He surveyed the empty rear of the rig as if he expected to see other corpses there.
"They all asked for it, feller," the half-breed answered as he swung down from the buck-board and moved alongside it to unhitch the reins of his mount from the rear. "But Saxon was talking so much garbage, him it was hard to refuse."
Chapter Twelve
THE bay gelding was as fatigued and as sweat-run as the team horses and the mount of Gerry Saxon by the fear triggered gallop, so Edge did not swing up into the saddle after unhitching the reins. Instead, led the animal by the bridle into a turn and then along the street toward the mid-town intersection. While behind him the Elgin City undertaker worked with the inherent reverence of a man in his business to lift the corpse down from the seat of the buck-board and carry it into his parlor. And to either side of the half-breed and his horse other citizens divided their attention as they remained on or stood just outside the thresholds of the buildings, sometimes eyeing the lone man ambling along at the side of his horse toward where the grossly fat Earl Gray had advanced on to the center of the intersection, but more often peering up the street to where a large number of men—and some women—were riding their horses in off the east trail. Most of them advancing in the formation of an arc that stretched from one sidewalk to the other, riding to the cadence of a soundless death march with revolvers or rifles drawn and aimed at the group of men bunched dejectedly in front of them.
In the line of captors were Pearl Irish and her four daughters, Chris Hite and Sam Tufts and some other hard men Edge either recognized from yesterday or had never seen before. Only the physically ill-assorted Laura, Anne, Joy and Gloria Irish displayed broad grins of triumph: while their mother and the hard men appeared to be in sour moods, like they were aggrieved by the chore of guarding prisoners who could more easily have been killed.
The captives included Irwin Kansler, Prentice Gilmore, Seth Corey and Clay Averill. Plus six others to who the half-breed could not put names. So Ray Washington, Charlie Bonham and one other deposed homesteader had not survived the ambush. Of those who had surrendered to a numerically superior force that was also vastly more experienced at gun-fighting, only the black-bearded Irwin Kansler was able to emerge from the slough of his despair to lift his chin off his chest, glower at Earl Gray and then inject a larger measure of venom into his expression when he looked beyond the man to snarl at Edge:
"So the bastard didn't buy you, uh? But I gotta say one thing for you, Edge. To set us up that way sure took guts. And I'd like to see the kind you got—spillin' outta a friggin' hole in your belly!"
The fat man, dressed as he had been for dinner at the big house on the hill but with the silver-buckled gunbelt supporting the holstered Tranters around his waist again, turned his head back and forth to watch both the half-breed and the homesteader with just a hint of a satisfied smile in his wide apart dark eyes and the set of his lips above the series of chins. Then concentrated on the entire bunch of captives as he ordered:
"Hold it right there, runts!"
He draped a hand over the ivory decorated butts of his matched revolvers and the prisoners immediately reined their mounts to a halt, their leader as much infected by the fear of sudden death as the rest of them. And there was a venting of shock by many of the witnesses along both sides of the street, but this was largely masked by the hard men and women peace officers stopping their horses and swinging down from the saddles. Each booting a rifle or holstering a revolver—confident of the fat man's control of the situation. And the smile on the fleshy face of Gray broadened as he accepted the responsibility with uninhibited pleasure in the fact of command.
"Just for the record," he went on less forcefully, "Edge knew nothin' of the reception I planned for you people. I've been kept fully informed of—"
He broke off and switched his gaze from the prisoners who were starting to be intrigued by what Gray said, to Edge, and the smile was displaced by an apprehensive frown as he watched the half-breed go on by him at the same easy pace, to halt in front of where the bespectacled, sallow-complexioned Prentice Gilmore sat his horse on the right of Kansler.
"What's the idea, Joe?" the fat man demanded.
And the Irish women and the hard men grew tense as hands inched toward holstered revolvers.
"You still have my pistol in your pocket, feller?" the half-breed asked evenly.
The feed and seed store owner opened his mouth to speak, but anxiety kept his throat constricted. And he simply nodded once then, when the brown skinned hand was extended toward him, he put a hand into his pocket. The tension remained high and seemed to have a palpable presence in the pre-dawn atmosphere. But only Gilmore drew a gun, gripping it around the barrel with a hand that trembled, to extend it butt first toward Edge. Who took it with a brief nod and a soft spoken:
"Much obliged."
A sigh was vented from many throats and feet were shuffled and rumps moved in saddles as the half-breed brought the Frontier Colt down toward his holster. But this sound of a mass exhalation of breath was not sufficiently loud to cover the thumbing back of the hammer to those in the immediate vicinity. And everyone in Elgin City heard the single crack of the Colt exploding a bullet. Which blasted from the muzzle on a rising trajectory, going under the neck of Gilmore's horse to enter the head of Irwin Kansler via his compressed lips which had tightened as he realized he was to be the victim of the glint-eyed half-breed.
The bearded homesteader was rocked backwards by the impact of the bullet from close range. Was rigid for a moment as he died, his booted feet trapped in the stirrups. Then, his mouth gaping wide to torrent blood from the hole in its roof, he fell forwards and sideways. To crash to the street between his own and Gilmore's horses, both animals jittery from the shot and ensuing taint of gunsmoke. But not inclined to bolt when there was just an uproar of voices rather than a barrage of other shots in the wake of the new killing. While Edge pushed open the loading gate to extract the spent case and then reloaded the chamber.
The babble of talk was ended with the suddenness of the gunshot that had caused it. And as the half-breed slid the Colt into the regular resting place of his holster, Earl Gray said in a dictatorial tone:
"If you weren't Josiah C. Hedges, you'd be dead, mister!"
Edge turned just his head to meet the glowering stare of the obese man with a level and unblinking gaze that tacitly urged Gray to elaborate. At the same time as it expressed a total lack of anxiety that the multi-ringed hands of the Elgin City mayor were now fisted around the butts of the Tranters.
"Worth gettin' yourself in a spot where you could be killed, Joe, just to spite a man who made a monkey outta you?"
"Kansler had this feller steal from me," Edge answered evenly, with a gesture of his head toward Prentice Gilmore. "I live by the gun and so, yeah, it's worth risking my life to blast anyone who robs me of it."
It took several seconds after the half-breed had finished talking for the fat man to draw far enough back from the precipice of his volcanic rage so that he could unclench his fists from the revolver butts and get an expression that approximated a smile spread on his tanned, much lined features. When he nodded and allowed:
"I can understand that, Joe. But I'm real glad you didn't blast the man that did what Kansler told him. Wouldn't have been able to give you one last chance then. Come on over to where you belong, Prentice."
He motioned with his head and the storekeeper, eyes blinking fast behind the lenses of his spectacles and both hands trembling now, swung hurriedly out of his saddle. And jerked viciously on the reins to urge his horse forward, away from eight surviving homesteaders whose combined malevolence directed at the traitor to their cause seemed to be physically bearing down upon the man—to shrink and stoop him.
"Go see Eve if you don't have no objection, Mayor?" Gilmore said thickly, and moved even faster after the fat man nodded his approval.
Then Gray told the bitterly resentful group of mounted men wh
o continued to stare toward the departing Prentice Gilmore:
"So it'll give you runts somethin' to occupy your minds while you're kickin' your heels in the jailhouse. Waitin' to face me. Wasn't Joe sold you down the river. Guys like Joe and me and Zach and the men who're really men, they don't have to sink so low as to... hey, where the frig you think you're goin'?"
His tone got shriller and the words were coated with extra venom as he broke off from what was a speech to the whole town to address himself exclusively to the half-breed. Who had started along the street again, leading his horse around the bunched prisoners and then on a straight course for a gap in the arc of armed men and women between the squint-eyed, tobacco chewing Sam Tufts and the skinny Joy Irish. But when the question was asked, Tufts side-stepped to close the gap, showing his stained teeth in a grin, and raised his left arm to run it across his chin and wipe away the tobacco juice which spilled from a corner of his mouth. While the female deputy with a badge pinned to the uncontoured front of her shirt turned sideways on to the half-breed who came to an easy halt ten feet away from her. The smiling Tufts was as casual as Edge appeared to be, while the woman adopted a gunfighter's crouch and spread a challenging glower across her thin, angular features as she rasped:
"Granddaddy asked you a question, mister."
In back of where the tense deputy and the self-assured tobacco chewer stood, the brightly lit main thoroughfare stretched to the far side of Elgin City, flanked by uninvolved but far from disinterested citizens who stood like dejected, low ranking sentinels on the sidewalks, stoops and the street. Far from happy with their lot, but disinclined to move against the power and authority of the fat man in order to change things. Or even to assist those who did dare to fight for the rights of freedom. Were merely curious to see the outcome of any such act of defiance while they harbored faint hopes of events ever returning circumstances to their favor. And so there was no resentment directed toward the only hard man who was not with Earl Gray now, as he peered at the distant horizon where the dark sky was showing the first streaks of light to announce the approach of the new dawn: just vacuous inquisitiveness, like they were docile, dumb animals waiting to discover if they were to get a new master. Wanting a change but feeling helpless to influence the end result.
"I heard him, lady," Edge told Joy Irish. "But I figure that even if I knew where I was headed, it'd be my business."
"Granddaddy!" the flat chested, almost hipless deputy sheriff shrieked eagerly. "You want me to take him in for talkin' back to you that way?"
"Girl, if you don't wanna a hole in you where a female ain't supposed to have a hole, you won't try it!" her mother warned in a monotone.
"Do me a favor, Joe?" Earl Gray asked with no hint of anger in his voice—as Joy Irish seemed to collect all that had got away from him, and expanded it.
Edge shifted his impassive gaze away from the glowering face of the deputy to look over his shoulder at the fat man. Who stood, his heavily fleshed face displaying an expression that came close to being imploring, beyond the crumpled corpse of Irwin Kansler and the group of mounted men scheduled to die soon.
"Stick around and watch the show," Gray responded to the quizzical look that paid a brief visit to the lean, dark bristled face of the half-breed. And the soft spoken words caused certain of the prisoners to shudder—one to moan softly. "Clean yourself up some, maybe eat breakfast. Before you leave us."
"And if I say no thanks?"
"It'd be the wrong thing to say, Joe. Be your last chance outta the window. I'd regret it for the rest of my natural, but I'd have to give the word for you to die, Joe. Matter of principle. As leadin' citizen of this town I can't make exceptions to the rules on account of personal concerns. What d'you say, Joe?"
Sam Tufts ran a sleeve across his smiling, juice spilling mouth. The square-faced, mean eyed, scowling Chris Hite directed a globule of saliva at the street. The other hard men tensed to turn and crouch and draw. Pearl Irish seemed to be trying not to show an anxious frown, while all of her daughters grinned. And Joy was unable to suppress a short-lived giggle. Edge raised a hand to his jaw and rasped the palm over the stubble of a day and almost an entire night. Said:
"No choice, so no sweat."
And the gathering tension was abruptly dispersed: only Earl Gray and Pearl Irish content with the anticlimax. Everyone else on both sides of the fence—and those who straddled it—poured tacit contempt and resentment toward the half-breed.
"Lock up the prisoners, girl, and have them pick their partners!" the fat man ordered. "Show'll start at sun up! You men roust out my folks that are still pretendin' they're asleep."
Amid the sudden noise and activity in the wake of Gray's commands, Tufts said to Edge: "That skinnyribs is likely disappointed you didn't put another hole in her, Mac. On account of them she's already got must be near wore out. The way she puts herself around for anybody that don't care there ain't too much meat on the bone."
The squint-eyed tobacco chewer was grinning broadly again, his earlier disappointment quickly forgotten as he savored the prospect of the carnage to come.
"Following in the footprints of her grandpa, uh?" Edge said as he tugged on the bridle of the gelding to turn the horse around.
"Uh?" Tufts grunted, bewildered.
"Another town mare, feller."
The hard man frowned a second longer, then shrugged and shook his head, having failed to make the connection and unworried by it.
Edge tossed over his shoulder: "That anyone can get to ride."
Chapter Thirteen
THE old, gray-haired, wizen-faced man attired in a starched white coat who ran the public bath house said that he was called Pop by everybody. He kept apologizing for the need to charge a dollar for a hot tub that should only cost five cents while he started the fires in three stoves and then was unnecessarily busy with tending to them as they heated up large pots of water.
The half-breed acknowledged the introduction and the first apology, but thereafter ignored the nervously over active and reedily garrulous bath house attendant. Stood on the threshold of the building's anteroom, his back to the trio of centrally sited stoves, the lines of chairs against each side wall and the doors to the cubicles at the rear. Smoking a cigarette as he surveyed the street that was almost deserted again: but for his gelding hitched across the sidewalk from him and Sam Gower who was leading a horse back toward his parlor from the mid-town intersection—the corpse of Irwin Kansler draped limply over the animal, arms and legs swinging laxly.
The entire sky was a slate grey hue now and there were no longer any pinpricks of starlight visible. The moon was a lighter shade of grey, closing on white. Just a few lamps were still burning, but for the benefit of the occupants of the buildings rather than to spill light out into night on the brink of day. Chimneys other than that on the roof of the bath house were curling smoke into the chill air of the fall morning.
Edge had needed to relight his cigarette frequently since he started to watch the street empty under the lightening sky. For he was too withdrawn while he concentrated on the decision he would shortly have to make to be aware of present external inconsequential’s. Just occasionally became conscious of his surroundings—as if to run a check that his sixth sense for danger did not let him down. At such times, relit his cigarette, heard what the old man was muttering, saw the changes that had come about on the street and noticed how much progress the breaking of day had made.
Thus knew, when he saw the town's undertaker heading up the street with the body of Kansler slung over the back of his horse, that this was the last of the dead to be taken to the funeral parlor—for now. Had seen Gower go earlier out to the east trail, and return leading three corpse burdened horses. Bonham, Washington, and a third man whose name Edge could still not recall.
Which was of no consequences. Just as it was of no consequence what the freckle-faced Gower said as he drew level with the bath house entrance. But the man's vo
ice coincided with the half-breed's train of thought reaching the end of the line and he asked as he used yet another match on the quarter smoked cigarette:
"How's that, feller?"
"I said it looks like it's gonna be another fine day, mister," Gower answered. And jerked a thumb up at the cloudless sky.
Edge nodded. "For business, too."
"Tub's ready for you, sir," the old timer announced from a steam-filled cubicle.
"I ain't ashamed of doin' a necessary job," the mortician countered evenly—and yet paradoxically pointedly—as he went on by.
And Pop emerged from the billowing steam cloud to say, breathless from the exertion of toting heavy pots of scalding water: "It's all ready for you to get washed up, sir."
"I don't do something about it, I could be that already, old timer," Edge murmured as he tossed the cigarette out on to the street and swung around, features expressionless and tone of voice indicating he was pre-occupied.
But he was simply withdrawn from the plane of the present circumstances. Not wrapped in tortuous thoughts, even though he paid no attention to what Pop said to him as he moved across the room between two of the stoves and accepted with a curt nod of acknowledgement the two towels and a cake of soap that were handed to him. Then stepped into the ten feet by four feet steam filled cubicle and closed the door behind him: slid the bolt across its fixings.
This the opening series of moves in an action that was planned to cut cleanly across or through all the inconsequential’s. With the sole objective of re-establishing the self-respect he had lost during those brief moments when he submitted to the will of the fat man. The pride he was forced to swallow then had posed a greater threat of making him sick to his stomach than when the homesteaders had made him much more of a prisoner. For while he was determined at the outset to kill—at least—the leader of the bunch for forcing him to do something against his will, he had respect for the men, what they were doing and their motives for doing it. The eruption of the rage that drove him close to insanity was triggered when his esteem for the men abruptly ran out: and there was a strong chance that he was going to be murdered out of hand.
Edge: Bloody Sunrise Page 11
