Baker’s Winchester cracked twice and the crowd streaming from the saloon was so thick he could not miss. Two men fell and the others fought to get back inside.
“Bob?” Corners pleaded as Crane began to stuff dollar bills into a sack. “I’m bleedin’ to death. I think...”
His pain-wracked eyes finally spotted the lower half of his right leg. It was leaning, almost upright, against the head of one of the unconscious guards. Droplets of bright scarlet blood dripped evenly into the unmoving man’s open mouth. Comers’s voice began to quake and then he gave a groan as he sank into a faint.
“You fools!” the priest accused Martin. “You’ll never get out of town.”
Martin was sober now. His head ached from too much whiskey and his ears still rang with the impact of the explosion. But as he bellied through the hole in the insubstantial wall, he forced himself to think about what the pocked-faced priest had said. Up in the hotel room the escape had seemed the easiest part of the plan. Since Frank’s Livery had burned down, the horses were corralled in a meadow behind the houses on the south west corner of August and July. The idea had been to make a run behind the buildings, parallel with the main street, cut out four horses to ride and toss sticks of dynamite amongst the rest, killing or stampeding the animals.
But now, as shots began to explode from The Gates of Heaven, pouring lead into the blast-blackened bank, Martin had a better idea.
“Through the hole?” he yelled as he straightened up inside the law office.
Crane was the first to answer the call, crawling through and dragging the bulky sack of money behind him. “Reckon I got most of it, Bob,” he said gleefully, the intoxication of so much money substituting for the lost effects of the whiskey.
“What about Corners?” Baker asked as he came through, his Winchester still smoking.
“He took his chance with the rest of us,” Martin snarled.
“My goodness,” Elizabeth exclaimed, finding her voice for the first time since the explosion had rocked the building.
Her brother took her hands in his and tried to stop them shaking. Truman stared at the self-satisfied smirk which spread across the face of Martin and cursed the penny-pinching town council that had decided there was no necessity to build a reinforced wall between the bank and the law office.
“What now?” Baker wanted to know.
Martin nodded to the quartet seated around the desk with the remains of their suppers before them. “Forget the guy with the cuffs on,” he said easily. “But figure out the other three. A pretty woman, a lawman and a priest. We got us a perfect set of hostages.”
“For the citizens of Summer perhaps,” the priest said ominously, raising his voice to be heard above the rattle of gunfire that was pouring into the ruined bank. “But to those men in the den of vice across the Circle all life is cheap.”
The priest had voiced an obvious truth and the man in The Gates of Heaven who undoubtedly had the lowest regard for human life - if his interests were involved - was organizing the angry rabble into an improvised attacking force.
Calling upon his many years of army command, Haven was able to dismiss his initial urge to anger when news of the bank robbery was brought to him. So that when he descended the stairway into the saloon his time-worn face was set in an expression of cold determination and his mind was working like a well-oiled machine. He halted at a halfway point for a few moments, surveying the backs of the men crowded into doorways and at the windows as they fired wildly towards the bank. Then he looked at the stiffly angry figure of Millie Pitt as she marshaled her excited girls and ordered them to the safety of their rooms. The whores voiced their disappointment as they obeyed the Pitt’s command and filed up the stairs, brushing past the tall figure in the neck brace.
“Wondered when you’d show up,” Jonas Pike called to Haven as Mann scurried nervously in the wake of complaining women.
The doctor turned bounty-hunter was sitting on the edge of a roulette table, idly spinning the wheel.
“You don’t seem worried that the reward money is being stolen,” Haven replied stonily as he continued down the stairs.
Pike shrugged. “I checked on you, Colonel,” he said, shouting to be heard above the gunfire. “Your father left you enough money to put up ten rewards of that size.”
Haven nodded. “I always took you for a methodical man.”
“I need to make a lot of money,” Pike answered. “I can’t afford to take chances.” He spun the wheel. “So I check. Nothing at face value.”
Haven gave another of his restricted nods. “Get their attention, please?” he asked.
“You’ll pay damages?” Pike asked, taking the Remington from his pocket.
“Yes.”
Pike aimed and fired. The bartender at one of the curved counters yelled and ducked as the mirror behind him shattered. The shooting ceased abruptly as the men turned from doors and windows, startled.
Haven addressed himself to Pike, but his words were meant for every ear in the saloon. “If you really know me, sir, you’ll be aware that irrespective of what I have left, I will allow no man to steal anything that is mine.”
“You can afford the ideal,” Pike replied.
“Precisely,” Haven agreed. “I therefore offer—”
“Hey, you over at the saloon!” The voice of Martin cut across what the Colonel was saying and drew the attention of the men away from the tall man in the neck brace. “You hear?”
“We hear!” a gimlet-eyed heavyweight answered from a window.
“We want safe passage out of this town,” Martin demanded.
“Up your back one!” the saloon’s spokesman hurled in retort.
“Hell, they’re in the sheriff’s office!” a man exclaimed.
“We got tickets,” Martin shouted. “Four of ’em. A padre, the sheriff, and a brother and sister name of Day.”
Pike reacted sharply to the boast. He straightened up from the gambling table and fixed Haven with a hard-eyed stare. “Forget what you had in mind, mister,” he rasped.
Haven held the steady, menacing gaze. “Don’t tell me how to plan an attack,” he snapped, then turned towards the men as his fierce tone attracted their attention again. “The offer is two hundred and fifty dollars a head on the men who robbed the bank.”
“How much for each innocent victim?” Pike rasped.
“Innocent people die every day,” Haven tossed at Pike, then started across to the front of the saloon. “Best to split up into small groups and encircle them.”
“I’m for rushing them,” the bulky man with the gimlet eyes hissed. “It worked for that guy Edge down the street”
As the men used time in arguing tactics while Haven stood tacitly by, Pike moved quickly and silently towards one of the doorways which gave on to September Street Lights showed from houses on both sides of the street, but the occupants stayed fearfully in the doorways and on the stoops, craning to see what was happening but unwilling to risk being caught in crossfire. The more nervous ducked back inside and slammed their doors as Pike emerged from the saloon and walked quickly towards the Circle, the long coat flapping around his legs.
“What about it?” Martin demanded impatiently. “We’ll come out behind the hostages and you guys’ll hold your fire.”
“Just try it,” a voice bellowed from the saloon and a burst of rifle and pistol fire added substance to the warning.
A man cried out and a woman screamed. Pike was on the run, taking advantage of the gunfire and crash of shattered glass to angle across the Circle to the bullet scarred bank. But he knew it was Elizabeth who had screamed and the knowledge drove him to greater speed. He reached the opposite sidewalk and pulled up sharply as the covering noise ceased.
“John!” Elizabeth said shrilly.
“You hit the Day guy!” Martin yelled. “You stupid lunkheads.”
Elizabeth began to sob.
Pike went on to the balls of his feet to step through the shattered doorway into the
bank. He saw a movement in the rear of the room and jerked up the Remington as he went into a crouch. Edge, moving in through the rear doorway, snapped the Winchester up to the aim and whirled sideways on. Neither man could clearly see the other but both sensed an identification a moment before their fingers moved the final fraction of an inch against their triggers.
The atmosphere was rancid with burnt powder and fresh blood. Each had to step over the bullet-riddled bodies of the Pinkerton men, and met beside the dead, mutilated form of Corners. Light shafted into the room through the hole in the wall. Edge reached it first and squatted down to peer through as a renewed burst of firing came from the saloon.
He saw the three bank raiders crouching below the window sill, as bullets whistled over their heads to smash into the walls of the office. Two of them were facing the window and rose to pump shots across the street. The third was covering the hostages, who lay full-length on the floor. The priest was praying, moving his lips silently. Sheriff Truman looked with a fixed stare towards his out-of-reach gun on the peg. Elizabeth was sobbing as she cradled John’s head to her breast, unmindful of the river of blood that pumped from a gaping wound in his throat to form a broadening stain on her jacket. As Edge watched, the young man gurgled up a final bubbling spring of blood and then sighed into death.
Elizabeth shrieked her grief.
“The whole frigging lot are coming at us!” Baker yelled and opened up with his rifle.
“Hostages no damn good!” Crane croaked, close to tears as he began to fire.
Elizabeth started to rise, her features contorted into near ugliness by hysterical grief. Martin glanced out of the window and saw men spilling from the doorways of the saloon, bringing up their weapons to the aim. The sight rooted him to the spot for a moment. Then he quaked and moved forward, reaching for the money sack on the desk.
Edge took aim and started to squeeze the trigger. Pike tugged at his coat as he tried to wriggle into the hole. The bullet was meant for Martin’s heart. It seared through the reaching hand. The four fingers were sheered off and twisted across the room. Martin screamed and run for the rear door, jerking it open and disappearing. Baker and Grane emptied their guns and spun around at the sound of a shot from behind them.
“It’s gone wrong!” Crane sobbed.
“Where’s Bob?”Baker screamed.
“Figured it first,” Edge muttered and sent a bullet into Crane’s heart as he jerked himself through the bole.
“Fire!” Haven commanded.
Elizabeth was standing at her full height, holding her head in her hands as she swayed her body. Edge lunged at her and encircled her knees with an arm as his shoulder thudded into her stomach. She screamed and toppled as a deafening fusillade of shots sounded out on the street. A hail of bullets, like Gatling gun fire, tore into the office. Up to a dozen smashed into Baker’s back and head, lifting him off his feet and flinging him across the office like a piece of rag dripping red dye.
The sheriff was caught reaching up for his gunbelt and three bullets drilled neat holes through his already injured hand.
“Cease fire!” Haven’s voice boomed.
There were a few seconds of silence, and then heavy footfalls sounded on the sidewalk outside. Some twenty hard-eyed stares raked the tableau of carnage presented by the office. They looked without emotion at the survivors as they got to their feet: Edge helping Elizabeth, the sheriff holding his bloodied hand to his middle, the priest with face turned heavenwards in thanks, and Pike who looked at the lean half-breed and the distraught woman with an expression of profound thought.
But then the men spotted the sack on the desk. Edge prodded it with the Winchester muzzle and it tipped, spilling a mixture of money and dynamite sticks on to the blood-stained floor. Greedy smiles spread across the faces of the men.
“Hey, where’s the other one?” a man demanded. “Corners’ next door in the bank and these dead ‘uns are Baker and Crane. They all been hanging around with that Texan -Bob Martin. He was in it for sure. What happened to him?”
Edge urged the woman towards the front door of the office, keeping himself between her and the body of her dead brother. The priest fell in behind him.
“You see another of ’em, Mr.. Edge?” a man asked. “Was Bob Martin here?”
The men fell back to allow Edge and the others to pass through on to the street.
“Yeah,” the half breed answered. “He was here. But he took a powder.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
SUDDEN death was no stranger to the men who had rained it upon the law office and even as the town’s overworked undertaker was still making arrangements for the bodies to be removed The Gates of Heaven began to resound with music, shouting and laughter again. On the quiet streets away from the aura of light and noise radiated by Solar Circle, the citizens of the town retired for the night. There had been another shooting, but lately such incidents had become commonplace. It was nothing to stay awake worrying about
Edge took Elizabeth Day to the church house and the priest’s wife - deeply shocked herself that the supper she had cooked for John Day should have caused her husband to become a hostage - attended to putting the bereaved woman to bed. Pike came to the house a few minutes later, carrying a valise filled with medical instruments and medicine bottles.
He saw Edge and the priest in the sitting room of the small, neat house and was intrigued by the attitude of interrogation which the half breed was adopting. But he went up the stairs and gave a sedative to Elizabeth before giving in to his curiosity. When he finally entered the sitting room, the priest was alone.
A horse snorted out at the back of the house, then hoof-beats sounded. The animal trotted across Solar Circle and was heeled into a gallop down August towards the bridge.
“Edge?” Pike asked the priest
The man nodded, the smallpox scars on his pale face very pronounced in the flickering lamp light “He asked to borrow it.”
“He’s not the kind of man to ask for favors,” Pike said thoughtfully.
“Not normally,” the priest agreed. “But he seems to have changed somewhat tonight.”
“It’s what makes the world go round, padre,” Pike said. “But he’s still got a yen for the money?” He showed his crooked smile. Two can’t live as cheaply as one.”
“He was asking me about the family of one of the men he killed at the newspaper office. Bradford Rivers. Oddly enough, another ... another man was asking the same questions a few days ago.”
“Man named Silas Hyman?” Pike suggested.
The priest was surprised. “How did you know?” he asked.
Pike held on to the smile. “I make it my business to know things,” he replied. “I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me what you told Edge.”
The priest nodded. “Why not. The sooner somebody finds Haven’s belongings and collects the reward the better it will be for Summer.”
It didn’t take long to tell and less than fifteen minutes had passed since Edge had crossed the bridge when Pike rode his horse out of the corral and galloped in pursuit of the half-breed.
The Chandler farmstead was small and ill cared for. It was ten miles east of Summer, reached by a spur which left the stage trail and took a tortuous, twisting route among foothills country. Edge slowed the horse to a walk when he came within sight of the spread and halted at the leaning gate to the yard. His hooded eyes focused upon the single lighted window in the dilapidated, one-storey house then roved over the two small barns. There was an empty corral behind one of the barns and the house and its out-buildings were surrounded on three sides by neatly tilled fields. It was all clearly defined in the frosty moonlight.
The tall, lean half-breed turned in the saddle and saw a narrow gully that offered a hiding place for the horse. He dismounted and led the animal out of sight from the track, where he tethered it. He left the saddle in place but slid the Winchester from the forward hung boot. Then he returned to the open gate of the Chandler farm arid followed the fen
ce around to the barn with the corral behind it.
He found a split board to peer through and enough moonlight shafted in through holes in the roof to show him the barn was empty. It smelled of rotting timber and decomposing animal feed. He moved quickly and silently to the second barn which looked from the outside to be in as bad a state of repair as the first, unpainted and apparently holed in many places. But Edge could see nothing as he tried to peer inside and when he prodded at the holes with the Winchester he discovered they had been repaired from the inside. There was a heavy padlock holding the two big doors at the front firmly closed.
He eyed the lock for a few moments, then shook his head and turned to lope silently across to the house. It was little more than a four roomed shack, its timbers warped and with several broken panes of glass replaced by balled up newspaper.
He looked through the lighted window into the living room. It was sparsely furnished with a whitewood table, two ladder-back chairs and a bureau poorly stocked with un-matching china. There was no fire in the grate and the light was shed by an unshaded lamp hung from the centre of the blackened ceiling.
Two coffins, plain pine and open, rested across the table. The pale, stiff faces of Bradford Rivers and Frank Chandler showed above the starched whiteness of their burial robes. A woman in her seventies, with skin like dirty parchment and eyes that looked dead, sat in one of the chairs in silent vigil. She held an empty shot glass in one hand and a half full bottle of whiskey in the other. Her movements, as she filled the glass, lifted it to her lips and swallowed the amber liquid in one were almost mechanical. Her lips moved, perhaps in prayer, perhaps counting the seconds, and then she took another drink.
Edge, his expression impassive, reached the door on the balls of his feet. There was no way of telling whether or not it was locked. He stepped back, raised a leg and thrust the heel of his boot against the door. It whipped open and crashed back against the wall. He followed it in, the Winchester leveled.
The old woman looked up without surprise, and fixed Edge with a vacant stare. “My last kin are dead,” she said in a croaky voice. “My nephew Frank and his brother-in-law. I’m alone in the world now.”
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