“You can breathe,” Edge invited softly. “For awhile.”
Twin blooms of dull mist began to spread and fade across the shiny surface of the blade immediately beneath the flaring and contracting nostrils.
“What the hell...?” Laine demanded.
The preacher was speechless, his lips seemingly sealed by dried saliva while his round eyes were held wide enough to pop the balls from the sockets. Sweat stood out on his face like fresh rain beading a rock.
“Figure you’d have the preacher man on the Citizens Committee?” Edge posed, his glinting eyes fixed on the terrified stare of the padre.
“You figure right,” Laine answered. “And you oughta know I’ve got a six-gun aimed at your back. So say what you have to.”
“Somebody told a Corners’ deputy Maclean was heading out to find me last night,” the half-breed said evenly. “Decided at the secret committee meeting, weren’t it?”
Stunned silence greeted the rhetorical query. McNally broke it.
“That’s right, Laine,” the old man said excitedly. “Stranger told me earlier we had a tale-carrier on the committee. Didn’t have no chance to pass it on, with what happened.”
This produced a ripple of ugly murmurings.
“Why’s it have to be the preacher?” a man demanded.
“Don’t have to be,” Edge answered off-handedly. “But unless you fellers on the committee figure out who it is, I’m gonna start carving.”
“A man of God?” a woman gasped.
“Just a man to me, ma’am,” the half-breed replied. “I don’t have the faith no more. Figure to live in a town like Hate you folks must still have it.” He grinned into the sweat-run face. “Guess the preacher’s counting on it.”
“Leave him be!” a woman shrieked, and knocked over her chair as she leapt from it. “He’s the traitor!”
Edge swung around, still keeping the razor tight against the preacher’s nose. The old man with the bandaged head was cringing in his chair, seemingly pressed down into it by the weight of enraged stares turned towards him. The heaviest pressure of hatred was directed at him from the blazing eyes of his wife as she clutched her babies to her breasts.
“He’ll do anything for money except work!” she snarled. “He fixed it so his number only went into Corners’ bag every couple of weeks. Fixed it by letting one of the deputies know about secret meetings. Informing on folk. The other deputies paid him for letting them into our house: into our bedroom.” She began to sob. Dry sobs because the hate in her eyes wouldn’t let the tears out. “I had to. To buy things for the babies.”
“No!” the old man shrieked, lunging for his wife. But she backed away and strong hands captured the man’s quaking shoulders and fastened him back on the chair. His terrified gaze swung frantically about the room. It found only acrimony. “You saw. Today wasn’t the first time. I’m always gettin’ beat up by Mr. Corners men!”
“To make it look good!” his wife accused.
“Pardon me, preacher,” Edge said as he removed the razor from the man’s flesh. The man slumped back against the bar.
“You still use lousy methods, mister,” Laine told Edge. “But sometimes they work.”
He leveled his revolver at the quaking old man, who was held fast to the chair by naked terror as his captors and the others around him backed suddenly away. But despite Laine’s revulsion for the traitor, he could not bring himself to squeeze the trigger of the revolver. Not in cold blood.
The half-breed moved fluidly away from the bar and while Laine and the old man stared at each other, all the rest of the people in the saloon watched Edge. He halted silently at the rear of the chair and the razor flashed in a sideways stabbing action. The point sank into the soft, pulsing flesh beneath the ear, angling upwards. The blade penetrated smoothly through skin, flesh, muscle. It nicked the brain and the old man died with a sigh. He toppled to the side, drawing himself off the killing weapon. Blood splashed vividly and the flies droned in for the feast.
“Personal,” Edge said softly, stooping to wipe the blade on the dead man’s shirt sleeve. “He almost got me killed.
“Whoever would have thought it of Mr. Heinz,” a woman gasped.
“Fact is, he spilled the beans,” the half-breed muttered as he slid the razor back into the neck pouch.
“He was all kinds of a bastard!” the dead man’s wife snarled, and spat down on to the corpse.
“I reckon at least fifty-seven varieties,” Edge replied softly.
CHAPTER TEN
EDGE sold the citizens of Hate on his plan to get inside the lumber mill across the river. But there was a condition: that the cash would be paid on delivery, not in advance.
Edge raised no objection to this and the meeting broke up, the people filing out the way they had come in, to disperse to their homes and wait for nightfall. Cooking fires were lit, but it was the aroma of coffee that permeated the heat waved air. For with the sickly sweet scent of fast-rotting human flesh pervading the town, few could face food.
The half-breed was not effected in this way, unmindful of the slumped corpse of the traitor as he ate the meal cooked by Cyrus McNally. Finished, he leaned back in the chair and tipped his new hat forward over his eyes. He snored quietly and regularly as the afternoon ground its stifling course, the merciless sun dipping towards the white-peaked mountains in the west and pointing an accusing finger of shadow at the town from the tall mill.
“Rider a-comin’ fast!”
The excited shout jerked Edge out of sleep. As always, he was instantly aware of his surroundings. His hooded eyes raked the saloon and discovered everything precisely the way it had been when he last saw it. Even McNally seemed not to have moved, held like a statue at the bar, elbows leaning on the counter top, chin in hands and eyes staring into an infinity of sadness.
‘Two men on the one horse!” the sentry outside yelled.
This second report brought Edge out of his chair and the old bartender was snapped from his period of mournful reflection. The half-breed reached the vantage point of the open doorway long before McNally had shuffled into position beside him. The two men riding tandem were a half-mile out on the trail bisecting the strip of open ground featured by the stumps of felled pines. The horse was galloping at full-stretch, pumping hooves kicking up a great cloud of dust that billowed out behind like grey smoke. The dark shape of the horse and its two riders were clearly silhouetted against the lighter colored background. But they were not recognizable until they were much closer. racing for the bridge with no slackening of speed.
“Hold your fire!” McNally shrieked: then lunged out into the street, thrusting his thin arms high into the air.
Three rifles cracked, spewing death from the doorway and two windows of the tall mill building. McNally had been facing down the street, addressing his plea to the men watching the mill. He was hit in the back, three red blossoms of oozing blood issuing from a close grouping at the top of his spine. They had merged into a single stain before his falling body smashed his face into the dust. Dying nerves twitched his frail form once and he was still.
“Some guys just won’t be told,” the half-breed muttered, returning his attention to the approaching riders, looking across the backs of the six horses still hitched to the rail in front of the hotel.
In the saddle was the deputy who had galloped out for the trees that morning. Clinging on to him from behind was Billy McNally. As the horse swerved in through the gateway of the mill, Edge swung up the Winchester. Then, as he was about to lean out for a clear shot, another rifle cracked. Splinters of wood exploded from the doorframe only inches from his head. He whirled, aiming across the street to the figure of Laine in the doorway of the courthouse.
“Billy’s on that horse!” the handsome young man yelled angrily.
The animal with its two riders galloped into the cover of the mill building. Edge, his face a mask of cold anger, forced his muscles to relax, starting with those in his finger curled around the tr
igger. “You got a second mortgage on your life, feller,” he called tonelessly.
“I said,” Laine reiterated distinctly. “That Billy McNally was on that horse.”
“It was him I figured to blast,” Edge replied flatly.
“For what?”
“Because I don’t reckon such a simple-minded feller like him deserves what he’s gonna get from Corners.”
Edge could only see Laine. But he sensed many other ears straining to catch his words. And he guessed that every person who heard felt the same degree of horror as Laine showed on his ruggedly handsome face. The man stared at the half-breed in silence for long seconds - until a piercing scream from inside the mill broke the tension.
“Why do you always have to be right, mister’?’ Laine challenged in a snarling tone.
Edge shrugged and showed an icy grin. “A man’s got to have one redeeming feature,” he replied.
Laine spat.
“McNally!” The voice of Luke Corners trembled against the air of the dying afternoon with a note of triumph giving it power.
“McNally ain’t with us no more!” Laine shouted in reply. “Your boys just killed him.”
“Pa!” Billy shrieked in anguish. Then was abruptly silent.
Corners kept the peace for a few moments, then broke it. “Too bad! Still, it don’t matter! Everyone in town likes Billy, don’t they?” He paused, but no voices filled it. “Of course they do,” he continued. “Nothing about the addle-brain idiot to dislike!” He injected harshness into his voice now. “Whereas that trouble-making drifter! Why, he’s the cause of everything that’s happened here today. Everyone’ll benefit if you turn him over to me in exchange for Billy. And I’ll take it as a sign of your good faith that nothing like it will ever happen again. Forgive and forget! What d’you say?”
“Can’t tell you, Corners!” Laine shouted. “Too many ladies around.” He lowered his voice. “You still ready to do it, stranger?” he hissed at Edge.
“Takes a lot to make me change my mind,” the half-breed replied in the same low tone.
“You want Billy McNally to suffer?” Corners yelled, his voice short on confidence now.
“We ain’t sure he’s still in one piece to do any suffering!” Laine challenged.
Another pause, and then Billy’s voice shouted from the mill. It had a pained tone. “Bastard deputy booted me in the balls when I tried to run, Mr. Laine. I was tricked out at the cabin. Deputy told me Pa was sick.”
He tried to go on, but a hand or a gag muffled him into silence.
“Good enough, Laine?” Corners yelled.
“I wanna see him!”
Again the demand drew many seconds of silence from the mill as the sun sank lower behind it, beginning to become tinged with red. Then.
“Be a pleasure, Laine!”
The pause without voices was longer this time, unevenly paced by the sound of heavy footfalls within the mill.
“Going upstairs,” Laine rasped across the street at Edge.
The half-breed nodded and remained in the cover of the doorway, canting the barrel of the Winchester slightly.
“Here he is, Laine!” Corners roared. “So you can see the bullets tearing him apart if the drifter don’t show pretty damn quick.”
A loft hatchway was exposed above the main door of the mill and the wooden jib of a crane was swung out. A chain hung from the pulley, the hook at its end looped under Billy’s belt at the back. The man swung in a circle, his legs hanging down as he forced his torso and bead up, forming a right-angle at the waist. His arms were stretched out in a silent plea for help.
“Get that drifter out on to the street!” Corners bellowed.
Edge moved while Corners was shouting, lunging from the doorway to crouch among the horses. The animals snorted and tried to rear, but were held down by the hitched reins. The half-breed saw Billy’s position for the first time between the flanks of two excited horses. He aimed and fired at the precise moment the men at the mill opened up. Two of the horses keeled over and one sat down. Animal blood gushed into the dust. Billy was hit between the eyes as he swung around to take his last look at the town he had always wanted to leave. A fraction of an instant later the lead burrowed into his brain and he was gone forever. Rising dust from the lashing hooves of the surviving horses and the writhing bodies of the injured animals covered Edge’s first steps across the street. But then his running form was in full view and the rifles cracked. He threw himself forward, tucking his chin to his chest and powering into a head-over-heels roll. Bullets whined around him and spat up divots of dry earth. His heels thudded to the ground and he lunged upright: then dived full-length through the doorway into the courthouse.
Laine stepped deftly out of his way and the shooting stopped. He glanced quickly out through the doorway and withdrew. “Billy’s dead,” he reported flatly.
“There’s a lot of it about today,” Edge replied, hauling himself to his feet and dusting himself off. “Almost happened to me - just crossing the street.” Laine met the piercing stare of the slitted blue eyes and tried to shrug off his nervousness. “We can’t afford to waste lead with covering fire,” he excused.
The sunlight shafting in through the west-facing windows of the courthouse was less harsh and carried a definite tinge of red as afternoon faded into evening. The temperature was still as high as ever, but Laine was certain he felt cold enough to shiver as the half-breed moved towards him, the rifle leveled.
“I ask for any?” The words were hissed through clenched teeth, the thin lips hardly moving.
“Guess not.”
Edge worked the lever action of the Winchester. “When I ask a man for something and he don’t deliver, that’s when I get mean with him.” He slammed the rifle stock into his shoulder and snapped a shot through the doorway. Pumped the action and fired again. “I’m almost never mean to animals,” he muttered.
Laine leaned to the side to look around the tall half-breed and saw the final nervous twitches of the two horses put out of their agony. The three surviving animals sidled away to the extent of their hitched reins, and became quiet.
“Everyone ready?”
Laine dragged his thoughtful gaze away from the inert horseflesh and gave a curt nod. “Just waiting for the word. Tell me something?”
Edge began to take shells from his gun belt and push them through the gate of the Winchester. He grinned. “What’s a nice guy like me doing in a business like this?” he suggested wryly.
Laine did not seem to be the kind of man to have a sense of humor at the best of times. “Killing Billy and then the horses ... did you feel any different about it?”
“Sure,” the half-breed replied. “With the horses, I felt I was doing them a favor.”
Suspicion narrowed Laine’s dark eyes. “Billy, too,” he reminded.
“Sure,” Edge allowed indifferently as he finished the reloading and rasped a hand across his stubbled jaw. “As well as.”
“As well as what?”
“As well as the fact that the stupid lunkhead almost got me arrested.” He altered his mouth line a trifle, to form the grin into one of cunning. “And as well as another fact - that maybe Corners could have talked you into exchanging me for the loony.” He spat out through the doorway.
“You ever do anything that don’t have an angle to it, mister?” Laine asked bitterly.
“Yeah,” Edge replied. “Sometimes I pitch a curve.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TWO hours after full nightfall the moon was big and bright. It reflected against the unlit windows of the quiet mill and turned the river to molten silver. The folded body of Billy McNally suspended from the crane jib was an obscene silhouette, evilly still. The town was as silent as the mill but the smell of death was stronger for it was host to the rotting bodies of six men and three horses. There was not even the hint of a breeze to waft away the nauseating odor. The humid heat continued unabated in the meeting of the valleys. Only the monotonously slow churning of
the water mill had disturbed the peace since the explosion of shots which had killed the wounded horses.
But to the men wading upstream from the south the quiet sounds of their progress seemed to echo stridently between the tree-clad slopes of the valley. There were fifteen of them and they had left town immediately the red sun plunged behind the distant mountain crests: stalking off into the trees flanking the disused eastern trail. Laine took the lead, with Edge close behind him and the others strung out at the rear.
They swung south, up the timber-rich valley slope and then west, on a parallel course with the single street of Hate. All were on foot and armed with a motley assortment of conventional and unorthodox weapons. Edge had his rifle, revolver and razor: Laine carried a Winchester and two men had handguns. The remainder had scoured the basements, lofts and closets of their houses in search of the tools they had used in the free enterprise days before Luke Corners established his grip of iron on the town. Thus, the majority of the men moving through the night carried axes, saws, sledgehammers, knives and even bundles of old dynamite sticks.
The men headed into the southern section of the valley for almost a quarter of a mile, before crossing the river at a point where the pine grew thick to both banks. They stayed in the river to move north towards the mill, crouching low to keep under the bank. At first, the cool water served to negate the heat of their bodies as it lapped around their lower legs. But as they neared the looming shape of the high mill building the sweat of tension began to pump from their pores again.
Only two pairs of eyes followed their progress as the stealthy attackers approached their objective. Two men armed with Winchesters were sprawled full-length on the courthouse roof, fingers curled around the triggers of their rifles. Over in the hotel and behind the cover of the bank, other men waited in sweating ignorance of what was happening. Tacky hands gripped rifles and revolvers loaded with no more than two or three rounds of shared-out ammunition. Their ears strained unnecessarily to hear the crack of gunfire from the courthouse roof which would signal the start of the diversionary action.
Edge: A Town Called Hate (Edge series Book 13) Page 11