The man leapt backwards with a low shriek - as if the mug had erupted agony in his foot.
‘Pete!’ his brother yelled.
‘Hold it!’ Sullivan snarled, as Pete Carpenter went for his holstered Colt.
Every action was frozen by the fat man’s command. Except for the tightening of the half-breed’s fist around the Winchester frame.
‘You got reason to accuse him, mister?’ Sullivan asked, his tone rasping.
Edge spat, and scored a direct hit of his own on the buggy’s wheel rim. ‘When the rest of you fellers were busy with the Apache, that one took a walk.’
All eyes swung away from the half-breed to stare at Pete Carpenter. Even some of the citizens of Vintonville, who had left their tables to move to the doorway and windows. The accused man still had a hand draped over his gun butt. He let it go, to raise both hands, palms upwards, in a gesture of innocence.
‘I needed to take a crap, Mr. Sullivan!’ he implored. ‘A friggin’ crap is all. Go look in my gear. I ain’t got nothin’ I shouldn’t have.’
‘Check it out, Sonny Boy!’ the fat man ordered.
The Negro moved quickly to comply, relieved to get off the street, where the nervous tension seemed to double the heat of the sun. The Sullivan bunch’s saddles and bedrolls were stacked in a corner of the saloon. Sonny Boy pawed hurriedly through the gear. But tension stretched seconds to expand time.
‘Get the friggin’ lead out, will you?’ Sullivan bellowed.
Edge glanced in over the batswings. The big Negro was squatted beside the disturbed pile of gear. Sorting through banded bundles of bills. He stood up with a sigh.
‘Same pay-off money we all got, Mr. Sullivan!’ he shouted.
Carpenter showed a sick-looking grin. ‘See, didn’t I friggin’ tell you?’ His head swung this way and that, frightened eyes begging all to believe him.
The fat man vented a non-committal grunt and looked at Edge. ‘Check the rest of the friggin’ gear, Sonny Boy. Garcia, you watch when he goes through his own friggin’ stuff.’
‘Si, Senor Sullivan!’ the dudish Mexican rapped out, and pushed painfully through the batswings.
‘And hurry it up, frig you!’ the fat man snarled. “We wasted enough time in this stinkin’ town!’
As he spoke, he waddled to his buggy and heaved his enormous bulk on to the canting seat. The fringed canopy shaded him as he mopped at his sweating face with a bandana.
The sun inched higher and its heat increased. The men on the street shuffled and glowered. But the straggled line held further proof that Sullivan’s law was sacrosanct to his men. With a single, as yet secret exception.
‘Hey, Mr. Sullivan!’ Sonny Boy yelled excitedly.
The brief silence which followed his call was many times more harrowing than the long one which had preceded it. Then the buggy springs creaked. Sullivan swung to the ground, his knife drawn. The blade was still dulled by the blood of Grunting Bear.
‘You found it?’ He faced the saloon to rasp out the question. Then whirled to glare along the line of men.
‘Jesse’s gear ain’t here, sir!’
‘I confirm this, Senor Sulli—’
‘Pete!’ the red-headed twin with a mole screamed.
Jesse whirled out of the line. And powered into a sprint.
Sullivan let fall the knife and went for his Colt. ‘Friggin’ alive!’ he roared.
Edge was the only man on the street who did not move. The Sullivan bunch spun, still in the line, and trained rifles and revolvers on the moving target. The narrowed eyes of the half-breed watched the guns, rather than the men - until the fusillade of shots had cracked out.
Behind him, women screamed. His eyes moved frantically in their sockets. Seventeen gun barrels, smoke wisping from the muzzles, were angled downwards. Just one was held out level from the shoulder. Edge’s lips curled back in a faint smile of ice-cold satisfaction. The grim-faced man holding the leveled Colt was the brother of the dead man.
And Jesse Carpenter was undoubtedly dead, the fact announced by Sullivan’s roar of outrage. But the half-breed allowed himself a split-second glance at the body. An inert thing sprawled in the dust at the centre of the street five yards from where his escape attempt had started. The outstretched arms and the torso unmarked. Both legs shattered to shreds and oozing blood from multiple bullet wounds. More crimson, flecked with a lighter-colored substance, flowed from the single hole in the back of the skull.
‘So it was Jesse, Mr. Sullivan!’ the surviving twin rasped, thrusting the Colt back into its holster. There’s a friggin’ end to it’
The fat man wrenched his blazing gaze away from the corpse to show his rage full-face to the half-breed. He found Edge still directing the humorless smile towards the red-headed man.
‘For one half of the Carpenters, it’s only just begun.’
‘What the friggin’ hell?’ Sullivan snarled.
Pete Carpenter vented an obscenity - seeing every ounce of Edge’s cruelty glinting in the slitted eyes. He went for his gun.
The Winchester whipped down, the barrel smacking into the palm of the up-thrown left hand.
A woman screamed. The Winchester cracked. Pete Carpenter spun, screaming as the Colt spun away from his hand. Like Juan Garcia before him, the injured man stared down at blood spurting from the crook of his arm.
Edge prepared to crash sideways through the batswings. Sullivan stood in a frozen attitude, thick lips pulled wide. His men peered at him, itching for the order to be given.
No more than a second had elapsed since the Winchester crashed out its bullet. From far off to the east, an apparent echo sounded. Then this was echoed. And this. But the terrain was wrong for that kind of effect. And, despite the nerve-twisting menace that had a smell of fear-erupted sweat in the small town, every man on the street realized this.
Sullivan moved, but only to reach a position where he could look between two houses on the other side of the street.
‘The friggin’ army!’ he snarled, narrowing his eyes to pick out details of the troopers as they galloped their mounts out of the heat shimmer. He became rigid again, holding his breath so that not a single roll of fat quivered. Then he vented a harsh laugh. ‘And they’re bein’ chased. The friggin’, stinkin’, bastard Apaches are comin’!’
All but one of his bunch whirled to find a place where they could watch the frantic approach of the soldiers. Just Pete Carpenter did not move, his pain- and hate-filled eyes fastened on Edge’s face.
‘It is as if history repeats itself, senor,’ Garcia muttered from behind the batswings, ‘The broken arm. The Apaches.’
‘Yeah,’ the half-breed muttered, starting away from the wall and stepping off the boardwalk towards the surviving Carpenter twin. ‘Kinda like yesterday once more.’
Chapter Eight
THE injured man backed off two steps, vented a croaking moan of terror, and whirled.
‘Get in cover, you friggin’ lunkheads!’ Sullivan roared. ‘An’ get me a friggin’ ’pache in one piece!’
Edge didn’t speed up his pace. And only broke his concentrated gaze at Carpenter for a moment. To glance to left and right and behind him.
But Sullivan’s law was asserting itself again. And, with the prospect of finding the woman named Coralie once more uppermost in his mind, the fat man was oblivious to all else. The order ensured that his gang were of a like mind. Thus, the men who suddenly spurted into movement were no longer concerned with the stolen bankroll, the man who had taken it, and the half-breed who had lost it. For now.
Carpenter moaned again when he realized he had nowhere to run to. The tall, lean, coldly smiling Edge was behind him. Ahead of him, beyond the row of crude houses, up to a score of galloping troopers were racing for the comparative safety of Vintonville. Behind the horsemen, blasting out a hail of bullets in response to the quarry’s fire, was a group of whooping Apaches. Other war-painted braves veered their neck-stretching ponies to either side in a flanking move.
Cavalrymen and Apache warriors threw their hands and weapons high and pitched from their mounts. Other wildly fired bullets found horseflesh and white and red men were hurled from tumbling, blood-spurting animals. The troopers were close enough for the anguish of the dying and the terror of the living to be clearly seen.
But Carpenter looked for only a moment. Then, as bullets overshot the prime targets and pitted timber and adobe, he kicked open a door and lunged into the insecure sanctuary of a house.
He tried to slam the door closed, but the catch failed to hold. The door crashed into its frame and bounced open again. Carpenter went backwards over a chair, and screamed as he slammed down on to his wounded arm. Then the sound died on his lips as he looked up - and saw the tall figure of Edge in the doorway, a dark silhouette against the bright sunlight.
‘Jesse’s horse is in the mine tunnel with the others!’ Carpenter shrieked, struggling up to a sitting position. ‘Money’s in the saddlebag!’
He used the fallen chair, then a table, to haul himself to his feet. Bullets thudded into the outside of the house wall. Men screamed. Carpenter flinched at every sound.
‘Money ain’t everything, feller,’ Edge answered, and stepped over the threshold, canting the rifle to his shoulder.
Carpenter swallowed hard, and backed off again. There was nothing else for him to smack into in the sparsely furnished living room of the small house. He backed away until he was blocked by the wall at one side of the crude fireplace.
‘What you want from me?’ Every muscle in his face was twitching. He couldn’t control his lips and his words were slurred. Saliva spilled from the corners of his mouth.
‘Money was mine in the first place, feller. You can’t use that to pay me for my trouble.’
Hoof beats thundered against the ground on either side of the house.
‘Take cover!’ a man roared, full-throated.
Even against the crack of rifle fire, crash of hooves, the whooping and the screaming, Edge recognized the voice of Captain Kirk. Carpenter nodded vigorously in agreement as dust whirled and eddied in through the open doorway.
‘I got four grand of my own, mister! And there’s Jesse’s four grand. Money we earned bringin’ in bandits for the Mexicans. Take it. Every last cent.’
His terror-bulged eyes swung away from Edge, to look at the doorway again.
‘Money never settles an affair of honor, Senor Carpenter,’ Garcia said, a little breathless after his awkward bolt across the crowded street. ‘Those with the blood of Mexico in their veins, they understand this.’
Edge glanced indifferently at the newcomer just as Garcia was knocked violently forward by the blonde-haired Dorrie, crashing in through the doorway.
‘Maybe I should have sold tickets,’ the half-breed growled wryly.
Tears were rolling down the woman’s wan cheeks and her mouth was working. But she made no sound. Just slammed the door closed and sank into a squat against it. Garcia recovered from the shock of the collision and moved to a window.
‘I am not a fool all the time, Senor Edge. The Apaches are holding back and lighting fire arrows. The hotel, it is of wood dried by hot sun.’
‘I don’t want to die,’ Dorrie wailed meekly, the hands over her face muffling the words.
Outside, the more frenetic sounds of battle had subsided. Horses snorted and pawed at the ground. A man called for help - from far off. Isolated rifle shots cracked. One of them ended the man’s cries. Then there came a number of whooshing sounds which might have been difficult to identify had Garcia not noted the flaming arrows being prepared.
‘Ain’t just her sex makes her different from you, feller?’ Edge said, advancing on the quaking Carpenter.
‘I knew you’d come,’ the terrified man blurted. ‘But one man against the whole Sullivan bunch ... It wasn’t supposed to be this way.’
As he passed, Edge rested the Winchester on the table top. ‘How was it supposed to be, feller?’ he asked.
‘Get water!’ The bearded cavalry sergeant’s voice was loud, but not panicked. ‘The damn buildin’s burnin’!’
From all around the small town, the whoops of the Apaches expressed their triumphant delight at the flames and smoke.
‘I took your money, mister!’ Carpenter whined. ‘Four grand each wasn’t enough for me and Jesse. Not for all the lousy time we spent goin’ after friggin’ bandits. But Sullivan, he had to come north to get his woman. I was just checkin’ your gear, that’s all. But when I found that bundle of money . . . well, I reckoned that’d make up what Jesse and me figured we wanted.’
‘You are a bigger fool than all the times I have been, senor,’ Garcia hissed, not turning from the window.
His vantage point was at the side of the house. He swung his head this way and that - peering out at the Apaches and then towards the many seats of fire on top of and around the hotel and store.
‘Jesse’s already paid his due,’ the half-breed muttered, halting in front of the red-haired man, two feet away from him.
Pete Carpenter gulped. ‘He didn’t know nothin’ about it. Jesse was like the others. Figured the sun shone outta the fat man’s ass-hole. I wasn’t gonna say nothin’ to him till I saw a chance to break from the bunch.’ A glimmer of regret showed through his fear. That was supposed to be after you got yours, mister. But Sullivan, he had to friggin’ handle you his own friggin’ way.’
Edge raised his left hand to rub the backs of his fingers over the stubble on his jaw.
‘Mister, I’m tellin’ you like it was and—’
‘On account of while there’s life there’s hope?’ the half-breed interrupted evenly.
A fusillade of rifle shots cut across the roar of flames. Dorrie screamed.
‘A soldier who tried to put out a fire,’ Garcia reported flatly. He looked the other way. ‘The Apaches are closing in. Under cover.’
‘We got here after the Injuns hit first time. Sullivan figured to rest us and our horses for a while. Jessie’s mount’s better than mine. When we stashed the horses in the tunnel, I told Jessie I’d take care of his stuff.’ He gulped again, not trusting the unmoving eyes and constantly mobile hand of the half-breed. ‘I figured to get away in the night. Me and Jesse both, Ride two up the hell outta here while everyone else was sleepin’. Only it was almost all drinkin’ and hardly no sleepin’ at all!’
‘All through?’ Edge asked.
A burst of rifle fire punctuated the query. Bullets cracked in from every direction, splintering wood and chipping adobe. Garcia’s head whipped from side to side.
‘The Indians are providing covering fire. For what, I cannot see. They no longer advance.’
‘I’ve been honest with you, mister!’ Carpenter pleaded. ‘Jessie’s dead. Only kin I had. An’ I got a bum arm won’t ever be no use. You can take the eight grand. What more d’you want, mister?’
‘Yeah, you’re all through, feller,’ the half-breed rasped. And the slow back and forth motion of his left hand sprang into a blur of speed. The hand left his jaw, curled around the nape of his neck, and swung away from him in an arc. The sunlight, shafting through the south-facing window of the room, danced on metal. The finely honed blade of the straight razor whipped from the neck pouch.
‘No!’ Carpenter shrieked, snapping up his good arm. And sunlight flashed on another blade.
The red-head’s good arm had been behind him while he spoke. As it came into sight, the hand was fisted around the string-bound handle of a knife.
‘I am pleased the affair has some honor, senores,’ Garcia said softly.
Carpenter, fear contorting his stubbled face, slashed awkwardly with the knife. Dorrie screamed. Edge, his thin lips curled back in an icy grin of pleasure, held back his attack and arched his body away from the blade. Carpenter was not ambidextrous. He was weak from loss of blood and pain. His useless arm unbalanced him when he made a fast move.
Garcia had turned his back on the window, to watch the combat inside the house. ‘
Not much, but a little,’ he added, with a grimace of disgust.
Even when Carpenter knew the slashing blade was going to miss its target, he could not halt the move. His own impetus twisted him away from the wall and he screamed a greeting to impending death.
‘Stop it!’ Dorrie shrieked, watching through the cracks between her fingers.
Carpenter was half-turned from the waist and at the start of a stoop. Edge went up on to his toes, snapped his body erect, and stabbed the razor across the bar of the other man’s forearm. The tip of the blade penetrated the filthy flesh beneath Carpenter’s bobbing Adam’s apple. As the blood spurted, a roar of delight was vented from countless Apache throats.
‘Dear God, we’ll all be killed!’ Dorrie cried. She rolled herself into a tight ball as she toppled out of the squat.
Edge’s free hand fastened over the wrist of Carpenter. The red-head’s scream became a body-shuddering sob as he felt the warmth of blood against his flesh. The half-breed thudded a knee forward and slammed it into the other man’s crotch. The scream was revived, at a higher pitch, as Carpenter started to fold. He dropped the knife as his hand was crashed against the wall. As he twisted and stooped still more, his own weight and the half-breed’s strength sank the razor in deeper. And dragged it along the side of his neck. Blood gushed into his throat and he gurgled on the thick, salty moisture.
Edge twisted his wrist and the blade sliced through a full circle of flesh. From the front of the throat, round under one ear, across the nape of the neck and then beneath the other ear. Not pulling clear until it met the start of the gruesome wound. Then he stepped back and Carpenter dropped to his knees and sprawled full-length. He was still alive, and writhed, making small sounds, as he started to drown in his own blood.
Garcia still wore the grimace of distaste as he watched the man die. ‘He was disabled and unused to handling a weapon with his left hand, senor. A full-blooded Mexican would have fought more honorably than you.’
EDGE: Sullivan's Law (Edge series Book 20) Page 9
