EDGE: Rhapsody in Red (Edge series Book 21)

by George G. Gilman

  “Neither’d be a problem any other time, cousin. But don’t you start no ruckus when you can’t get either of them after a long trip like you’ve had.”

  “Nothing worthwhile’s easy, feller,” Edge replied, and stepped outside.

  In the shelter of the basin, the temperature was a good deal higher than it had been up among the peaks. But by contrast to the cozy warmth of the law office, the outside air seemed to be threaded with tendrils of ice.

  “Reckon I’ll mosey on down to the mortician’s office,” Hiram said, his youthful features forming into an expression of remembered grief. “I wanna make sure Aunt Emma don’t have no ten dollar planting in Potter’s Field.”

  Edge nodded. “You and her have rooms booked?”

  “Dang it, that’s right! She won’t be needing no bed now, will she?” He grinned his pleasure at the prospect of being able to help the half-breed. “The Houston Music Society got in early. There’s some rooms for us at the hotel. Most folks only got boarding houses or are having to sleep under canvas.”

  He jerked a thumb along the street towards the tent town at the eastern end of High Mountain.

  “Obliged, Hiram.”

  “See you in the saloon for a brew, maybe?”

  The kid hurried off along the crowded street and Edge swung down from the sidewalk and turned into the alley. The Concord was still parked where it had halted. The passengers had dispersed and the corpses and baggage had been removed. But the team was still in the traces and the four saddle horses remained hitched to the rear of the coach. The short and overweight Augie was making a sales pitch to a tall, thin, baldheaded man in dungarees.

  “The sheriff says you and the kid earned yourselves some bounty money,” the stage driver said quickly as Edge approached. The nervous tic was moving his cheek again.

  “High Fy ain’t concerned with our dealin’s,” the horse-trader whined. “Twenty-five bucks apiece, take it or leave it. You keep the saddles and stuff. Get a better price elsewhere. But ain’t no elsewhere closer than twenty miles to here.”

  He spat.

  Augie shuffled his feet and rasped a hand over his jaw bristles. “Well, I ain’t rightly sure the nags are mine to sell.”

  “This one ain’t, feller,” Edge said evenly, unhitching the grey hollow back he had selected when he first found the horses.

  “You figure the kid’ll lay claim to the others, Mr. Edge?” Augie asked anxiously.

  “I hear he’s getting to talk like me,” the half-breed answered, unbuckling the cinch and letting the saddle and bedroll fall to the ground. “But that don’t mean I can speak for him.”

  He stepped up on to a coach wheel to drag his own gear off the roof. He draped it across the back of the gelding without fastening it and led the horse out of the alley.

  “Well, where is he so I can ask him?” Augie yelled as the horse-trader grew impatient to close the deal.

  Edge jerked a thumb towards the western end of the street. “Guess he’d like me to tell you he went thataway!”

  “Hey, you!” a man roared across the din of the town as Edge started to move towards the De Cruz Livery Stables. “Get that horse off the street.”

  The press of evening strollers and pleasure seekers had opened up a gap for the half-breed to take his new mount from one side of the street to the other. Abruptly, another corridor was driven through the crowd from a different direction as two of the Devil’s Disciples shoved and elbowed their way towards Edge.

  “No animals allowed on the street while the festival’s on.”

  “Exceptin’ for ours.”

  The two black-garbed gunmen had been stationed on either side of the batswing doors of the saloon, directly across from the law office. The livery was fifty yards further west along the street, beyond a crowded millinery store and the music-filled meeting hall. The two Tallis men skidded to a halt ten paces in front of Edge, when he was still twenty yards short of his objective.

  “People want to get animals from one side of the street to the other, they gotta take them around town,” the man on the left snarled. He had a thin mustache along his top lip and a dimple in his chin. “Didn’t you know that?”

  Edge had halted when the two men moved into the open area. His tone was as nonchalant as his stance. “Heard that was just when there were dead men across the horses.”

  The one on the right shook his head. He was clean shaven and had cut himself during his most recent effort to stay that way. “It’s on account Mr. Box don’t want people walkin’ through horse droppin’s. He knows it now, Joe.” He pointed a finger and made a circular motion in the air. “So why don’t you turn around and do like you’re supposed to, mister?”

  Edge glanced briefly over his shoulder, and spotted a third gunman moving out of the alley between the law office and the church. “I figure I got less ground to cover if I keep going ahead,” he answered evenly as he looked at the men again.

  Beyond them, he glimpsed two familiar forms. The Baron was in the saloon doorway, sucking slowly from a glass. Hiram Rydell was watching from the sidewalk in front of the mortician’s black-velvet-draped window.

  The mouth lines of the gunmen tightened and their bodies became rigid. Hands moved fractionally toward jutting Colt butts. Many of the bystanders moved hurriedly away, while others jostled to get a clearer view of what was happening.

  “Don’t tangle with them bastards, mister!” a woman rasped from behind Edge, to the left.

  The half-breed sighed. “Be obliged you fellers didn’t draw those guns on me. Give folks just the one warning about that.”

  “Tough talk won’t get you nowhere,” Joe growled. “We got word from Mr. Box personal we can use force to see the festival rules get obeyed.”

  “He got the same rules for blood as for horseshit?” Edge asked.

  Some women gasped, perhaps at the prospect of violence—or maybe at the sound of bad language.

  “We sure have got us a tough nut, Harry.” The dimple on Joe’s chin deepened when he smiled.

  “Seems like, Joe. Let’s crack him, huh?”

  The distance between Edge and the gunmen made a lunge impossible. His left hand held the gelding’s reins and his right kept the Winchester canted to his shoulder. The rifle was uncocked. He remained motionless, narrowed eyes flicking from one gunman to the other. A blanket of tense silence became draped over the area of the street where the two men faced a third. Beyond, the town was as noisy as ever: but the sounds of merriment and hard-selling seemed to be carried only outward from the center of High Mountain.

  “A final chance, feller!” Joe snarled. “Back up!”

  They drew in unison. Fast and smooth: both hammers cocked and the muzzles aimed unwaveringly at the half-breed’s heart

  “Just do like you’re told, tough nut!” Harry ordered. “Kill you if you don’t. And we got the law on our side. Been deputized.”

  Still grinning, Joe flipped up a lapel of his coat to display a tin star.

  Only the look in the half-breed’s unblinking eyes hinted that the casual attitude was a deception—but they were mere glinting threads of blue in the shadow of his hat brim, and a man would have to be very close to read what was behind those hooded eyes. There was fear there, and a brand of tension that used fear as a weapon. A long time ago, at the outset of the War Between the States, he had been afraid only of killing. Then, as one bloody battle followed another, the young cavalry officer underwent an involuntary reversal: to slaughter and maim the enemy while in the grip of a searing sense of exhilaration that scorched all other emotions into extinction—acting with the same degree of recklessness as Hiram back at the gorge.

  But then he had come to recognize fear as an essential prerequisite of survival—provided it was a kind of fear that was as ice cold and controlled as the exhilaration had been white hot and mindless: the kind that kept a man’s senses sharp and allowed his brain to function positively while his reflexes were poised for smooth action. Thus, behind the hard
eyes and casual stance, Edge was as aware of the cold grip of such fear as he was of every other aspect of his readiness to combat this new danger.

  “Seems I have to turn around and go back,” he said evenly.

  Now both Devil’s Disciples grinned. And Harry displayed his beaming face to the watchers on either side as Edge started to turn the gelding. Some of the bystanders nodded approvingly while others glared at the half-breed with blatant scorn. On one side of the street, Hiram expressed disappointment and the Baron watched with avid interest—still drinking steadily. On the other side, the towering lawman divided his attention between Edge and the black-garbed gunman at the mouth of the alley. His craggy face alternately showed mild approval and grim warning.

  The half-breed kept his movements slow, backing to stand beside the horse, then tugging gently on the reins to ease the animal around. When the horse was between himself and the gunmen on the street, he powered into speed.

  He sprang open his hand on the Winchester and the rifle started to slide off his shoulder. His lean face retained its calm set—and his hand streaked to snatch at the butt of his holstered Colt. But the move was hidden from the gunmen by the gelding. They merely added a twist of contempt to their grins, seeing the dropped rifle as a sign of nervous clumsiness—until the Winchester hit the ground and Edge powered down onto his haunches.

  “Watch him!” the man from the alley roared.

  Edge heard the warning, and the gasps, screams and yells that exploded from a score of throats to either side of him.

  Then the Colt bucked in his hand. Joe staggered backwards, a gush of blood arcing from the center of his forehead. He was still grinning when the bullet drilled into his brain.

  Harry had time to form his features into a snarl of hatred. He saw the glinting-eyed face of Edge looking at him from under the belly of the gelding, but the half-breed’s gun cracked a second time before Harry could track his own Colt low enough. And it was Edge who grinned now, curling back his lips to show the line where his teeth were clenched: as Harry took a bullet in the heart.

  The open area on the street had widened to twice its size since Joe went down. Now Harry started to corkscrew to the ground, and his finger squeezed the trigger an instant before he died. The bullet spun across ten yards of cold night air and drove into the flank of the gelding.

  Edge whirled in the crouch—and stayed his trigger finger. For the gunman in the alley was held in rigid inertia: as if pinned to the spot by an extension from the aimed barrel of Fyson’s Remington.

  The pool of silence extended much further after the explosion of shots: tense and brittle for stretched seconds as it waited to be shattered.

  “Was self-defense, cousin,” the tall lawman drawled.

  The horse’s forelegs buckled. A woman screamed and the gelding snorted. Countless throats roared a reaction to violence. Edge snatched up his Winchester, half-turned, and powered out of the crouch. Then he vented a snarl as, for the second time that day, he scrambled from under the crushing weight of a wounded horse.

  The gelding kept his hind legs rigid until he canted onto a shoulder and rolled onto his side, then lashed all four legs as he tried to turn and bite at the wound.

  The silence came back—to grip the entire town now. Deeper, harder and more tense than anything which had preceded it. Attention, directed from faces etched with shock, fear or excitement, switched from Edge to the horse, to the bodies, to the lawman, and back around the same route again.

  “Things ain’t always what they seem,” the half-breed muttered.

  Then he slid the Colt into his holster and pumped the action of the Winchester as he threw the stock to his shoulder. The gelding gave up trying to reach the source of his agony and his head slammed to the ground. The rifle exploded a shot from a range of five feet. The bullet went into horseflesh behind the ear and the gelding twitched once and was still.

  From many directions, grim-faced Devil’s Disciples converged towards the center of violence.

  “Tallis was warned, goddamn it!” Fyson roared. “He won’t goddamn like this!”

  Edge pumped the rifle action and did a slow turn, the stock still against his shoulder. The crowd drew back further, those at the front leaning hard against those at the rear. Like robots, the black-garbed figures came to a halt. Ten of them at least. Maybe more. Hatred etched deep into the lines of their hard, mean faces.

  “Sokalski, what do we do?” one of them yelled.

  There was a short pause. Then:

  “Boss’ll be here soon. Feller’ll keep until then.”

  Edge turned, but didn’t see Sokalski’s face. Just the broad back, with the studded lettering on the sheen surface of the black buckskin jacket as the man moved away through the crowd.

  “Warned you people there’d be killing!” Fyson roared. And holstered his revolver.

  A honky-tonk piano and a fiddle started to make off-key music in the saloon. A larger group of entertainers began a different tune in the meeting hall. Hands and feet beat time and men yelled for drinks. A woman shrieked with laughter. The crowds on the street stirred into movement again. The noise swelled to the volume it had held before the gunfight. The strolling resumed its former cadence. But now, the death-strewn, blood-run area of street in front of the meeting hall was regarded as a no-man’s land.

  “Guess you didn’t need no advice,” a woman said as Edge eased the Winchester’s hammer and canted the rifle to his shoulder. He recognized the voice as the same one which had hissed the warning to him.

  She was a slender redhead with green eyes who might have been pretty had her teeth not been so prominent. She looked about thirty, but it was possible she could be several years younger under the thick layer of make-up pancaked to her face. Her dress picked up the color of her eyes but was far newer and did not yet show so many signs of ill-used experience. It was cut low to reveal all her shoulders and much of her breasts, fitted skintight to the waist to contour the curves of her torso. Her hair was held in a bun on top of her head. Her smile was part admiration and part invitation.

  “I work in the saloon if you need some relaxation after the excitement, mister.” Her backward glance was a mockery of coyness as she started towards the batswings. “Name’s Virginia—and no cracks!”

  Edge stooped to recover his fallen gear. He looked up and the line of his mouth came as close as it ever did to expressing warm humor. “So how d’you make a living?” he asked.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE man who emerged from the undertaking parlor was short and slightly built, around fifty with a ring of gray hair surrounding his bald skull. He had wizened features that seemed to be set in a permanent expression of resignation.

  He hurried to the bodies, crouched between them, and vented a grunt of satisfaction. “They’re mine, Mr. Fyson. Dead as all get out.”

  “Mighty fine shooting, Edge,” Hiram congratulated with a broad smile as he emerged from the crowd, on the other side of the open area from the lawman. “Knew you could handle it, so I just stayed watching.”

  “Told you Hiram learns some things fast,” the half-breed growled at Fyson.

  “You ain’t no slouch yourself, cousin,” the sheriff muttered. Then, to Harv Danby: “Get the mess off the street. All three of the animals. Tallis’ll pay burying expenses.”

  “Ain’t you going to pay, Edge?” Hiram asked.

  “That’s only when there’s bounty money on the dead,” the half-breed explained, as he met the piercing gaze of Fyson.

  “You caught my drift about trouble, cousin. Don’t concern me none if every Tallis man in town gets blasted. Long as the fighting’s fair.”

  “Fifty bucks’ll buy you a fast ride outta High Mountain, mister!” This from the dungareed horse-trader who had emerged from the alley beside the law office, an avaricious smile pasted to his face beneath his bald dome. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  “I told Augie he could have the horses to sell, Edge,” Hiram said.

 
“Buy one and beat it,” Fyson advised. “You just started a war with the Tallis bunch and they ain’t the peace-treatying kind, cousin. Soon as Tallis gets here, all hell’s going to cut loose. Innocent people are liable to get hurt. That happens, I’ll see everyone responsible pays for it. Guess I don’t have to paint it no clearer than that, cousin? Not a man gets my drift easy as you do?”

  “Your meaning’s as plain to see as you are, sheriff,” Edge allowed, then glanced at the horse-trader. “Later, feller.”

  “There ain’t much ‘later’ left for him,” a man snarled from out of the crowd on one side.

  “And he don’t wanna waste fifty bucks on somethin’ he won’t get to use,” another voice taunted from elsewhere.

  Fyson turned and started back towards his office. Hiram snapped his head from side to side, to glare into the hard-set faces of the watching Tallis men. When he looked back at Edge, the half-breed had stepped around the horse carcass and was heading for the saloon entrance. The young New Yorker, spurs jingling, ran to catch up.

  “High Fy’s right, Edge,” he said excitedly. “I reckon you’re gonna have to have a showdown with the whole bunch of critters. You want me to back your play?”

  The half-breed halted with one foot on the sidewalk: and turned his head to fix the youngster with a scornful stare. “Want you to just back off from me, Hiram,” he answered coldly.

  A hurt expression spread fast across the fuzzed, baby-faced handsomeness of the kid’s features. Then as he saw the full depth of the half-breed’s brooding anger, he swallowed hard and licked his lips. But he was quick to control his fear. “All right, mister!” he snapped. “You don’t have to make no smoke signals. But you weren’t so damn independent when we got held up, doggone it!”

  He stared into Edge’s lean face for a moment longer. And, in that brief segment of time, fear was totally replaced by bitterness. Then he whirled and forced a way through the press of the crowd.

  Edge vented a low sigh and stepped up onto the sidewalk.

  “Sir, I think that is the first decent thing you have done in a very long time!”