Edge: Echoes of War (Edge series Book 23)

by George G. Gilman

  Many other men had died violently at the hand of Edge since the life-blood of Elliot Thombs was spilled on the rich soil of Kansas. Between that far-off day and this morning, when his newly purchased gun blasted the life from the holdup man, perhaps he had killed more men than he had slaughtered for the cause and for his survival during the war.

  But there were no wanted posters out on the man called Edge. Many men and some women had blamed him on the grounds of morality - much as the old-timer in the stove-pipe hat had berated him this morning. However, the law had always been forced to hold its hand, if not its representatives’ tongues. Just as the beefy deputy town marshal had been required to do earlier, after listening to eye-witness accounts of the hold-up and its blood-spattered finale.

  There had been shattered bodies and spurting crimson on the final leg of Edge’s aimless journey which had so far led him from the burnt-out Iowa farm to the winter coldness of Omaha. The men who had been killed because they had attempted to prevent the half-breed completing a job he had been hired to do. He did not complete the job in the manner expected of him: but he did finish it to his own satisfaction - and received the thousand-dollar pay-off he was promised in San Francisco.

  It was that thousand dollars which financed his stay at the Astoria Hotel, purchased his new clothes and hand-gun and bought the ticket on the Delta Dawn, on the Hurricane Deck of which he stood now: reflecting on the past without regret, ignoring the future and betraying no indication of how closely he was examining his surroundings of the present.

  For danger dogged him more closely than his shadow at high noon. Through almost every state and territory west of the Mississippi it had never been more than a gunshot away from whichever course he had chosen to wander - or somebody had paid him money to take. And the key to his survival - for it was essential if he were to have the opportunity to use his skill with blade or gun - was his war-taught ability to be on his guard against danger every second, even when asleep.

  Thus, he was not startled when a hand tapped him lightly on the shoulder.

  ‘The old lady’s husband was right, ma’am,’ he said evenly. ‘I did it for me and my money.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ the pretty brunette who had been in the office of the Mid-West Steam Packet Company answered with a shrug. ‘I’ve already had my say about that to the deputy marshal. I was just going to offer a penny for your thoughts.’

  Since climbing the main stairway to the raised deck, Edge had been aware of the passage of time. A clock somewhere in midtown Omaha had marked each quarter hour with pleasant chimes which cut through the more raucous sounds of commerce and industry. From one-thirty, officers, crewmen and passengers had been boarding the stern-wheeler. And the clock was chiming a quarter past two when he saw the woman moving up the gangplank from the wharf. She had caught his eye for a moment, then was apparently ignored. But he continued to be aware of her as she organized the carrying of two large trunks into a passenger compartment amidships: and sensed her approach from behind before she tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Nothing I want costs only a penny,’ he told her, and she flushed again, as his cold eyes surveyed her with complete frankness.

  Out in the bright sunlight her features were as attractive to look at as they had been in the gloom of the office. Even more so, he thought: perhaps because she had taken off her hat so that her coal black hair - sheened and fine - fell freely to below her shoulders in a series of natural waves. When she tried to hide her embarrassment behind a smile, she showed two crooked .teeth which detracted from her beauty but added character to her otherwise perfect face.

  ‘My name is Charity Meagher and I’m going all the way to Fort Bulford on this boat. Then overland to a town called Lisaville on the Musselshell River. I’m hired to teach school there.’

  She spoke slowly and distinctly, not enjoying the half-breed’s impassive survey of her face and thickly cloaked body: but using the time to rid her skin of the blush.

  ‘I like children, don’t you, Mr. Edge? I always have, ever since I discovered I wasn’t a child anymore.’

  Edge showed a quiet smile now - just a little warmer than the one he had worn before the ugly old lady had broken his mood of contentment that morning. ‘Glad to see it was a discovery that’s been well-developed, ma’am,’ he responded softly, his gaze shifting from the conical mounds of her heavily shrouded breasts to her face.

  Dull red suffused her from hairline to throat once again. ‘Oh dear, you’re flirting with me!’ she said in a hushed whisper.

  ‘Maybe, ma’am. But you happen to look better than Iowa to me right now. And a whole lot fresher.’

  The smile had gone from his face and his tone was flat. His abrupt change of mood - back to what it had been before she approached him - both surprised and disturbed her. The expression on her own face became sympathetic.

  ‘Bad memories, Mr. Edge?’

  He was looking out across the river again. ‘My business.’

  The curt response stirred her to the beginnings of anger. ‘You brought it up!’

  ‘Happens sometimes.’ He put his back to the Missouri and all that lay on the other side and shifted his casually careful attention to the wharf. The Delta Dawn and the other moored boats were still being loaded with cargo, the tempo of the work increasing as departure time approached for all three. Passengers and people who had come to see them off thronged the wharf. ‘You still want to talk, ma’am?’

  ‘I love to,’ Charity replied, encouraged.

  Edge showed her another brief smile that was as close as he ever got to a broad grin. ‘So let’s do that.’

  The color rushed to her cheeks: but spread no further and was not so deep as before. ‘You really are a very strange man, aren’t you?’ she posed rhetorically as Edge resumed his surveillance of the busy scene on the dockside.

  He paid particular attention to a tall, slender, almost graceful man who was wandering through the crowd with apparent aimlessness. The man was well dressed in high-buttoned boots, a tailored topcoat, cravat and derby worn at a jaunty angle. His face was very pale, like that of a man who spent most of his time indoors. It was a long, rather mournful face with deep set blue eyes, hollow cheeks, aquiline nose and thin mouth above a weak jaw.

  ‘Like everyone else, ma’am, I think I’m normal,’ Edge replied .at length, not sure if he was telling the truth or not. There was something familiar about the well-dressed man with the wan face. Not so much in his build, but rather the set of his almost characterless features.

  ‘I sometimes think I’m not like other women,’ Charity said. ‘Especially in a situation such as this.’

  ‘You can do all right if you try hard enough,’ the half-breed told her. ‘How did you play it with the clerk at the office?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  The pale-faced man lifted a billfold from the side pocket of a gray-haired old-timer: then moved away with calm innocence. And Edge saw why his gait was not as graceful as it should have been. He limped slightly, favoring his left leg.

  ‘Clerk told me there were no cabins left. Way things happened, you didn’t get service until after me. And you got a cabin.’

  Edge saw the limping man lift a pocket-book from a basket held by a middle-aged woman deep in fast conversation with another woman. Then the half-breed’s attention was captured by a fellow-passenger who carried a bulky carpet-bag across the Hurricane Deck. It was the short, overweight, graying man who had been in the shipping company office during the holdup. The man paid no heed to Edge or Charity Meagher as he made a beeline for the cabin next to that of the woman and went inside.

  ‘He didn’t use feminine charm, that’s for sure,’ Edge muttered sourly as the Delta Dawn’s steam whistle shrilled and preparations were made to haul up the gangplank and release the mooring lines.

  ‘That is Mr. Horace Ferris,’ Charity supplied.

  ‘Guess it’s just because he’s a big wheel, uh?’

  ‘Excuse
me?’

  ‘Ferris - a big wheel?’

  ‘A well-known businessman in New Orleans.’ She was suddenly tight-lipped. ‘And there was no favoritism on the part of the clerk, Mr. Edge. I can assure you of that. Mr. Ferris and I booked ahead for our cabins. We were merely in the office to confirm our bookings.’ There was a note of triumph in her voice now. ‘Your mistake, I think?’

  ‘Nobody’s perfect, ma’am.’

  The half-breed was studying the pale-faced man again. He was certain it was Henry. Once the fact of the limp was established, the rest of the man’s physical appearance provided a match. The only difference was that Henry had changed his top clothes. But this did not account for Edge’s vague feeling of recognition of the man: a feeling he had first sensed from looking at Henry’s face. In the office, the face had been effectively masked: then, out on the intersection, there had been just a distant glimpse which conveyed no detail. So, the half-breed decided, the total memory of the pale-faced Henry was locked deep in the back of his mind. Stored in that lobe of his brain that seldom revealed its secret hoard - unless something in the present reminded him strongly of the past.

  Like a view of Iowa stirring up memories of Jamie; or boat wakes scarring the muddy Missouri recalling San Francisco Bay where the slaughter road to Omaha had begun: or even Charity Meagher triggering to the forefront of his mind another period of the past he hardly ever thought about.

  ‘Have you ever been married, Mr. Edge?’ the woman asked suddenly, almost as if she had read the thought which flashed through his mind: and therefore knew the answer to the question.

  Thief!’ a man shrieked. ‘I’ve been robbed! Stop that sonofabitch!’

  Edge saw Henry lift leather for a third time - delving under the lapel of a middle-aged man preoccupied in waving to somebody aboard the boat berthed ahead of the Delta Dawn. But, in withdrawing his hand, Henry’s coat cuff caught on a watch chain and the movement alerted the victim.

  The boats fore and aft had already cast off their mooring lines and their bows were swinging out towards mid-river, helms held hard over to steer on to a south-bound course. Their stern-wheels thrashed brown water to white foam, their engines thudded, their whistles shrilled in high-pitched warnings and their spare steam hissed through the safety-valves. Bells rang and orders were yelled. On boats and wharf, passengers and those who had come to see them off shouted last minute good-byes.

  The half-breed had been about to snap his head around and snarl at the woman to mind her own business. But the abrupt burst of excitement amid bustle on the dockside saved Charity from the retort. For Edge kept his attention directed towards Henry, as the hold-up man turned pickpocket whirled from his victim and sprinted away.

  For a moment, nobody else was aware of the crime and its discovery. Then, as Henry zigzagged through the crowd, banging into people and knocking bags and packages to the ground, the meaning of the victim’s words as well as the sound of his voice reached other ears.

  ‘Me, too!’ a woman shrieked. ‘I’ve been robbed!’

  The man who had raised the alarm gave chase, yelling for Henry to be stopped and held. A few men made half-hearted attempts to comply, and two beefy stevedores went for full-blooded tackles. But Henry was too agile for them and they found themselves grappling each other as they slammed to the ground with yells of anger and pain. Most people scuttled from the weaving path of the fleeing pick-pocket.

  The Delta Dawn was no longer moored to the wharf. Both her fore and her aft lines had been cast off, but the helmsman and pilot were holding her tight to the dockside with the wheel hard over and the engines alternately in drive and reverse. For the boat ahead had not yet made her turn to steam downriver and was blocking the way. But, despite the efforts in the wheel-house and engine-room, the flow of the Missouri relentlessly inched the bow of the Delta Dawn away from the wharf. Then she was jutting out at a forty-five degree angle, her stern gunwale creaking against the dock pilings, when Henry realized the departing boat offered his only means of escape. For the stevedores had picked themselves up - one to give chase and the second to sprint for a blocking position. Their voices, raised to a harsh pitch to curse at Henry and anybody who stood in their way, attracted the attention of others of their kind.

  ‘Ten dollars to the man who gets the bastard!’ Henry’s last victim snarled.

  ‘I’ll match that!’ the woman who had been robbed added shrilly.

  Whistles blasted, engines thudded and paddle-wheels thrashed. But the offers of reward were heard and passed on. The thief was heading diagonally across the wharf, aiming for an area of warehouses which promised cover to throw off his pursuers before he lost himself in the riverside section of town.

  Abruptly, a half dozen dock workers emerged from one of the warehouses, saw the hue and cry, heard the money talk and spread out: cutting off Henry’s escape route and brandishing bill-hooks.

  Edge and everyone else aboard the Delta Dawn had only a rear view of Henry when the running man realized he was trapped. But then Henry leaned into a fast turn - to duck under the outstretched arms of the stevedore intent upon tackling him before he reached the workers waiting at the warehouses. People shuffled and leapt out of Henry’s new path, enjoying the chase now; loyalties divided between the quarry and his pursuers. Henry’s face, which could now be seen by those aboard the stern-wheeler, showed an expression of mild anxiety for a moment. But then became spread with a broad grin of satisfaction when he saw that the Delta Dawn had not yet lost contact with the wharf.

  Charity gripped Edge’s upper arm tightly and exclaimed: ‘That man, isn’t he the one ...?’

  ‘Looks like it could be second time lucky,’ Edge answered. The boat ahead thrashed clear of the Delta Dawn’s course and the boarding of the Hurricane Deck trembled as the engines were throttled to full ahead. The steam whistle shrilled and open water showed between the entire length of the hull and the wharf.

  Henry spurted and the stevedore who had been behind him now lunged out from a group of excited watchers ahead of him. Without breaking stride or hindering his balance, Henry delved a hand under the left lapel of his coat and withdrew it. A flash of sunlight showed across his clenched fist. The stevedore crouched and leaned forward, pushing out his arms to full stretch. Henry ran directly into the start of a body-crushing bear hug.

  Witnesses howled for blood or snarled their displeasure that the chase was to end so quickly.

  Henry held up his left arm in what seemed to be an ineffectual defense against the trap of the stevedore’s arms. But his left swung in the arc of an uppercut. The brass knuckledusters of his combination weapon flashed once again in the cold sunlight: and the stevedore was suddenly flat on his back - his mouth sagged crookedly open in the sculpture of a broken jaw. Blood, sprinkled with the white flotsam of fragments of broken teeth, bubbled up and spilled over his lower lip.

  Howls of enraged protest were mixed with cheers of approval.

  Again, Henry did not break stride. His leading foot slammed down on to the belly of the unconscious man and the yielding flesh acted as a springboard to power his final dash to the lip of the wharf. The crowds moved further back on either side. Henry angled slightly to the left - to head for the point where the gap between boat and dockside was narrowest.

  He leapt clear, head high and feet pedaling in mid-air. Every passenger aboard the Delta Dawn - save one - surged forward to the rails of the various decks. And saw Henry slam to the safety of the wheel support. The leap was across more than seven feet of open water and Henry vented a shriek of pain as the impact punished his weakened left leg. His free hand fisted around the hog chain to steady himself. But he rested only a moment, in the icy spray of river water thrown up by the paddles, before he started to clamber up on to the Boiler Deck.

  ‘He’s aboard,’ Charity reported as Henry’s three victims emerged from the crowd on the wharf to shake their fists and rant at the departing boat. ‘Do you think he’ll be clapped in irons or something?’

/>   When she turned, she saw that Edge was unbuttoning his coat. Sunlight glinted on the bullets slotted into his gun belt loops.

  ‘Maybe not, if he stole enough to pay for a ticket.’

  ‘Are you going to cause trouble because of what happened in town?’ Her pretty face was creased by an anxious frown.

  On the wharf the crowd dispersed, except for a small group gathered around the unconscious stevedore. Aboard the Delta Dawn, trembling and shuddering against a mid-river current, the crew resumed their duties and most of the passengers hurried to find shelter in the salon from the cutting cold of the slipstream.

  ‘Make it a habit to be ready for trouble, ma’am,’ Edge told her as the Hurricane Deck became deserted except for the woman and himself.

  ‘He’s hardly likely to start any, Mr. Edge. He’s bound to pretend he doesn’t recognize us.’

  The half-breed shook his head. ‘Ain’t nothing certain about life. Except death.’

  Charity shivered, perhaps from the cold. Edge took her arm and steered her off the open deck and along the railed companionway which ran past the doors to private compartments and public cabins. She made to halt at the doorway of her quarters, but the pressure of Edge’s grip kept her moving.

  ‘I need to eat,’ he told her. ‘How about you?’

  She glanced at him sharply. ‘I wasn’t going to invite you inside, if that’s what you think!’

  ‘Only thought in my mind right now concerns food.’ He smiled. ‘I’m buying.’

  ‘Not simply for the sake of watching me eat, I think?’ she countered lightly.

  As they neared the door to the dining salon, the late-boarding and unexpected passenger was hustled across the Boiler Deck by the uniformed Master’s Mate and a roustabout. Henry was limping badly again, but was neither breathless nor anxious as he was escorted to the stairway which led up to the wheel-house. He smiled at Charity and the expression remained in place when his gaze shifted to Edge. Then, for part of a second, a sneer altered his mouth line and his eyes showed fleeting surprise. But he recovered quickly.