The clock on the wall behind the vacant desk struck the hour of eight. Edge waited. An occasional word or phrase came clear from out of the background noise in the saloon. But nothing was said to indicate the start of suspicion.
Outside, on the roofs of the Greenville City Hall and the Valley Smithy, four men died. The weapons used against the Big R sentries were knives and lengths of baling wire. The killers were Zane Wynne, Charlie Morrell, Danny Oakley and an elderly farmer named Billy Clarke. These four men, together with a half-dozen others, had entered Greenville as stealthily as Edge while the town’s earliest risers were still preparing breakfast. They had positioned themselves strategically to take care of posted look-outs for Woodrow Ryan. Only Wynne enjoyed the moment when he slid the six-inch blade of a knife into the back of his victim. The other three had to keep in mind the deaths of Jack Clayton, Selby, Kelsey and Yates in order to commit murder.
The killings were simultaneous, and took place ten minutes after Ryan and his men had entered the hotel. Edge learned of the murders when a wagon creaked into earshot. He started down the stairway then, switching his narrow-eyed attention between the saloon entrance and the hotel doorway. He was down on the floor of the lobby when the buckboard rolled to a halt outside, just beyond where the horses of the Big R men were hitched to the Lone Star rail. He recognized the leathery-skinned Ned Crosby up on the seat with the reins. Dale Anson, sweating worse than the desk clerk had been, was seated beside Crosby. Crosby, as calm as if he had been out on a Sunday hayride, glanced up and down the street and then spat between the backs of the two horse team. This was a second pre-arranged signal - that the rest of the valley farmers were closing in on Greenville for the purpose of urging the citizens to leave town.
Edge made no acknowledgement of the signal. He merely lengthened his stride, but set his feet down just as lightly, to reach the saloon doorway. He peered over the top of the doors, raking the square room in a fast glance. He saw Woodrow Ryan, sharing a table close to the bar with Curran. His men were well scattered over the smoke-layered room lounging at tables or leaning on the bar. A tight group would have been better, but the half-breed had to play the hand he was dealt.
‘The boss dies first!’ he snarled, opening the doors just wide enough to prod the Winchester barrel through the crack. The noise was abruptly curtailed, as if everyone had suddenly become a deaf mute. ‘If anybody even blinks!’
Only eyes moved, swiveling away from Edge’s head and shoulders above the doors to locate Ryan. Expressions altered from shock to expectancy. The rancher’s shock was the most short-lived of all.
‘My men do nothin’ unless I tell them to, Mr. Edge,’ he said levelly, teeth clamped around his pipe.
The half-breed concentrated his attention on the bearded face. But many of the other men were on the periphery of his vision. He relied on instinct to warn him of unseen movement.
‘Which one’d you tell to lift my three grand, feller?’ he asked.
Ryan looked startled, and he moved. But slowly, just raising a hand to take the pipe from his mouth. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ he asked. He flicked his eyes to glare at the nervous Curran. ‘Are you in league with this man?’ he demanded.
Curran didn’t trust himself to speak. He shook his head and seemed poised to leap from his chair. But he didn’t move.
‘You paid me two and a half, feller,’ Edge said. ‘In this very hotel. And I had some travelling money when I reached town. Was in my saddlebag as far as Rivertrees Bend. After that -nix!’
The rancher was worried. He fixed Edge with a level stare. ‘I gave you my word, sir. And I meant it. I would not countenance theft.’
‘You got beat up for what you done to me, drifter!’ London added. He was in Edge’s view, standing between Harding, Carver and Lincoln at the bar behind Ryan’s table. ‘Weren’t nothin’ planned about takin’ no money.’
‘Best laid plans of rats and foremen,’ Edge drawled, not taking his stare away from the rancher’s face. ‘Gonna count to ten, feller. And either somebody says something or you’re finished talking for all time. One. Two. Three...’
Ryan looked scared for the first time since Edge had known him. ‘I’ll make it good, Edge!’ he promised.
‘Wouldn’t be fair on a fair man like you,’ the half-breed replied. ‘All you’ve gained is a few seconds. Four. Five...’
‘What’ll killin’ me get you?’ Ryan demanded, eyes flickering to left and right like those of a cornered animal.
‘Nothing,’ Edge allowed. ‘Which is what I’ve got now. So what have I got to lose, feller? Compared with you?’ He sighed. ‘Six. Seven...’
Ryan sprang erect and the move almost earned him a bullet three seconds early. But it wasn’t an act of retaliation. He half-turned one way, then the other. Then glared over his shoulder.
‘It’ll match Edge’s three grand to the man who names the culprit!’ he yelled.
‘Eight,’ Edge said.
‘Please?’ Ryan begged
‘Nine.’
‘Edge! I’ve got your money!’
The shout came from out on the street. And of those in the saloon only the half-breed and Curran recognized the voice. Danny Oakley.
Edge reacted with a narrowing of his eyes to glittering blue slits. Then: ‘My mistake, feller,’ he said.
He squeezed the trigger of the Winchester. Ryan and Curran dived under the bullet. George Lincoln took the lead through his heart and bounced back against the bar before crumpling. From outside came an ear-splitting explosion that rocked the Lone Star Saloon and shattered its windows. Dust billowed in through the openings. The Winchester spat two more bullets and Harding and Carver became dead weight as they completed their dives for the floor.
Then Edge was forced to retreat, whirling away from the batswings as other Big R hands drew their six-guns and blasted a hail of lead towards him. He made the foot of the stairway and glanced out through the main entrance. The buckboard with Crosby and Anson on the seat had gone. The Big R horses were still hitched to the rail, rearing and snorting in fear of the explosion and the still billowing dust.
He went up the stairway, two, three and four treads at a time. He cursed Oakley for fooling him: and himself for missing out on the second giant. He fired four shells towards the saloon, then reached the landing. He was out of sight from below when Harv London led the charge of Big R men out into the lobby. He couldn’t see what happened, because he was racing along the landing. But no footfalls sounded on the stairway. Gunfire out on the street drew the men towards the main doorway. Guns exploded shots from inside the lobby, and voices were raised to give orders and counter-orders.
At the far end of the landing there was a window. It was open. Edge climbed on to the sill, but didn’t go out. Instead, he reached up, and pushed open a trapdoor. Sunlight shafted in. He tossed his rifle out on the roof and climbed up after it. He snatched up the Winchester, then went out prone and bellied towards the cover of the hotel sign at the front side of the roof.
Down at the southern end of the street, the Greenville City Hall was a blazing, blackened ruin sending orange flames and oily smoke up into the morning air. And, lined up across the end of the street, mounted and with their guns holstered and booted, were the valley farmers.
‘Ryan, you bastard!’ Wynne yelled above the roar of flames. ‘You and the Big R ain’t gonna have things your way no more!’ The shout silenced the confused babble of talk in the hotel lobby for a moment. Then Ryan snarled an order.
‘Go get those sodbusters! Go kill every last one of the sonsofbitches! Hundred dollars a head!’
‘You heard Mr. Ryan!’ Harv London roared. ‘Move!’ There was a burst of gunfire from the hotel entrance. The farmers wheeled their horses and lunged into galloping retreat.
‘They’re runnin’!’ the big R foreman yelled gleefully.
There was a knot-hole in the sign. Edge put an eye to it and peered down the facade of the building as men rushed off the stoop and tore t
he reins from around the hitching rail. He held the rifle between his clenched knees and pushed an index finger into each ear.
Seven men swung into the stirrups simultaneously and thudded down into their saddles. Seven detonators were triggered and seven packs of dynamite sticks exploded between saddles and horseflesh. But more than seven men and seven horses died. The blast sent screaming men and panicked horses into a melee of collisions and more detonators were triggered. For long moments, Edge was dazzled by the intense flare of the multiple explosion. And, even when he took his fingers out of his ears, he continued to suffer temporary deafness.
Then it began to rain debris which had been hurled high into the air. Blood-dripping, unrecognizable chunks of horsemeat and human flesh. Pieces of saddle. Twisted metal that had once been guns. Flaming remnants of clothing. Edge crouched, covering his head with his arms, until the detritus storm was over. By then his vision had cleared and he was hearing normally. He saw the returning farmers first. Then heard the beat of their horses’ hooves. As he stepped back towards the front side of the hotel roof, the sign he had sheltered behind collapsed and crashed downwards. He looked after it and saw the awesome spectacle of mutilated and blackened bodies and carcasses. Every man who had rushed out of the hotel to carry out Ryan’s order had perished. But the mutilation of the remains was too terrible to make even a cursory count. The decapitated head of the second giant was recognizable.
Two men from the Big R had not died as a result of the exploding horses, though. Woodrow Ryan and Harv London had been inside the lobby when the chain reaction of lethal explosions began. They had been hurled back into the building by the blasts and suffered only shock and bruising. As Edge continued to look down at the result of his idea, the rancher and the foreman stepped outside, dazed but able to pick a way between the horrific remains of men and horses. Both had their hands raised above their heads.
For a moment, Edge was puzzled. But then a third man made his exit from the Lone Star Saloon. Curran, carrying a leveled Winchester. The trio moved out into the centre of the street, on the fringe of the grisly debris. The farmers slowed their horses as they approached from the south end of the street. The citizens of Greenville, on foot, shuffled forward from the north end.
It was the rancher who first sensed the half-breed’s presence, and turned his shocked gaze up towards the hotel roof. His clothes and neatly trimmed grey beard were sooted and untidy now and he looked every inch a broken man.
‘You’re a real smart guy!’ Ryan said, his voice croaky.
All other eyes swung to look at the tall half-breed atop the blackened and shattered facade of the hotel. Edge gestured with the Winchester to encompass the litter of shattered corpses.
‘Real smart,’ he agreed. ‘Look, Ryan - no hands!’
‘Went to pieces, didn’t they?’ Zane Wynne called happily.
‘Here, Mr. Edge!’ Oakley yelled. ‘No hard feelin’s, uh?’
He stood upright in his stirrups to hurl an oil-skin wrapped package up to the roof. It arced through the acrid-smelling air and bounced on a wrenched-off hand and forearm to land against the half-breed’s left boot.
‘Maria don’t deserve to be a widow,’ Edge replied as he stooped and picked up his money. ‘But if you see me again, turn and go the other way, feller.’
‘Step aside, Curran,’ Zane Wynne ordered, happiness gone and his face and voice heavy with menace.
‘What you gonna do?’ Harv London whined.
‘Take it like a man!’ Ryan growled.
‘You’re a fair man, you always say,’ Wynne snarled. ‘So you gotta see you should get the same as your men.’
It wasn’t a part of Edge’s plan, but it had been pre-arranged. As Curran stepped out of the line of fire and the citizens of Greenville backed hurriedly away, every valley homesteader save one leveled a rifle. Harv London turned and tried to run. Ryan stood rigid, swelling his chest with an intake of breath. The fusillade of rifle shots sounded somehow muted after the recent explosions. Multiple wounds were opened up in both men, and each was lifted clear of the ground before being flung down on to it. Their heads, torsos and limbs were suddenly stained crimson by spurting blood. Scavenging flies from the blasted corpses swarmed towards fresh food.
The man who had failed to take part in the execution was the freckle-faced Oakley. He was still looking up towards Edge. Not in fear, for he had accepted the half-breed’s word that he was in no danger from the canted Winchester. Edge showed a grin that held just a hint of humor.
‘And Harv turned around for you, feller,’ the half-breed called evenly.
Oakley blinked. ‘What?’
‘You could have shot him,’ Edge answered. ‘Kind of a swan song in this ruckus.’
‘What you talkin’ about, Edge?’ Zane Wynne growled.
‘Just seems to me,’ the half-breed answered as he turned. ‘That Danny boy oughta have scored a hit with the London derriere.’
DON’T MISS THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE
OF
GEORGE G. GILMAN’S
BEST SELLING SERIES ABOUT THE MAN KNOWN AS…
EDGE
COMING SOON!
Other titles in the EDGE series from Lobo Publications
#1 The Loner
#2 Ten Grand
#3 Apache Death
#4 Killer’s Breed
#5 Blood On Silver
#6 The Blue, The Grey And The Red
#7 California Kill
#8 Seven Out Of Hell
#9 Bloody Summer
#10 Vengeance Is Black
#11 Sioux Uprising
#12 The Biggest Bounty
#13 A Town Called Hate
#14 Blood Run
#15 The Big Gold
#16 The Final Shot
#17 The Final Shot
#18 Ten Tombstones To Texas
And More to Come…
Edge: Vengeance Valley (Edge series Book 17) Page 12
