Edge: Echoes of War (Edge series Book 23)

by George G. Gilman

  ‘People are their own masters, is that it?’ Charity asked rhetorically. They take their own actions and must be responsible for them.’

  ‘Unless they get paid to take orders.’ He smiled bleakly. ‘Without tying the string that says they do things their way.’

  The gaze from his ice-blue eyes was frank. First he looked into her face and saw that, in artificial light it was only fractionally less attractive than under always flattering moon glow. Then he shifted his gaze to briefly study the contours of her shoulders, breasts and midriff: the firm curves and angles of her body tightly hugged by the high-necked dress.

  ‘And what about when you get hurt yourself by your own actions, Mr. Edge? Is there never self-apology? Regret? Remorse? Or even self-denigration?’

  She spoke quickly now, not enjoying the cold-eyed stare that seemed capable of looking through her dress and underwear to see the sweat-tacky flesh beneath.

  Then the steward delivered their food, leaning between them to hide her embarrassment and block the half-breed’s unemotional eyes.

  ‘Like crying for my Ma if she wasn’t around when I hurt myself, I grew out of all that, ma’am. Took longer and the learning was harder is all.’

  She watched him eat before starting herself. And again was pleasantly surprised at his discreet, unselfconscious table manners.

  ‘You’ve done a lot of long and hard learning, haven’t you, Mr. Edge?’ she said at length, when the half-breed made no attempt to restart a conversation. ‘Some in school rooms but far more outside.’

  The salon was becoming more crowded, most of the passengers intent upon using its facilities as a bar room. One more poker game started.

  ‘Men and women are animals, ma’am. Just able to learn more than most, is all. How much they learn and what they decide to forget is up to them.’ He ate fast because he was hungry. The food was not good, but it was filling. Whether or not he had once been used to better, Charity Meagher was unable to tell. The conclusion she did reach was that the man across the table from her probably regarded food like most other things in life. If he needed to eat, he ate.

  And, as she picked daintily at the food on her own plate, she discovered a shameful excitement rising from the pit of her stomach. For it was obvious Edge felt the need of a woman. Would this desire be appeased in the same manner he satisfied his hunger for food? Or could a woman arouse passion - perhaps even tenderness - in a man whose appetites for all things seemed to be so jaded.

  She felt her flesh become hot as she considered the challenge: no longer lying to herself. Not a woman: but herself. She had hinted - if not promised - that he could share her bed. It had never been of her own free will and she had hoped she could avoid it. But now, in the over-heated salon, she realized she welcomed the opportunity: both aroused and frightened by the challenge.

  ‘You’ve either got hot blood or a fire in your belly, ma’am,’ Edge said, as he rattled his knife and fork down on to his empty plate.

  Charity realized the heat she felt from within her had suffused her face with a blush again. She started, and knocked over a glass of water.

  ‘I’m ready when you are,’ he added.

  She had to swallow hard a piece of steak that needed chewing. Then she choked on it and drank gratefully from Edge’s glass.

  ‘You are the most direct and to the point person I have ever met in my life!’ she accused hoarsely. ‘You’re making me feel like a ... a ... who ... a dancehall girl.’

  ‘Never have dealt with that kind, ma’am,’ Edge told her as he pushed back his chair and dropped a five-dollar bill on the table.

  ‘And I have never been in this situation with a man whose first name I didn’t know before!’ she retorted.

  But she pushed back her chair and stood up.

  ‘Never form an opinion about something before you’ve tried it, ma’am,’ the half-breed told her, holding out her coat.

  ‘At least call me Charity,’ she said stiffly. ‘And I would like to know your name.’

  Another voice spoke - loud and angry - before Edge could comply. ‘You, sir, are a cheat!’

  The accusation cut across every other sound in the salon and silenced it.

  ‘Was born Josiah Hedges,’ the half-breed supplied, then joined everyone else in looking towards the source of gathering trouble.

  It was the tall, thin man with a stamp of distinction who had shouted. He sat rigid in his chair, but the sparse flesh of his cheeks quivered as he glowered across the table at Ferris. The shorter man had his back to Edge and Charity so they could see nothing of his reaction except the fact that the nape of his neck, below his graying hair, was bright red - and that he was as unmoving as his accuser. The youngster with the weasel-like features looked frightened and had his hands pushed against the table-top, as if he was preparing to lunge up and run. Henry was staring hard at Edge, an expression of surprised fascination on his weakly handsome face.

  ‘You have pre-empted me with a lie, sir!’ Horace Ferris said, his voice slow and controlled; the manner of his speech emphasizing its Deep South drawl. ‘The boot, I feel, is on the other foot.’

  ‘Please, no!’ Charity gasped, clutching at her throat with both hands.

  The door from the companionway swung open and two uniformed officers came in: the master and the mate, for a moment wearing expressions of forced pleasure since they considered the necessity to mingle with passengers one of their most onerous duties. But, even before the cold air which streamed inside with them had started to cool the stove heat of the salon, they had sensed trouble and spotted its source.

  ‘You again, Rhett!’ the master of the Delta Dawn snarled.

  He was a big man - standing taller than six feet with a great deal of fat layered on a frame that obviously commanded considerable strength. He rolled like an ocean-going seaman when he moved. His mate was smaller, thinner and faster, but from nervousness or deference stayed behind his superior officer. He had a Frontier Colt stuck under his belt at the middle of his belly. He fisted a hand around the butt and cocked the gun, but did not draw it.

  Edge received just these fleeting impressions of the men as he glanced towards the sudden draught of cold air. But then, his eyes narrowing to the merest slits and his lips curling back in a hard, humorless grin of satisfaction, he flicked his attention back towards the poker table on the far side of the salon. It wasn’t Henry Rhett who had been hovering tantalizingly on the brink of his memory. It was merely his looks which had caused a mental drape to sway. The voicing of his full name wrenched the drape aside.

  Rhett grinned, seeing that Edge had reacted to his name in a different manner but just as emphatically - as he, himself, had responded to the half-breed’s more quietly spoken revelation of a few seconds earlier.

  The distinguished looking man powered erect then, delving a hand inside his suit jacket. A woman screamed.

  The weasel-faced youngster chose to go backwards instead of up, lifting his feet from the floor and shoving hard against the table. His chair tipped and he gathered himself into a ball as the back crashed to the floor and he threw himself into a bone-jarring roll.

  Rhett reached behind, a long arm snaking towards his hanging coats.

  Ferris also remained seated, but his shoulder blades rippled the back of his coat as he did something fast with his hands.

  Charity squealed, in both alarm and pain, as Edge hooked a hand over each of her shoulders and pushed her down hard on to her haunches: where she unbalanced and slammed on to her rump.

  All over the salon, passengers and stewards sought the relative safety of the deck floor.

  ‘Gentlemen!’ the rolling and swaying master yelled, his tone midway between a plea and an order.

  The mate drew his Colt but did not raise the gun.

  The accuser of Ferris drew a tiny brass-framed Darling pepperbox: and his scowl of injured pride became a snarl of triumph. But then Ferris lunged up from his chair, his hands hooked under the table to lift and throw it forw
ard.

  Charity started to get up, anxious eyes seeking to watch events. Edge raised a foot and rested it gently against the top of her spine. Then he shoved forcefully and the woman’s cry was entirely of pain as she sprawled out on to her belly and her chin cracked against the decking.

  The half-breed’s cold glower was enough to keep her flat to the floor when she wrenched her head around to glare at him.

  He stepped to the side, wide of the line of fire from the multi-barrel weapon.

  But the pepperbox wavered in its aim as the man holding it was forced backwards by the tipping table.

  ‘Hold it, mister!’ the master bellowed. ‘Wren!’

  The senior officer skidded to a halt and leaned to the side, shooting out an arm to point towards the disrupted card game. His mate snapped up the Colt, swinging it between Ferris and the other man.

  Ferris’s right hand came out from under his jacket, thumb and forefinger holding the point of a knife blade.

  From his new position, Edge caught a glimpse of Ferris’s profile. The face was stark white, in contrast to the crimson hue at the nape of his neck. And, etched deep into the face, were the lines of naked fear. For the New Orleans businessman realized he had wasted time by tipping the table - that he could not throw the knife before the ring trigger of the Darling exploded a killing shot into his heart.

  ‘You’re covered, damnit!’ the Delta Dawn’s master roared.

  He was about to follow this with a threat - or perhaps an order to the confused mate.

  But a gunshot exploded, the stink of burnt powder merged with the odor of burnt fabric.

  A small hole appeared in the centre of the forehead of the man holding the pepperbox. For an instant, he remained erect, his look of triumph changed to one of surprise. Then the killing bullet crashed out through the top of his skull, trailed by a torrent of liquid red. The glaze of death dropped over his eyes and his skin texture abruptly looked much older. He took an involuntary step backwards, then crumpled: limp and loose, as if death had melted his bones.

  Henry Rhett, who had seemed to rock backwards in his chair to stay clear of the line of fire, now straightened, taking his hand out from under his hanging jacket. The hand was empty. A final wisp of smoke rose from the jacket, where the revolver action of his combination weapon had blasted a hole through the material.

  ‘It was the dead man that was cheating, Captain McBride,’ Rhett said easily, looking odd and somehow vulnerable as he sat in the chair beside the overturned table. ‘And you know I know my business.’

  People got tentatively to their feet: some remaining erect and others dropping gratefully into chairs.

  ‘I didn’t see nothin’!’ the weasel-faced young man said hurriedly as he came upright, massaging the bruises of his self-inflicted fall. ‘Didn’t see nobody do nothin’.’

  Charity Meagher started to rise, wincing as the injuries of her enforced tumble protested with stabs of pain. She glared in anger at Edge again as he approached her. But then sighed with relief as he helped her to her feet and demonstrated that he could use his easy strength with gentleness.

  ‘Mr. Wren!’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Escort all three men to my quarters! And arrange for the cadaver to be removed!’

  Wren made a jerking gesture with his Colt, Ferris, looking both afraid and ashamed, complied first. Then the youngest of the trio followed, still muttering that he knew nothing of what had happened. Rhett took his time, shrugging into his jacket and topcoat before heading for the door.

  ‘It’s all over now, ladies and gentlemen!’ McBride announced, attempting a placating attitude. ‘I’d like to apologize to you for what happened. And assure you it won’t occur again. So you just go on enjoying yourselves the way you were before the incident. Steward, drinks on the line for the rest of tonight.’

  The master had a round, ruddy face with a pitted skin, an untidy moustache and dark eyes that looked incapable of sincerity.

  ‘Thank you,’ Charity said with a sigh, continuing to lean against the half-breed. ‘I could have been killed and you did the right thing.’

  Edge knew she was talking in an effort to conceal the concerned exchange of glances between herself and Horace Ferris.

  ‘Most of the time I do,’ he responded absently as Ferris pulled open the door and admitted a new draught of icy air to dispel the last traces of gunshot odor from the salon.

  Ferris went out and the youngster was hard on his heels.

  Henry Rhett halted in front of Edge, aware of but ignoring the Colt of Wren aimed at his back.

  ‘Captain Hedges who served with the Union cavalry during the war?’

  Edge nodded, his impassive eyes studying Rhett up close for the first time. Henry was a year or so older than his brother would have been - had he lived. As tall and lean, but with a suggestion of latent strength that Bob had never displayed: probably had never possessed. Now that the family connection was established, the facial resemblance between the two brothers was striking. The same shade of blue in the eyes, the same high forehead, the same slightly sunken cheeks and the same fault in the structure of the mouth and jaw that robbed the whole of manly handsomeness. For the line of the lower half of the face was weak, due to the simpering pout that the lips formed in repose and the too-perfect symmetry of the chin.

  But, whereas this had been a physical mark of Bob Rhett’s craven cowardice, the surviving brother had already demonstrated his ability to control fear in a crisis. Another difference between Henry and Bob was that the elder brother was not so blatantly homosexual as the younger had been.

  ‘I heard a lot about you from Bob,’ Rhett said. ‘He thought a great deal of you.’

  ‘He thought a great deal about all men,’ the half-breed muttered as passengers yelled orders for free drinks, eager to take advantage of McBride’s offer.

  ‘We can’t help the way we are,’ Rhett answered simply, and merely grimaced when the muzzle of the mate’s gun was shoved into the small of his back.

  ‘Move, Henry,’ Wren ordered.

  Rhett ignored him. ‘Bob wrote me you didn’t try to make his life hell like some of the other guys in the outfit - just because he wasn’t like them.’

  ‘Sure didn’t hold it against him,’ the half-breed growled.

  Rhett grinned. ‘Rib all you like, Captain. Bob could take it and so can I.’

  ‘Move it!’ Wren snarled, responding to a glare from Mc-Bride. ‘Or I’m in lousy trouble, too.’

  ‘See you, Captain,’ Henry said evenly. ‘But I won’t be looking to kill you for what happened to my friend this morning.’ He started forward and glanced back over his shoulder. ‘So you can relax and enjoy yourself. No sweat, okay?’

  ‘Intend to, feller,’ the half-breed replied, and looked meaningfully at Charity as Rhett was escorted out through the doorway.

  The woman had completely recovered her composure now and was eyeing Edge with pensive concentration, behind which was surprise.

  ‘His brother served under you during the war?’

  The half-breed smiled with his mouth. ‘In one way,’ he allowed, and gripped her upper arm more firmly to steer her through the doorway. ‘You ready to try the other?’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Charity Meagher was afraid of accepting the challenge. Her trembling as the tall, lean, taciturn man guided her towards her cabin was not at all due to the intense cold of the moon and star bright night. He was big and he was strong and the constant look in his narrow eyes and the line of his mouth more than merely hinted at the cruelty that was held on a tight leash just beneath the surface of his being.

  Her hand shook too much as she tried to fit the key into the door lock. He took it from her gently, but this gesture - and the politeness he showed in ushering her ahead of him into the cabin - seemed insignificant. Her mind refused to acknowledge his gentlemanly conduct at the dining table. She remembered only the casual way in which he had killed a man that morning, his bitter retort when she
asked about his past, the power of his hands pushing her to the floor and the brutal way he kicked her down again when she tried to rise.

  His actions at the shipping company office had been for the good of all the victims of the hold-up. He perhaps had a good reason for not wishing to discuss his marriage. And the force he used in the dining salon had been to protect Charity.

  But, as he closed the cabin door and leaned against it, she found she could think only evil of him. At the hold-up, he had put many lives in danger for purely selfish reasons. Did he refuse to talk of his wife because he had killed her? He protected her in the dining salon simply because he was lusting for a woman.

  ‘I’d rather not have the lamp lit,’ Charity said huskily.

  ‘Your place, you make the rules,’ Edge replied as he took off his hat. ‘I’ll let you know if I’ve got any objections.’

  There was no lust in his voice. No passion. No gentleness. No nothing. As Charity went to the double bed and dropped her coat over a nearby chair, she thought fleetingly of the way he ate his food - indifferently, disinterestedly, impassively. But the recollection did not restimulate the hot anticipation she had experienced in the crowded salon. For now she was alone with him, in a confined space dominated by her body, his presence and a bed.

  He had taken off his coat now, and dropped it to the floor. He let his hat fail on top of it and then began to unbutton his shirt. The cabin’s sole porthole was blinded by a drape, but moonlight was filtered and dim as it shone through the frosted glass transom above the door. Enough for her to see him - and for him to see her.

  He eased his shirt out from under his pants and shrugged out of it. There was dark hair on his chest, but less than she had expected. The skin of his torso was only a shade lighter than his facial complexion. It was stretched taut over solid, muscular flesh, rippling slightly when he moved. Livid scar tissue showed at his left shoulder and right hip. There was a much fresher wound just below the elbow joint on the inside of his left arm. He unbuckled his gun belt and dropped it on the pile of clothing. Then the belt beneath, and started on the front fastening of his pants.