Edge lunged up from the floor then, gaze and gun tracking across half the smoke-filling, flame-illuminated room. And saw Hedda Trask lift the skirt of her dress to step over the corpse of Gabe Millard and get out of the room. Close behind her, Pearl Irish had less difficulty negotiating the dead man because she wore pants. The obese Gray, a handkerchief pressed to his mouth, came to an abrupt halt in the wake of the fleeing women when the gun in the brown skinned hand of the half-breed drew a bead on him.
Then he moved the mask against smoke and fumes to plead: "Let me explain, Joe?" and his eyes glistened with tears of fear, grief, pain, or lost hope.
"After this, feller, I don't figure we should be on speaking terms," Edge told him harshly, through teeth clenched in a grin of the killer.
And the fat man thought his time was up-pressed the handkerchief back to his mouth and vomited into it as he lunged out through the doorway, one booted foot stomping on an unfeeling arm of the corpse.
Edge followed him with less obvious haste-taking long strides to swing around the rapidly spreading flames. The revolver still in his hand until he emerged into the hallway. Where Gray leaned into an angle of two walls below the curve of the staircase, being wetly and malodorously sick to his stomach; while Hedda Trask looked at him with a strange mixture of revulsion and joy; Pearl Irish sat on a chair with her face in her hands, sobbing; and a half dozen Chinese servants of both sexes remained crowded in a doorway from the rear of the house, each holding a pail of water.
He holstered the gun then, and gestured with his head for the frightened Chinese to start fighting the fire as he stooped, took a grip on one of Gabe Millard's ankles and dragged him out into the hallway. Growled at the corpse: "In your business, feller, first is first and second is dead, right?"
The Chinese went silently into the flaming room and then became excitedly noisy as they flung water at the flames and ran toward the rear of the house again to refill the pails.
Edge started down the center of the brightly lit hallway toward the double entrance doors and the woman sheriff curtailed her sobs to ask plaintively:
"Where you goin', Joe?" Then snarled at the scurrying, chattering Chinese. "Shut up, you foreign creeps!"
Her words alerted the fat man to the fact that the half-breed was leaving and he struggled to quell his now dry retching as he straightened and turned from the comer, scrubbing at his vomit-run chins with the handkerchief.
"To eat," he answered with just a glance back as he eased open one of the doors with his left hand—the right poised to draw the Colt again should Lowell have recovered from his horror and be out on the terrace with a lethal intent. But the terrace was deserted in the moonlight and that which spilled from the windows of the big house. There was a lot of moon shadow among the plantings to either side of the curving driveway, though, and Edge remained tense to respond to the first sign of aggression.
"You won't get outta my town alive unless—" Gray started to rasp.
"Dad, that ain't no way to get what you want from a man like Joe. Not after you pulled that rotten trick on him. Let me try to tell him—"
The fat man had started forward to catch up with the half-breed who stepped out into the night, ignoring his daughter as she rose from the chair. Until she reached out with a hand to catch hold of his shoulder and restrain him. When he moved one of his hands, the same speed he had drawn against Magee and Colly causing the action to show as a mere blur. The back of it cracked sharply against the face of the woman and sent her staggering away from him with a scream of pain and shock—blood spurting from two ragged wounds gouged across her wrinkled cheek by jeweled rings when he brought his hand suddenly down before pulling it back.
"Not even family in my own friggin' house!" Gray roared as Pearl Irish was slammed hard down on to the chair. And Edge paused to look back into the house, as the fat man lowered his voice but kept the harsh tone to warn: "You better believe me, Joe. You just go waltzin' into town alone, you'll be shot down like a mad dog. Just want some more talk is all. And if you wanna eat you can do it here at the house, for free."
Steam had taken the place of smoke coming from the arched doorway to the sitting room and now this evaporated as the Chinese ceased their toing and froing and disappeared into the rear of the mansion, anxious to be gone from the area which was pungent with the stink of doused burning and tense with the threat of renewed violence.
"It's the truth!" Pearl Irish blurted emphatically and shot a defiant look toward her father. "Without Dad or me along with you, my girls and the men will—"
"I've got a message," Edge cut in on her as he swung back across the threshold, and used a boot heel to close the door. "What's for supper?"
Earl Gray grinned broadly and his daughter expressed relief: while standing in back of them, Hedda Trask stoked up some more scorn for the half-breed.
"How do you like your steak, Joe?" the fat man asked.
"I'm real hungry, feller. Just cut off his horns and wipe his ass."
Chapter Eight
THE fat man said, after the two Chinese women who served the meal had left the dining room: "I'm gonna say somethin' to you now, Joe, that I ain't said in so long I maybe not even recall how to pronounce it right. Just two words to start—I'm sorry."
Just fifteen minutes had elapsed since Edge re-entered the house, convinced that the Gray father and daughter had told the truth. In that time, he had sat in a chair at one end of a long table which could accommodate twelve diners in the elegantly furnished room, again with an arched doorway, immediately across the hall from the fire damaged sitting room. While, on instructions from the fat man, Pearl Irish returned reluctantly to town to report to those who needed to know the events at the house and Hedda Trask went to the kitchen to supervise the cooking of the meal—without any unwillingness to be out of the presence of the two men she so despised. And Earl Gray himself climbed the stairway to go wash up and change from the vomit-covered clothes.
During the time he was alone in the dining room, Edge sipped good Kentucky bourbon at the invitation of the fat man and thought again briefly along the line that had occupied him on the ride out to the house in the rockaway. And smiled as he sat down at the rosewood table with its silver place settings—relishing the fine taste of the bourbon and appreciating the richness of his surroundings, but knowing that he would later be able to drink the cheapest Snakehead whiskey in the crudest of saloons with the same satisfaction and no rueful memories of his present circumstances.
He was just beginning to recall the last occasion when somebody had tried to give him a lot of money for, to his mind, no good reason, when Earl Gray entered the dining room with the salver-bearing Chinese girls at his heels. Just a tenth of the hundred thousand dollars this viciously evil, grossly obese man wanted to settle on him. His would-be benefactor then had been a woman, who when he refused to accept the cash had given him a half share in a saloon. Not the crudest in the west. Her name had been, like the glass he siped this good bourbon from, Crystal....
Edge put the past out of mind as the fat man sat down in a matching chair at the far end of the elongated table and snarled rasping imprecations for the servants to hurry. Gray did not mention Hedda Trask and why she was not with them for the meal that was just a single course of steak and potato and salad—the portions for the larger man less than half the size of those given to the guest.
"Reckon if I had a house like this and I thought it was burning down, I'd feel pretty damn sick, feller," Edge answered.
"I was sick with rage!" Gray shot back and paused to calm himself. "At what that bastard Millard did. What I'm apologizin’ for is puttin' you to the test the way I did."
Edge had finished cutting meat and now used his fork to begin eating it, not taking his slitted eyes in the grimed and bristled face off the freshly washed up and changed—into a blue shirt with white fringes and unsheened black pants—fat man some fifteen feet away.
"You surprised me, feller.
But I aim to stay on my toes by—"
"Joe, I'd like you to listen to me," Gray cut in with a mixture of vehemence and pleading in his tone and on his face. "And all I want you to say when I'm through is yes or no. Will you agree to do that?"
"If silence really was golden, I'd be able to afford the whole of Wyoming instead of just one county, feller."
The fat man breathed in deeply and nodded as he set down his fork—like he did not want anything as distracting as eating to interfere with what he needed to say.
"Zach Irish wasn't simply my son-in-law,
Joe. He was the best friend I ever had—maybe the only friend, I'm prepared to admit. And I was ready to spend the rest of my life huntin' for the bastard that killed him. But like you know, I didn't have to do that. And it's because I didn't have to do it that I got to be so rich. You made it that way and so it's natural, seems to me, that I feel I oughta reward you."
"I told you no, feller."
"I ain't through!" This was blurted out and the tone was immediately regretted. And he needed again to pause so that he could get his temper back under control before he continued: "You're exceptional, Joe. Most everybody I've ever met wanted to be rich. And them that were rich already wanted to be richer. It's in the nature of most people, seems to me."
He shook his head from side to side, frowning as if he was giving the intriguing puzzle a final few seconds of thought. But he failed to come up with the solution and now shrugged as if it no longer mattered. Went on:
"Gabe Millard was my top hand for more than two years, Joe. Came to town on the stage from Cheyenne because he'd heard I was always lookin' for good men of his kind to keep protected what I owned. Got from new man to top man in three days. By beatin' up on two guys and shootin' down another. With the fastest draw I ever seen—until today. And I'm includin' my own draw in that, Joe."
He looked expectantly along the table to invite a comment from the half-breed. But Edge simply chewed some steak, swallowed it, and forked another piece into his mouth.
"I knew it, Joe. When Gabe and the Lowell kid rode into town from the Sweetwater crossin' and I was told it might well be you headin' for Elgin City, I knew you could handle Gabe. And the kid both, if he poked his nose in. I knew it from what I've heard about you, Joe. From all over and all sorts of people. On account of it's known far and wide I had an interest in you and so stories about you reach me every now and then. You'll be surprised how much I know about you, Joe?"
His tone and a slight elevation of his eyebrows added the query to make the statement a question. And on this occasion, Edge filled the pause. Said flatly:
"You surprise me again, feller, and the fat will really be in the fire. If you understand what the hell I'm talking about?"
Earl Gray squeezed his dark eyes tightly closed and then massaged the lids with his ringed fists. Said while he was doing this: "You can judge how highly I think of you, Joe, by the way I'm near bustin' a gut to be patient with you. The quickest way to blow my top is to pass remarks about my weight, which ain't my damn fault."
He dropped his hands and opened his eyes, all traces of rage gone. Saw that Edge was calmly eating again, and nearing the end of the meal.
"I'll get to the point. From what I'd heard about you, on top of what I owe you, I wanted you as the top man around here, Joe. And when I saw you, I wanted it double.
"Gabe had told me what I'd heard a dozen times already—that you ain't the kind that does anythin' you don't want to. Not to horse around, that you're an ornery sonofabitch. And, again not to horse around, I played on that part of you to set up the shoot out with Gabe. Took into account as well that Gabe made it pretty plain to me he didn't much like you."
The fat man was talking fast now, obviously anxious to be finished with his explanation and proposition before Edge was through eating —as if he was afraid that his words alone would not be appealing enough to keep the half-breed at the house.
"He didn't much like me either, Joe. Same as everybody who knows me. Because I ain't a very likeable person. The way I am and I won't ever change. And don't have to. I want to be liked the way most everybody else wants to be hated—not at all. And I can afford to pay for every thin' I want, includin' what men with good buddies get for nothin'.
"Because most everybody has a price, Joe. And whatever it is, I can pay it. You know what I paid Gabe Millard? A grand a month is what I paid him. Top hand before him got two hundred a month. But Gabe said he felt naked without that S & W on his belt. For a thousand a month, though, he was ready to live with the feelin' of bein' naked—and wear his pistol only when I told him he could.
"See, Joe, I felt uncomfortable havin' Gabe around me with a gunbelt on when I knew he could outdraw me. And a man rich as I am shouldn't oughta be uncomfortable. Don't you agree?"
Gray had slowed the rate of talk as he digressed: and his intense expression faded to be replaced by a thoughtful frown. While the gaze from his wide apart eyes seemed to be fixed on an image of acute interest in the middle distance off to the right.
Edge chewed and swallowed a final piece of steak, rattled his fork down on the plate and asked: "This where you want me to say yes or no, feller?"
The fat man jerked his mind's eye away from the reverie and was abruptly angry again—but at himself rather than with the half-breed looking impassively along the table at him.
"Damnit, I ain't one usually to horse around, Joe. Just that so much has happened tonight, I guess. Look, I told Gabe to be ready to go up against you if I yelled for him, Joe. Knowin' deep down inside that you'd beat him to the draw. Wanted him dead, Joe. Because I wanted—want—you as the top hand around here. And there ain't no way that could be with Gabe Millard still around.
"I know people, Joe. I can look into the eyes of most of them and see just how their minds are workin'. And when I talked to Gabe tonight, I knew he knew I was countin' on him to get himself killed. So maybe my life was on the line as well, Joe. Maybe if I'd got it wrong and he beat you—especially with that shitty shotgun trick which I never knew about—Gabe wouldn't have held back from bias tin' me the way you did."
He shook his head sharply again and was once more irritated with himself for drifting of the subject.
"Look, in a nutshell, I want you with me, Joe. And the hundred grand is just for starters. Name the figure you want me to pay you every month. Whatever kinda place you want to live in, I'll have it built. You can have the pick of the women in Elgin. Anythin' you've ever wanted anywhere, I'll have it shipped here for you—"
Edge had rolled a cigarette and now he lit it with a match struck on the butt of his holstered Colt as he stood up from the table, put on his hat and buttoned his sheepskin coat. While the fat man watched him with a series of expressions that opened with surprise and ran through disappointment, despondency, anxiety, irritation and bitterness to the threshold of rage, which was about to be vented as the half-breed said evenly:
"My soul is the same as any gun, feller. Not for sale. Either way."
"Either way, Joe?" Gray's temper was off the boil, but reduced only to a simmer.
"To be used or put on ice."
The fat man shook his head, so vigorously his flabby cheeks and many chins quivered. "You don't understand, Joe. You won't be like Gabe Millard and the rest of the hired help. For you, it'll be like you were Zach. Family—better than family. You won't have to give up a thing. You won't be a hired hand, Joe. You and me'll be partners. What d'you say?"
"Want there to be just one thing between you and me, feller," Edge said as he moved away from the table toward the arched doorway.
"Name it and you got it."
"Distance."
He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway that still smelled faintly of the smoke and steam and burnt oil of the doused fire in the sitting room. But also permeating the atmosphere were some pleasanter aromas—from the raven hair, beautiful face and slender body of Hedda Trask. Who had quite obviously been eave
sdropping at the door and who now smiled her admiration for Edge around the finger she pressed to the center of her half open lips.
"So beat it, you crazy bastard!" the fat man exploded. "Get the hell outta my house, my town and my county. And stay a stinkin', penny-pinchin', ragged-assed saddletramp for the rest of your shitty life, runt!"
The half-breed closed the door quietly on the ranting man, whose voice could still be heard without the words sounding clearly enough to be understood.
The woman dropped her hand to her side and said softly against the distant ravings of Earl Gray: "It's a real pleasure to meet a real man. Going to be worth suffering him in a temper after seeing somebody stand up to him. And I thought you were going to be like the rest of them."
Edge took the cigarette from his lips, blew a stream of smoke toward the woman and growled: "All it takes, lady, is to tell him no and walk away."
He replaced the cigarette.
Hedda Track's smile became hard and bitter and cynical as she rasped through her perfectly matched teeth: "Anybody who ain't Zach Irish or you did that, mister, they'd be dead before they took two steps." Now every semblance of any kind of smile was gone from her face which suddenly was no longer beautiful as it showed a frown of evil cunning. "And dead I don't wanna be. That has to be even worse than being poor. Rich is a whole lot better."
Earl Gray had finished bellowing out his enraged tirade at the absent half-breed and the woman with skin deep beauty lowered her voice in the utter silence that gripped the big, expensive, unhappy house.
"And I don't give a shit about what you think of me, mister. I got something he wants and as long as he keeps on paying high for it, I got no intention of turning my back on him."
Edge made no reply and neither did he respond with a change from his impassive expression before he turned away from the woman and started along the hallway to the double doors, footfalls rapping on the polished flooring.
Edge: Bloody Sunrise Page 6
