The deputies waited by the gates, poised to fling themselves into the cover they offered. The waiting men hung their heads, bodies rigid with tension.
“Heard you were real anxious to have me back, sheriff,” Edge replied evenly. “Five grand anxious.”
“Talking out the back of your head,” Corners retorted.
A few of the men in the group looked at the half-breed now. Their faces were blank, suggesting they had no intention of contradicting Corners or explaining the change of attitude.
“Hole’s in the back of my hat, not my head,” Edge said. “Should have convinced me your deputy wasn’t a straight shooter.”
“You killed those men?” Corners asked, completely in control of himself. The effort didn’t even show and his voice was pitched evenly, holding a note of indifference.
Edge did not understand the new mood of the big man, but he sensed it was no part of a trick. He slid the Winchester back in the boot and saw the tension leave the expressions of the deputies as they moved to take up positions on either side of Corners. He hauled on the reins of each trailing horse in turn, and displayed the face of each dead man by yanking up his head with a fistful of hair.
“Him … and him,” he admitted as, first the man with a bullet through his heart and then the one with a slit throat, was exhibited. “Self-defense, sheriff. After one of ’em had a brush with Maclean.” He held up the head of the dead dentist, the mouth gaping to show the stumps of the shattered lower teeth imbedded in the crust of congealed blood. The ugly blackness of the dried blood emphasized the ghastly paleness of the dead man’s complexion.
“Don’t tell me about it,” Corners rasped. “I’m not the top law in town today.” He delved a meaty hand into the sack and withdrew a cardboard tag. “Number thirty-five!” he yelled.
A man at the rear of the group pushed to the front and went through the gateway. He didn’t smile, but there was something about his walk that suggested a mild degree of happiness.
“Eighteen!” Corners called as he drew out another tag.
A second man responded by going through into the lumber mill. Edge watched in cool detachment as the process of random selection continued. In the mounting heat of morning, the mill wheel churned, flies droned as they swarmed about the bloodied wounds of the dead, Corners’ voice spat out numbers and men shuffled through the dust. Then:
“That’s it,” the big, silver-haired man proclaimed. “Just need twenty-five hands today.”
Ten were left on the wrong side of the gates. One of these - fifty, stooped-shouldered and with a haggard face upon which the skin hung in loose folds - scuttled forward.
“Mr. Corners!” he whined. “I ain’t done no work in ten days. I got a wife and kids to—”
Corners nodded curtly to one of the deputies as he spun around. The deputy stepped forward, thrusting the Winchester out in front of him. The bent old man saw the coming attack in time to halt, but he had no chance of turning away from it. The rifle muzzle thudded into the base of his stomach and he screamed, high and thin. He folded forward and the deputy spun the rifle. The top of the stock crashed into the head of the winded man, who pitched into the dust, silent and pouring blood from a split in his bald dome. None of the other rejected men moved, held still by the raking swing of the second deputy’s Winchester.
“Haul him out of here and learn!” the lawman who had done the damage snarled, backing away and leveling his rifle. “You all know the rules. Break ’em and you get broke.”
Every man in the group wore a holstered gun, but the deputies turned their backs with complete confidence and began to hustle the chosen workers towards the mill with the parked wagons aligned outside. Two of the rejected men stooped to lift the injured one between them.
“Bastards!” a tough-looking young man who was naked to the waist muttered, and spat into the dust.
“That’s really scaring the hell out of ’em,” Edge taunted as he heeled the gelding forward, jerking the pack horses in his wake.
“Easy for you to talk, stranger,” the man with the rippling muscles rasped in the same low tones.
The slitted eyes were fixed upon the rugged features of the youngster as the half-breed rode by him. “Sure is,” he allowed. “My Ma taught me, real young. Later, my Pa taught me a few things.”
There was no response to this beyond further futile words and the heavy silence of massed frustration followed the half-breed across the wooden bridge and on to the town’s single street. Then a new sound impressed itself upon the lazy hum of the morning: the angry hiss of vented high pressure. This, in turn, was drowned by the rapid thump-thump-thump of a large piston. Grey vapor began to issue in short spurts from an outlet at the side of the lumber mill as a powerful steam engine was surged into action.
Although the sounds came from a static engine, they were almost identical to those made by a locomotive barreling along a railroad; and as Edge dismounted in front of the church he could not prevent his memory from flipping forward a vivid series of recollections from the distant past. For the sound of hissing steam and pumping pistons inevitably flooded his mind with images of his escape from the Confederate hellhole of Andersonville* (* See—Edge: Seven Out of Hell and The Blue, The Grey And The Red) and the suffering that preceded it. But then a harsher noise drove the past back where it belonged - the tortured sound of a fast-spinning saw blade ripping into a fresh log.
“Dear God, not more!”
Edge turned to look across at the side of the tiny church. The grave dug for Ezra Hyams had been filled and there were two more fresh mounds. The pot-bellied, pink-faced preacher was just unbending from fixing markers into position at the head of each new elongated heap. The painted letters, shiny in the sun, signaled the final resting places of Bradbury and Bucher.
“Where on earth am I going to bury them?” the man asked anxiously, spreading his hands to encompass the restricted cemetery between the church and the hotel. It was close packed with neat mounds, allowing just enough space to walk between them.
Edge nodded as he moved to one of the pack horses and delved a hand into the hip pocket of the deputy with the slit throat. “Seems you got yourself a grave problem, preacher,” he drawled, pulling out a billfold.
“Hey, you!”
Edge glanced along the street and saw a short, powerfully-built man step from the doorway of the law office. A star set into a circle pinned to his vest pocket proclaimed his right to be there. Edge spat into the dust and returned his attention to the leather billfold. He flipped it open and saw a ten, a five and seven ones inside.
“You! I’m talking to you, mister!”
The lawman had a pompous voice. And his walk had more than a hint of the arrogant in it as he strutted angrily towards Edge.
“Preacher?”
“What do you want?” The man who sweated above the dog collar seemed genuinely concerned by the problem of where to bury the new dead: and annoyed at the half-breed for causing the anxiety.
“Answer me, man!”
Edge sighed and looked at the town’s new law. He was about forty and did not have the right kind of face to top off the ruggedly-formed body. It was round and deeply tanned, the flesh molded in pleasant lines and surfaced by smooth, unblemished skin. The green eyes were spaced close together and looked crafty. The wide mouth had a weak look above a chin that cut away towards the throat too soon. The black material of his vest was speckled with dandruff where it curved over the broad shoulders. He was hatless and didn’t have a great deal of rust colored hair to keep the sun off his greasy skull. The circle around the star was inscribed with the message that he was a Montana Territorial Marshal. He wore a Tranter revolver high on each hip. Both guns had mother-of-pearl butt pieces. His vest, shirt, pants and boots looked expensive. But as the half-breed’s hooded eyes met those of the lawman, the return stare warned against mistaking the marshal for a dude who happened to wear a star.
“I’m talking to you.”
“Obliged if y
ou wouldn’t interrupt,” Edge said easily, and swung his head to look back at the preacher. “How much a hat like this cost in Hate, feller?” He touched the brim of his hat.
Both the preacher and the marshal flinched at the name. The ten men rejected for work at the mill had crossed the bridge and stood watching with a subdued air of anticipation. Edge sensed other eyes upon him, hidden by the reflected glare of sunlight on windows and the dark shadows of doorways.
“Town isn’t called that,” the preacher replied.
“Ain’t what I asked.” Edge could hear the rapid, angry breathing of the marshal.
The preacher sighed. “About a dollar, maybe. No more.”
“Obliged,” Edge told him, extracted a dollar and pushed the billfold back into the pocket of the dead deputy. Then he turned to the marshal and dropped his chin to his chest, showing the hole drilled through the brim of the hat at the back. “Feller did that before I killed him,” he explained as he jerked up his head. “Man shouldn’t go out owing folks.”
The marshal forced his rage to stay below the surface. For just as Edge had recognized in him the signs of a man able to take care of himself, so the marshal had seen the far more blatant danger signals given off by the half-breed.
“You killed these men?” He sounded slightly incredulous.
“Two of ’em,” Edge replied. “Self-defense. After one of ’em blasted the third guy.”
“You think I’m about to believe that?”
Edge caught up the reins of his stolen gelding and set his mouth in a cruel line as his eyes glittered with ice cold anger. “You think I’d haul these stiffs back into town if I’d bush-whacked ’em?” he snarled.
He started to lead the horse towards the front of The Last Drop Hotel. The marshal hurried forward to examine the corpses, wrinkling his snub nose at the stink of them.
“Two of these men are deputies!” he yelled, whirling to look across the street, his hands coming up and then dropping to curl around the fancy butts of the Tranters. But he did not draw the guns.
Edge hitched the horse to the rail in front of the hotel and turned slowly. His arms hung loosely at his sides, right hand inches from the Colt and left ready to snatch the Winchester from the boot. “Being a law officer don’t guarantee a man a long life, marshal,” he warned evenly. “You draw those cute irons, start blasting. Or don’t ever point them at me again. Those two deputies got the same warning. But seems they were deaf as well as dumb.”
The marshal had left his move too late, and he knew it. Edge was at the side of the street, close to the cover offered by the open double doors of the saloon. He was exposed in the centre of the sunlit street. Hostile eyes were focused upon him from all directions and each thud of the piston through the cylinder seemed to drive home harder the mistake of making a play. Sweat beads stood out on his high forehead, then coursed downwards. He dropped his hands away from the guns.
“You haven’t heard the last of this business, mister!” he challenged.
The words rang with the hollowness of an empty threat in his own ears and he whirled abruptly and stalked back towards the law office. Edge watched him halfway to his destination before swinging around and entering the saloon.
“That showed him, Mr. Edge!” Billy McNally called in delight as he turned from peering out into the street through a crack in the boards masking the broken window.
The moon face of the man with the mind of a child was wreathed in a beaming smile, far removed from the expression Edge had last seen on the smooth features.
“You’ve got no sense of direction, feller,” Edge told him as he crossed the saloon towards the doorway which gave on to the restaurant.
“Sure I have!” Billy argued with feeling. “I was headed straight for Trasker when I run into that lousy marshal. He brung me back.”
Cyrus McNally emerged from the doorway in back of the bar and eyed Edge with his normal apprehensiveness. “Anyone who knows Billy knows he ain’t safe to be on his own, mister. Anytime they see him outside of town, they bring him back.” He rested a closed fist on the bar top and when he opened it, loose change spilled out. “Billy, thanks you. I don’t.”
Edge’s impassive gaze flicked from the father to the son. “Billy?” He held out the dollar bill he had taken from the dead deputy.
The simpleton’s retarded mind slipped easily from depression to glee. “Yeah, Mr. Edge?”
“Please,” the old man begged.
“No sweat,” Edge told him, then to the son: “Go down to the store and buy me a hat. Same size, color and style as this one.” He took off the hat and gave it into the eager hands along with the bill. “You get nothing for going but the walk.”
Billy’s mood did not alter. “That’s okay, Mr. Edge. Ain’t much reason to want to leave town when Marshal Colman’s here. Ain’t hardly any trouble when he’s around. Corners and his help keep real quiet.”
“Go buy the man his hat,” the elder McNally snapped at the younger.
“Sure thing,” Billy replied, and scuttled out of the door.
“Enough in that pile for breakfast?” Edge asked.
The old man poked the heap of change with a nervous finger. “More than.”
Edge nodded that he wanted some food and dropped into a chair near the restaurant entrance, resting the Winchester across a table. “What’s that marshal got over Corners, except rank?” he asked absently.
“I wouldn’t know nothin’ that ain’t my business,” the old man answered pointedly.
Edge curled back his lips into a grin as the bartender turned to shuffle through the doorway into the back. “Maybe it’s just that Colman’s pretty hot stuff,” he muttered.
CHAPTER SIX
EDGE checked the restaurant and found it empty. He also saw that it had no direct entry or exit to either the front or rear of the building. So he elected to eat the breakfast of steak, grits and eggs at the table in the saloon. This placed him midway between the main front entrance and the doorway that gave on to the back of the premises behind the bar. He had half drunk his second cup of coffee when the new hat was delivered.
It was brought by a sallow-faced man of middle years with sandy-colored hair and frightened eyes of light brown. He was short and thin and had nervous, constantly moving hands dotted with freckles on their backs. He sidled rather than walked into the shade of the saloon from the bright splash of sunlight in the street - like a crab emerging from the sea.
“I fetched your hat, Mr. Edge,” he said in a croaky voice as he halted in front of the table.
Edge nodded and took the hat. Apart from the ingrained dirt, stains and bullet hole of the old one, it was a perfect match. The half-breed tried it on and found the fit perfect.
“I’ll put the word around.”
“What?” The man blinked several times.
“Drum up some business for you,” Edge answered. “Among guys with bullet holes in their hats. Dollar enough?”
“Dollar ten,” the man rapped out automatically in storekeeper cadence. Then he blinked again and shook his head rapidly to remind himself that wasn’t what he had come for.
“Preacher’s taking care of a guy with his throat cut,” Edge told him. “Better collect what’s owed before a place’s found to bury him.”
The man swallowed hard. “I’m running a discount this week.”
“Running scared, too,” Edge said, fixing the storekeeper with a glinting scare. “You got something to say, better get it out fast, feller. Way you’re sweating, likely to melt clean away soon.”
“Maclean must have got to talk to you before he was killed, Mr. Edge.” It was a statement rather than a question.
Edge nodded. “Didn’t say a lot. No more than a thousand bucks. Hardly worth getting killed for - anybody getting killed.”
The storekeeper took out a large, damp handkerchief and made it wetter as he mopped his face. “All we can afford, Mr. Edge.” A fragile smile lit his sallow features.
“But you came bac
k to Corn … Hate.” He sounded very pleased to speak the forbidden name. Then he glanced around nervously, wringing his hands together. They were alone except for Cyrus McNally who was dusting off unused glasses behind the bar.
“I came back to sort out another matter,” the half-breed replied, and finished the coffee. He curled back his thin lips to expose his even teeth in a grin, “but it may be we’re interested in the same thing, feller.”
The man blinked. “Oh?” He cleared his throat. “What do you want us to do, Mr. Edge?”
“Take up the collection,” the half-breed replied.
The man’s smile was brighter this time, but still very vulnerable to an attack of nerves. Even Edge’s steady gaze was a threat, so the man swung away and moved quickly to the bar. “You wanna kick in to start it, Cyrus?” he asked.
The old bartender did so, with slow reluctance. He gave a nod, shuffled out into the back and returned a few moments later with a bundle of crinkled bills. He eyed the money ruefully for stretched seconds, then handed the ill-used bills to the storekeeper: like a man investing his life-savings in an operation in which he had no faith.
“Thanks, Mr. Edge,” the storekeeper called, and hurried out.
The half-breed took out the makings and rolled a cigarette. He lit it, then split the match and used the pointed end for a tooth-pick.
“What am I supposed to do to earn it?” he asked to end a long silence in the stuffy saloon.
A million dust motes began to float smoothly again in the sunlight shafting through the open doorway, settling down after the agitation of the storekeeper’s exit.
“You must know,” McNally accused dully, returning to the chore of cleaning the glasses.
“Got to be one thing or another,” Edge allowed. “Either run Comers out of Hate or kill him.”
“Corners won’t let anybody run him out.”
Edge nodded through the smoke from his cigarette. “And I won’t let anybody hire me to kill somebody,” he said softly.
Edge: A Town Called Hate (Edge series Book 13) Page 7