Edge: Slaughter Road (Edge series Book 22)

by George G. Gilman

  Both men stared at Edge in disbelief.

  Footfalls sounded on the crushed rock of the roadbed as Vic approached the Pullman.

  ‘Okay, so die here.’

  As he spoke, he stooped to pick up the razor and return it to the neck pouch. Erect again, he swung the rifle from Wayne to Dale.

  He knew the two young children would die if he had to explode the Winchester. He also knew that death for the kids would be almost as certain if he told Wayne to order their release. For it was obvious that suspicion was building as fast as heat outside in the morning sunlight.

  ‘You’re out of your mind,’ Wayne rasped, then turned and moved fast to the open door.

  Dale was only a moment behind him, both of them having to ignore the second Winchester which lay on the floor.

  ‘I figure you could be right, feller,’ Edge muttered so that only he heard the words.

  Wayne reached the doorway and Vic’s footfalls halted.

  ‘So it’s okay?’

  Dale was still exposed as a target for the Winchester. Wayne felt he dare not raise the alarm yet.

  ‘Fine. Dale’s got—’

  ‘But maybe being mad helps,’ the half-breed snarled, as the cold fires of rage blazing in his belly added power to his muscles.

  Head down so that his chin pressed against his chest, he made a half turn, thrust out his shoulder - and sprang at the nearest window.

  He heard the smash of shattered glass, felt the pain of the impact travel from his shoulder to his wrist and saw most of the length of the train through a shower of falling shards. Then there were other sources of pain - but only pinpricks on his face as some of the sharp fragments of glass stabbed into his flesh.

  Men shouted.

  He fired the first shot while he was in mid-air, risking the lives of the children by not exploding the bullet for mere effect.

  For his spectacular exit from the Pullman had created the diversion - drawing every pair of eyes towards him. And the children would be in deadly peril from the instant Josh and Junior recovered from the shock.

  Junior did not recover.

  Edge’s bullet hit the platform of sleepers and ricocheted. It went through Junior’s shoulder from the rear and burrowed into and out of flesh without touching bone. For part of a second the crimson colored bullet was in the open, then it found fresh meat below Junior’s ear. It came to a stop in the brain and the man was dead before he started to fall.

  Edge struggled to turn himself in mid-air, pumping the action of the rifle as he flailed his legs to get them angled towards the ground.

  He didn’t quite make it.

  His right foot slammed into the sand of the desert a yard beyond the roadbed. His ankle turned and a groan of pain burst from his lips as the worst pain of all hit him. He went down hard and two bullets cracked over his tilting body.

  A moment of exhilaration gripped him, negating the agony that had travelled from his ankle to every nerve ending in his brain.

  Josh had seen Junior go down with blood blossoming at his shoulder and weltering from the side of his head. He also saw Junior’s killer and instinctively elected to blast at Edge rather than a child who could not harm him.

  The other shot came from behind Edge, exploded from the Colt of Vic as Wayne and Dale screamed at their man to kill the half-breed.

  Spade lunged at Cal as the raincoated man whirled to look towards the sound of shattering glass.

  Hammer sprang towards the group of roped horses, his arms at full stretch to grasp the stock of a rifle jutting from a boot.

  Heads were withdrawn into the day cars and locomotive cab, then thrust out again.

  Edge got off a second shot, lining up the rifle sights with an eye hung with blurring beads of the tears of pain.

  Josh held still for a moment that lasted an eternity, his Colt thrust out in front of him in a double-handed grip.

  Edge’s vision cleared and he saw a grin of triumph on the face of the man he had failed to hit.

  The children near him seemed rooted to the roadbed and had moved only to clasp hands.

  A puff of smoke showed at a window in the first day car. Then another. Another and yet a fourth.

  Josh staggered forward in an awkward gait. His finger squeezed the Colt trigger but the revolver was angled down at the ground - the same way as his body. He lost his footing on the roadbed and pitched on to the sand of the desert floor. Hard enough so that spurts of blood were jetted from the four wounds in his back.

  Spade slammed into Cal as the man in the raincoat started to turn towards him. Both of them crashed to the ground.

  Hammer slid the rifle from the boot and pumped the action as he whirled.

  Edge forced himself over on to his back, then on to his other side. He saw, and ignored, Hammer, Spade and Cal.

  Smoke puffed at the muzzle of Vic’s gun.

  The searing pain of a bullet against his flesh drew another groan from between the half-breed’s clenched teeth. It was just below the elbow on the inside of his left arm.

  But he willed himself against indulging the new agony and blasted a shot at Vic. The gunman took the bullet in his left eye and reeled backwards, flinging his arms wide and hurling his gun away.

  Two more shots sounded, like nearby echoes.

  Wayne was turning to scramble into the cover of the Pullman. For an instant he was facing Hammer and it was the insurance company detective who put a bullet in his heart.

  The other shot was exploded from the Colt of Cal, as he struggled to retain it against the attack of Spade.

  Unaimed, the bullet drilled cleanly through the neck of Hammer to send the detective staggering back among the excited horses.

  In a capsule of otherwise total silence, a horse whinnied and Hammer made gurgling sounds as he drowned on his own blood.

  Edge folded up into a sitting position, eyes and rifle barrel tracking the course of Dale along the Pullman car. The man showed at one window, then another. But not the next.

  The half-breed’s left shirt sleeve was heavy with blood and his arm felt as if it was on fire. But he knew Dale was crouching down to claim his brother’s Winchester: and that whatever reservations the man had had about killing, they were now totally negated.

  He pumped the action and squeezed the trigger. Repeated it. Then again and again, until the final spent shell casing was ejected and the firing pin clicked into an empty breech.

  By that time, the side of the Pullman was peppered with a small grouping of bullet holes. And the head that appeared at the smashed window was not that of Dale. Instead, Zane Yancy, with his ten gallon hat atop it.

  ‘You ventilated him real good, son,’ the Texan reported. ‘Any more and they’ll have to shovel him into his box.’

  Edge rasped the back of a hand over his jaw and looked briefly at the trails of blood staining the sinewy flesh.

  ‘Obliged for the information, feller,’ he said.

  A shot punctuated his sourly-spoken comment and he glanced towards the baggage car.

  Spade had not won the struggle for possession of the Colt - just forced the issue of which way the revolver was pointing when it fired. Blood bubbled up from Cal’s mouth as the sandy-haired detective got shakily to his feet.

  Edge watched him sag against the side of the baggage car, then shifted his gaze to look along the train to where Henry and Arlene let go of each other’s hands and went to crouch between their dead parents.

  ‘We can discount Hammer,’ Spade called breathlessly. ‘He was doin’ a job he was paid for.’

  ‘You learned enough to start giving lectures already, student?’ Edge growled.

  ‘Only half as good as with Joe Pearce in Frisco,’ Spade responded. The kids are safe, but their parents didn’t fare so well.’

  Edge felt the fire of rage go out in his belly. Every man who had been responsible for making the survival of the children dependent upon his actions was himself dead. He was now his own man again, free to do his job his way. Mere w
ords of taunt could not provoke him to new anger. He put the rifle down and reached out exploring fingers to feel his ankle. It was badly bruised, but probably from a sprain rather than a break. Then he tore open his shirt sleeve. There was a deep groove in the flesh of his arm.

  ‘And you came through with just a couple of dents,’ Spade continued in the same harsh tone.

  Edge shook his head. ‘Don’t figure I’m through yet, feller.’

  He turned his head to look towards the front of the train. Josh had been blasted in the back by four shots. And four of the six people moving in a line down the side of the stalled cars carried leveled revolvers: the man who had complained of the draught harming his sick wife last night; the city-suited old timer who no longer looked like a drummer minus his sample case; the young man who travelled with a woman with a baby; and the young man who travelled alone. The other two were women: the elder one still looking sick and the younger one carrying her baby.

  Edge had an empty Winchester and a vacant holster, Spade just an empty holster.

  The detective groaned and raked his anguished gaze over the corpse-littered ground between the baggage car and the Pullman sleeper. Shayne moved an arm and uttered a low whining sound, as if to claim that he was not one of the dead.

  ‘I can’t take no more of this,’ Spade croaked, and raised his arms high in the air.

  Edge lay back on the sand and cracked his eyes to narrow slits against the glaring blueness of the sky. ‘Right now I ain’t got what it takes,’ he muttered as the line of four men and two women halted six feet away from where he lay. ‘Figure Shayne’s had enough.’

  ‘Three wise men,’ the old timer who was not a drummer said flatly.

  ‘Mine?’ Zane Yancy asked, leaning out through the broken window and exhibiting the da Vinci painting of Joseph and Mary at the inn.

  ‘With the gift of knowing when to back down,’ Edge rasped.

  Chapter Ten

  Edge and Spade rode two of the horses westwards along the sand beside the Central Pacific roadbed. Both men were unshaven and grimed with sweat-pasted dust. But they were rested and well-fed. For it was the morning of the day after the train had continued on its way from the scene of slaughter. The horses and all the supplies they carried had been left for the two men. Their guns had been taken. Shayne was not with them, for he died from massive loss of blood and was buried in a shallow grave with the other dead.

  The two men who had been abandoned - apologetically but firmly - had taken the two strongest horses, all the canteens and as much food as could be packed into their saddlebags. They rode throughout the day and slept all night. Two westbound trains, one passenger and the other freight, had sped past them, and they made no attempt to stop either.

  During the first day’s ride, Spade had said, ‘They can get away with it.’ Then he spat. ‘You know that, Edge? Yancy always knew he’d have to keep the picture purely for his own pleasure. To covet in secret. And the others can get away with it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Edge had answered dully, indulging the pains of his ankle, arm and shoulder, which continued to hurt despite being treated by the woman with a baby.

  They’ were all the passengers and crew aboard the train. Not merely those who considered they had some kind of legal title to a share in the painting’s worth - the fur trapper and his sick wife, the AWOL Major Kelso who had pretended to be a drummer, the sister of the jailed Indian agent and her husband and baby, and Colby Kerwin who looked nothing like a trail hand in his smart suit. They were also the brakeman and conductor, the engineer and fireman, the preacher and the rest of the passengers who had agreed to remain silent about the theft - in return for an equal share of the three quarters of a million dollars Zane Yancy had agreed to pay them.

  ‘When Yancy pays them, all they have to do is scatter. With that kind of money they can leave whatever they have and make a good life anywhere they like.’ Spade’s tone had become vehement. ‘But that bastard won’t get to keep the picture. I’ll make damn sure of that.’

  ‘Man gets angry in this heat, it doesn’t do him a lot of good,’ Edge had warned.

  Later, the half-breed had opened a brief conversation. ‘Any idea who Josh and his buddies were working for?’

  Spade had shrugged. ‘Maybe they had the same idea as the first brakeman. Reckoned to ransom the picture to the insurance company. Or perhaps they got commissioned by some other collector with as few scruples as Yancy. Maybe someone in Europe or South America. Art ain’t always a matter of polite bids and counter-bids in plush auction rooms, you know.’

  Edge had spat then. ‘I know, feller. And I got the scars to prove it.’

  That had been the extent of their talk during the first day and night. Now, as they saw a moving stream of wood smoke far to the west, the half-breed angled his horse up on to the track and reined him to a halt

  ‘What the hell?’

  ‘A wave of the hand won’t stop them, feller.’

  Spade stopped his horse, but did not ride up on to the track. Edge unhooked a canteen and tilted it to his mouth. When he had drank his fill, he took out the makings and rolled a cigarette.

  The train sped closer.

  ‘Spade?’

  ‘Yeah. Marlow and Archer. Hammer and Shayne.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They married?’

  ‘You care?’

  ‘Asked you a question, feller.’

  Spade grimaced at the hard set profile of Edge as the half-breed continued to direct his glinting-eyed gaze along the track. ‘Yeah, and all of them had kids. I know the families of Archer and Marlow. They live down in Los Angeles. Hammer told me he’s got a wife and son in New York. Shayne’s widow and orphaned boy live in some beach town in Florida. Why? You want to write letters of condolences, Edge?’

  The rails were beginning to hum and vibrate as the train rumbled closer.

  ‘How about you?’

  ‘I got a girl. We figure to get married next year. What’s with all the questions about their families? And my personal business?’

  Edge lit the cigarette and spoke around it, as the sound of the train came close enough to mask the noise of the trembling tracks.

  ‘As tough private detectives none of you did too good in my book. But maybe the tradition’ll improve if the sons follow in their fathers’ footsteps.’

  The crewmen aboard the approaching locomotive had spotted the man and horse blocking the track. First the whistle shrilled for a clear path. When this failed to stir Edge into movement, brakes squealed.

  ‘I don’t understand you, Edge. You know that? Not one little bit.’

  ‘Maybe you should have paid more attention,’ Edge answered as he stroked the neck of his horse, to calm the animal which was showing signs of panic as the slowing locomotive slid closer on locked wheels. ‘But I sure ain’t going to play it again, Sam.’

  The train came to a jolting halt, smoke pouring from its stack and steam hissing from escape valves. Windows in the cars were slammed open and heads poked out. The passengers were merely curious. The engineer was enraged as he looked down from the cab.

  Edge dismounted and slapped the rump of his horse. Spade imitated the half-breed and both animals snorted and bolted off across the desert.

  ‘What the hell you guys think you’re doin’?’ the oily-faced engineer snarled.

  Edge already had one foot on the step of the first car.

  ‘Waiting for a train,’ he answered with a grin as he swung aboard, and Spade hurried to join him.

  The train’s passenger cars were entirely first class: a combination of Union Pacific Pullmans and Central Pacific Silver Palaces. Four day cars at the front and as many sleepers at the rear. The day cars crowded with wealthy and well-dressed passengers who eyed the dirty and disheveled Edge and Spade with amazement, curiosity, distaste, contempt and anxiety.

  The half-breed was in the lead limping along the aisles of the cars, which began to sway as the locomotive inched forward. His narr
owed eyes swung from left to right, raking dispassionately over the many faces showing many different expressions. Spade stayed close on his heels: staring wearily at the back of the sweat-stained shirt - confident that Edge would not miss what he was looking for.

  By the time they had moved through the final, empty sleeper, the train had reached its top speed as the locomotive crew worked to make up the time lost during the unscheduled stop.

  ‘They ain’t aboard!’ Spade yelled above the clatter of turning wheels and rattle of couplings as Edge led the way from the sleeper platform to that of the baggage car.

  The half-breed made no reply until he had swung open the door of the baggage car. ‘Sure looks like them, feller.’

  Drew and Madeline Grover were sitting in two chairs brought into the baggage car from a Pullman. A crate between the chairs served as a table on which stood a bottle of champagne and two glasses. The conductor sat at his desk in the corner, sipping champagne from a third glass.

  ‘What happened?’ Grover asked, his voice slurred, but shock blatantly obvious through the liquor sheen of his wide eyes.

  His over-painted wife was just as drunk as he was. But her expression was of pleasant surprise as her eyes crawled over the filthy and unshaven men in the doorway.

  The conductor suddenly found some papers on his desk of absorbing interest.

  ‘We fouled up, Mr. Grover,’ Spade answered, moving into the car and shutting the door behind him to close off most of the train noise. ‘We lost it and Yancy’s got it.’

  Grover had recovered. His face calmed then, as he stared at Spade, the first trace of a smile established itself on his features. ‘How much... much did he pay?’

  The smile took greater hold. His wife lost interest in the puzzled Spade and drank exclusively on the sight of Edge.

  The half-breed ignored her, his own eyes raking over the neatly stacked crafts and cartons of freight.

  ‘Three quarters of a million,’ Spade supplied, a little hoarsely.

  Grover’s smile expanded to a full-throated laugh.

  ‘Men were killed,’ Spade snarled. ‘A woman, too.’

  ‘Did you kill them, Edge?’ Madeline asked huskily, and began to rub her buttocks against the chair. ‘Did you leave them lying out there in the desert somewhere? Will we be able to see them when the train passes?’