Edge: Bloody Sunrise

by George G. Gilman

  "Hedda!" Earl Gray roared.

  Edge opened one of the front doors of the house and glanced back to see the woman grim­ace her revulsion and then wreath her face with a smile before she opened the door of the dining room. About to step out on to the terrace, the half-breed paused: having glimpsed the start of a look of terror which again stripped Hedda Trask of beauty.

  The crack of the gunshot was not loud. And the weapon was not powerful enough to ex­plode the bullet out of her back after it had penetrated into her belly. And neither was the impact heavy enough to stagger her backwards across the hallway. So she merely stood in the open doorway for stretched seconds, staring into the room and then down at where blood was blossoming a stain on the front of her dark dress. Then brought her hands to the wound and took them away again—to peer incredu­lously at the stains upon them. Opened her mouth in a way that suggested she was going to utter beseeching words rather than to scream, before Earl Gray said in an ice cold tone:

  "You maybe were tryin' to screw me blind, Hedda. But I ain't gone deaf."

  "No, Earl, please don't..." she begged. And stepped backwards three paces while she stared wide eyed into the room. At the fat man who was close enough so that his ringed right hand fisted around the butt of a Remington over-and-under came into view beyond the doorframe when he extended his arm to aim at her terror-stricken face.

  "Bitches are the same as dogs," he cut in on her plea as she froze, perhaps three feet away from the twin muzzles of the .41 caliber hand­gun. "When they're no longer loyal to their master, they have to be put down."

  She reached out with her blood-stained hands toward him, then knew she could expect no mercy from him and started to turn her head to direct a tacit plea at Edge. Whose ice blue eyes glinting through the screen of rising tobacco smoke offered her no hope. And an instant later, the second barrel of the small gun ex­ploded a bullet. That went into the side of her head to drive through her brain—killed her on her feet and left a wound that was hidden by her hair as she sank to the floor and spasmed once before she became still.

  The pudgy hand with its jeweled rings glit­tering in the overhead lights remained in view as its fist was unclenched so that the Rem­ington could drop to the floor.

  "Appreciate it if you'd close the door after you, Joe," the fat man said dully as he slowly withdrew his hand from sight. "Goin' to be cold in the house tonight."

  Edge shifted his gaze from the doorway of the dining room to that beside the stairs at the rear of the hall, where the Chinese servants stood in a shocked and silent group, drawn there by the sound of gunfire.

  "You're bound to feel the draft, feller," he said evenly, with the cigarette bobbing at the corner of his mouth. "Without a woman to warm your bed and the place full of Chinks."

  Chapter Nine

  PEARL Irish had taken the rockaway back to Elgin City after two of the Chinamen loaded the blanket-wrapped corpse of Gabe Millard aboard it.

  The country wagon with the canopy top was still parked at the foot of the steps from the terrace, but after giving it no more than a glance the half-breed ignored the rig and started down the drive at an ambling walk, his booted feet crunching noisily on the gravel in the stillness of the night. Until the sound was masked by the louder ones of the wagon and horse moving from a standstill into a tight turn and then starting down the slope, the driver in no haste.

  Edge took a few more paces and halted, hav­ing dropped the cigarette butt under his lead­ing foot, then crushed out its fire as he turned to look back at the approaching rig, as seem­ingly indifferent to his surroundings as he had been since closing the door of the house. Seeing the driver as no more than a slightly built shadow against other shadows under the can­opy.

  "I don't mean you no harm, stranger," Bob Lowell said nervously after he reined in the horse to stop the wagon alongside the silent half breed. "Would've hid and took a shot at you if I did. Man like you that's faster than Gabe Millard was."

  "Long time since he was in Dodge, and he was out of practice, way the fat man told it," Edge said.

  "Like all of us. You wanna ride to town?"

  "Walking's only good for bootmakers, feller," Edge answered. "Was hoping you were going to offer back there."

  He gestured with a thumb up the driveway as he climbed up into the rear seat of the wagon. Lowell caught his breath, then shrug­ged as he said in a melancholy tone:

  "Yeah, Gabe had that way of tellin' when somebody was around even when there was no way of seein'."

  He clucked to the horse and remained silent while the hooves and wheelrims crunched gravel. Then, when he had turned out of the Triple X entrance to head for town, asked:

  "Am I right in thinkin' that was Mayor Gray's little pocket gun that was fired twice before you come out the house?"

  "You're right."

  "Anybody hurt?"

  "First he gut shot his woman. Then put one in her head. She hurt between times, I guess."

  "So you ain't gonna take Gabe's place?"

  "It wasn't just from bad temper, kid. He heard her tell me she was using him."

  Lowell spat off the side of the wagon. And Edge had the impression that, just as the youngster sought to imitate the shrug of Mil­lard, so he modeled the act of spitting on the way Chris Hite did it.

  "Hot damn, he has to know all of us only take the shit he hands out on account of the high pay that comes with it. You made him killin' mad by not doin' what he wanted. If he wasn't that, he'd likely just have slapped her around some."

  "Kid?"

  "Yeah?"

  "You figure you can't beat me in a shoot out. So you plan to make me pine myself to death over some hard-as-nails ass peddler who knew the score when she laid it on the line for the fat man and—"

  "Hot damn, stranger, I ain't blamin' you for nothin'!" Lowell cut in quickly and anxiously as he drove the rig by the town maker. "Even if Gabe and me did warn you how the Mayor would be if you turned him down, it was up to you what you done. Hell no, I ain't sayin' it's your fault. Not none of it. I'm just speakin' aloud my thoughts, I guess. While I try to figure out what's best for me now that Gabe ain't around no more...."

  The remains of the gunfighter from Dodge City were still close by as the youngster who admired him so much spoke of him. For the freckle-faced Sam Gower had not yet buried the corpse in an area of unfenced ground al­ready featured with several elongated humps out back of the undertaking parlor: the mortician still in process of digging another grave beside two only recently filled in—shoveling the displaced dirt to the left of the deepening hole, across from where a plain pine coffin rested.

  Gower's sweat-sheened bald head reflected the moonlight as he labored with the chore. And Bob Lowell uncovered his and broke off what he was saying until the country wagon rolled on to the western end of Elgin's main street and the blacksmith's forge blocked the view of the town's Potter's Field.

  "Whether to stick around or to get out and give up the whole idea of raisin' Hereford," he went on. "That's a breed of British cow me and Gabe was gonna run on some range he'd seen over in Minnesota Territory some place. After we'd made the money we needed from workin' for Mr. Gray. Don't reckon I could cut it on my own. Probably be best to stick around. Watch my step and keep saltin' cash away until I can figure out somethin' else to do with my life."

  There was a gleam of light from a turned low lamp at the foot of the door to Sam Gower's premises. And some more showed at the win­dows of the Delaware Saloon and the office of the Elgin County Herald on opposite corners of the intersection. Every other building on both sides of the length of the town's main street was in total darkness. And there was just the thud of the shovel as it bit into the earth to compete with the clop, creak and rattle of the rig moving slowly over the hard packed sur­face.

  "But it ain't gonna be easy for me, stranger," Lowell went on, gazing directly ahead while Edge peered from side to side: surveying the many areas of moon shadow under sidewalk roofs and in alley mouths and scanning
the un­even rooflines of the buildings. "Not without Gabe around to keep tellin' me all the time how it's all gonna be worth it in the end. That it's not gonna matter when we have the place over in Minnesota, the Mayor played with us like we was part of the biggest toy in the world—hot damn, what's that!"

  Lowell reined the horse to a sudden halt and thrust forward his left arm, forefinger pointing. To single out from the night-shrouded town a deeply shadowed strip of sidewalk out front of the premises of a watch and clock repairer that was next to Hedda's Hats: fifty feet in front and to the right of where he had stalled the rig.

  Edge, having sensed the country wagon was under close scrutiny ever since it rolled in off the open trail, raked his gaze toward the area the young gunman indicated: having failed to see any sign of the secret watchers himself and thus certain he was not under imminent threat. But open to being proved wrong and clawing his right hand up from the seat to fist around the butt of the Frontier Colt.

  Lowell was already rising from the driver's seat and powering off the wagon to the left by the time the half-breed had focused his slitted, glinting eyes on the dark facade of the store. And failed to see any shadow that rang a warn­ing bell in his brain and caused him to draw the revolver and thumb back the hammer. But then, in the periphery of his vision as he made to shift his attention to the youngster scramb­ling off the rig, he saw the actual danger—as moonlight was reflected dully off something darkly metallic gripped in the right hand of Bob Lowell. The kid having brought in his pointing arm, curled the hand and drawn the Colt from his holster as he plunged to the side. Where he now hit the street, sure-footed but with momentum twisting him from the waist so that he was unable for a stretched second to steady his aim as he thrust out the cocked gun at arms length.

  "Gabe was—" he started to scream shrilly.

  "Hold it, kid!" a woman bellowed.

  "Lowell, don't!"

  "You crazy—"

  "Don't be stu—"

  Edge had planned his counter in the instant he saw the source of the danger. And readied his muscles to put it into effect in the next instant. This at the moment Lowell's feet first made contact with the street. And he was starting to power off the seat as the arm and hand and gun began to arc to draw a bead on him: the grief stricken screaming taunts of Lowell began and were almost immediately drowned by the cacophony of competing voices from the area of the intersection.

  The burst of vocal sound took the younger man by surprise and momentarily distracted him. Which gave the half-breed a sliver of time more to launch himself off the wagon—rising, turning and leaping in the same manner as Lowell. But in the opposite direction, and making no attempt to remain on his feet when he hit the street.

  Lowell wrenched his attention back to the rig, his round and button-eyed face showing an expression fixed midway between the strange mixture of grief and triumph with which he had opened the move and one that was a mingling of fear and non-comprehension triggered by the sounds and sight further up the street.

  He squeezed off a shot in a panicked reaction to the sudden tilt of the country wagon as the half-breed shifted his weight. And the bullet cracked through the windowless body of the rig to thud into a sidewalk roof sign that ad­vertised:

  5c. PUBLIC BATH 5c.

  Edge hit the street and pitched himself out full-length alongside the wagon: on his side so that his right hip and shoulder took the jolting impact of the fall, while he held the Colt in a double-handed grip—aimed under the vehicle between the leading and rear wheels. And triggered a shot that drilled a bullet into the crotch of the kid—just as the youngster was starting to drop to his haunches so that he could aim be­neath the wagon.

  The half-breed's round of shot crackled. To entirely drown out the groan of disappoint­ment that Bob Lowell vented as he was bowled over backwards by the impact of the bullet: still gripping his Colt as he experienced the initial bolt of agony and clutched both hands to its source.

  "You were good, kid," Edge murmured as he thumbed back the hammer while Lowell went down on his back: waiting for him to fold up into a seated posture so that he could blast a killing shot into a vital organ.

  But then a single shot split the silence of the night in the area where the volley had been fired earlier. At the same moment Lowell directed a shrill scream toward the moon. Which was the general direction in which the hail of bullets had been aimed, Edge saw, when he craned his neck to turn his head and peer along the street. To where a dozen men and the four daughters of Pearl Irish were grouped at the intersection, many with handguns and rifles still aimed skywards through a slow drift­ing pall of acrid smoke. While, isolated at the front of the gathering, Elgin's woman sheriff had her revolver aimed from the hip, tilted slightly downward so that she covered the divot her bullet had dug in the surface of the street. Just under the barrel of the half-breed's gun. Which was an incredibly accurate shot over a distance of more than seventy feet.

  "Anyone aim's a gun at me now better kill me with it!" Edge shouted, able to keep the in­jured Lowell in blurred vision from the corner of his eye while he gazed at the group at the intersection.

  "On your feet and on your way, Joe," Pearl Irish commanded harshly. "And leave that creep for Elgin folks to deal with."

  She started along the street toward halted rig between the public baths and a gunmaker's establishment with a man sprawled out to either side of it. And her daughters and the hard men trailed her, responding to her soft spoken command that they should holster their handguns and rest their rifles.

  In the wake of his scream and the silence with which he had listened to the exchange between Edge and the woman sheriff, Bob Lowell began to moan. But in despair rather than pain. The half-breed peered under the wagon at him and saw he had released his grip on the Colt as he struggled to sit up. And said, as he rose to his feet and slid his own gun into the holster:

  "You really fooled me, feller. You should have taken up acting instead of gunslinging."

  "Not me, Mrs. Irish!" the young man with the dark-stained crotch rasped out through a throat dried by pain and terror. "The stranger's the one you want! There was some more shootin' after you left and brought Gabe's body down to Sam Gower, ma'am! Two shots! Like maybe he blasted the Mayor and the lady from the hat store, too. The stranger, he comes outta the house and says he'll kill me if I don't drive him down to town so he can get his horse and gear. Says I have to tell anybody that tries to stop him that the Mayor give him the okay to leave and—"

  Lowell screamed again—but in expectation of pain and subsequent evil rather than in response to it. The shrill sound started when Pearl Irish halted on a spot just inches from his head: and drew back a booted foot. And curtailed when her toe slammed into the side of his head, to plunge him into unconsciousness.

  The woman's entourage of daughters and gunmen had come to a halt in an uneven arc around the front of the horse in the traces by then—and either grinned or glowered silently at the injured and unconscious Lowell or the merely bruised and very much aware Edge.

  Pearl Irish sighed softly and only now holstered her gun as she looked over the driver's seat of the country wagon and growled:

  "Get while the gettin's good, Joe!"

  "Hell, Mom, we didn't oughta let him just ride off until we're sure he didn't do Grand-daddy no harm!"

  "I ask for your advice, Anne Irish?" the oldest woman asked of the youngest, shortest and plumpest of her daughters.

  "No, Mom, but I go along with—" the pret­tiest girl started.

  "Hush it up, Gloria," the one Edge knew was named Laura said harshly—she had the kind of scowling face that suggested she might be in­capable of speaking or acting in any other way. "Let's get him strung up."

  "That's right," the tall and almost skinny Joy agreed. "Look, here comes Granddaddy now."

  Everyone peered along the street and out on to the moon whitened trail to where the unmistakable form of Earl Gray could be recognized on the seat of a buckboard being driven by one
of his Oriental servants.

  The pace was slow and there was no change in it when the approaching buckboard became, for a few moments, the center of attention. Be­fore, without any order being given, the group around the stalled country wagon suddenly broke up, the girl deputies and the hard men yelling raucously that the Mayor was on his way into Elgin. Which brought a handful of men spilling out of the saloon and a larger crowd—men and women—from off the side street where they had apparently been drawn together by the gunfire of a few minutes ago. All of them to hurry to their respective business premises and light lamps.

  Amid all this activity, just Edge, the town sheriff, and the unconscious Bob Lowell remained unruffled beside the country wagon. While the buckboard rolled to the end of the street and was halted. And the fat man stayed seated aboard it as the Chinese climbed down, went to the rear, hefted something wrapped in a blanket over his shoulder and started in the direction of Elgin's Potter's Field.

  "Who, Joe?" Pearl Irish asked dully.

  "Hedda Trask. She said the wrong thing at the wrong time."

  "Shit! Dad really ... Best you get movin', I think."

  He touched his hat and said: "Obliged, ma'am. It's what I had in mind to do."

  "Damn you for bein' so much like my Zach!" she rasped, and viciously kicked Lowell's gun far out of the youngster's reach as he made the groaning sounds to announce that he was on his way back to consciousness.

  This as Edge set off along the street busy with people hurrying to open and illuminate their places of business and others who were yelling at the rest to move faster. Every one of them taking a little time off from his or her pressing chore to direct a look of scowling re­sentment at the tall, lean, unresponsive half-breed who ambled unswervingly down the cen­ter of the street, apparently blaming him en­tirely for this new upheaval in the routine of this town.

  "Don't make no odds to me, mister," the short-sighted and almost bald Devine murmur­ed as he pushed open a door of his livery as Edge reached it. "I live in a shack right out back of this place. But these surprise trips Mayor Gray makes to town at nights, they sure rile most folks hereabouts. Here's your mount, sir. Mrs. Irish, she said you'd probably want him ready to leave. He's been fed, watered and brushed down so that'll be five dollars. There ain't no reduction for the animal bein' in a stall just part of a night."