EDGE: The Prisoners

by George G. Gilman

  ‘You know one of the easiest things to say to somebody, Edge? It’s don’t worry. But it’s one of the hardest things for the person being told to do.’

  ‘Live for the day, feller. Tomorrow never comes.’

  ‘So I say some stupid things sometimes. Sometimes a man has cause to worry. I’d be a whole lot happier if we rode around that place ahead.’

  Both he and Edge had not shifted their gaze off the building since it first emerged from the shimmering heat haze. Studied each new detail of the composite whole as it came into clear view.

  There were in fact two buildings - side by side with a gateway between them. An empty corral out back of them. A well out front of the nearest one which had the stone chimney climbing up the frame end wall. This building had a stoop with a water trough in front of it. And four horses with saddles on their backs were hitched to a rail that ran across the top of the trough.

  When he had seen all of this, Joe Straw turned to show his anxiously frowning face to Edge who rode ten feet behind the gelding.

  ‘Four horses, man.’

  ‘I can count.’

  ‘Chances are four men.’

  ‘Go along with that.’

  ‘Breed hatin’ white men. And me a half Comanche and you a half Mexican.’

  ‘On the other hand, Joe. Four sisters of mercy come out here to see that we minorities are being treated right.’

  ‘Up a pig’s ass, man. You just said - ’

  Edge took out the makings and spat at the side of the trail as he began to roll a cigarette. Then he grinned at the apprehensive man riding ahead of him.

  ‘Just giving a happy-go-lucky feller like you the bright side to look on, Joe. Me, I always view the other side. So sometimes I get a pleasant surprise. Most times I’m not disappointed. Just keep on riding slow and easy. And do what I tell you when I tell you.’

  ‘Easy for you to say when you got a handgun and a rifle and a - ’

  ‘First thing I have to tell you is to keep your mouth shut,' Joe.’

  Straw glowered at Edge, who ignored him as he lit the cigarette and continued to concentrate his attention on the way-station and its surroundings.

  He was close enough now to see that it was built at an intersection of trails, for one spurred off to the left, and curved into the fold between two hills to the west. Then, closer still, he could guess that the four horses at the trough had been ridden along the west trail to get to the way station. For the geldings were in good shape, showing no signs of recent long travel. And Edge knew it was a long way to anywhere on the south trail: could see there was nothing out across the desert until the distant hills.

  The two riders and the mule were within four hundred feet of the building with the chimney on the side when a man began to sing. Forcing the words in a gravel tone, off key and out of tune:‘Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope - ’

  ‘Sing it louder, mister!’ a young sounding man yelled.

  ‘Yeah, and put more damn feelin’ into it, why don’t you?’ Another youngster.

  ‘Like you was singin’ a love song to this pretty little wife you got, Mr. Ford!’

  ‘Hey, that’d be even better! Ask him if he knows any pretty love songs to sing, Clyde!’

  Two more young men. Speaking in liquor slurred Southern drawls.

  ‘Aw shit, man, I told you there’d be trouble,’ Joe Straw whined.

  ‘The mouth, Joe,’ Edge reminded.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Told you to keep it shut.’

  ‘Ask him yourself, Ward!’ Clyde snapped. ‘I’m busy! Set them up again, Mrs. Ford. All round. Include you and your sweet singin’ husband, ma’am.’

  ‘He ain’t singin’ sweet or any other friggin’ way, Clyde.’

  ‘Watch your friggin’ language, Sonny! There’s a friggin’ lady present.’

  ‘That’s no friggin’ lady, Clyde,’ Sonny countered. ‘That’s his wife!’

  A gust of drunken laughter greeted the joke and when Joe Straw glanced over his shoulder to show an expression of anguished pleading, Edge cracked a cold grin.

  Said: ‘They sound like your kind of people, feller. A barrel of laughs.’

  They were close to the buildings now and could smell the aroma of cooking food mixed in with the woodsmoke from the chimney. And were able to read the weather faded sign painted on a plank fixed above the doorway and flanking windows in the morning shade of the stoop:

  TRANS TERRITORIAL STAGE LINE

  WAY-STATION NO. 3

  Edge nodded for Straw to angle off the trail, past the well and toward the hitching rail above the trough.

  ‘Please, boys!’ an older man implored. ‘You’ve had your fun and - ’

  ‘You was told to sing!’ Clyde was no longer a happy drunk. Sullen anger had taken command of his mood. ‘So friggin’ sing!’ He emphasized the order with a smash of breaking glass.

  Mrs. Ford screamed.

  Ward yelled: ‘Hey, that’s a waste of good liquor, buddy!’

  ‘There’s plenty here!’ Sonny countered, his high humor unabated. ‘Come on, Mr. Ford! Sing up! The friggin’ party’s still goin’, ain’t it?’

  ‘If it ain’t, I reckon the lady here could get it started again!’ the unnamed youngster announced gleefully. ‘By sheddin’ a little of the threads she’s wearing’! What d’you say, Clyde?’

  ‘Sure is kinda hot in here, Dave!’ His mood had changed again and there was a leer in his voice now. ‘Mrs. Ford oughta be more comfortable if she didn’t have so much - ’

  ‘Clyde, I don’t think we oughta let this get outta hand!’ Ward cut in, speaking quickly and nervously.

  ‘Please, boys!’ Ford tried again. ‘You can’t mean you’d - ’

  ‘Sing, you snivellin’ little coward!’ Clyde roared. And this time punctuated his command with a gunshot that forced another scream from the woman and a howl from her husband.

  This as Edge and Straw swung from their saddles after halting the mare and the gelding at the trough alongside the four horses already hitched there. Straw froze with the hand of his good arm fisted to the horn and one foot in the stirrup: his green, fear-filled eyes fixed upon the impassive face of his captor.

  Edge signaled with one hand for the man to get off his horse, while the other slid the Winchester from the boot.

  ‘Gi-give me-a-ho-me, where the . . .

  ‘Start with the undressin’, Mrs. Ford.’

  ‘You can’t mean it?’ the woman asked tearfully of Clyde.

  ‘. . . buffalo roam . . . ’

  Edge hitched the reins of his and Straw’s mounts to the rail.

  The mule stood in blank eyed docility to the side.

  ‘Oh, dear God help us,’ Ford pleaded.

  ‘He sings and you strip off, lady!’ Clyde said with cold menace. ‘Or Ward and Sonny hold him while Dave strips the clothes off you. Up to the both of you.’

  The highly charged exchange masked the sounds of the newcomers’ arrival, dismounting and their footfalls on the hard packed area fronting the way-station. But the tense silence which followed Clyde’s ultimatum was broken by the footfalls of Straw and Edge as they stepped up on to the stoop.

  Every pair of eyes turned to the open doorway, the various expressions they had held an instant previously abruptly altered to incredulity at sight of the quaking half breed Comanche with a limply hanging left arm, and the taller man without expression who stood at his side, a rifle canted to his left shoulder.

  ‘We was just havin’ a little harmless fun,’ one of the young men blurted huskily. He was Ward.

  ‘Thank God you’ve come!’ Ford forced out in a harsh whisper.

  His wife breathed out: ‘Oh,’ and looked on the verge of fainting.

  The kid who was as nervous as Ward was Sonny.

  Because it was Dave who snarled: ‘They ain’t no problem, Clyde!’

  And Clyde who answered: ‘So you deal with them, buddy.’

  At which Dav
e found his gaze locked on the unblinking, narrow-eyed stare of Edge which had shifted around the room to briefly study each occupant in turn. And Dave was suddenly as afraid as Ward, Sonny and Straw. His Adam’s apple bobbed.

  Then Edge took the cigarette from his mouth and pursed his lips. Asked evenly: ‘Obliged if somebody could tell me when the next northbound stage is scheduled.’

  Ford gasped.

  His wife shook her head violently, as if attempting to physically rid her stunned mind of an image of reality she could not believe.

  Straw’s confidence returned in relation to the degree by which fear spread among three of the four youngsters. And he was unable to prevent a short, harsh laugh from blurting out of his throat.

  ‘It’s late already,’ Clyde said sourly.

  Edge nodded and hung the cigarette back at a corner of his mouth. And stabbed a long forefinger at Dave.

  ‘No big deal for me, kid,’ he drawled. ‘If you want to be like the stage.’

  The youngster swallowed hard. ‘Uh?’

  ‘Late.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘Uh?’ Dave grunted again.

  ‘Late means dead, stupid,’ Clyde growled. And turned his back on the doorway, to grab a bottle of rye and tilt it and his head to suck from the neck.

  The public room of the way-station was forty by forty with a counter running along the length of the side wall to the left of the doorway. A large cooking range was set into an alcove on the facing wall. Three steaming pots on top of this gave off appetizing aromas. Two trestle tables pushed together and flanked by backless bench seats were in front of the rear wall. There were two Boston rockers facing the windows to either side of the doorway.

  Midway along the counter there was a gap bridged by a closed flap. This break divided it into a bar and a store counter.

  The tall, good looking, slenderly built and forty-year-old blonde Mrs. Ford was behind the bar: in back of her three shelves aligned with glasses and bottles of liquor and beer.

  Dave was closest to her.

  The woman’s husband was in the store section, between the counter and a half dozen shelves stacked with packages and cans and jars of provisions. He was ten years her senior with a fleshy face and flabby body. Just a circle of mottled grey hair on his otherwise bald skull.

  Ward and Sonny were near him in front of the counter.

  Clyde sat on the end of the bench close to the bar section.

  All the youngsters were in their early twenties. Tall and lithe, sun tanned and clean shaven. Dressed like cowpunchers, which bore out the hunch Edge had when he saw the style of saddles and the kind of accoutrements which were on the horses hitched to the rail.

  ‘Sisters of mercy, shit,’ Straw rasped.

  Edge folded his forefinger back into the fist of his right hand. Lowered the hand and drove a jabbing blow into the small of the half breed Comanche’s back.

  With a cry that was more of alarm than pain, Straw was sent staggering across the threshold.

  Ward and Sonny scuttled nervously along the dual purpose counter to close with the scowling Dave.

  ‘I tell you to speak, Joe?’ Edge asked evenly when Straw pulled up from the involuntary move and swung around to glower his hatred at the rifle toting man in the doorway.

  ‘That was outside, man!’ He sank into a half crouch as if preparing to lunge back at Edge. ‘I swear I’ll - ’

  Edge stepped into the way-station and again all eyes were fixed on him. ‘Swear is like late, feller. Has more than the one meaning. Don’t like to hear dirty words in front of a lady. And it seems you can’t talk without using them.’

  ‘Kate’s heard worse than that, mister,’ Ford put in quickly, dripping with sweat. ‘Get you anythin’ while you wait for the stage?’

  ‘We got all we need.’ He gestured with a hand for Straw to sit on one of the rockers. ‘A place to rest up out of the sun.’

  Straw complied sullenly with the tacit order and Edge dropped into the nearby chair after turning it so that he could survey the room. He rested the Winchester across his thighs, hand fisted to the frame and muzzle aimed across the room.

  ‘All right I leave, mister?’ Kate Ford asked tentatively, and ran a sleeve of her shapeless brown dress over her sheened forehead. Then finger combed her hair. ‘Just to our private rooms. I need to wash up. I ain’t never felt so dirty.’

  She shot a glance of loathing toward the quartet of young cowpunchers.

  ‘Your place, ma’am. You got the right to do what you want.’

  There was an arch between the shelves of the bar and the store section and she turned and hurried through it. Avoided meeting the gaze of her husband which was filled with distress close to the point of tears.

  Dave, who had a shock of black curly hair on the back of which his white Stetson was jammed, had taken his glass of whiskey when he retreated to where Clyde sat. In the tense silence after the woman’s exit, the sound of the gulp when he swallowed the liquor was very loud.

  Ward, who was the leanest of the four and Sonny, who had the most bloodshot eyes, looked longingly along the counter to where their newly filled glasses had been left in front of Ford.

  ‘All right for me to talk now, man?’ Straw asked.

  ‘No sweat, Joe.’

  But Clyde spoke first. He swung a leg to straddle the end of the bench and growled with a sneer firmly set into his lean features: ‘Rather you didn’t, mister. Seein’ and smellin’ the stink of him is bad enough. Don’t want to hear him, too. Him being a no-good half breed.’

  He raised the bottle and tilted his head back to take another swig of the rye

  Edge thumbed back the hammer of the rifle, elevated the barrel and steadied the stock with his free hand. Squeezed the trigger.

  A chorus of yells merged with the report of the gunshot. Then came the crash of smashing glass as the bullet blew the bottle into myriad pieces that scattered amid the spraying liquor across the trestle table and floor. To mingle with the fragmented shards and pools of whiskey scattered by the bottle that Clyde himself had broken earlier.

  ‘Sonofabitch!’ Clyde roared, snatched his hand down from his mouth and hurled the undamaged neck of the bottle away. This as he powered to his feet to stare with fear and rage at Edge who was pumping the lever action of the Winchester. ‘What’d I say, damnit? You ain’t been treatin’ him like he’s some big buddy of yours, mister!’

  Now Edge took the cigarette from his lips, dropped it to the floor and stepped on it. ‘He ain’t. Took exception to you calling him a half breed, feller. Maybe would have even if I wasn’t one myself.’

  ‘But he’s got Indian in him, mister! You got the look of a Mex is all.’

  ‘Mexican.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take exception to my Pa being called a Mex. I figure it the same as greaser.’

  ‘And you guys better not aim a gun at him without pulling the trigger,’ Straw said with the trace of an evil smile. ‘He takes exception to - ’

  ‘Obliged, Joe. Saves me from giving them the warning.’ Clyde sank back into his straddle of the bench and dabbed with his kerchief at a small cut a piece of flying bottle glass had inscribed along his right cheek. The fear had left now, but the anger still smoldered in his dark eyes. Dave, Sonny and Ward looked at him apprehensively.

  ‘He’s your prisoner, ain’t he?’ Ford asked tentatively. ‘You’re the law, I guess?’

  ‘Only to himself, man,’ Straw growled.

  Edge rocked his chair gently back and forth and did not shift his steady gaze away from the four youngsters across the room. Asked: ‘How late’s the stage, feller?’

  Ford dug a watch out of a pocket of his vest and flipped open the lid. ‘Past eleven now, sir. Should’ve been through at ten.’

  ‘Where from and to?’

  ‘She starts at Tucson and swings way down to the south west before headin’ north up through here. Then a straightaway almost to Phoenix. Long distance, and it ain’t unusual for her to
be late. Same with the southbound, but that ain’t so bad, of course, on account of - ’

  ‘Phoenix will be fine, feller. How far across the territorial line to Crater, Joe?’

  ‘Find your own way, man! I ain’t about to help you get me up there so I can . . . ’

  Straw let the sentence hang unfinished, abruptly as anxious about the four young cowpunchers as was Ford. The switch from scowling defiance caused by the manner in which Clyde suddenly stood up and swung away from the bench.

  ‘Hell, Mr. Ford, I’m really sorry for the hell we was raisin’ just now. We all are. You know that weren’t like us.’

  The flabby man behind the counter was as distrustful as Edge and Straw at the totally unexpected apology. Then Clyde dropped his look of contrition for a stretched second to glower at his equally startled companions. Who nodded hurriedly, without losing their expressions of bewilderment.

  ‘It was the liquor did it. And us being ready for some hair to be let down after four solid months of nothin’ but work and sleep out on the Santa Rosa spread. We went too far, we know that. But it wouldn’t’ve gone any further.’

  ‘That’s right, Mr. Ford,’ Ward added quickly. ‘I was already tellin’ them to knock it off, wasn’t I? You heard me. They’d have listened. Drunk as we all were.’

  Clyde delved a hand into a hip pocket and came out with a ten dollar bill. ‘Here,’ he offered as he approached the suspiciously frowning Ford. ‘Take this. More than covers the cost of the liquor. Buy your wife somethin’ nice. From us. To make up for the bad time we give her.’

  With his free hand, hidden behind his back, Clyde made a frantic gesture for the other three cowpunchers to head for the doorway.

  ‘Okay, boys,’ Ford said with a sweating faced smile. ‘Apologies accepted. You was always nice to me and Kate when you used the place for tobacco and liquor in the past. I was young and high spirited myself awhile back.’

  Ford reached out with his right hand to take the bill that was extended by Clyde’s left.

  ‘This is wrong, man,’ Straw rasped, flashing his green eyed stare from the apparently indifferent Edge to the three young men who were almost at the doorway.

  ‘Don’t shoot unless you have to.’