Edge: Vengeance Valley (Edge series Book 17)

by George G. Gilman

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Coming soon!

  Vengeance Valley

  By George G. Gilman

  First Published by Kindle 2013

  Copyright © 2013 by George G. Gilman

  First Kindle Edition May 2013

  Names, Characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance

  to actual events locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any

  information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author,

  except where permitted by law.

  Cover Design and illustrations by West World Designs © 2013.

  This is a High Plains Western for Lobo Publications.

  Visit the author at: www.gggandpcs.proboards.com

  For: J.G.

  a small cog in the Edge wheel but relatively important.

  Chapter One

  THE man at a second storey window of the Lone Star Saloon breathed in deeply of the warm, late morning air and looked down on the main street of Greenville. The street was like the room at his back in one respect - neat and clean. Then he raised his eyes to make a raking survey over the broad valley: his vantage point high on the western slope of the long depression in the land of southwest Texas. It, too, was neat and clean. All of it in keeping with the man who owned the valley, the town, and everything in the valley and town. Except the man at the second storey window: for nobody owned Edge. Not even Woodrow Ryan.

  The verdant valley and the neat town were quiet beneath the peaceful sky in which there was not a single cloud. And for a full five minutes Edge stood at the window, contemplating what might have been: thinking about a farm on the prairie of Iowa and another farm beside a lake in the Dakotas. At no time did he consider what still might be for this was no longer his way. The lessons of the past had been too hard and too painful. Fate had decreed that this man had no right to plan - or even hope - for the future: not if such plans or hopes demanded an absence of violence and death. For, if he claimed such a right, the result was as inevitable as night following day - his capacity to endure mental anguish would once more be put to the test. And he was not sure just how low his resources in this respect had fallen. So he lived for the day, the hour or even the minute: content to survive and confident of his ability to do this, no matter what degree of physical suffering was involved.

  A gentle breeze was breathing warmly from the southern end of the valley and on it was carried the appetizing aromas of many meals in the process of cooking. The smells broke his train of thought and he turned from the window and crossed the room to the bureau with a mirror fitted into its high back. There was a bowl of cold water on the bureau, with a bar of soap and a razor alongside it. He stripped off his red undershirt and started to wash up and shave off a thirty-six-hour growth of bristles.

  He had to stoop to see the reflection of his face in the mirror, for he was a very tall man. Six feet three inches without his boots on. The mirrored image showed a long, lean face with piercing blue eyes looking out from under deeply cut brows. Beneath the eyes, his cheekbones were high, flanking the start of the steep slope of his hawk like nose. His mouth was wide and narrow lipped above a firm, strong jaw line. The skin of the face was stretched taut over the bone structure, burnished to a dark brown by heritage and exposure to every kind of weather: and deeply scored, particularly around the mouth and at the corners of the eyes, by both age and long experience of deprivation and suffering. Age was the lesser responsibility, for the man was only in his mid-thirties. The frame of the face was the long, thick, dark black hair that reached down to brush his shoulders and the base of his neck. It was the face of a man with mixed blood coursing through his veins: some of the features inherited from a Mexican father and others passed on by a Scandinavian mother.

  The body beneath the face was deceptively lean, for the man weighed a solid two hundred pounds and carried not an ounce of excess fat. On his chest was a thick matting of hair, as black as that on his head. The firm flesh, which had the texture of well-used leather, was olive-brown in color, except for the white scar tissue of an old bullet wound on his left shoulder. There were other areas of scarring on him - at the nape of his neck, beneath his hair, and on his right hip and left thigh concealed by his long Johns. Three of the wounds inflicted by Rebel soldiers during the War Between the States and the furrow across the nape of his neck acting as a constant reminder - if such was needed - of how close he had come to death since the end of that conflict.

  Washed and shaved, he started to dress. Riding boots, pants, shirt and hat. All travel-stained but still serviceable. The single holster gun belt had the same qualities. He spun the cylinder of the Army Model Colt before sliding it into the tied down holster. Then he checked the action of the Winchester after picking it up from the floor beside the rumpled bed. Finally, he wiped the steel blade of the wooden handled open razor and eased the implement, become a weapon, into the leather pouch that hung on a beaded thong at the back of his neck. His hair concealed the top of the handle and it would take a keen eye to read anything dangerous into the faint, elongated hump where his shirt contoured the sheathed razor.

  As he let himself out of the room and went along the landing and down the stairway, it would require more than a mere passing glance to spot the even subtler signs that the man called Edge was a man to be wary of.

  ‘Afternoon, sir!’ the young, bespectacled man behind the desk in the lobby greeted brightly, ‘It certainly is a fine day, isn’t it?’

  The city suited desk clerk was too bright - making too much of an effort at being friendly. It was a fake mood to front his nervousness and he was not making a very good job of it. The atmosphere in the shabby lobby was pleasantly cool, yet the clerk’s wan face became sheened with sweat in the time it took Edge to move from the foot of the stairs to the desk.

  ‘Do somethin’ for you, sir?’ The clerk’s lower lip quivered and there was a tremor in his voice. He did not look into the ice-blue eyes of the tall half-breed who towered almost a foot higher than him. But he had already given his guest more than a passing glance. Yesterday Edge and an old lady had entered the Lone Star, a gun covering two of Woodrow Ryan’s meanest hands. In one of the upstairs rooms, with Mr. Ryan as a witness, two people had died. A guest and the old lady. Edge had not been responsible for either sudden death. Not to the extent of squeezing a trigger, anyway. But the clerk, who considered himself a well-schooled student of human nature, attached moral blame to the tall stranger. As Edge had checked in following the double shooting, the clerk had looked long and hard, if surreptitiously, at the new guest.

  The clear blue eyes were the major clue. They looked incapable of smiling. Then there was the mouth. The thin lips did fold back to reveal even, very white teeth but the humor of the expression never spread beyond the extent of the skin creases from the corners of the mouth. And, in repose, the mouth adopted a line that was either bitter or cruel. Then there was the way the man carried himself. He was a quiet, loose-limbed mover: apparently incapable of haste. But this, too, was a facade. Behind it, he was constantly poised to spring i
nto instant action should his ever-alert eyes detect a hint of danger.

  Added to all this was Edge’s total lack of emotion following the explosion of violence.

  This man, the clerk decided, was no stranger to danger and death for he was himself both dangerous and deadly. Hardly a man at all, except in basic appearance. Under this outer shell he had the mind and reflexes of some kind of animal: a beast of prey who was himself preyed upon by others. And such a man, the clerk considered, would possess a quick temper. Thus, the clerk went to great lengths to avoid antagonizing Edge.

  ‘Like to pay what I owe and check out,’ the half-breed replied evenly, aware of the reason for the clerk’s nervousness. Everywhere he went, men of perception were able to detect the aura of death that emanated from him. But he believed he could not help what he had become: and considered there was no point in either excusing or defending what he was.

  ‘Leaving Greenville, sir?’ The clerk used a red and white spotted kerchief to mop the beads of sweat from his forehead.

  Edge showed the clerk his mouth-only smile that made the blue strips of his narrowed eyes colder than ever. The Lone Star’s got a rooms-for-rent monopoly in this town and I don’t plan to sleep on the sidewalk, feller.’

  The clerk tried a smile of his own and succeeded in looking a little sick. ‘It’s just that Mr. Ryan will be in later today, sir. And he did say he wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘How much for the room?’ Edge asked, sliding his bankroll from a hip pocket. It was a large wad of bills. Twenty-five hundred dollars for completing the job that brought him to Greenville, plus the stake he had carried with him before he tied up with the ill-fated women he did the work for.

  ‘Ten dollars, sir. That includes livery of your horse, sir.’

  Edge nodded and counted off the money. ‘You run a good hotel, feller. So I reckon my horse did all right, too.’

  ‘Mr. Ryan demands the best of everything, sir.’ The clerk hurriedly wrote out a receipt for the room rent. The attempt at a smile had been abandoned and the pale young face was set in grim lines as the receipt changed hands. ‘He also likes people to do like he says, sir.’

  Edge slid the receipt into his pocket with the bankroll and canted the Winchester to his shoulder. ‘If I happen to run into him, I’ll tell him you’re doing a good job here, feller.’

  He turned and ambled over to the door.

  ‘I’d be obliged if you’ll tell him I gave you the message!’ the clerk called. ‘Mr. Ryan really doesn’t like it at all when people don’t do what he tells them.’

  ‘I get the message, feller,’ the half-breed answered without turning around as he pushed out through the door.

  His eyes closed to even narrower slits as he stepped into the bright, Texas sunlight. The aroma of cooking food was stronger than ever now and the street was not as quiet as before. The stores and other places of business were closing up for lunch and people were moving along the sidewalks towards their neat homes or the Rio Grande Restaurant a block and a half south of the hotel. And a few men were riding in on horseback and buckboards from the crop fields and pastures in the immediate vicinity of Greenville. Dust from under lazily moving hooves and slowly turning wheels rose into the heated air and floated back down to the street again.

  Moving down to the restaurant, Edge saw the grey motes settling on to his clothes and felt them against the skin of his face, held there by the sweat which had started to ooze the moment he came out of the shade. And he sensed many pairs of eyes watching him. It was obvious that, while he had slept, the story of the violence which marked his arrival in town had been told and retold. But there was no resentment in the stares directed towards him as he made his easy progress down the street. And none of the observers got close enough to him to experience the kind of nervousness in his presence which had gripped the desk clerk. As the object of the surveillance, Edge sensed simply an expectant curiosity.

  When he reached the doorway of the restaurant, he shot an easy glance back up the street towards the front of the Lone Star Saloon. The desk clerk was standing between the two rocking chairs flanking the entrance, his glasses removed in order to focus his gaze across a block and a half. He seemed agitated at being discovered watching Edge, and he snapped his head around and began to talk fast to a young boy sitting astride a pony. The boy nodded forcefully, accepted something small and glittering from the clerk, and heeled his mount into a fast gallop. He rode out of the north end of town, onto the trail that curved down the valley slope.

  Edge pushed open the door and stepped into the restaurant. For a moment, a dozen conversations continued to make a pleasant buzzing sound in the cool interior. Then, as the people spread among the tables turned their attention towards the new customer, talk faltered and stopped. The half-breed could smile with genuine humor when the occasion demanded it, and he did so now, sweeping his blue-eyed gaze over the expectant faces.

  It was the only smile in the room, which wasn’t unusual for Greenville. The clerk’s pathetic attempt to hide his attack of nerves was the closest thing Edge had seen to happiness since he rode into town more than twenty-four hours ago. Neatness, cleanliness and peace did not breed contentment in Woodrow Ryan’s town and valley.

  He took off his hat and hooked it over a stand just inside the door. ‘Sure hope the food in this place matches the smell and not the faces of you folks,’ he said evenly, starting to weave between the gingham-covered tables to a vacant place in a rear corner.

  ‘Mr. Ryan demands the best of everything,’ a woman answered, as all eyes followed the half-breed.

  Edge dropped into a chair that put his back to the corner, and leaned his Winchester against the wall. The woman was middle-aged and fat. She sat on a stool behind a short length of counter and her enormous breasts were flopped and spread on the counter top. Her dress was the same checkered pattern as the tablecloths. Her straw-colored hair was drawn back severely off her fleshy, over-painted face. Thus, her grimly insulted expression was blatantly plain to see.

  ‘Should have remembered, ma’am,’ Edge told her. Teller down at the hotel already said that.’

  ‘Includin’ the best table,’ the fat woman went on. ‘Which you’re sittin’ at.’

  Edge glanced around him again, then down at the table immediately in front of him. All the other tables, in use or vacant, were laid with steel knives, forks and spoons, paper napkins and glass condiment sets. The one he had chosen was arrayed in engraved silver and linen.

  ‘Ryan expected?’

  ‘We never know if he’s expected until he’s here. But even if he don’t come, he won’t like to know somebody else has sat at his table.’

  ‘What the hell, Lizzie?’ a man sitting with three others growled. ‘You give him the warnin’. Stranger wants to sit there, let him.’

  ‘It’s all right for you, Nathan!’ the fat Lizzie countered. ‘Won’t be you moppin’ the blood off the floor if Mr. Ryan or one of his men comes in here.’

  She returned her glare to Edge.

  He sighed. ‘There’s no blood when a man dies of hunger, ma’am,’ he said wryly.

  Lizzie gave a sigh of her own, which sent ripples all the way to the curved crests of her large breasts. Then she flashed a toothy smile that emphasized every one of her considerable number of wrinkles. ‘Serve the gent, Greta!’ she yelled over her shoulder, then returned her attention to Edge. ‘Can’t no one say you weren’t given the warnin’, mister. And, seein’ as how you’re settin’ yourself up for trouble, I sure hope you get it.’ She suddenly spoke more quickly. ‘And I ain’t wishin’ nothin’ bad for you, mister. Just for whoever tangles with you.’

  ‘And I reckon that goes for everyone in here!’ a man agreed enthusiastically. He wore a white smock with scissors and a comb showing at the breast pocket.

  ‘Ain’t no doubt about that, not no way,’ another man put in. ‘I surely am achin’ to see a Ryan man taken down a peg or two. And this feller sure looks the kind could do it.’


  ‘He don’t only look the kind,’ a woman customer contributed excitedly. ‘I was out on the street yesterday. Saw the way he handled Hardin’ and Carver.’

  Edge wasn’t listening to the flattering comments being spoken about him. Greta - a skinny, short-haired girl of about twenty with bad skin and a lisp - had given him a menu and he was choosing his lunch. By the time he had ordered, the Rio Grande was buzzing with conversations again. Now there was an almost tangible atmosphere of subdued excitement in the restaurant and the glances directed towards the half-breed had become surreptitious again. The expressions in the eyes were a mixture of admiration and rueful pity.

  But, as time slid by - Edge eating soup, a steak and trimmings, then apple pie - the tension subsided. Some of the customers even left to start their afternoon chores, their disappointment at the non-appearance of Ryan or any of his men plain to see. Then, just as Edge was about to start on his end of meal coffee, the message sent out by the hotel desk clerk produced a reaction. Galloping hoof beats sounded against the sun-baked surface of the street and the gentle breeze from the south tossed little billows of dust in through the open windows of the restaurant.

  Lizzie and the dozen or so customers remaining in the Rio Grande suddenly looked as if they no longer relished the prospect of witnessing rare trouble from such close quarters. Four riders skidded their mounts to a noisy halt outside. The barber attempted to leave, but backed off hurriedly from the opening door.

  Edge lifted the coffee cup to his lips and eyed the quartet of newcomers over the tilted rim. He recognized Harding and Carver from yesterday. Both in their mid-twenties, broadly-built and hard-eyed, they were the two men Edge had been forced to get by in order to reach Woodrow Ryan at the Lone Star Hotel. From the way they halted on the threshold and glared at the half-breed, they were still smarting from the ignominy of that minor humiliation. Behind them were two older men. One about forty and the other five years younger. The forty-year-old was only an inch or so above five feet in height, but he was the broadest and heaviest of the lot: his shirt and pants contouring flesh that looked as if it was as hard as granite. His bare arms and square-cut face certainly had the visual texture of rock stained dark brown. His hat hung down his back to show close-cropped, iron-grey hair. He had green eyes with bloodshot surrounds. The fourth man was a slighter, thinner, slightly shorter variation on the tough pattern of Harding and Carver. All the men were sheened by sweat and their clothing was filmed by the dust of a long, hard ride.