The single street was now empty of everyone except the group of black-garbed men in front of the law office. The doors of all the buildings along each side were firmly closed and the windows—glinting in reflection of the morning sunlight—looked like empty eyes, with no suggestion that there were human watchers behind them.
Beyond the town, the grassy slopes spreading down to the platform with its adjacent tent were thickly packed with the local citizens and the rich out-of-towners. The entire audience was watching the progress of the approaching Concord in silence. But there was an almost tangible quality of mounting excitement in the warm stillness. Then a ripple of subdued noise broke, but it was immediately quelled as the tuxedo-clad Duke Box moved out of the tent and onto the stage. He was carrying a bullhorn.
Edge saw all this from behind a casual attitude that was just a surface veneer. Underneath this, his muscles were tensed for fast action and his mind worked coolly on what those actions would have to be if he was going to survive the violence that would shortly explode on the peaceful scene.
“Smile, fellers,” he instructed his prisoners as the Concord rolled across the town limits. The men grimaced with mixed fear and rage. “You look like death,” Edge criticized, taking first pressure around the rifle trigger. “And if that’s how you feel, be happy to oblige.”
Both men showed their teeth with upturns of the mouth line at each corner and the half-breed realized it was as much as he could expect under the circumstances. And it was good enough, for the sun was shafting down from behind the coach, and its interior was in shade.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” the voice of Duke Box bellowed as the Concord rolled within twenty yards of the law office. “Mr. Rollo Stone has been rescued from the evil men who kidnapped him. And here he comes to open the High Mountain Festival of Fine Music. Playing, with his world famous quartet, a piece especially composed for this occasion: Concerto for the Devil and His Disciples”
The grin of triumph on the ugly face of Ben Tallis broadened, displaying his very white teeth and emphasizing the cruel knife scars.
“How about that, Sol?” he rasped to his first lieutenant who stood beside him at the front of the group of black-garbed gunmen. Then, as Augie hauled on the reins without applying the brake, Tallis raised his voice: “No problem, High Fy?”
“Not for me, cousin,” Fyson growled. Then, under his breath: “I hope.”
“Up and out,” Edge snapped. “Ain’t against shooting fellers in the back.”
Diagonally across the street from the law office, the double doors of the De Cruz Livery Stable were flung wide—and the flames of a burning torch flared in the shaded interior.
Up on the Concord seat, Fyson drew his Remington, the bulk of Augie’s frame hiding the move from Tallis and his men.
Augie caught the signal and took a tighter grip on the reins.
Roy and his partner got hurriedly to their feet, the man with the scar swinging open the door of the coach.
Uproar exploded suddenly from the open-air concert hall. At first, as the tall, slender Rollo Stone led his group of musicians from the tent onto the platform, there were gasps and shrieks of surprise and shock. Then a burst of delighted applause. Finally, a tumult of cheering: that was abruptly curtailed—to allow the pure music of four violins to penetrate melodiously through the warm air of a morning that was suddenly heavy with the menace of violence about to break.
“What the—!” Tallis snarled, his smile and those on the faces of his men becoming enraged scowls.
“Ben!” Sokalski snarled. “Somebody’s messin’ with our horses again!”
In the livery, Baron Finn-Jenkins brandished the flaming torch at the handsome black stallions he had freed from their stalls. And, snorting in terror, the animals lunged at a gallop for the open street.
“Ain’t nobody gonna mess with Disciples’ horses and get away with it!” a man roared.
“Don’t just stand there,” Edge rasped. “They’re playing your tune.”
Bracing himself against the back of the seat, he raised both feet from the floor and bent his knees. Then he sprang his legs straight and the heels of his boots slammed into Roy’s back.
“We been friggin’ had!” Tallis yelled, going for his gun.
The men behind him went for the draw.
The two black-garbed men aboard the Concord were sent crashing out of the open doorway as Augie cracked the reins and the team lunged into movement.
Edge fired the first shot, as he dropped down onto one knee and aimed across the falling forms of the screaming men he had pushed out.
Fyson was just a split-second later in squeezing the trigger of the Remington, the crack of his gun lost amid the fusillade exploded by the grouped Devil’s Disciples.
Two men died as the Rollo Stone Quartet played the opening lento movement of the Concerto for the Devil and His Disciples: for Roy and the other luckless man who had been sent to the pass were caught in the hail of lead instinctively directed toward the coach as it was powered from a standstill.
And two more staggered under the impact of crippling wounds as the shots of Edge and Fyson—fired for effect, with no chance to take aim from the jolting Concord—spun into flesh amid the panicked and enraged group of Devil’s Disciples.
Augie lost his tobacco chew again as bullets cracked about him and he wrenched on the reins to send the team into a tight turn. Behind the snorting horses, the coach swayed dangerously to the side … and canted up onto two wheels as it tore into the alley between the law office and the church.
Sprawled low across the roof, Fyson fanned the Remington hammer to send a spray of bullets toward the enemy.
The black-garbed men who had lunged away from the law office facade were driven back—by flying lead and the pumping hooves of horses spooked out of the livery.
Edge was slid along the seat by the tilt of the crazy turn. As he slammed against the padded side, he reached out a hand and turned the handle of the door. The door flapped wide and he powered out through the opening as the Concord bounced back on all four wheels again.
Augie slammed on the brake and acrid smoke streamed from between the wood blocks and metal rims. Dust billowed from under the sliding wheels and flailing hooves.
Edge hit the ground with his feet, but could not brace himself against the forward momentum of his exit from the Concord. He ran for three strides, then pitched through the dust cloud. Bullets dug divots around him and snagged at his clothing.
Every part of his lean frame suffered jarring pain as he slammed into the ground, and the wind whooshed up from his lungs to whistle through his clenched teeth.
But his desire to survive sublimated pain, and strength was forced into his punished muscles: strength to power him into a roll—over and over until he came up hard against the wooden facade of the church.
Splinters showered down on him as bullets cracked across the alley mouth to rip into the clapboard.
His eyes were out of focus from the spin of the roll and tears were squeezed from their ducts by the gritty dust. But his hearing was still unimpaired. He heard the violin quartet as the pace of the music built from lento to allegro. The melody was counterpointed by the crash of gunfire and the thud of bullets into the woodwork close to him. And voices.
“The bastards!” From Sokalski.
“Kid!” A Woman’s voice: the whore, Virginia, shrieked from the open window of the saloon’s second story.
“Get the back, cousin!” Fyson said.
“You varmints! I’ll cover you, partner! I’ll fill these no-good critters full of hot lead.”
Edge shook his head and his vision cleared. His back was against the angle of the church front and the ground, feet under the steps of the sidewalk where it restarted after breaking for the alley. The dust raised by the panicked horses was settling as the animals galloped off the street and out onto the trail.
He saw the heads and naked torsos of Hiram and the whore at the open window of the hotel. The
young dude was using the half-breed’s Colt to send fast shots toward the front of the law office. There was an excited grin on his face, contrasting starkly with the anguish expressed by the naked woman at his side.
Then he saw the bewhiskered Baron, kneeling down on one knee in the doorway of the meeting hall—firing a Winchester with the same brand of controlled rage that he handled the sword within the cave up at the pass.
The barrage from the kid and the Britisher had driven the Devil’s Disciples into cover and the two kept up the fusillade as Edge pushed himself onto all fours and then scuttled forward across the mouth of the alley.
More shots sounded at the rear of the law office and cell block and the half-breed glanced down the alley as he dived under the sidewalk in front of the building.
The Concord had not slithered to a halt until it was on the back lots of the flanking buildings, and Fyson and Augie were now using it as cover from which to explode shots at the hole in the cell block wall caused by Hiram’s jail break.
Abruptly the shooting ended: as Edge lay in the shade of the sidewalk planking and sucked in deep breaths of warm, dusty air. But, as the ice-blue slits of his eyes raked the street, the violin music of the Concerto for the Devil and His Disciples was not the only sound in the deep basin. For during this brief lull in the gunfight, the fast-moving melody competed with the shrieks, screams, and yells of the terrified audience.
“Stay back!” Fyson bellowed, his voice all but drowned by the exclamations from a multitude of throats.
The kid ducked back out of sight, dragging the whore with him. The Baron fed fresh shells through the loading gate of the Winchester. Edge blinked sweat beads from his eyelids and looked impassively at the two horse carcasses and four black-garbed bodies sprawled on the gray dust under the yellow sunlight.
He looked at the blood-smeared bodies of the men with the same lack of emotion as he had viewed the ravaged remains of the cougar under the mesa, his hooded eyes as cold as they had been when they raked over the other corpses that marked his trail from that mesa to this street.
“Watch out!” Virginia shrieked.
Hiram had reloaded the Colt with shells taken from Edge’s saddlebags, and he had put on his ten gallon hat. It looked more incongruous than ever atop his youthful face as he appeared at the window again.
“Here’s your one way tickets to Boot Hill, you lousy—”
He got off a single shot that shattered the glass panel of the law-office door.
Then a fusillade of answering fire exploded from the already smashed window of the building.
Hiram’s chest, pale and hairless, was abruptly marked by half a dozen dark holes. He died without a scream, the impact of the bullets knocking him backwards. He crashed into the naked whore and bounced forward, blood spurting from the wounds to slide slickly down his flesh.
Virginia shrieked a profanity. Hiram’s crumpling body hit the window sill and he folded forward over it. His hat fell off as the Colt dropped from his lifeless hand. He tipped out through the window, slammed against the saloon canopy, and thudded to the street—naked except for his fancy boots, their rhinestone trimmings sparkling in the sunlight.
Just a flicker of emotion showed in the ice-blue slits of the half-breed’s hooded eyes now. But the moment of pain that showed was physical—caused by the movement of a bruised shoulder rather than the mental anguish of watching the reckless young dude die. And it was followed by a fleeting smile that brought to the surface all the latent cruelty that lurked within the lean body of the man.
“You’ve gone as far west as you can go, Hiram,” he muttered against a snarling cheer from inside the law office.
Edge’s sardonic humor was not triggered by the violent death of the naive youngster from New York’s West Side. Rather, it was his response to the killing: which was totally negative.
There had been an affinity to, and a liking for, Hiram Rydell: but neither was strong enough to penetrate the half-breed’s defensive barrier against the kind of involvement that could lead to more than a shallow relationship. Thus Edge could concentrate entirely on the reason he had come to this single-street town in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains: plain and simple money, which a man could gain and lose with equanimity for there was always more to replace that which was lost.
People could not be replaced. Not Jamie, not Beth, and certainly not his own lost youth as epitomized in the unlikely form of Hiram Rydell. But if a man wanted to attain something that was vitally important to him, his mind had to be free of the influence of side issues: and a human relationship of any depth could be a deadly side issue.
Edge wanted ten thousand dollars, an amount which had taken on a special significance in his life. There had been that much hidden in a small Mexican town called Montijo—sufficient for Edge to make a new start and help insulate him from the tragedy of Jamie’s death. But rats reached the money before the half-breed. Then there had been the second ten thousand, paid to him by a woman who had revived memories of Beth. The woman could not be his, and the money had been put farther out of reach than its donor.
Between these two opportunities to paste over an emotional void with the richness of money was a chain of time with the links forged of savage violence and harsh suffering: a time during which so much else had been won and lost with no ultimate gain except continued survival—and survival with no aim until the mind of the half-breed fixed upon this goal.
The audience in the open-air concert arena had quieted, but through the now up-tempo strains of the Concerto for the Devil and His Disciples came another sound: the voices of the crowd were silent, but their running feet on the grassy slopes seemed to make the ground of the entire basin vibrate.
“Get back, you crazy fools!” Fyson yelled.
Edge experienced a stirring of foreboding in his coldly working mind.
“Bust outta the back!” he heard Tallis snarl. “Get in the crowd!”
Footfalls thudded on the floorboards.
“Jesus Christ!” Augie screamed.
Revolver shots exploded—toward the hole in the cell block and from it.
“We need some help, cousins!” Fyson shrieked, fear withdrawing every hint of the drawl from his voice.
Edge started to roll out from under the sidewalk, his actions triggered entirely by self-interest, brain unclouded by any desire to avenge the death of Hiram Rydell.
Baron Finn-Jenkins broke from the doorway of the meeting hall, firing and pumping the action of the Winchester.
“You killed my son!” he roared, his inflamed passion for vengeance keeping him on a straight course to his objective.
Edge halted his roll—sprawled on his back and looking up between the gaps in the sidewalk planking.
Two men had not rushed to the rear of the building. They stepped across the threshold of the front doorway now, fanning their Colts.
Had he zigzagged and bobbed, the paunchy Britisher might have evaded the bullets. His mistake cost him his life. He was hit three times in the face, pulled up short, stood for a moment, and corkscrewed to the ground. Blood from his pulped nose and the two holes in his forehead rained down on his fallen Winchester—adding fresh stains to those Luke had made on the stock.
There was not enough clearance under the sidewalk for Edge to bring his rifle to the aim.
“Where’s that bastard—” Sokalski snarled.
Edge powered out from cover, again halting the roll with his back pressed to the ground. He aimed from the shoulder, fired, worked the action, and fired again.
“Sometimes get under folks’ feet,” he muttered as Sokalski and Nye plunged through the doorway, trailing twin arcs of blood from their punctured jaws.
The bullets burst clear at the tops of their skulls and gore sprayed along the door’s lintel. Drips of it splashed on Edge as he scrambled erect and leapt across the sidewalk and into the office.
Sokalski and Nye brought the total of dead inside to three. Unfeeling flesh was soft beneath Edge’s feet as h
e advanced across the office to the open doorway into the cell block. Glass from the shattered windows crunched. Gunfire masked the sound.
Gun smoke stung his eyes and assaulted his nostrils.
There were two more inert Devil’s Disciples in the cell block. Tallis and four more were standing at each side of the enlarged aperture where the barred window had once been.
Between their heads and shoulders, Edge could see a part of the Concord—the front half, with its woodwork holed and splintered by bullets. Augie and Fyson continued to blast shots from the cover of the coach, which rocked as the surviving horse of the team struggled to get up off its side, dragged down by the dead weight of three carcasses.
Bullets spat against the outside wall and cracked through the opening to ricochet off cell bars.
The black-garbed men took a signal from the ugly Tallis and sent a volley of gunshots towards the Concord.
Fyson was standing on the spokes of a front wheel, clinging to the cover of the seat. He leaned into the open for another shot, and his craggy face exploded crimson spray and chunks of blood-moist flesh as he was hit by every bullet in the fusillade.
The Concerto for the Devil and His Disciples moved into the crescendo of its finale as the massively built former sheriff was flung from the coach and crashed limply to the ground.
“They got High Fy!” Augie shrieked from inside the Concord. “Oh, my God!”
“Just for the record, you fellers want to surrender?” Edge asked as the men at the far end of the cell block prepared to burst out from the hole into the open.
They whirled and the half-breed read their intent in the enraged eyes. He fired twice while still erect and two men died, their falling corpses banging against the other men and spoiling the aim of smoking guns.
His hand pumping the action as fast as hot metal would allow, he fired again from a crouch. A bullet grazed his earlobe as a third black-garbed man crumpled.
“We had it friggin’ made!” Ben Tallis snarled, drawing a bead on the half-breed as Edge threw himself into a sprawl.
EDGE: Rhapsody in Red (Edge series Book 21) Page 13
