Edge: The Loner (Edge series Book 1)

by George G. Gilman

  “I’d like you to know it’s for Jamie,” Edge said and pressed down and across with the razor. The blade sank deep into the soft flesh and cut a course in a arc beneath the jaw, did not come free until it reached his right ear. Blood oozed out, ran down to start spreading a clean, scarlet stain across the grimed neckline of his under-vest. His dying sound was a sigh more sensuous than those which the girl had been pouring in his ear.

  Edge looked down at his crotch, saw Scott had completed his final act in life. “You came out of one,” Edge murmured. “Guess it’s fitting you should die trying to get back into another.”

  Then he swung his legs across the supine body of the dead man, stood and retrieved his rifle. He wiped the blood from the razor on a bed blanket and went to the door, first cracked it to peer outside before leaving the room. He found Billy Seward in the room directly across the hall. Exhausted and enjoying a drunken sleep, mouth open, completely naked body stretched across the length and width of the bed. His girl was in the corner of the room washing the area of her body where Seward had spent himself. She gasped when she saw Edge in the doorway but made no further sound when he raised a finger to his lips, and stepped inside. When he had closed the door against the sounds from downstairs he removed the finger from his lips and jerked it at the man on the bed.

  “You like him very much?” he asked.

  The girl had a face that might have been pretty once, but time and ill-treatment had taken their toll. She looked abused and stupid. Even her nude body had lost any pride that might once have been apparent in the firm, pointed breasts and flared hips. She looked at Seward with abhorrence.

  “I hate him,” she whispered. “He hurt me bad.”

  “How much did he pay you?” Edge asked.

  She spat into the water. “Nothing.”

  “I’ll double it if you keep quiet.”

  She was as stupid as she looked. She took time to think about the offer, smiled and nodded. “You going to kill him?” Her eyes shone with pleasure.

  “I ain’t going to sing him a lullaby,” Edge replied, and went to the bed.

  He selected the knife this time, and turned the rifle so he was holding it by the barrel. “Billy,” he called softly, bending, leaning close to the face of the sleeping man.

  Seward grunted, closed his mouth.

  “Billy,” sharply this time.

  Seward’s eyes snapped open.

  “They call me Edge now,” Edge told him. “But I’m still Jamie’s brother.”

  Seward’s mouth came open with a click and the knife buried itself into the back of his throat. He gagged on blood and steel and his teeth clanged down on to the blade. His only sound was a gurgling, but his eyes, blurred by tears revealed the full extent of his pain. Then the stock of the Henry completed his execution, cracking against his forehead, splitting the skin and laying the flesh open to the bone.

  “You don’t fool around,” the girl said and Edge spun around, saw her standing on the other side of the bed, still naked, still looking excited.

  “Now he knows it too,” he said. “Stay here.”

  She nodded, smiled. “I’ll get my fun just looking at him like that.”

  Seward’s teeth had a death grip on the knife blade and Edge had to use a lot of force to pull it clear. Suddenly the girl’s bony fingers clasped Edge’s wrist and he watched through narrowed eyes as she licked off Seward’s blood. He waited until she had raised enough moisture into her mouth to spit the dead man’s blood into his face before turning and going out of the room.

  He had reached the turn in the hallway at the head of the stairs before the short laugh of the man coming up from the saloon told him his next victim was at hand. And when he stepped clear of the angle of the wall, came face to face with him, he recognized Roger Bell. And recognition hit Bell at the same instant.

  “Christ the captain,” he said hoarsely and suddenly took a backward pace and moved sideways, putting the shocked saloon girl between himself and Edge. “Frank,” he yelled in warning as he drew his Colt.

  From the corner of his eye, Edge could see over the banisters of the stairway as Forrest and Douglas exploded into movement, pushing their girls away from them and diving for the floor, pulling guns. Bell loosed off a shot that whistled close to Edge’s ear and two cracks sounded from below. One of these sent splinters flying from the banister rail, which showered the face of the girl who was shielding Bell. She screamed and collapsed as a sliver of wood pierced her eye and Bell, a hand supporting her at the waist, was suddenly exposed from his belt upwards. One bullet from the Henry caught him in the middle of the belly, a second drilled his heart and the third gouged a furrow down the back of his head as he fell forward.

  “Three from Jamie,” Edge muttered as he stepped back from a hail of bullets that was being hurled up from the two men below.

  A single shot, separated by a pause from the others, then second of silence.

  “Frank?” A woman.

  “Yeah.”

  “It ain’t me and Arlene’s fight.”

  “Get.”

  Footsteps rattled on the wooden floor. The swing doors swung, squeaking.

  “How many you got?” Forrest’s voice addressed to Edge.

  “Three. Two more.”

  “Who are you. You from town?”

  A table crashed on its side.

  “Iowa,” Edge called back as he pumped three more shells into the Henry, making it fully loaded again.

  “Frank?” Douglas called, from close to Forrest. “I thought I heard Rodge say something before ...”

  “So?” Forrest asked.

  “It sounded like Captain ...”

  “Jesus,” Forrest said just loud enough to carry up the stairs.

  “You heard right, “Edge said and suddenly broke from the cover of the angle of the wall, pumping bullets into the saloon below, firing blind and wild.

  Only one shot was returned, splintering wood several feet from Edge. Edge’s narrowed eyes pinpointed the table from behind which the shot had come and concentrated his fire upon it. The heavy caliber bullets smashed through its underside and Douglas rose up from behind it like an apparition, his revolver and falling from lifeless fingers as blood stained his shirt in three places and fountained from his cheek. Edge elevated the Henry for a final shot and saw Douglas go over backwards as his nose exploded, spraying blood and splintered bone.

  Edge vaulted over the banister, his feet smashing on to a table top, his weight breaking the legs as if they were cardboard. Three shots followed his progress, the last one burning across his forearm, drawing blood. He dived for the floor, wriggled behind the end of the long bar as more shots dug into the wood and smashed bottles above his head.

  “We should have stayed around and taken care of you like we did your brother,” Forrest called.

  Edge heard the voice without listening as he rose and ran in a half crouch to the far end of the bar, peered out around the corner and got three quarters view of Forrest squatting behind his cover, hastily reloading his Colt. Edge stood and moved clear of the bar, raising and aiming the Henry.

  “Shut up and watch it coming, Forrest,” he called.

  Forrest turned fast, looked in horror at Edge and then at his unready gun.

  “You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man,” he implored, knowing the lie of his words.

  “They’re the easiest kind to kill,” he said and squeezed the trigger.

  But at that moment the hammer struck the firing pin, glass shattered and another gun went off, the bullet smashing into Edge’s hand, spinning the Henry from his grasp, its shell burying itself harmlessly into the floor.

  “Reach, Forrest,” a man commanded and as Forrest obeyed Edge looked at the shattered emptiness of the saloon window and saw Honey’s face nestled against the stock of a rifle. “I think we want a hundred back,” he said to Edge.

  “He ain’t dead yet,” Edge said softly,

  “He won’t see another sunrise,” Honey replied.
“Please throw down your revolver, Señor Edge.”

  As Edge complied the rest of the town came in through the swing door, led by Gail.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  EDGE sat on the side of the bed in his hotel room, submitting with a mere token show of reluctance to the ministrations of Gail. First she bathed his injured hand in warm water, then dabbed an astringent liquid upon the torn flesh before finally bandaging it. He was sure she enjoyed it when he winced as the healer stung, complained she had fastened the dressing too tight.

  “There,” she said when she had finished. “You won’t be shooting anybody with that hand for some time to come.”

  He grinned coldly. “I’m two-handed with guns, lady,” he said. “Or any weapon.”

  The young man who stood to the left of the room door, holding a revolver in his hand as if he was not sure what it was shuffled his feet uncomfortably as he heard Edge’s words. Edge had heard Honey give the kid his instructions, telling him to watch the stranger, prevent him from reaching Forrest before the citizens could make the final kill for themselves. He had accepted the duty with pride and enthusiasm which had waned steadily as the results of Edge’s violence had come to light in the rooms above the saloon. He was just a kid who thought himself a man. With each soft word that Edge spoke he grew younger and more vulnerable. He was glad the waitress from the restaurant was in the room with him and Edge. She seemed able to keep him in line.

  She came up from stooping over her patient, rubbing the small of her back where it ached from holding the same position too long. “You must have had a powerfully strong reason for wanting to kill those men,” she said, and carried the bloodied bowl of water over to the dresser.

  “Five hundred of them,” Edge answered.

  Gail shook her head. “Stronger than money. I think you took the reward under false pretences. You were going to kill them anyway.”

  Edge shrugged. “Thinking is free.”

  “One of them called you Captain.”

  “I ain’t ever liked answering questions, lady,” he told her, his expression as hard as granite.

  She pouted. “A man’s business is his own, unless he wants somebody else to know it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Frank Forrest is the town’s business,” she came back. “I told you earlier we had a lot of respect for Sheriff Peacock. And we want Peaceville to be a clean, decent town. If there was any doubt who killed the sheriff we’d hold a vigilante trial and dispense justice the way we see fit. But Forrest and his men killed the sheriff before the whole town so he’ll hang.”

  Edge listened dispassionately. “Then the town ain’t so decent,” he said softly. “It’s robbing me of something.”

  An expression of distaste flitted across the woman’s beautiful face. “They’ll probably let you keep the full five hundred.”

  “I aim to,” he answered. “But I’m not talking about money. That doesn’t matter a damn in relation to the other.”

  Gail looked at him closely, a confused look upon her features, “You ...” she started and then stopped.

  “Yeah?”

  “You can speak like an educated man when you want to and yet most of the time you ...”

  Edge stood up, suddenly angry, and the kid near the door brought up the gun, cocking it. Edge knew that when the chips were down, he’d know what to do and he’d do it quickly.

  “I ain’t no first grade drop-out,” Edge snarled at Gail. “I already warned you about prying into my affairs.”

  “They must have done something very evil to make you the way you are,” she replied with gentleness, refusing to be provoked by his anger.

  Edge turned his back on her and went to the window, threw it open, admitting the cold of the early hours, drawing it into his lungs in great gulps. The gray light of a false dawn was already streaking the sky, dimming the stars and giving the town the substance of solid wood and adobe out of the shadows from which it was formed during the night. Edge leaned out to look back down towards the intersection of streets and watched for awhile the activity taking place there. A dozen men were working in the center of the two streets, measuring, sawing and nailing. They had been engaged on their task for less than a hour and yet already the construction was taking the shape of a gallows.

  “Ain’t you ever hanged anybody in Peaceville before?” he asked without looking back into the room.

  “There’s some trees outside of town,” the kid replied to Edge’s impassive back.

  “They were lynchings,” Gail put in with repugnance. “This is going to be done correctly.”

  Edge withdrew his head, closed the window and went back to the bed, stretched out full length on it. His hat was on the floor below and he picked it up, set it upon his forehead so that it covered his face except for the stubble jaw line.

  “Wake me up before sunrise,” he said from underneath the brim. “I wouldn’t want to miss the show.”

  No-one answered him and within a few minutes he was breathing deeply and evenly, like a man in a sound sleep.

  “Christ that’s a relief,” the kid said with a sigh. “I don’t mind admitting it, Miss Gail. That feller makes me nervous by just looking at me. D’you see what he did to those people in the saloon?”

  “They told me,” Gail answered, looking at Edge with an odd mixture of concern and disgust in her dark eyes. “I suppose he did what he felt he had to do. He has his own values and nobody in Peaceville can in any honesty despise him for what he did. We paid him for doing our dirty work and we didn’t make any conditions.” Her voice was tinged with sadness. Then she sighed and moved to the door. “He seems harmless enough now, Jesse,” she said. “I think that’s the first time he’s had any real rest in ages. But keep an eye on him. Honey will send up somebody to help you take Edge out if he really does want to see the hanging.”

  “Right, Miss Gail,” the kid said with the confidence of Edge’s sleep as he opened the door, then closed it again when the woman had left the room.

  But Edge was not asleep. He had kept his breathing deep and evenly paced by a conscious effort as he listened to the conversation, quelling his impatience as the seconds ticked away and the voices droned on. He knew he could handle both the woman and the kid. But he would have to take the kid first, to disarm him, and while he was doing that the woman would have enough time to raise a ruckus loud enough to wake the whole town. There was no point to that, if it could be done quietly without trouble. So Edge curbed his itch for action until the woman had gone out.

  The kid was nervous, and that was bad. A brave man might think he could handle Edge alone and could be pushed into making a mistake. The kid would either shout for help or, worse, start blasting at the first flicker of trouble. So Edge had to wait for him to make the first move. It wasn’t a long wait. He had been standing by the door for a considerable time and at first the monotony of sentry duty had been counteracted by watching the woman at her nursing, then by conversation. Alone, except for the apparently sleeping man the boredom set in. The sounds of building across the street reached the room, faint but without competition, sufficient to catch his interest.

  He tiptoed across the room, keeping his eyes and the gun trained upon the bed, holding his breath and clamping his teeth on to his lower lip with each tiny sound of his movement. Edge followed his progress with ease, grinned into the darkness of the hat when he heard the faint swish of the window rising, the sounds from outside suddenly amplified. Edge counted the beat of his own breathing, got to ten and reached up to raise the hat, swiveling his eyes to look at the window. He saw the kid’s rump folded over the sill, the slope his back angled out into the gray of dawn as he craned forward for a better view of the activity that held his attention.

  Careful to keep his breathing pitched at the same regular beat, Edge sat up, put on his hat and turned his body so he could throw his legs off the bed. He held the pose for a second, waiting for the kid to sense trouble and swing the gun onto a target. The kid stayed
as still as Edge.

  Edge’s mouth cracked open and his teeth gleamed in contest with the glint of his narrowed eyes. Winter north of the Artic Circle had never been so cold as the expression. His boots were still in the room above the saloon, and his stockinged feet moved soundlessly across the floorboards. He had not spent much time in the room, but he was well aware of those sections on the floor that creaked. He avoided them.

  They had found his knife, taken it with the Remington and Henry, but the razor in its pouch had escaped their attention. He came up behind the kid and drew the razor. The kid’s sixth sense delivered a late warning and he started to turn. But Edge’s fingers were already curled over the kid’s belt and the kid was being hauled in from the window with great force and speed. The side of the kid’s head smashed into the window frame, stunning him. Then Edge smashed him against the wall and pressed his body against him, bringing up his hand to hold the razor against his throat, just nicking the skin. The kid felt the sting of the wound and looked down with distended eyes at the object of his pain as warm blood oozed.

  “You all right, Jesse?” somebody called from below.

  “Answer him while you can still talk,” Edge hissed.

  “Quiet,” the kid said. “Stubbed my toe. You’ll wake him.”

  Edge grunted his satisfaction.

  “Don’t kill me, mister,” the kid pleaded.

  “Stoop down,” Edge told him, relaxing the pressure of his body a little, but keeping the blade tight against the other’s throat. “Lay the gun on the floor. Make a sound and you’ll be at the gates to welcome Frank Forrest.”

  The kid tried to nod, felt the blade dig deeper and made a low noise of horror. As Edge’s full weight was removed, he slid down the wall, bending his knees, stretching down his arm to let the gun rest on the floor. When Edge glanced down and saw the kid’s fingers come free of the revolver he stepped back a pace, taking the blade away from the flesh. The kid’s sigh of relief was curtailed by a soft groan as Edge’s knee snapped up, caught him on the point of the jaw. His eyes glazed, closed and he fell forward, to be caught by Edge, who lowered the inert form quietly to the floor.