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

by George G. Gilman

  The women and children, under the apprehensive guardianship of the pink-faced preacher, waited in tense silence in the store of Alex Burgess.

  The two dogs prowled nervously, with hair bristling and snouts sniffing the death-sweet, tension-laden, heat-heavy air. Horses stood in statue-like immobility, ears pricked and nostrils flared.

  The men on the courthouse roof saw the leading figure of the column in the river wade past the end of the fence marking the extent of the mill property. The others moved slowly in his wake. Closer to the building, where the rotating wheel caused the silvered smoothness of the slow-running river to bubble into white foam, some of the men snaked up on to the bank. Their shadowed forms became merged with the stacks of fresh-cut logs and sawn timber littering the fenced property behind the building. A group of three men stayed in the water and moved cautiously along the side of the mill towards the churning wheel.

  A match flared briefly in the deep shadow where the side of the mill met the river bank.

  “That’s it!” one of the men on the courthouse roof rasped.

  But the whispered words were drowned by the crack of the other man’s rifle. An instant of silence fled into time past and then the men below responded to the signal. Pent-up excitement ripped from throats as if to give added power to the bullets which were exploded towards the mill.

  Edge was crouched at the side of a large heap of logs. The barrage of shots which thudded lead into the side of the mill acted as a spur to drive him forward. Together with other attackers, he sprinted for the rearing wall of the mill as the men inside shouted in alarm and returned the fusillade of shots with one of their own.

  It was up to each individual man now. The half-breed’s plan had begun with the stealthy exodus from the far end of town and ended with the opening barrage of covering fire. He could have extended it beyond this point, given a knowledge of the mill’s interior layout which most of the lumber men knew. But this was no well-drilled army unit tractable to discipline. It was a mob tasting freedom after many years in a vicious yoke.

  The fire from across the river cost no lives. It was aimed high to avoid scything into the attackers and did no more damage than digging splinters of wood from the stoutly-built mill wall. The dynamite made a far greater impression. The match which had signaled the opening shots of the battle had set light to the fuse of four sticks lashed together. This lethal bundle was hurled high up at the wall of the mill. The thrower and his two companions ducked under the water and the dynamite exploded with an ear-splitting roar.

  Midway along the rear wall of the mill, another flaring fuse found its mark and a second explosion masked the crackle of gun fire. Blazing and blackened timber flashed through the air inside and outside the mill as the men on the town side of the river expended their meager supplies of ammunition.

  The first man to die in the battle was the one who had set the charge at the rear of the building. The ancient fuse burned too fast and he had retreated only two yards when the dynamite went off. Blast picked him off his feet like tumbleweed in a high wind and hurled him against a pile of prepared fence poles. A dozen cruelly pointed lengths of wood skewered his body and burst out at the back. Blood fountained away from his burst flesh like red mud through a sieve.

  “Rob’s dead!” a man shrieked in horror.

  “Staked his all and lost,” Edge muttered as he slid around the corner of the mill on the side away from the river.

  With shouts and the crackle of gunfire filling the night, seeming insignificant after the two mighty explosions, he reached the far corner and moved along the front of the building towards the main doorway. At the rear, lumber men sprinted towards the gaping hole as the smoke cleared. On the river side of the mill, the three men grasped the paddles of the water wheel and were carried up towards the second jagged aperture ripped in the wall.

  The big double doors at the front of the building were solidly closed and the half-breed crouched down at the side of a window. He peered inside and there was nobody to see him. For many seconds had passed since the final shot was fired from the town and the defenders were re-positioning themselves to meet the attack from another quarter.

  Edge’s hooded eyes saw a great cavern of a place, revealed in the flickering light of many fires where blazing debris from the explosions had ignited wood shavings and discarded chippings. The first floor was two storeys high for the greater part of its dirt-floored area, with piles of logs providing ample cover. At second floor level there was a broad balcony around all four walls, supporting stacks of timber cut into building planks. At one side was an endless belt split into two sections and driven by the churning water wheel. The enormous blade of a circular saw was stationary halfway along the belt, its vicious teeth gleaming in the firelight. The furnace box of the steam engine glowed with hot ashes but the latent power of the boiler was not connected with the piston to drive the giant saw.

  The half-breed spotted two deputies and one hired gun crouched behind timber stacks; their rifles aimed at the hole ripped in the rear close to where the stairway from the balcony reached ground level. Four lumbermen charged in through the jagged aperture, their axes and sledgehammers held high and their mouths wide to scream aloud their fury. Gunfire exploded and three of the invaders were hurled to the floor with chests blossoming red. The fourth threw himself into cover at the foot of the stairway, yelling for those behind him to stay back.

  Up on the balcony, the first man stepped in off the water wheel. A gunslinger moved out of the shadows, thrust his rifle into the intruder’s stomach and squeezed the trigger. The lumber man crumpled. The attacker immediately behind him stepped off the wheel before the gunslinger could pump a new shell into the breech. The rifle jabbed at him and the lumber man toppled backwards with a scream. The strident sound was curtailed by the evil crunch of crushed bones as the live body was fed into the massive cogs linking the wheel with the drive to the belt.

  Something metallic flashed at the shadowed area beneath the foot of the stairs. The axe spun through the firelit air like an Indian tomahawk and the gunslinger on the balcony screamed. The blade cleaved deep into his back and he staggered forward. The third man who had used the water wheel to enter, stepped to the side, plucked the Winchester from the loose grip of the dying man and kicked him on his way. He was dead when he splashed into the river below.

  Edge stepped in front of the window and began to blast through it. Glass sprayed across the dirt floor and bullets homed in on their targets. He heard a shout of encouragement for the men outside to charge in. He saw the two deputies and the gunslinger take his bullets in their flesh, dropping where they were hit, with no more life left in them to turn around and see who had killed them. The half-breed waited until the lumber men began to duck in through the back before he followed his bullets, diving through the glassless window and rolling: then bellying into the cover of a stack of timber. Bullets spatted into the ground close to him, jerking up small showers of dirt. The shots came from up above and his slitted eyes raked the balcony. Most of it was in heavy shadow, out of reach of the light from the dancing flames.

  Another burst of gunfire forced him to duck, but he had the man spotted. He waited for the barrage to stop, then flung himself upright, swinging the Winchester to the aim. But he was too late. The lumber man on the balcony had beaten him to the kill, creeping up behind the gunslinger and smashing down with the sledgehammer he carried. The rifleman died without a sound, his body still folded into a crouch as he fell from behind his cover of planks. The big head of the hammer had smashed through his skull and been buried in the pulpy, red bubbling mess beneath. The man who had struck the killing blow leapt forward to grasp the handle.

  “I showed him, didn’t I?” he boasted joyously.

  A gunshot cracked and the man’s right eye exploded in a shower of blood. He was flung back against the planks, then bounced forward and toppled off the balcony to crash to the floor.

  “Pride comes before a fall,” Edge muttered a
s he whirled to locate the gunman.

  For long moments, as the wheel churned and the fires crackled, he saw no sign of movement. Even the men who had poured through the hole in the rear wall were not in sight. But then he heard running footfalls and snapped his head around. The gunslinger who had done all the talking was racing along between two stacks of logs. He was minus rifle and revolver and his once hard face was now twisted into a mask of terror. Behind him in the timber-flanked aisle sprinted two lumbermen, axes held high and mouths wide to yell their triumph. Ahead of the fleeing gunslinger, as a lumber man rose at each side, a two-handed saw was lifted six inches from the ground. The terrified fugitive did not see the obstacle. He screamed as the wicked teeth bit through his flesh to scrape against the ankle bones. He pitched full-length to the dirt floor. His pursuers stopped short, dropped to their knees and swung down the big axes. One blade sank into the helpless man’s back, going all the way through to pin him to the earth. He was dead before the second axe smashed through the back of his head to splash great gouts of blood on to the timber at either side.

  “Did we kill that bastard!” one of the axe wielders yelled in delight.

  “Sure gave him the chop,” Edge replied wryly, raking his glint-eyed gaze around the great cavern of the mill.

  Both deputies and the quartet of hired guns were dead. But Luke Corners and his niece had been noticeably absent from the scene of the slaughter.

  “Maybe they sneaked out the same way we left town,” Laine rasped from the rear of the mill.

  “Way to find out!” Another man roared, running out from cover to reach the controls of the big steam engine. “Blow this damn mill to bits. If they’re in here, they’ll show when this baby starts building up a nice head of steam.”

  He threw the lever to set the piston throbbing and the saw blade whirling. Then he began to frantically hurl cord wood into the furnace box.

  “No!” Dorrie shrieked from high in the building. “Let me get out!”

  Her footfalls clattered on the stairway, increasing in volume as she raced downwards. Her dress was a blur of White on the balcony and then she appeared clearly on the final flight down to ground level. The man feeding the furnace continued with his self-imposed chore working with the frenetic speed of a mind crazed by power. Edge and the other half-dozen survivors of the attacking force watched the woman coldly.

  “Bitch!” Laine spat at Dorrie as she reached the foot of the stairway and became transfixed by the stares of the men.

  “I’ll do anything!” she pleaded, pathetic in her helplessness. Her face was stark white against the soiled dressing on her cheek wound.

  “I reckon you would,” Laine snarled at her.

  “Just one thing,” a man said icily as running footfalls pounded on the bridge outside.

  Dorrie swallowed hard. “Yes?” she forced out.

  “Die!” the man snapped, and hurled a knife towards her.

  The blade thudded home beneath the thrusting swell of her left breast. The woman screamed once and raised her hands to grip the quivering handle. But she died before she touched it and crumpled into a heap: all white except for her black hair and the expanding stain of red from the wound.

  “Guess that’s the first time she ever did like she was told,” somebody said as shoulders crashed against the big doors at the front of the mill.

  As the doors burst open and men and women thronged through, the man firing the furnace slammed the box closed and shut off the outlet valve. The engine hissed furiously and began to tremble on its mountings.

  Edge turned towards Alex Burgess, who was among the first to stagger in through the doorway. His voice rapped out clearly above the racket of the racing engine.

  “Obliged for bringing along the money, feller,” he said, aware of a movement up on the balcony as he reached out for the paper sack in the storekeeper’s hands.

  Burgess made to give it to him.

  “No!” Laine commanded.

  The handsome young man, still shirtless, his sweat-sheened upper body streaked with soot and blood, stepped up to the engine controls and opened the safety valve. He waited for the initial rush of steam to subside.

  “We need the mill,” he announced to all who looked at him. Then he fixed his steady gaze on the half-breed’s coldly impassive face. “And all the money we’ve got. We’ll pay you ten dollars for your plan, mister. You didn’t do no more than the rest of us, and Luke Corners is still alive. We’ll take care of him ourselves.”

  Burgess began to withdraw his offer of the sack. Behind him, the vast majority of the townspeople gave tacit approval to Laine’s contention. Edge’s hooded eyes moved in their sockets to look at the survivors of the battle. Still breathing raggedly from the exertion and tension, they showed their readiness to swing their blood-dripping weapons to menace the half-breed.

  A new movement high on the balcony scratched a faint impression on the periphery of Edge’s vision: but his impassive features gave not the slightest sign that anything was wrong. Then, to a gasp from the watchers, he whirled to the left and the Winchester canted and bucked in his hands. Laine’s rifle and the axes, hammers and saws of the other men started to menace Edge. Then the familiar twin reports of Corners’ shotgun shattered the second of silence which followed the crack of the Winchester. The buckshot spattered harmlessly into the high roof as the old man’s massive body plummeted downwards. He had taken the bullet in the shoulder, but the impact of his head against the hard planks beneath the endless belt plunged him into unconsciousness. His inert body was carried inexorably towards the blurred serration of the spinning blade.

  The eyes of every man and woman except Edge stared in horrified fascination as the cruel teeth of the saw ripped into the top of Corners’ head and slashed through his skull as if it were made of cardboard. A drenching spray of crimson with highlights of gleaming white fragments of bone spumed away from the ghastly path of the blade as it sliced the rugged face in two and then began to bisect the body.

  Some men crouched down and started to vomit. Many women covered their eyes as others crushed the faces of their children against them to hide the awesome sight. But most seemed to be frozen into a state of suspended animation which did not end until the blade burst free after severing the old man’s right leg. The two halves of the split body rolled on to their sides.

  It was at that moment that Edge snatched the money sack from Burgess’s numbed fingers and back-stepped away from the armed men. The storekeeper gasped and spun around. The others swung their wan faces towards the half-breed and saw the Winchester leveled at Laine. Three men took a pace forward, but Laine’s voice halted the movement.

  “Hasn’t there been enough killing?” he asked stridently. “If the drifter wants the money that much, let him have it.”

  “I want it,” Edge replied evenly as the endless belt tossed the two halves of the body on to a cushioning heap of sawdust. He circled around to the blasted hole in the rear wall, aware that one of the deputies’ horses was hitched out there, still saddled from the ride to bring in Billy McNally. “And what I want, I usually get.”

  “By one way or another,” Laine said bitterly.

  “By hook or by crook,” Burgess put in mournfully.

  “Right,” Edge called as he ducked out through the blackened hole. “And sometimes by cutting Corners.”

  DON’T MISS THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE

  OF

  GEORGE G. GILMAN’S

  BEST SELLING SERIES ABOUT THE MAN KNOWN AS…

  EDGE

  COMING SOON!

 

 

 
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