Bloody Summer

by George G. Gilman

  Elizabeth shrieked and tightened her arms around John’s waist as the boards creaked and swayed under the horses’ hoofs. The clatter of their progress covered the sound of her fear and the noise of the town. But as Day and Edge reined their mounts to a walk between the neat one and two storey frame houses flanking the main street they heard the jangling notes of an out-of-tune piano and the voice of a woman singing against the raucous barrage of drunken shouting.

  The noise was coming from an area ablaze with lights about two hundred yards down the street. And the noisy brightness of what lay ahead seemed to be magnified by the subdued peace of this end of town. To left and right of the newcomers as they moved along the rutted dirt street the houses sat in brooding silence behind well-tended gardens bounded by white picket fences. Only meager cracks of light under doors and between shutters on the windows betrayed the presence of occupants.

  They crossed an intersection with neatly painted signs which told them they were on August Street at July. There were more houses, less well tended, on the cross street August became brighter with business premises that did not put up the shutters when night threw its shadows over the town.

  “Evening, folks,” a gangling man in his sixties called from the doorway of Frank’s Livery. “Welcome to Summer.” He grinned and blew on his hands. “Don’t feel like it sounds, does it?”

  “Looks like there’s a hot time happening down the street,” Edge answered, angling his mount across to the livery entrance.

  The man broadened his grin and glanced down towards the source of the noise and light. “Sure is a lot of folks on Solar Circle with money to burn, mister,” he said as Edge slid from the saddle. “But the only one really getting any warmth out of it is Millie Pitt. Guess you’re heading for The Gates of Heaven, uh?”

  “Ain’t we all?” Edge said, handing the reins of his horse to the man.

  He laughed. “Sure is the truth. But I’m talking about Millie Pitt’s hotel. That’s what she calls it. “Course, local folk reckon as how it ought to say Steps into Hell over the door. Ten dollars a day, mister.”

  “Pretty high, even for paradise,” Edge said.

  The man had stopped grinning when he mentioned the rate. Now his gaunt features took on a hard expression, as if he expected trouble and was confident he could handle it “I’m talking about feed, water and a stall for your horse. What the Pitt charges for human animals is her business.”

  Edge shrugged, surprising the man, and turned away, sliding the Winchester from the saddle boot “Ain’t my horse,” he said. “X just borrowed it”

  “My goodness, that’s an exorbitant price,” Elizabeth Day said shrilly. “Come on, John, we’ll find another place.”

  Edge was already ambling down the street towards Solar Circle and the woman snatched the reins of her horse from the man then made to follow the half-breed.

  “Ain’t another place in town,” the man said easily. “And you leave a couple of fine animals like that unattended in Summer, they’ll get stole soon as you turn your back.”

  “Warmest hearted town!” Elizabeth exclaimed angrily.

  “Sure enough is,” the man replied, rekindling his grin. “Course, since Haven set himself up in the Bridal Suite at The Gates of Heaven and the new people started to come to town, things got changed some. You got to pay a little more for everything nowadays, ma’am. Law of supply and demand. Good horses are in short supply. And so are stalls to keep them in.” His expression hardened again and his eyes became greedy as they stared at the woman, then swung to her brother. “One day in advance. That’ll be twenty dollars for the two animals.”

  John dug inside his jacket for money.

  “You better take good care of them,” the woman warned.

  “Animal gets stole, you get your money back,” the man answered, watching John’s actions as he counted four fives off his roll. “Only I ain’t never lost an animal yet.” He took the money and pushed it into his boot then reached into the doorway behind him and brought out a Spencer repeater. “Either me or my partner’s on guard twenty-four hours a day, folks. Your animals will be safer than you are in this town.”

  John Day unstrapped the two bedrolls and slid out the Winchester before standing back to allow the man to take the horses.

  “I suppose there’s no other place in town except for this Pitt woman’s hotel for us to stay?” Elizabeth asked sullenly.

  “All we needed was just the one hotel before Mr. Haven came,” the man replied. “Just didn’t get the passing trade. And there ain’t been no time to build another since the money rush started.”

  “Come on, John,” Elizabeth urged.

  The man nodded. “You’d better hurry and catch up with your friend. He looks the kind of feller who can handle trouble. And in Summer that’s the only thing we ain’t got a shortage of.”

  “What am I?” Day demanded. “A handful of chopped liver.”

  The man shrugged. “Just thought I’d mention it. A friendly warning, like.”

  “He’s no friend of ours,” Elizabeth shot back, and caught hold of her brother’s arm to start down the street. “And we can take care of ourselves, anyway.”

  The man shook his head to their backs, then led the two horses into the livery stable, contemplating his chances of inheriting the animals on the grounds that possession was nine points of the law.

  Down August Street, where it was intersected by September to form Solar Circle, Edge glanced at the elaborately decorated facade of The Gates of Heaven Hotel. It was a three storey building on a prime corner lot. Lights blazed brightly from the first floor windows and spilled out from the four sets of batwing doors, as if trying to escape from the raucous din of the saloon. The kerosene burned on lower wicks in the hotel rooms above, shining out on to railed balconies which were hung with painted wooden cut-outs of winged angels. Flanking each set of doors were a pair of more ornate guardians of paradise, carved into three-dimensional models with their arms outstretched in welcome.

  “What do you want here, mister?” a man asked.

  Edge turned to look at him. He was a big man with long legs, broad shoulders and a stomach that seemed to start beneath the lowest of his many chins and reached a wide girth around his waist before being pinched in by his double-holstered gunbelt. He was holding open his ankle-length coat to exhibit the pair of Navy Colts in the holsters and a tin star pinned to his black shirt His face was as fleshy as the rest of him and his eyes seemed to be glittering from the bottom of deep valleys of fat. They met Edge’s hard stare of inquiry and held fast.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Sheriff Truman. He stills wants to know.”

  “Curiosity’s killed a lot of cats, sheriff,” Edge answered easily.

  “Jesus, another one of them,” the lawman rasped. “I figured you for one and I was right. Guess I don’t have to ask. You came to see Haven.”

  “Law against it?”

  Truman pushed something out of his teeth with his tongue and spat it at the wall of the church which occupied this corner of the inter-section. “There ought to be, but there ain’t,” he answered. “But we got all the other laws you’ve heard about, mister. Don’t break any of them and there won’t be any need for me to talk to you again.”

  He closed his coat and buttoned it against the night cold. With no guns or a star showing, he was just a fat man with small, untrusting eyes.

  “One what, sheriff?” Edge asked, looking again at the hotel, then at The Last Rose restaurant on an opposite corner which was also doing good business. The final corner of the intersection was taken up by the Summer County Bank. It wasn’t open but lights burned inside, and two men could be seen sitting at a table, playing cards. They could use only one half of the table. Their rifles rested across the other section.

  “Bounty hunter,” Truman answered sourly. “I been the law in Summer for twenty years. In all that time only strangers to pass through were on the Deadwood bound stage. Decent people on legal business
. Why, the Ball brothers and their side-kicks never come within twenty miles of town. Now, because of them hitting the army train and that crazy Haven wanting their blood, we’ve filled to overflowing with the riff-raff of the territory.” He sighed. “Guess one more won’t make much difference.”

  Edge had his back towards the sheriff. It was impossible to see through the misted up windows of the saloon, but he could get a view over the top of a pair of batwings to where a blonde-headed woman in a low-cut dress was leaning across a piano and singing a song which was lost amid the shouts and cheers of her drunken audience. “You got a law about not hitting a man who runs off at the mouth?” he asked.

  Truman knew what the half-breed was talking about and started to unbutton his coat. The fastenings were fixed so that all he had to do was insert his finger under the lowest button and run it upwards. He had only reached the crest of his bulbous stomach when Edge gave a backwards flick of his wrist and the stock of the Winchester smashed up into the lawman’s crotch. The breath whooshed out between his clenched teeth as his legs buckled and he fell heavily to his knees, his pudgy hands clasped over his groin.

  “Bastard!” Truman flung at Edge as the half-breed turned to face him.

  “I ain’t that either,” Edge said softly and brought up his knee hard into the kneeling man’s face.

  Truman was flung backwards and his head crashed heavily against the church door. He crumpled into an unconscious heap in the porch as the door was swung inwards. The priest stared down in astonishment at the still form, then turned his wide eyes towards Edge.

  “It’s okay,” the half-breed said. “He knocked on your door by mistake. It was the second one he made.”

  “What happened?” Elizabeth Day asked as she and John halted in front of the church and saw the slumped form of the sheriff.

  She posed the question to the priest, who was a tall, narrow-faced man in his mid-thirties. He had thinning sandy hair and skin pocked by the scars of smallpox. He recovered from his shock and crouched down beside the unconscious man.

  “He wasn’t polite,” Edge said.

  “It’s Sheriff Truman,” the priest exclaimed. “You hit him?”

  Edge took out the makings and rested the Winchester against his leg as he rolled a cigarette. “Once for riff-raff and once for bastard. If he thinks of any new words when he wakes up, I’ll be over at the hotel. It looks like it’s closer to my idea of heaven than what you’ve got inside, father.”

  He struck a match on the porch wall and fired his cigarette before turning and going across the intersection towards the hotel.

  “The hotel’s full,” the priest called after him, using a handkerchief to wipe blood from the sheriff’s split lip. “But I think Bob Truman will accommodate you in one of his cells.”

  It had been a bad day for Edge. First he had been almost scalded by boiling coffee, then shot at, railroaded into a fight he wanted no part of and finally insulted by a hick town lawman. That added up to a lot of anger in a man such as he and lamming into the sheriff had been a calculated act which did nothing to relieve his feelings. It was therefore fortunate for the priest that his taunt was lost against the waves of noise flooding from the saloon.

  So, as the Days stooped to help the priest lift and carry Truman into the church, Edge entered The Gates of Heaven with a full load of contained frustration still waiting to be unleashed. He stood in the doorway for long moments, his hooded eyes raking the crowded, smoke-filled room, the cigarette angling from one corner of his thin-lipped mouth. There were two bar counters taking the form of quarter circles in the far corners of the big room. Across the rear wall, running between the bars and as high as they were, was a stage and it was on this that the melancholic-faced pianist and the big-breasted, over-painted singer were finishing their part of the saloon’s entertainment program.

  They had the noisy attention of about half the patrons. The rest were engaged in the games of chance set out on a dozen tables spread across the front area of the saloon. But as the singer reached the end of her song and her accompanies! struck up an off-key introductory piece, even some of the gamblers turned their attention towards the stage. They added their roars of approval to the cheers of the men clustered in front of the stage and at the bars as a dozen long-legged chorus girls in cut-away gowns high-kicked their way into view.

  Edge eyed the flashing legs and swaying bodies appreciatively for a few moments then returned his attention to the audience. Apart from a score or so of house girls, the patrons of the saloon comprises upwards of fifty men. Maybe half of these were farmers and ranchers come in from the surrounding country, or local citizens. But the remainder were the riff-raff of whom the sheriff had spoken. They were easy to pick out, no matter whether they were attired in eastern suits and had recently washed up and shaved or if they had come in straight from the trail with dust still clinging to their stubbled jaws and western threads. . For they were the watchful ones, never able to completely relax, always flicking anxious glances around them, constantly reappraising their surroundings as they went through the motions of leering at exposed female flesh or willing the dice to roll the right combination.

  “Like what you see, stranger?” a woman asked.

  Because Edge was just the kind of man he had been pinpointing in the saloon, he was aware of the woman’s approach. He had seen her, on the periphery of his sweeping glances across the saloon, come out from behind a desk set at an angle at the foot of the stairway which canted gently up one wall of the room. He had noted the forced elegance of the way she carried her statuesque body and recognized the avariciousness that gleamed in her beautiful eyes. The eyes, large, blue and clear, were all she had retained of her youthful good looks. Now, as Edge turned to look at her he saw the extent to which the passing years had robbed the woman of what had once been a proud beauty. Paint could not entirely conceal the ravaging lines on her face; grey roots sprang up in her red dyed hair and constricting whalebone showed as ridges beneath her bright green dress. She was almost fifty and trying to look twenty. His cool eyes examined her from head to toe, offering no clue to what he was thinking.

  “You Millie Pitt?” he asked.

  She showed well-made, very expensive dentures in a smile that was supposed to be beguiling. “The one they call the Pitt,” she replied, “Because I’m so deep no man’s ever got to the bottom of me.”

  “I prefer my tail younger so I won’t even try, ma’am,” Edge said. “Where will I find George Haven?”

  The Pitt had been in her business a long time and had learned to take insults, spoken or implied, without losing her surface coolness. “Figured you might want to see the Colonel,” she said easily. “These days men come to The Gates of Heaven for one of three things - drinking, whoring or to see Haven. Men being men, I get my share of the action -sooner or later. Haven has the Bridal Suite. Third floor at the back. It’s quiet.”

  Edge nodded. “Obliged.”

  “Edge!” a man yelled as the half-breed made his way towards the foot of the stairway,

  He heard his name above the noise from the other end of the big room. He halted and started to turn. A handgun went off and an eerie silence intruded into the saloon. The men stopped yelling their approval of the dancing girls, the girls finished their act abruptly and the piano player halted in the middle of a bar. The quietness took up to three seconds to become complete and lasted another two as every eye in the place swiveled to the doorway, saw Sherriff Truman standing there, and travelled to where Millie Pitt stood. Everybody except the lawman ignored Edge.

  “I told you. Bob,” the madam spoke into the silence. “Anybody fires a gun in my place has to answer to me.”

  The woman’s expression was as ice cold as her tone. But a burning anger was raging just beneath the surface, ready to explode out into the open at the slightest provocation.

  Truman’s anger was visible in every trembling ounce of his obese frame. He was standing in the doorway with the batwing doors resting against
his back. One of the Navy Colts was coming up from where he had fired it into the floor. Dried blood stained his series of chins.

  “You’re under arrest, Edge,” the lawman rasped, leveling the Colt, ignoring the woman.

  Edge was standing sideways on to the sheriff, the Winchester held low down in both hands and aimed at Truman. His finger was curled around the trigger. “Third mistake tonight, feller,” he said easily. “Wasting a bullet into the floor like that.”

  “It goes for you, too, mister,” Millie Pitt hissed at Edge. “No shooting in my place.”

  Now it was Edge who became the centre of attention. He didn’t have to look around the room to know that every eye in the place was focused upon him. A sixth sense born of living in the shadow of sudden death for so long told him all he needed to know.

  “People have tried to throw me out of better places than this, ma’am,” he drawled, keeping his hooded eyes fastened upon Truman.

  “You’re goin’ to get carried out of his one,” Truman said sharply and squeezed the trigger.

  Edge dropped into a crouch and fired the Winchester. Truman’s bullet whistled over his head and thudded into the stairway banister. The sheriff yelled and went sideways, his revolver spinning away from his numbed fingers. A streak of blood appeared on the back of his hand where Edge’s bullet ploughed a meaty furrow from the middle finger joint to the wrist.

  A ripple of awed surprise trickled through the crowd of watchers. Truman doubled over, pressing his injured hand to his middle and trying to staunch the flow of blood with the other one. Edge moved towards him, his gait casual but his expression purposeful.

  “You heard what the Pitt said,” he told the lawman.

  “I said I handle my own trouble, mister!” the madam snarled.