cheap as life,” the half-breed invited. “But lost sleep could be too high a price to pay unless I got something I don’t already have.”
Maclean swallowed hard. “Corners has posted a reward for you, Mr. Edge. Five thousand dollars. And not just to his deputies. Woke up the whole town to make the announcement. And he told us he’s sent one of his boys into Trasker. To hire some gunslingers. He figures to have you hunted down no matter where you go.”
Edge thought about this for a moment and the forest came alive with low volume noise again as the animals and insects adapted to the voices of the men and recommenced their nocturnal business.
“Still ain’t all,” Edge said at length. “Folks of Hate don’t owe me anything. Even a warning.”
Maclean pumped his head in agreement. “That’s right, Mr. Edge. But it sure did the folks some good to see the way you stood up to Corners and give him the run around, the bastard.”
“Weren’t for anybody’s benefit but mine,” Edge told him.
“That don’t matter,” Maclean said quickly as he suspected Edge was about to continue. “It got folks to thinkin’. We lived so long with that bastard runnin’ us we got to believe there weren’t no other way. But you showed us different, Mr. Edge.”
Edge sighed. “You gonna get to the point, or are you just here to needle me, feller?”
“We can raise a thousand dollars,” Maclean blurted out.
“Don’t reckon that’ll be enough to buy him off,” the half breed replied wryly.
“For you to run Corners and his boys outta town,” Maclean went on as if there had been no interruption. “Be in your interest, too. Apart from the money. Especially if you kill the bastard. Then he won’t be around to hire no guns to go lookin’ for you, Mr. Edge.”
Edge did not take time to consider the offer and he spoke with the easy confidence of a man whose hip pocket bulged with the best part of five thousand dollars. “Go back to Hate and raise the money, feller.”
Delight spread across the upturned face. “Sure thing, Mr. Edge.” He started to turn.
“Then!” Edge called, louder.
The dentist swung his attention back to the half-breed. “Yeah?” Excitedly.
“Roll each bill up tight,” Edge replied. “And stick them up the collective ass of the Citizens Committee.”
Maclean’s moment of happiness was frozen on his sweat-run features for long seconds. Then the abysmal depths of his disappointment became evident.
“Sorry you been troubled,” he said dejectedly.
“Likewise,” Edge told him coldly.
“Can I take my rifle?”
“Sure. You might be able to use it to shove those bills where I told you. Won’t be no guts to—”
“I got the message of what you think of us,” Maclean cut in. Then he stooped, picked up the rifle, turned and strode back to where his horse was hitched.
The rifle shot cracked obscenely across the low murmur of forest sound. There was no echo and the split-second of silence that followed the explosion was absolute. Then Maclean punctured it with a ghastly scream. He had one foot in the stirrup and was hoisting himself up on to the horse. The bullet took him in the jaw on a rising trajectory, burrowing through the flesh, smashing into his lower teeth and then tunneling upwards to burst open the roof of his mouth and kick into his brain. It was a very shrill, very short scream. Then he was silent in death as the impact of the bullet sailed his twitching body through the air and thudded it to the ground.
The half-breed saw nothing of this. He heard the gunshot, saw the brief flare of a muzzle flash, then angled his body to the side and rolled down the slope of the roof. Maclean’s scream split the humid air as Edge smacked into the gutter. He powered himself down to land on his feet just as the dead man thudded to the ground.
The shot had come from the trees on the left of the clearing. Edge went towards the right, running around the nervously snorting horse and angling away from the cabin to keep its bulk between himself and the rifleman until he reached the cover of the trees. The grass of the open space muffled his footfalls at first, then he was on the deep carpet of pine needles. Once in the protection of the tall uprights of the trunks, he changed direction. He walked now, taking long strides, doubling back across the rear of the cabin. The shot and the scream which followed it had a more traumatic effect on the creatures of the forest than had the voices of the men. It took a full minute for the low murmuring to begin again and by that time the half-breed was in the trees at the side of the clearing, thirty feet back from where he had seen the flash of the exploded shell. He was as motionless as the trees all around him, ears straining for the slightest sound which struck an alien note.
When it came, it was a gentle thud—on the far side of the clearing. The narrowed eyes glinted in recognition and the thin lips curled in the familiar humorless grin. Maclean’s killer was a crack shot with a rifle but lacked the ability for original thought. He had tossed a small rock in an attempt to mislead the half-breed.
Edge moved forward, flitting like a silent shadow. He remained erect and zigzagged from tree to tree, merging into the cover of each gnarled trunk as he reached it. At each brief halt, he looked out into the clearing, to where Maclean’s horse stood like a statue beside the slumped body of the dentist. Moonlight made a bright pool of the animal’s eye and emphasized the taut black points of the pricked ears. The horse’s fearful attention was riveted upon the spot among the trees where Edge felt certain the rifle man was waiting.
The half-breed took three more silent strides, then froze as a rustling noise reached him. The horse snorted and the gelding behind the cabin responded in like manner. Edge saw the small, dark rock sail across the clearing: heard the more muffled sound as it missed the pines and impacted with the time-rotted needles. He was within ten feet of the man now. He stepped to the side and saw him.
A bulky man, hunched into a crouch, looking towards the cabin but hidden from it. Exposed at the rear and sides. Edge blinked sweat beads from his eyelashes and raised the Winchester stock to his shoulder.
“Pull that trigger and you’ll sprout wings - about here!”
The voice was soft, but clear, speaking from close behind Edge. A gun muzzle thudded into the centre of the half breed’s back as the man spoke the final word. The crouching man swung his head around and Edge recognized the features formed into an evil grin - the deputy with the knife scar beneath his right eye. It took just an instant of thought to decide Edge’s reaction to the voice and gun. Maclean had been killed instead of him. To flush him out into the open and get the drop on him. Words and the solid threat of the gun. Corners wanted him alive. In the next instant a man died. He ended his life with a grin and a broken heart. Edge squeezed the trigger and the bullet smashed into the deputy’s chest just below his tin star. It rifled through the rapidly beating heart, stopping it instantly. Then it burst clear at the back, chased out by a gush of crimson.
Again the half-breed had no time to see the effect of a rifle shot. Corners’ wish would not have precedence over a man’s ardent desire to survive. The man behind him was confident his order would be obeyed and Edge had to grasp the slim advantage of shattering surprise to implement his own instinct for self-preservation. In the sliver of time it took the man’s mind to adjust to t
he totally unexpected, Edge acted. He folded forward from the waist and launched a vicious back heel. The man fired his rifle and Edge felt the bullet ripple the hairs on the nape of his neck before it bored a hole in his hat brim.
The heel of his boot sank into the sparse flesh beneath the man’s kneecap and he screamed. Edge forced himself to fall sideways, turning his body as he went down. He thudded to the ground in a splayed-legged sitting position, the ready-cocked Winchester aimed. The deputy with the cleft chin was sunk on to his hurt knee, his face contorted by pain and terror as his hands scrabbled at the lever action of his rifle.
“No chance, feller,” Edge warned softly.
The deputy forced down the lever. Edge squeezed the trigger. The bullet smashed into the crooked knee of the good leg. It splintered the bone to the accompaniment of a wailing scream and burrowed through the flesh encasing the femur. The man fell backwards, flinging his rifle high into the air and reaching both hands to his new injury. He continued to vent his agony as Edge climbed casually to his feet and stepped across to tower above the shaking body. The piercing sound did not stop until the muzzle of the half-breed’s Winchester was lowered against the pulsing throat. The whites of the man’s near popping eyes seemed to gleam with the light of the agony coursing through him.
“Please?” he pleaded, his voice a harsh croak. “It was Christian’s idea.” Saliva bubbled out of the corner of his mouth and ran down his chin.
“What’s religion got to do with it?” Edge muttered sardonically, steadying the rifle as the man’s Adam’s apple bobbed.
“My buddy!” the deputy whined through clenched teeth. “Frederick H. Christian. He figured we could trail the dentist and get led to you. I just come along to—”
“Fit me with a pair of wings,” Edge cut in. “But turns out Fred’s an angel all of a sudden.”
“What d’you want with me, mister?” the agony-wracked deputy implored. “Gee—”
“Report,” Edge barked.
“What?”
“Fill me in,” the half-breed explained in the same harsh tones. “How’d he know Mclean was headed out to find me?”
“He had an in with the Citizens Committee,” the man replied quickly, anxious to comply in the hope that the half-breed towering above him would show compassion.
“Who?”
“Honest, I don’t know, mister.” The possibility that he would survive transcended his pain and the deputy’s voice was stronger. More ingratiating. “If I knew, no reason why I shouldn’t tell you?”
“Guess that’s right,” Edge agreed. “So we got nothing else to talk about.”
Terror seemed to rise from the deputy in visible waves, like heat shimmer in a desert. “Don’t shoot me, mister?” he pleaded.
“Okay,” Edge said easily.
Relief expanded a wet stain from the crotch of the deputy’s pants. Edge tilted the Winchester away from the pulsing throat. Then he powered down into a stoop, his left hand streaking to the back of his neck. It came away even faster, with a metallic flash from the moonlight on the blade. The action was so swift the man on the ground did not have time to reflect his fear on his face. The point of the razor plunged into the flesh beneath one of his ears and went deep. Edge drew the blade in a vicious arc and did not pull it clear until it nicked the lobe of the other ear. The deputy died showing an expression caught between terror and joy. Blood gushed from the gaping wound as if from an undammed red river. But the flow had stopped by the time the half-breed had wiped the razor clean on the corpse’s shirt.
“Condemned man deserves a last request,” he murmured, then went back into the cabin to resume his interrupted sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
IN even the hottest of summers there is a brief period during the false dawn of each new day when the air is cool. It is as if nature seeks to re-assure all living things on earth that the unremitting sun which is shortly to rise will eventually exhaust its heat for the year and they can exist in comfort again. During such a period, if a man is awake to reflect, he is inclined to accept the interlude at face value and not consider the potential harshness of the winter which can be far more cruel than any summer.
Edge awoke at the beginning of the false dawn, when the stars went out as the sky changed from black to grey in advance of the sun’s leading arc. Surrounded by the richness of natural things - the white crest of the distant mountain ridges; the glimmer of dark blue from the far off lake; the deep green of the towering pines; the singing of birds; and the luxury of the fresh, clear, cool air - he thought about the bullet hole in the brim of his hat.
He battered open a tin from the carton of supplies and tossed it into the heap of dead ashes in the stove when the stink of rottenness rose from the moldy beans inside. He needed a new hat and decided he could also do with a decent meal. As he carried the saddle from the cabin, he saw that Maclean’s horse had wandered into the centre of the clearing and was grazing with two other geldings: still saddled from when the deputies had left them to go stalking five thousand dollars. The dentist still lay where he had fallen, of course, his putrefying flesh giving off an evil odor into the freshness of the air. The corpses of the deputies were presumably still among the trees where they had died.
Edge carried the saddle around to the rear of the cabin and dunked his head into the rain water barrel before preparing the horse for riding. The sun hauled its advance curve above the tree tops in the east as he rode out into the clearing and the moisture dried from his face. Then the sweat of exertion replaced it as he coaxed the dead men’s horses to him and loaded the evil-smelling corpses across the saddles. The bodies hung limply, arms and legs dangling: the humidity which had hastened decomposition had slowed down the stiffening process of rigor.
It was not, of course, the desire to buy a new hat and the need for a good meal which turned Edge eastwards, cracking his eyes against the glare of the newly-risen sun. The town called Hate was doubtless the nearest community but there had to be other places on the Continental Divide where he could get what he wanted. But they did not have Luke Corners living in them - the man who was offering a five grand reward for the half-breed.
Being a wanted fugitive with a price on his head was not a new experience for Edge. It was a reward, posted in Kansas, for his capture to stand trial for the killing of a man named Elliot Thombs which had caused him to forsake his given name and to flee the land which was his birthright.* (* See—Edge: The Loner.)
But that had been a long time ago and the hundred dollars offered was not enough to keep the bounty hunters interested. Five thousand was a different proposition entirely. With that kind of money riding on his head, a man had to be destined for an early grave.
It was seven o’clock when Edge rode at an easy pace out of the trees, leading the three horses with their putrid burdens. The sun was well clear of the foothills now, blazing down fiercely upon the town, the river and the vast area of tree-stripped ground littered with the naked stumps of felled pines. The harsh heat easily penetrated the dark pall of wood smoke which was suspended above the town, fed by the cooking fires which burned beneath every chimney.
As the half-breed and his charges moved out across the open country it was as if every man in Hate emerged to meet him. They came out of the houses at the far end of the single street to form an enlarging group which moved at a shuffling, somehow dejected, pace towards the bridge. Because he was better than a half mile away, Edge could not hear the sound of their progress, at first muffled by the dust they dragged up from the street, then clattering as their boots thudded against the boards of the bridge.
The group halted at the big gates in the fence surrounding the lumber mill just as Edge reached a marker sign he had not noticed on his rapid retreat from the town last night. It was a very elaborate sign, neatly painted with expertly-shaped lettering and a symbolic picture.
YOU ARE NOW ENTERING
THE FORMER TOWN OF THEA
RENAMED CORNERS
IN HONOUR OF
ITS PREMIER CITIZEN
AND GEOGRAPICAL SITUATION
Beneath the lettering was a pictorial representation of the valley intersection with the river running across it. The high angles of the valleys were exaggerated to emphasize why Luke Corners was gracious enough to share his honor with topography. The message came across clearly to the tall half-breed - as did the anagram of Thea which produced the equally appropriate town name fading on the marker at the side of the east trail.
Edge paused only a moment to look at the sign, then heeled his horse forward again. The almost eerie impression that the men of the town had been coming out to meet him was totally destroyed as he shaded his hooded eyes with a brown-skinned hand and saw that the group was turned to face the mill gates. As he drew closer, a man in the group spotted him and there was a ripple of movement as every pair of eyes was turned towards the half-breed. A murmur of conversation trembled in the hot air: then was silenced by a shout. All attention was returned to the gates and Edge’s slitted eyes swung to peer through the wire mesh fence at the mill.
The massive figure of Luke Corners towered above the flanking forms of his two remaining deputies as the trio strode between the mill and the gates. The old man carried a burlap sack. Winchesters were canted in the crooked arms of the men on either side of him. The deputies swung open the gates and Corners stood like a craggy outcrop of rock in the centre of the entrance just as Edge halted his own and the pack animals at the side of the group of men. For the last two hundred yards, the half-breed had been riding with his rifle drawn, canted across the front of his body in a one-handed grip.
The big man on the horse and the big man on the ground clashed eyes across the heads of the anxious faced men between them. Controlled anger twisted the features of Corners. Edge appeared coldly at ease.
“You ain’t welcome in this town, drifter!” The words were spat out, as though they had an evil taste.
Edge: A Town Called Hate (Edge series Book 13) Page 6