Far below, close to the bottom of a great dish scooped in the mountains, the lights of a town burned bright and unflickering through the clear night air. The lights gleamed in two parallel rows to mark out the line of a single street, at the western end of which was a far broader area of bright illumination. The softer glow of the moon augmented the lamp light.
The street ran in a straight line from east to west along the southern rim of a deep chasm that sank to the lowest point in the great circular basin amid the peaks. The buildings on either side of the broad thoroughfare were a mixture of single and double story, of timber, red brick and local stone; with covered sidewalks running along the front of the buildings, broken at the alleys which gave on to back lots.
From the terraced crop fields that were spread to the south and the sloping pastureland extending up the northern side of the basin beyond the chasm, it was apparent that High Mountain was a farming community, the kind that, under normal circumstances, would have been dark and quiet at such a late hour.
But the circumstance of a music festival was not normal and as the Concord drew nearer—at first inching around dangerous hairpin curves and then making speed down a shallow grade between the well-tended fields—those aboard were able to hear the noise that accompanied the bright lights. Music, laughter, loud voices, the thud of feet against floorboards and the general background hum of a wide-open town provided a raucous contrast to the almost awesome silence clamped over the surrounding peaks.
“Hot damn!” Augie snarled, hauling on the reins to bring the team to a walk. “Not more friggin’ trouble here!”
His outburst was caused by a line of four men who had appeared to block the way. They emerged from the moon shadow of a two-story brick building at the point where the trail ran out to become the eastern end of the street. All were tall, all carried a lot of solid weight, and all moved with the smooth ease of youth. They were dressed entirely in black, from highly sheened boots to the low crowns of their hats. Their jackets and pants were of shiny buckskin, the coats hiked up at the right hip to show the jutting butts of holstered revolvers.
The quartet stood immobile in the path of the slowing Concord, mere silhouettes against the lights of the street stretched out behind them.
“Hey, you could get run down doin’ somethin’ like that!” the weary Augie snarled in exasperation as he halted the team, the lead pair only a few feet from the men.
“Welcome to the High Mountain Festival of Fine Music,” the one who had led the others across the street announced flatly. “Ben Tallis says we gotta check you ain’t bringin’ no trouble here.”
He sounded bored by the words, as if he had made the same short speech a thousand times. Glancing along the crowded sidewalks and at the mass of people milling around the brightly lit tented area at the far end of the street, Edge guessed it might have been that many.
“Oh, Jesus,” Augie hissed so that only the half-breed could hear. “The Devil’s Disciples!”
“We’re bringing trouble aplenty!” Hiram announced.
Hands rose fast to drape four gun butts.
“Don’t draw those irons!” Hiram warned.
“Trouble to bury, is all!” Augie put in hurriedly, the nervous tic starting up in his right cheek.
“After we been paid bounty on it!” he augmented. “We was bushwhacked by four varmints.”
Edge glanced over his shoulder. Hiram was standing upright between the two tightly wrapped corpses. He had unbuttoned his long coat to reveal his entire rhinestone-studded garb.
The news failed to interest the four gunmen and they were unmoved by the outlandishly attired youngster.
“We only got jurisdiction up to the rim,” their spokesman announced. He waved his free hand in a circular motion to indicate the high limit of the basin. “Didn’t happen local or we ‘d have heard it. Need to see all your folks got festival tickets. Or stage line credentials.”
He stepped forward as the Baron leaned from the window, his bewhiskered face set in a glower. “Who are you, sir?” he demanded. “To delay us after such a distressing and arduous journey?”
“Wants to see your tickets, folks,” Augie supplied, still afraid of the black-garbed quartet. “One of the fellers hired to help out the local law.”
He handed down confirmation of his identity and Hiram extended a piece of pasteboard.
“Very well,” the Baron submitted stiffly, and turned his head to peer back into the coach. “It is all right, my friends. The fellow is merely doing his job.”
The Britisher thrust a handful of tickets through the window and these were examined closely, together with the one from the kid and Augie’s letter. Then the man pushed the whole bundle back at the Baron.
“Okay,” he growled in the same flat tone, shooting a dull-eyed glance at the undraped bodies slumped across the horses in back of the Concord. “But keep this rig off the street until you unload the stiffs. Law office and mortician’s place are on that side. We don’t want nice folks upset, get me?”
His eyes glinted with a warning for a moment, then he backed away and returned to take his place at the end of the blocking line.
“Mean looking critters, ain’t they?” Hiram murmured.
“Real mean,” Augie hissed as he urged the team into movement and steered the Concord towards the rear of the buildings lining the north side of the street. “Run up against them once before. Bunch of trigger-happy vigilantes that Ben Tallis hires out for big money. Work California mostly. And if you have the lousy luck to run in with Tallis, you’ll know why he calls ’em Devil’s Disciples.”
They were behind the buildings now, out of earshot of the hired guns. And Augie suddenly cackled with laughter. “Mean as fellers get to be,” he rasped. “But real dumb.”
“Letter covered Luke and you both, huh?” Edge suggested.
“Sure did,” the driver responded. “But they never figured you weren’t Luke.”
“Obliged,” the half-breed acknowledged.
“My pleasure, mister,” Augie assured, his laughter subsiding to a grin of satisfaction. “Never thought I ‘d see the day I ‘d fool a Tallis man.”
Edge expressed a subtler brand of humor that was just an upturn at the corners of his mouth. “Should have known it would work like a charm.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE law office was at a midway point along the north side of the street, a stone building just one story high with a cell block at the rear. It was tacked on, seemingly as an afterthought, at the end of a two-story block comprised of the stage depot, town bank, hardware store, and a restaurant called The Big Basin. Across an alley wide enough to take the Concord was a wood-built church with a high steeple.
Edge blinked against the bright lights of the street as he stepped from the half-darkness of the alley.
“Guess this’s what’s called rip roaring,” Hiram said with high excitement as he halted alongside the half-breed.
He had scrambled down from the coach roof immediately behind Edge, but then had held back to shed his long coat and to dust off the dried mud from his highly decorated outfit.
“When it ain’t called fleecing the suckers,” Edge replied, ignoring the looks of curiosity, disgust, and even scorn which were directed by the passersby at himself and Hiram.
Windows in almost every building along both sides of the street were ablaze with yellow lamplight: and hung adjacent to the majority of them were hurriedly painted signs proclaiming a brand of goods or the service offered by the owners. These were in addition to the premises which continued their normal lines of business: the restaurant, the Peaks Saloon and Hotel, O ‘Leary’s Dry Goods Store, Bartholomew’s Poolroom, and a handful of others catering to the everyday needs of a small town. Elsewhere, Rooms signs were displayed in a score of places. Advertisements for Take-Away Liquor were almost as numerous. A palmist operated from a private house. A twenty-four-hour fire-kindling and lamp-oil service was offered by the hardware store. And the town doctor had c
overed his normal shingle with a sign which claimed he ran an infirmary: while another sign under a blazing window across the street maintained that Grout’s Snake Medicine would cure all human ailments. Games of chance were offered in a dozen places, there was a polka dance in the meeting hall, religious carvings were on sale from the church, and food—from popcorn to exotic foreign delicacies—could be purchased from pushcarts and open windows.
And business was booming everywhere, as well-dressed visitors to the town moved in and out of brightly lit doorways, between times strolling the sidewalks or crisscrossing the street which was hung with colored lanterns and strung with banners proclaiming the reason for the excitement: The High Mountain Festival of Fine Music.
“Reckon there ain’t nothing that’s cheap to be had in this one horse town right now,” Hiram allowed, hitching up his gunbelt.
As the half-breed and the kid stepped up onto the sidewalk fronting the law office and Augie helped his passengers out of the Concord, it was obvious why the newcomers drew passing attention away from the town’s long-established and new enterprises. For their travel-stained appearance and weary features were at complete odds with the fine attire and clean faces of the men and women thronging the street. Most of them looked as rich as Edge’s fellow-passengers, displaying their wealth by the cut of their clothes and the sparkle of their jewelry.
But in such a crowd of mainly elderly, obvious city dwellers, a few others stood out as noticeably as the recent arrivals. These were the black-garbed Tallis men, similar in age and identical in appearance to the quartet who had halted the Concord at the town limits. They prowled the sidewalks or lounged against building facades, their guns displayed from hiked up jackets and their eyes constantly raking over the ever-moving tableau of rich folks on the hoof. As one of the men did a slow turn to gaze insolently at a middle-aged but beautiful woman, the stud-formed lettering on the back of his sheened jacket reflected the lights: Devil’s Disciple—California.
“This Tallis critter sure seems to have a lot of help,” Hiram said as Edge reached the law office doorway and took a final look around as he fisted a hand over the knob.
“Hell of a lot,” the half-breed said evenly as he pushed open the door and stepped across the threshold.
“Shut that goddamn door on that goddamn Sodom and Gomorrah out there!” the man behind the desk yelled from under his hat.
The desk was at the rear of the room, to one side of another door that gave on to the cell block. It was a large desk bearing just a clean blotter, a lamp with the wick turned low, and two empty wooden trays. The man in the swivel chair behind the desk was also large. Not so much in girth, though he probably weighed better than two hundred and fifty pounds, but he had the height to carry it without slack for he was close to seven feet tall. His chair was turned slightly sideways so that he could rest his long legs at full stretch on the uncluttered top of the desk. His elbows were braced on the chair arms and his chin was propped on clasped fists. His face was completely hidden by his hat.
“Hell, he’s a big critter!” Hiram gasped as he closed the door.
Because of the stout stone walls of the office, the din outside suddenly seemed to come from a great distance.
“Name’s Fyson,” the sheriff supplied, unbunching a fist and pushing the hat onto the back of his head. “Near enough to seven feet as makes no difference. On account of which I get called High Fy.”
“Wow!” Hiram exclaimed, his eyes raking along the length of the lawman again. “Seven feet—that’s just got to be a record of some kind.”
“He sure don’t look like a stereotype,” the half-breed said.
Sheriff Fyson was about forty with deeply bronzed features that might have been modeled from a mountain crag, the eyes representing dark lakes between snow-fringed shores. The structure was angular and the skin was pitted and cracked. But there was a certain rugged handsomeness to the face, which showed an expression of dislike as the dark eyes surveyed the newcomers.
He had a five-pointed tin star pinned to the left pocket of his checked shirt. His pants were blue Levi’s, the cuffs tucked into his boot tops. A single-holster gunbelt was hung around his hips. The loops were fully stocked with shells and the holster carried an old Remington .44 Army Model.
“Something I can do for you, cousins?” he asked, his voice a lazy Southern drawl. His eyes remained unfriendly.
“Six corpses outside in the alley,” Edge said, moving to a potbellied stove that stood against one wall alongside a rack of six Winchesters.
The lawman’s eyes were abruptly more unfriendly and he dragged his legs off the desk and slammed his feet to the floor. “I sure do hope you’re trying to make a joke of some kind, cousin!” he warned.
“We were bushwhacked, sheriff!” Hiram supplied quickly, jerking out of his fascinated appraisal of the big lawman. ‘Four of the varmints. All of them riding the range in the sky now. Lost a couple of our own, though.”
Edge had wedged the Winchester between his knees and was standing with his back to the warmth of the stove, his hands splayed in line with the heat. Fyson’s unblinking eyes raked a scornful gaze up and down the kid, then swung to look at the half-breed.
“It ain’t no joke, is it?” he asked with a sigh. “Even them pretty threads the kid’s wearing don’t make it no goddamn joke, does it, cousin?”
Edge shook his head. “Hiram’s learning as he goes along. Some things faster than others.”
“I saw off two of them,” the kid boasted, unconcerned by Fyson’s blatantly contemptuous attitude towards him. “Edge here gave the other two their tickets to Root Hill.” He hitched up his gunbelt. “My name’s Rydell. Kid Rydell.”
“Kid Rydell?” Edge rasped.
“It’s gotta be better than Hiram or Junior,” the youngster pointed out evenly.
The sheriff raised his hat to scratch at his thick growth of graving red hair. “Gave them their what to where?” he asked.
“Killed them is all,” Edge explained with a sigh. “Hiram read a lot of books back East about the West. You want to check if the dead are worth anything except burying?”
“Where’d it happen?”
“In the mountains. South.”
“A long ways from here, sheriff,” Hiram added.
Fyson got wearily to his feet and had to hunch his shoulders to keep from hitting his head on the ceiling. “Four, you say?” he asked from the door.
“Two notches each for our guns,” Hiram confirmed.
“Could be the Warner bunch. Ran them boys outta High Mountain before the Tallis vigilantes took over the law business here. They rode south.”
The noise of the town crowded into the office for a moment, then the door closed behind the lawman.
“He’s a critter rides tall in the saddle, ain’t he?” the kid muttered, and took the time to gaze around the office with as much fascination as he showed for each new scene or person he came upon. “And he’s got the same kinda eyes as you. Filled with far horizons.”
“Hiram?”
“Yeah, Edge?”
“One day you’re going to call the wrong feller critter.”
The kid nodded, and pursed his lips. “Got you, Edge.”
Time crawled slowly in the warm, dimly lit office, the passing seconds marked by the loud tick of a wall clock. Edge continued to stand before the stove while Hiram opened the door in the rear wall. He vented a grunt of disappointment when he saw that the two cells were vacant.
“I was right, cousins,” the lawman drawled when he returned to the office and closed the door gratefully behind him. “Flyers out on them from Santa Fe. Bank robbing. Don’t say whether dead or alive, but I guess it don’t make no difference. Hundred bucks apiece to anyone without a badge.” He went towards a safe at one side of the only window and used a key from a ring hung on his belt. “Worth only trouble to a lawman, which is why I just contented myself running them out.”
“A hundred each!” the beaming Hiram exclaimed. “W
ell, I’ll be.”
“Just remember about ‘critters’,” Edge warned. “Or could be you won’t be much longer, Hiram.”
“Don’t mind Edge calling me Hiram,” the kid told Fyson as the safe door swung open. “On account we been through a mess of trouble together.”
“I saw and heard about it, cousin,” the lawman answered. “Harv Danby—town’s mortician—is taking care of the arrangements. The Warner bunch and passenger and shotgun. Hold-up happened outside my jurisdiction so I just pay you fellers and that’s it as far as I’m concerned.”
He counted out bills as he spoke, then gave one stack to the kid and one to Edge. All in twenties and fives.
“Hey, I’m twenty bucks short,” Hiram complained after checking his money while Fyson returned to his relaxed posture in the swivel chair.
“You pay to bury the men you kill, Hiram,” Edge told him, pocketing his share of the bounty without counting it. Then he canted the rifle to his shoulder. “Obliged to you, sheriff.”
The lawman had his feet back up on the desk and the hat tipped forward over his face again. “Santa Fe marshal’s office foots the bill. No skin off my nose. But don’t you fellers get trigger happy on my patch.”
“You said the Devil’s Disciples are running the law around here now,” Hiram pointed out, clutching what was probably the first money he had ever earned in his life.
“Suits me to let them think they do, cousin,” Fyson answered. “Long as they stop trouble happening. Soon as it does, the troublemakers’ll answer to me.”
“I’m just here for the music, sheriff,” Hiram said.
“Ain’t you I’m anxious about, sonny,” the lawman countered and raised his hat a fraction to fix Edge with a steel-eyed gaze.
“No sweat from me, feller,” the half-breed told him. “Heard from a drummer down in Arizona there was a shindig due here. Aim to find me a room and an honest poker game.”
EDGE: Rhapsody in Red (Edge series Book 21) Page 5
