Edge was committed to a shot at the second survivor. His bullet found the man’s heart and Tallis squeezed the Colt trigger.
Just as he had experienced the foreboding while lying under the sidewalk, now the half-breed sensed his ruling fate would cause the firing pin of the revolver to fall against a spent shell case.
The gun clicked.
Another one fired.
His knife-punished face contorted by depthless fury, Tallis lunged forward, hurling the empty Colt away from him. Drops of blood hit the body-littered floor behind him.
“I got him!” Augie yelled in delight as Tallis powered out of the cell.
Edge pushed himself up. With an animalistic snarl, Tallis increased his speed, long arms reaching out and hands clawed.
The Winchester was only half pumped when the hands closed over the barrel.
The half-breed made his choice. While his left hand maintained a tight grip around the frame of the rifle, his right streaked to the nape of his neck.
Tallis came to an abrupt halt and wrenched on the rifle barrel. Edge fought the challenge for a split second, then released his hold.
The roar from Tallis’s throat now had a note of triumph as he swung the Winchester back, then started it forward. Edge bobbed down, leaned forward, and drove his right hand upward.
The Concerto for the Devil and His Disciples came to an abrupt end and, for the first time since they had performed in public, the Rollo Stone Quartet received no applause.
Edge ducked his head under the vicious swing of the rifle. And his hand streaked up between the extended arms of Tallis—to drive the whole length of the razor’s blade into the center of the man’s throat.
The eyes of the doomed man bulged to the extent where they seemed on the point of popping from their sockets. Then there was a wet sound in his throat.
Edge stepped back, withdrawing the blade and plucking his Winchester from Tallis’s weakened grasp with his free hand.
The man tottered for a moment, then died and crumpled to the floor, showing the blood-ringed hole among the studs which spelled out his name on the back of his jacket.
“I didn’t finish him, huh?” Augie called hoarsely as he appeared in the jagged hole, and pushed a fresh chew of tobacco into his mouth.
“He was dead, I guess,” Edge allowed. “I just made him lie down.”
Then he turned and walked across the wrecked, acrid-smelling law office and out into the street.
“It figured we was gonna lose some, Mr. Edge,” the stage driver said as he followed the ambling half-breed.
“Nothing is for nothing, feller,” Edge answered evenly as he reached the far side of the street and stooped to pick up his Colt and slide it into his holster.
“I tried to stop him,” Virginia called down from the window. Her nakedness was now draped by a blanket but the expression of shock remained frozen on her face. “He didn’t have the time to do more than put on his boots and grab the gun when the shootin’ started. I tried to stop him.”
There were tears welling in her eyes and she spoke with a catch in her voice.
“No charge, ma’am,” Edge told her as he shifted his hooded eyes from the whore to the corpse of Hiram Rydell. Above his bullet-ravaged chest the youngster’s face was fixed in a grimace of excitement that looked strangely fake on his youthful, blond-fuzzed features.
“He was a crazy kid,” the whore croaked. “But I liked him one hell of a lot. It’s a lousy crime he had to die this way.”
The first people from the open-air concert had appeared on the street and the crowd was growing larger by the moment. Edge glanced around at them and, from the looks on their wan faces—horror and deep shock—he knew the earlier feeling of foreboding had been valid. For there was now too much death in this small town—out back of the law office and cell block, inside the building, and on the street. A final score of violence to a troubled time that added up to more carnage than these rich people from sheltered city backgrounds would be able to take. Or perhaps it was just that there was no longer any protection for that portion of their wealth they had brought with them. Whichever, the High Mountain Festival of Fine Music—together with all its side trappings—had begun and ended this blood-soaked morning.
“Sure is,” Augie said, dribbling tobacco juice as he controlled the nervous tic in his right cheek. “But I guess the kid died where he would have wanted—out here in the West that was sure wild today.”
“Better than that,” Edge replied, then worked saliva into his mouth and spat it out with the aftertaste of killing.
“Better?” the whore exclaimed tearfully. “There’s nothin’ good about a nice young kid like him gettin’ killed.”
Edge took a final, bleak-eyed glance at Hiram Rydell, nude except for his rhinestone-studded footwear. “Died the way he would have wanted—with his boots on.”
Other titles in the EDGE series from Lobo Publications
#1 The Loner
#2 Ten Grand
#3 Apache Death
#4 Killer’s Breed
#5 Blood On Silver
#6 The Blue, The Grey And The Red
#7 California Kill
#8 Seven Out Of Hell
#9 Bloody Summer
#10 Vengeance Is Black
#11 Sioux Uprising
#12 The Biggest Bounty
#13 A Town Called Hate
#14 Blood Run
#15 The Big Gold
#16 The Final Shot
#17 The Final Shot
#18 Ten Tombstones To Texas
#19 Ashes and Dust
#20 Sullivan’s Law
And More to Come…
EDGE: Rhapsody in Red (Edge series Book 21) Page 14
