Getting softhearted was also a sign of too many years gone by, he guessed. And he had been that, too. Toward John James. Even toward Hamilton Linn—when he shoved the actor out of the line of fire at a time when gunning down both Campbell brothers should have been his sole concern.
But forgetting to try out a dead man's gun until he needed it in a kill or be killed situation . . . that was what irked him most. And threatened to arouse fresh anger. At the back of his mind lurked a nagging worry that there was something else he had forgotten.
The sounds outside became even less intrusive as the day wore on. Then the town was quiet-mournfully so—as the light got dimmer and the air chillier.
Standing at the counter, the rifle resting across its top, Edge made the bottle last all afternoon, so he was not the least drunk when he heard the batwings swing. He did not sense any threat so he remained facing the counter with a cigarette angled from a corner of his mouth and a half-filled glass between both hands against his chest.
"They say that drinking alone is bad for a man," Doc Hunter said as he came across the saloon and went behind the bar.
He sounded very weary and when Edge looked at him in the light of a lamp he lit, the half-breed saw the Ridgeville doctor was near to exhaustion. But he could also tell that the blood that stained his clothing and smudged his gaunt face was not his own. "Or there's another school of thought," he replied as Hunter took down a bottle and poured himself a rye, "that says drinking is all that makes being alone bearable. Among other things."
The doctor replaced the bottle on the shelf with grim-faced resolution—determined to ration himself to just the one shot. "You're not that kind, Edge." He raised his glass. "Here's to all survivors."
"My horse going to be one of those?"
"Give her a week to mend and you can ride her. Just finished treating her. After patching up twenty townspeople and five men who came with the Campbells. One of them won't last through the night is my guess. And maybe three of my regular patients will die. Brings the total of Ridgeville's loss to sixteen. Which includes Moss Tracy, Edge. But somebody will inherit this place." He pointedly took out some coins from a pants pocket and placed a few cents on the countertop beside his empty glass.
"You happen to know if a feller named Donovan from the pass was killed, Doc?" Edge asked as Hunter came out from behind the bar and headed for the batwings.
"Yeah, he was killed. Knew him from treating him for boils one time. Something special about him?"
"Owed him for a bottle of whiskey I took to help JJ on his way out."
"Reckon you can forget it." Hunter paused with a hand on the top of the door. "Yeah, and forget what you've had here, too. Folks are in two minds about you and those theatricals right now. Take them a time to get over their grief, I guess, but when they do, they ought to feel grateful to you for giving them back their pride.
"I feel that way already—knowing I won't ever again have to lance the boils of a psychopathic killer. Or treat a man who broke his arm escaping from a posse after robbing a stage. Or lots of other things that used to stick in my craw.
"I've already told the group of actors something of the kind. And you played no small part in bringing things to a head. Night to you."
Just as Hunter went from the saloon, Edge recalled that he had not told anyone in town—except for Craig Campbell—that Bill Sheldon would not be bringing replacement payroll money from Casper. But he knew this was not the cause of the nagging worry at the back of his mind.
"An extremely large part, I'd say," Hamilton Linn boomed as he pushed through the batwings before they had finished flapping from Hunter's exit. "Had you not responded so quickly and skillfully to the excellent but rather reckless piece of drama staged by dear Elizabeth, there is no telling what the out-come might have been."
"No sense worrying about what might have happened, feller," Edge growled without turning around.
"I come to bid you farewell, sir. And to thank you for perhaps saving my life. Who knows, if you had not knocked me to the ground once again, I—"
"Like I just said, Linn—"
"Of course, of course. I felt I had to say it, though. Today has been a triumph in one way, in another it has been a failure. The stolen money was not recovered and the Linn Players must press on to a new engagement in a community which can afford to pay the admission price for our entertainment."
"Like they say, the show must go on," Edge murmured, and the important memory clicked to the forefront of his mind.
"Precisely."
The actor's boot leather scraped on the floor as he turned and the batwings flapped again. Edge finished his drink, set the glass on the countertop, and picked up the Winchester to go across the saloon, dimly lit by the single lamp Hunter had illuminated.
From the threshold he looked diagonally across the intersection, which had been cleared of corpses but still showed many bloodstains, to where a covered wagon with an elaborately and vividly painted canvas was parked, a four-horse team in the traces.
The elderly Clarence Gowan was up on the seat, the reins in his hands. Grouped at the rear were the girlishly good-looking Oliver Strange, the untrusting Henry Maguire, the plain Susie Chase, and the boy sharpshooter, Marybelle Melton. The man-hating Elizabeth Miles was already aboard, leaning out over the tailgate to look, like the others, up the steps of the boardinghouse the lighted hallway. There, in silhouette against the lamp glow, the duster-coated Hamilton Linn' was taking his effusive leave of Miss Emma Roche.
There was an eager tension in the attiutes the actors and actresses near or aboard wagon. And this tension suddenly seemed to be transmitted to Linn—for, although nothing was called to him, he abruptly bowed to the elderly spinster, turned, and hurried down the steps. He headed for the wagon with the intention of climbing up on the high seat beside Gowan.
But before he did so, he handed up a pair of bulky saddlebags which the man holding the reins accepted with relief. He did so at the same time as Maguire, sensing watching eyes, shot a glance over his shoulder and recognized Edge standing between the half-open batwings.
"Shit," he snarled, "it's that hard-nosed Mex-looking cowboy again, Ham!"
It was enough to get him killed, calling Edge a Mex. But he had to wait his turn. For Clarence Gowan had his shotgun on the seat beside him. He dropped the saddlebags, snatched it up, and thumbed back the hammers as he swung it around to aim across the intersection. The group at the rear whirled and yelled for Elizabeth Miles to toss their guns out.
The half-breed remained where he was as he brought the barrel of the Winchester down from his shoulder and thudded the stockplate into it. He placed the first bullet into the forehead of the old man on the wagon seat just as he aligned the sights of his shotgun on the saloon doorway. Next he stepped out of the doorway and raked the repeater along the garishly painted side of the wagon as he worked the lever action. He located the crack shot Marybelle Melton as she made to level her long barrel Colt in a double-handed grip. Shot her in the chest, drilling the bullet under the bullet under the gun and her outstretched arms.
He was clear of the saloon now, in the same moonlight that bathed the wagon and the Linn Players. He planted his feet firmly on the intersection to explode a bullet into the side of Oliver Strange's neck—as the girlish-looking young man snatched his Winchester from the hands of Elizabeth Miles.
The sight of arterial blood gushing from the flesh of the toppling youngster drove Maguire into an insane rage. And he lunged forward as he fired his Spencer, as if he needed to make physical contact with Edge.
"My Pa was a Mexcian!” the half-breed rasped as he squeezed his trigger a split second after Maguire fired his shot.
One bullet smashed a window of the Lone Pine Saloon. The other tunneled into the left eye of Henry Maguire.
The plain-faced Susie Chase had half climbed and been half hauled into the rear of the wagon by Elizabeth Miles. Now both women began to scream as they peered out of th
e rig and saw the limp corpses of three of their number sprawled in a heap below the tailgate. The high-pitched sounds they made drowned out the many shouted questions from battle-weary townspeople who feared the survivors from Cloud Pass had returned—as well as whatever the shocked Hamilton Linn was shrieking from his position of retreat on the boardinghouse stoop.
Edge had raked the Winchester muzzle back along the wagon's side with cool speed to locate the actor. He saw he had his hand in his duster pocket, but knew the tiny gun he carried posed no danger over such a range. And now he altered the aim of the rifle again as he began a slow advance across the intersection. While he methodically fired the gun and pumped its action, sending a stream of bullets through the canvas side of wagon until the magazine was empty. The final shellcase fell to the ground at his side.
The utter silence which followed was almost painful to the eardrums.
Edge broke it with his footfalls as he went to the rear of the wagon and, careful to avoid stepping on any of the dead, glanced in over the tailgate. He saw the two women clasped to each other in a deathly embrace, their dresses marred by many dark stains. The stink of something that was a natural reaction to terror was heavy in the air under the bullet-holed canvas.
"What in heaven's name have you done?" Hamilton Linn croaked. He stood with his back pressed hard against the closed door of the boarding house.
Edge moved around the rear of the wagon and advanced on him, the empty Winchester canted to his left shoulder and his hand close to the holstered Colt, his narrowed and glittering eyes fastened tenaciously upon the gaunt and ashen face of the actor. He was aware that Linn still had his left hand in the bullet-holed pocket of his duster.
"Figure I've just made a not so old man very happy, feller," Edge replied as he halted, six feet in front of Linn, once again within range of a small but lethal gun.
"Are you mad?"
"Maybe I was going a little crazy when I couldn't get the chance to prove to myself I'm as good as I need to be." He paused to purse his lips and then added softly: "Still."
"At killing innocent people you provoked into—"
"More of you than me, which evened the odds. One question for you. In case you figure to try to kill me."
The actor gulped and his eyes moved back and forth in their sockets, sweeping over the stunned and silent townspeople who had gathered around the wagon. "Olly Strange was on the roof of the saloon. He heard you and Campbell talking in the alley. When he told us about the hundred thousand in the saddlebags on that loose horse we all agreed to ..."
An angry murmuring had started among the audience Hamilton Linn would rather not have had. And he found himself unable to go on with what he was saying because of the constriction that fear placed around his throat.
But the crowd was not concerned with the actor for the moment. The townspeople were only interested in the pair of saddlebags that the towering Geroge had dragged down from the seat where Gowan had dropped them when he reached for his shotgun.
"Wasn't my question, feller," Edge said. "Who took my money?"
"Elizabeth!" he blurted and Edge accepted this as the truth. For the slightly built actor had proven many times that he was not a coward and would not now have hidden behind the skirts of a dead woman. "That was entirely her idea, sir. I swear it. She told us about it when we got back to town. She was concerned that we could not manage on our own against the men at the pass. So she took your money in the hope you would agree to be hired to—"
"Obliged," the half-breed interrupted. "She still have it?"
"Hey, mister, you can take what you're owed outa this," George invited in high excitement. He opened the saddlebags and held them out for his fellow citizens to see the bills stuffed inside.
"No need," Linn said across the fresh buzz of eager talk. "If you'll look under the straw in the corner of the stall where she nursed you, you'll find the money. She never really took it, you see. Just hid it."
"Obliged again."
"We aren't thieves really, you know!" Linn blurted and swept his worried eyes over the audience again. "We didn't take Mr. Edge's money. And the money in those saddlebags doesn't belong to anybody else here! The man who had it is dead and it wasn't truly his anyway! My entire troupe was slaughtered for doing nothing that was in any way criminal. It was a matter of finders—”
"The hell with that, mister!" Jack Quinn cut in. "You and your bunch knew the whole town was stole from and yet you was gonna take—"
"Yeah, that's right!" a woman accused.
"Get aboard your wagon and haul yourself and your dead outa our town, mister!" a lumberman snarled.
Edge had turned away as the crowd moved in closer around the wagon, some of them coming between himself and the frightened actor. Harry Bellinger, the town mortician, was among these. The half-breed addressed his word to him. "Seems I won't need that casket after all, feller."
"If you did, you'd be at the end of a long waitin' list, sir."
Linn jerked his hand out of his pocket, empty, suddenly aware that the half-breed was no longer a threat to him. And that the small gun he had been gripping was useless against the mob that threatened him.
"Mr. Edge!" he called. "These people look like they might . . . Where are you going, Mr. Edge?"
The man cowered, terrified of the crowd which was babbling with discontent and rage until the voice of Doc Hunter was heard. Suddenly all murmuring ceased. "Just do as you were told and leave town, sir!" Hunter commanded.
"Yeah, get your show on the road!" Jack Quinn snarled.
"I should say so!" Miss Emma called down from an upper-story window.
"Going, feller?" Edge murmured as he halted his movement toward the stable. He watched lumbermen loading the dead players into the rear of the wagon and decided to wait until tomorrow to tell the people that Bill Sheldon would never return to Ridgeville. "North is Canada and that don't appeal to me too much right now. Not far west is the ocean and I don't swim so well. Come up here from the south..."
He paused to take out the makings and start to roll a cigarette as the morose-looking actor without a company climbed up on to the wagon seat. Then he concluded: "My horse needs to rest up for a while. So could be, next week, east Linn."
EDGE: Montana Melodrama Page 14
