Billings became earnest. ‘A man has to set someplace sometimes, Mr. Edge. I used to travel over in the old days. San Francisco, Denver, New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago, El Paso, San Antone–’
‘Doing what?’ Abbie Clayton asked.
Edge met her eyes in the mirror and just for of a second she revealed that she knew the answer to the question she posed.
‘Playing cards, mostly.’ He smiled with satisfaction. ‘Reason for the name or this hotel. It was a hand of four aces that won me the bundle I used to build it with. Off a cattle baron in Abilene.’
He abruptly became aware of the fact that Lee and Travis had curtailed their own talk and were listening to him – and were as suspicious of him as of Edge.
‘You guys want to step outside and have Art Ely hitch that Clayton kid's team to his wagon. The. kid's probably too scared to do it himself, this close to the hotel.’
They moved grudgingly to the door, shooting sidelong glances at the two men and a woman standing midway along the bar. After they had left, the batwings flapping behind them, Billings lowered his voice to talk fast.
"Listen, Edge. This town has potential. I saw that from the start. It was a dull town then. Still is, I guess. But before the Four Aces was built, all it had by way of entertainment was that crumby place
Jonas Cochran runs and church socials. And you know what that meant? You've looked around. It's full of middle-aged couples and old timers. No young people, because they up and leave soon as they start flexing their muscles.’
‘That's no good for a town. You heard what happened to Huey Gould's young wife. And how Emmy-Iou lit out almost soon as the wedding cake was eaten. Lot of other youngsters did the same thing. Boys and girls who wanted more than mutton every meal and bad liquor served in dirty glasses over at the Sheepman.’
‘I'd want more than that,’ Abbie said when Billings left a pause and Edge showed no inclination to fill it.
‘So does everyone,’ the one-eyed man continued, his enthusiasm unabated. ‘Even the people who live here, as they'll soon realize when Freedom gets put on the map. I bear you no grudge, sir. I don't blame you for turning down my offer. The gun's not my way anymore. I don't even carry one now. '
‘But Huey Gould had to be got rid of, Edge. He was an old-style lawman running an old-style town and for as long as he wore a badge in Freedom the place was held back.’
‘Well, he's out of the way now and you seen already that I've got the local men that matter on my side.’
He broke off again, and this time used the mirror to check over the people who he did not want to hear what he was saying. Of them, only Rose Pride was showing any interest in the trio at the bar. And her malevolence was obviously concentrated on Abbie Clayton.
‘What 1 haven't, got is a replacement for Gould who I can rely on, sir. And I'm going to need one. Because Freedom is bound to draw in all kinds of people. The good and the bad. The ones who come to enjoy themselves and those who are looking for trouble. And 1 don't want this to be a Dodge or a Newton or an Abilene or any of them Kansas cow towns. And to keep, it from being that, I'll need a lawman as hard and tough as Gould was. But with a different way of looking at things. And 1 reckon that you'd do that job better than Randy Leech, Lee and Travis all rolled into one.’
He was through now. Signaled this by the way he sighed, poured a whisky from the bottle he had been sharing with the men he held in such low esteem, and knocked it back at a swallow. Then fixed the intent gaze of his good eye on the bristled face of the half-breed.
‘No deal, feller. Like before.’
Billings's hand folded around the empty shot-glass, shook. Then an angry frown took command of his face. Which perhaps meant the shakiness of his hand was not caused by anger.
‘Then get out of my place and out of my town, sir!’
‘And take your woman with you, mister,’ Rose Pride snarled.
‘The hell you say!’ Billings snapped, wrenching his head around to look at her.
She came down the bar toward him, having to lean against the counter to keep from staggering. She held an empty glass in her right hand and the half-empty bottle of rye in the left. Her eyes were glazed with the effect of drinking.
‘Sure I do! I'm madam at the Four Aces. And I pick the whores.’ She stared with contempt at Abbie. ‘We're all filled up.’
‘You are!’ Billings told her, his voice a hiss. ‘With whisky!’
His anger with her became mixed with that he felt for Edge and he lashed out with an arm. The blow was a back-handed slap which cracked viciously against her cheek, the rings on his fingers dragging the skin and opening up three bloodied ruts.
Rose screamed her pain and staggered backward for three short, awkward paces. Then fell heavily to the floor, the glass and bottle breaking. Sam curtailed his piano playing and many of the watchers gasped.
‘You shit!’ the madam shrieked from the floor after she had drawn a hand over her cheek and looked at the blood on her fingers.
‘Not as one of the girls,’ Billings said to Abbie.
‘The position of madam has just become available.’
‘You shit and bastard!’
‘What do you' say, my dear?’ the one-eyed man posed, calm and collected again, as he totally ignored the enraged woman sprawled on the floor amid broken glass and spilled liquor.
Abbie smiled. ‘I'd be a fool to turn down a bed of Rose's, wouldn't I?’
‘A wise choice, my dear. I'm sure you will be very happy here in Freedom.’
Abbie's smile was more radiant than ever. ‘I have a feeling this is going to be the happiest day of my life,’ she said, turning away from the bar.
Edge also swung toward the doorway.
‘Where are you going?’ Billings asked.
‘To get my valise from the stage depot.’
‘I'll have somebody get that for you.’
‘Let the bag get her own baggage!’ Rose Pride snarled as she finally managed to get to her feet.
‘I'll do it myself,’ Abbie insisted, and fell in beside Edge on the way to the batwings.
‘You want more!’ Billings roared and Edge and Abigail Clayton heard more gasps, another sound of flesh on flesh, then the scream and thump as the drunken madam was again knocked, to the floor. ‘How much more you want?’
‘No darling! Please! I love you! I don't want any other woman–’
‘Shut up, bitch!’
‘What's goin' on in there?’ Leech demanded as he reached the top of the steps and found his view into the barroom blocked by the forms of Edge and Abbie who emerged from the batwings.
‘The madam just took, a pratfall, sheriff,’ the woman replied.
Edge added, ‘Matter of injured Pride.’
Chapter Twelve
‘You?’ Leech snarled. ‘You caused trouble again, mister?’
‘Don’t point that rifle at me!’ Edge rasped.
But the muzzle of the Winchester was aimed at his belly over a range of four feet before he had finished the warning.
‘I got him, Abi!’ Leech yelled, his teeth fully displayed in a grin of triumph.
Lee and Travis had just completed fixing Willard Clayton’s team into the wagon traces. And they were alone on the otherwise deserted stretch of street which ran north from the front of the Four Aces. In one of the stores on the eastern side of the street a clock sounded a single chime to mark the time of 10.30. A half hour short of when the stage was scheduled to leave. But it was obvious that Randy Leech had made it known that Billings was not prepared to abide by the schedule. So, aware that the deadline might be reached at any moment, the peace-loving citizens of Freedom had once again withdrawn to the safety of their homes and business premises.
‘I can blast him to hell!’ Leech added, his voice rising.
The footfalls of the one-eyed man sounded on the floorboards in the bar room. As Edge stood, tense with controlled anger and fear behind his outer veneer of relaxed casualness. Only the utter coldness of his slitted eyes –
like blue threads through the lashes – offering a clue of the lengths he was prepared to go to survive. To put Abbie Clayton’s life on the line, if necessary, by pushing her in front of the menacing rifle as he hurled himself back against the batwings.
‘I will not work for a man who breaks his word!’ the woman said coldly, just as Billings came to a halt.
The sigh of the one-eyed man reflected disappointment.
‘Rose brought the trouble on herself,’ he said. ‘Let the man pass, Randy.’
Lee and Travis allowed their hands to drop away from their holstered Colts.
‘All this word-of-honour stuff is crazy,’ Leech hissed, and spat out of the side of his mouth as he shifted the Winchester to hold it across the front of his belly.
‘Don’t say thanks,’ Abbie whispered after Edge had steered her around the angry and tense Leech and down to the foot of the steps.
‘Didn’t plan to.’
‘How’s a man get to be so mean as you, mister?’ It was a rhetorical question, spoken as a rasped insult.
‘Takes a lot of experience.’
They veered to the left and started towards the front of the restaurant, where the door was still open to admit the bright sunlight of mid-morning. But nobody could be seen inside.
‘Hurry back, Abigail!’ Billings called, and hardened his tone to address the half-breed. ‘And you get right on the stage, sir. Travis, roll that wagon over to the side, in case Clayton isn’t so trusting as–’
‘Abi, what I got to tell you!’ Leech blurted. ‘Bart Briggs ain’t no place around and nobody’ll say–’
‘Run!’ Edge yelled. And released his hold on the woman’s arm to shove her hard in the small of the back.
They had reached a point midway between the foot of the hotel steps and the doorway of the restaurant.
Abbie took several more steps at an involuntary run, her breathing curtailed by the shock of the half-breed’s sudden switch from brooding to violent action. Then speeded her steps as Edge whirled, drew his Remington and sent a shot towards the hotel entrance. At the same time as her brother shrieked: ‘Sis!’ and showed himself in the restaurant doorway to trigger a bullet from his Tranter.
Edge aimed for Leech, but in the final fraction of a second before he fired he tilted the gun – as the sheriff raced around behind Billings to plunge into the safety of the Four Aces. And the bullet chipped stone off the front of the hotel and ricocheted into the ground inside the parked wagon.
Willow’s shot kicked up dirt and raised dust close by.
Both of them near to where Lee and Travis stood, half crouched in reaction to the sudden flurry of action.
Billings a look of terror etched deep into his face beneath his slicked-down hair, voiced his emotion and whirled to plunge into the barroom behind Leech.
This as the two horse team, spooked by the gunfire, reared and lunged into a gallop. Dragging the wagon in their wake, its wheels locked by the brake blocks. Dust from beneath the rims and the pounding hooves of the horses billowed up around Travis and Lee.
Edge triggered two more shots into the ground at the foot of the hotel steps, then whirled and took long strides toward the restaurant – leaping up onto the sidewalk and snatching his Winchester from the boot as he raced past his heap of gear and made it into the cover beyond the doorway.
Lee and Travis were late in getting started on their sprint for the safety of solid walls, lunging from out of the billowing dust cloud, scrambling up the steps and smashing through the batwings.
The half-breed had slid his Colt into the holster, pumped the action of the Winchester and reached a position where he could have got off a shot, before the two men went from sight.
‘You could have blasted one of them,’ Martha Emmons accused.
‘And killed Billings at the start of it,’ Art Ely said, his tone a lot calmer.
‘I’m half-Mexican and I don’t like having a gun aimed at me when I told someone not to do it,’ Edge replied evenly.
A fusillade of shots exploded from the Four Aces and he folded himself flat against the wall between the open doorway and the greasy window. To look impassively at the group that suddenly flung themselves back beyond the bead curtain as bullets and shared glass cracked and showered across the tables, chairs, and sawdust covered floor.
‘Riddles we got no time for!’ Martha Emmons yelled.
And the final two words of her response reached far out into the suddenly silent town. For, just as the opening gunshots had set the horses to panic, so the volley of fire from the hotel brought them to a sudden halt. Outside the dry goods store, the animals exhausted by the effort of dragging the dead weight of the wheel-locked wagon.
The better schooled team in the stage traces continued to stand potentially where Bart Briggs had stopped them, recovering from their frantic race into Freedom.
‘Leech called Ramon a Mex like it’s a dirty word,’ Edge said flatly, resting his rifle against the wall while he turned the cylinder of the Remington. ‘He also pointed a gun at me twice.’
He extracted the spent shell cases from the chambers of the revolver and took fresh bullets from his gunbelt, carefully inserting them to load the gun fully again.
The silence outside lengthened, seeming to stretch time and yet, strangely to contract it, so that the countless pairs of eyes which peered fearfully at the street registered the shortening of shadows as the sun rose higher in the cloudless sky.
Edge slid the Remington back into his holster and picked up the Winchester. He used the rifle to reach across the opening and hook the door closed.
A single shot cracked out of the hotel and the bullet slanted into the timber of the sidewalk in front of the restaurant door.
‘Hold your fire, I said!’ Billings shrieked.
‘So Leech is the only feller that bothers me,’ the half-breed drawled as footfalls sounded in the hallway and the Widow Emmons came out through the bead curtains. Followed by Willard, Art Ely, Sherman Hayes, Abbie and then Ramon Alvarez. ‘Couldn’t get a clear shot of him.’
‘Billings, sis?’ Willard asked tensely, his fingers white from the white grip on the wooden butt plates of his Tranter. ‘He the one?’
‘Yes, he’s the one right enough,’ the woman replied tautly. ‘I’m certain of that.’
The boy drew himself up to his full height and set his lips in a thin line as he thrust the Tranter into his belly holster. ‘Then he’s a dead man.’
Now that doubt had been removed, all the youngster’s apprehension drained out of him and there was not a single crack visible in his resolve to do what he felt he had to do. For several moments, everyone in the restaurant – in which the former cooking smells were now only faded memories clinging to the stained walls – was aware of the boy’s depthless determination.
‘Billings doesn’t carry a gun, kid,’ Edge said, the soft-spoken words drawing all attention back to him. As he spoke, he recalled the way the ringed hand of the one-eyed man had shook as it held an empty shot glass.
‘But he’s surrounded by men who do, Willard,’ Abbie added anxiously: and as she looked at her brother it was as if all his nervousness had been transferred to her.
‘Nine if you count the piano player,’ Edge supplied. ‘If there are none upstairs. Plus the whores who had Winchesters awhile ago.’
‘The only ones in town, Edge,’ Ely growled. ‘Phil Webb who owns the gunsmith store, told us over at the Sheepman earlier that last night Grogan and Leech bought up all his stock of repeaters.’
‘Damn him for not warnin’ us!’ Martha Emmons snapped.
Ely grimaced, but Sherman Hayes spoke the words.
‘Hell, we all know Webb,’ he growled. ‘He’s for Billings’s ideas and he’d be over at the Four Aces now if he had the guts to fire any of them guns he sells.’
‘Many more share his ideas but have the courage of their convictions?’ Edge asked, spending more time peering out from the side of the shattered window than he did looking at th
e group who stood or sat at the rear of the restaurant.
‘Hard to tell,’ Ely answered.
‘One feller with a gun in his belt left Billings’s place while I was over there. Way the hotel is placed, a whole bunch of men could sneak in through the rear door.’
‘My opinion you ain’t got nothin’ to worry about there,’ the Widow Emmons said bitterly. ‘All of them who want that nose-pickin’ sonofabitch to win will be fence-sittin’. Same as decent citizens who’d like to see Billin’s rottin’ in hell.’ She altered from her sneering tone to add, ‘Present company excepted, of course.’
‘We’re ready and willing, that’s for sure,’ Hayes allowed morosely. ‘But what can we do? There’s only Edge and the boy armed.’
‘Until now, Freedom hasn’t been the kind of town where anyone needed to carry a gun,’ Ely muttered in the same tone.
‘Webb’ll still have some revolvers in his store?’ Edge asked.
‘I reckon,’ Ely said, brightening.
‘How about the law office?’
Gloom clouded the blacksmith’s face again, and he spoke through his upper teeth clenched to his lower gums. ‘Huey carried a revolver and just kept the shotgun and a Winchester in his place. Leech has got the rifle.’
‘Cochran’s got a repeater, Art!’ Hayes reminded.
‘I’m with you people!’
The shouted words broke the silence which was clamped over the town. Then the pause which followed was shattered by the blast of a double-barrelled shotgun.
Edge saw a window to the right of the Four Aces entrance shatter into a million fragments. Then chanced making himself a bigger target by leaning further across the broken window of the restaurant to catch a glimpse of the bald-headed Jonas Cochran just before the saloon keeper stepped back from the bat wings of the Sheepman.
Then the half-breed ducked into cover himself, as a burst of rifle fire splintered timber and smashed glass in the facade of the saloon.
‘I always hated that loud mouth, but suddenly I love him,’ Sherman Hayes said gleefully.
‘He’s killed Sam, Abi!’ a man in the Four Aces yelled.
‘And I always hated those damn tunes that nigger played over and over all the damn time,’ Martha Emmons growled.
EDGE: The Frightened Gun (Edge series Book 32) Page 11
