“I wouldn’t know, feller,” the half-breed answered. “I’m not decent people.”
They were fifty yards apart and the gap was closing more slowly now that just one of them was moving. All the eager-for-vengeance watchers and the subjugated lawman had shuffled to a halt at the same time as Maguire, and a brittle silence was suddenly clamped over the town. It was briefly shattered immediately after Edge’s response: by a single chime from the depot clock as it struck a note to mark the time of three-thirty. Several choked cries of alarm sounded in the wake of the chime. Then the unhurried footfalls of the half-breed became the lone intruder in the tension-filled silence that gripped Prospect again.
“Everyone knows that!” Maguire snarled, and came close to shouting now that there was less need than ever to raise his voice to be heard by a man some twenty yards or so from where he stood. And, just for a moment, a flicker of concern cracked the contemptuous confidence with which the gunslinger had been imbued since he first announced himself. Then, with a slight movement of his left hand that caused his hat to turn, he recovered from this brief experience with fear. Or perhaps, like Edge, he was able to utilize such fear by controlling it and calling upon it to sharpen his wits and add power to his reflexes. Whichever, there was certainly no sign of apprehension in his attitude as he now attempted to stir the fires of anger within a man he obviously suddenly realized he had underestimated. And he sought with the carefully developed skill of a gunfighter to distract the attention of his adversary away from his gun hand. “You’re a cold-blooded killer is what! Shootin’ down decent people on the say-so of some hellfire preachin’ crazy man! A preachin’ liar is what he is, saddle-tramp! And if you’re too dumb to know that, I reckon you’re just too dumb to keep on livin’!”
After he had failed to get Edge to even glance for part of a second at the turning hat, Maguire sought to keep the glinting blue eyes trapped in a fixed gaze upon his blazing green ones. “What’d he tell you, Edge?” he ranted on, saliva spilling from a side of this thick lips and spraying out between his crooked teeth. “Not that he was in the business of runnin’ liquor to the Injuns, I’ll bet? Was buildin’ a church that was really gonna be a storehouse for the stuff? Not that him and his two-dollar whore tried to keep me and my buddies back from the war busy while the Injuns was fixin’ to do for us so they could rob us? But they was too liquored up to have a chance against me and Frank and Barr and Ben that had learned all the tricks in the book from fightin’ in the war? Bet it wasn’t nothin’ like that the lyin’ preacher told you? How we had to kill all them Injuns to keep from gettin’ killed ourselves? Had to kill the whore for the same reason? Then tied him up to her carcass to teach him a lesson? And rode the hell away from there with him screamin’ after us that he’d get free and one day find us and kill us all? I bet he didn’t tell you none of that, uh? Or maybe he did but your kind don’t give a damn why you kill decent people, long as the price is right?”
John Maguire asked the rhetorical question as Edge took a final pace and came to a halt about twenty feet away from the shorter and broader man. He timed the completion of this last step to match the thumbing back of the Winchester hammer, and answered as Maguire ceased to turn his hat and adopted the sideways-on pose of the gunfighter:
“Seems I’m going to have to kill you.”
“Draw, then!” Maguire snarled.
Edge rasped: “I’d rather win.”
Chapter Fourteen
IF the man facing Edge was not the fastest gun in the country, he came close. Even in the grip of fear and anger aroused within him by the icy calm of the half-breed, John Maguire’s right hand moved with a quickness that almost deceived the eye to slide the silver-plated Tranter out of the cutaway holster. And Edge, as he spoke the sardonic comment, felt sure he was on the brink of taking a bullet in the heart. He could only will himself to continue what he had begun and ignore the end that was surely just a part of a second away: and resolve to stay alive long enough to blast a shot toward the man facing him—in the faint hope of seeing Maguire’s lifeblood begin to spurt from a fatal wound.
Edge squeezed the trigger of the Winchester when the barrel of the rifle was just an inch or so away from his shoulder, knowing the bullet would explode harmlessly up into the Texas sky, but hopeful the report might act as some kind of hindering distraction to slow down Maguire, and gain time for himself to slide out of the holster the Frontier Colt, the butt of which was already in his fist.
He pulled back the revolver hammer with his right thumb as his left index finger triggered the rifle shot, and, an immeasurably short space of time later, heard a second shot. That should have belched a bullet from the muzzle of the Tranter that was aimed at him in the fist of Maguire. But the black hole at the end of the barrel remained cold and dark.
Not so a second black hole in the center of John Maguire’s forehead an inch above the bridge of his nose. This one began to ooze warm and liquid crimson, as the leveled Tranter barrel was raked away from its aim at Edge—and the half-breed got his cocked Colt clear of the holster.
A chorus of angry voices was raised yet again along the main street of Prospect. But John Maguire was unable to shout against the barrage of sound to silence it this time. He was dead on his feet and starting to fall down backwards before he could swing the Tranter to aim it at the man who had shot him. The gun slipped from one hand and his hat fell off the other. Then, before the man became as inert as his Stetson and his handgun, Edge had both the Winchester and the Colt leveled at Sheriff Milton Rose—the spent shellcase ejected from the rifle still spinning in the air after the one-handed pumping of the action.
The lawman’s Army Colt was not cocked as he pushed it, smoke wisping from the muzzle, back into his holster. His teeth gleamed even whiter than usual in contrast with the dark color of his emaciated face as he looked down at the corpse with an expression that was held midway between a scowl and a grin.
The look that was fleetingly spread across the face of Edge when he first got his guns aimed at Rose was not dissimilar to this. And both men were for a stretched second as utterly unmoving as the corpse. And the sight of the three protagonists in fresh violence seemingly frozen in this statuelike tableau served to silence every angry voice and still the stir of movement that had rippled along both sides of the street.
“Glory be to Almighty God! His will has been done yet again!”
Just as there had been no need for John Maguire and Edge to shout at each other along the street, so Austin Henry Loring could have been plainly heard by everyone without raising his voice. But it was not the preacher’s way to be reticent when extolling the virtue of his faith in good triumphing over evil, which he continued to do as he drove his buggy between the telegraph office and the train at the depot and headed down the street. He stood upright on the footboard with the reins in one hand his Bible in the other. He would doubtless have been ignored by everyone in town had it not been for the fact that Marsha Onslow sat on one end of the front seat and Eileen Donovan was on the other, one of the women recognized by Prospect citizens and the other by the passengers and crew off the train.
“I ain’t much for honor, sheriff,” Edge said, managing to keep his voice even-toned after shrinking his anger to an ice-cold ball in the pit of his stomach.
“If I hadn’t sneaked out my gun to plug him, you’d be a dead man instead of him, mister,” Milton Rose answered, dull-toned. He was peering up the street to where the buggy had been forced to a halt by the press of people crowding around it. And it was apparent the lawman would rather be in the crowd, yelling questions at the two women and hearing their answers—this interrogation having drowned out the preacher’s eulogy on the alliance of right with might.
“Why r ain’t much for it, feller,” the half-breed allowed, and eased forward the hammers of both guns before he holstered one and canted the other to his shoulder. “But it still sticks in my craw that you—”
The tall and skinny lawman had seen and heard e
nough of what was happening around the buggy to be aware of a change of mood among his fellow citizens. And he curled two fingers and rapped them against his badge of office when he shifted his attention back to the half-breed and held the level gaze. He growled:
“I’m a small-town peace officer, Mr. Edge. Who never was as fast as Red Maguire even when I was in my prime as a Texas Ranger. But even if I was, this tin star and what it represents allows me to do what I figure I have to so that law-abidin’ citizens are protected.” He glanced to left and to right. And so did Edge. He saw the beaming Loring approaching from one side and the train passenger named Clyde, without his wife and baby, closing in on the other—looking nervous and dejected. Rose sighed and went on: “Though I have to tell you, right up until I squeezed off that shot into Maguire’s head, I still wasn’t sure I was killin’ the right man.”
“I know you told us to remain outside of town until it was all over, my friend!” the preacher called, pressing the Bible to his chest with both hands. “But the women would not hear of it. Mrs. Donovan has been totally won over to our cause by Miss Onslow and they felt they had to try to aid—”
“If you’re still in any doubt, sheriff,” Clyde cut in, with an apologetic glance at Austin Henry Loring, “I reckon I can set your mind at rest about that.”
“I ain’t in no doubt no more, son,” Milton Rose answered, after he had peered up the street again at the quietening, strangely melancholic, contrite crowd gathered around the buggy from which the two women were being helped. “But if I was, why should I take any notice of what you tell me?”
The fresh-faced young husband and father swallowed nervously and explained: “My name is Tremayne.”
“Well, I—” Loring started.
“Not the Tremayne that was buddies with Crowell and—” Rose cut in.
“Clyde Tremayne, sheriff. Half-brother to Ben. Me and my wife and baby were at Ben’s place when the telegraph from John Maguire was delivered to Ben’s wife. Seems Ben used to talk a lot about his friendship with Crowell and Maguire and Donovan when they were in the war. His wife, she didn’t feel up to attendin’ another funeral, so she asked me if I’d come to Prospect and—” “Another funeral?” Rose posed.
“Are you saying, my young friend, that your half-brother is . . .?”
“Yeah, reverend, Ben’s dead. Him bein’ buried was the reason me and my family was visitin’ his place. He passed on after a long and painful sickness, which he figured, he told his wife while he was on his last, was given to him as a punishment for somethin’ real bad he’d done years ago. He was ravin’, his wife said, and she couldn’t tell all of what he was sayin’. But it was somethin’ about a bunch of redskins and a preacherman and a young woman. So from what I been hearin’ ...” Clyde Tremayne shrugged his narrow shoulders and spread a quizzical look across his face, then sighed with relief when Milton Rose nodded his agreement with the implication. And Loring pressed the Bible tighter to his chest as he closed his eyes and moved his lips to mouth the words of a silent prayer. This as Edge dug the makings from his shirt pocket and began to roll a cigarette.
“Makes two of them dead from natural causes,” announced the round-faced and rotund-framed man, who with his wife ran the Aurora Restaurant, from among the first shamefaced group of Prospect citizens to move away from the crowd at the stalled buggy.
“How’s that, Avery?’’ Rose asked with a puzzled frown.
Avery jerked a thumb to indicate where the blanket-wrapped corpse was being carefully taken out of the buggy. “Seems that one had a heart seizure from overexertion.”
“All you said was that he was dead!” the lawman growled at Edge, and emphasized it was a recrimination by directing a glinting-eyed glare at the impassive-faced man.
The half-breed struck a match on the stock of his rifle and lit the cigarette before he replied evenly: “I was a little too busy with other things to go into the details, feller.”
He had difficulty in stifling a yawn and his eyes felt suddenly gritty with weariness. All around him, others showed signs of their own tiredness at this early morning hour after sleep had been interrupted by enervating violence—with the single exception of Austin Henry Loring, who intoned aloud in the wake of his tacit prayer:
“Sickness or the gun! The causes of the deaths of these four wretched and literally godforsaken evildoers may be disregarded as of little or no importance. The vengeance of the Lord was wreaked upon them, that is what it is vital to keep in mind.
And it is to be hoped that others who may feel lured toward the ways of evil will take heed of. .
He allowed the sentence to hang unfinished in the predawn coolness as the depot clock chimed the hour of four. And he became disconcertingly aware that he had just a single inattentive listener, since most people were returning to their beds while a few attended to the removal of the dead to the mortician’s parlor, and a small group remained in sympathetic attendance on Eileen Donovan as she was steered by Marsha Onslow toward the Best in the West.
“You’re getting the message at last, feller,” Edge said absently, unconcerned that the guilt-ridden citizens of this Texas town were more discomfited by him than Loring.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir?”
“I don’t want to be preached to,” the half-breed reminded, and touched the brim of his hat as he made to move along the street, intent this time on reaching the boardinghouse of Mrs. Cloris Doyle without the need to shoot anyone on the way.
“You have my undying gratitude, sir!” the preacher called after him.
“No sweat, feller.”
“The will of God would not have been done without you!”
“Reckon it’s what us red-necks are here for.”
“We are all here to—”
Edge murmured against Loring’s sermonizing voice: “Help out you white-collar workers.”
THE MOVING CAGE
next in the EDGE series from Pinnacle Books
coming in November!
AVENGING
On Saturday, the fun-loving citizens of Prospect, Texas, slaughtered a band of drifters — Indians — who were just passing through their quiet little whistle-stop.
On Sunday, the god-fearing citizens of Prospect, Texas, received the blessing of Austin Henry Loring — Reverend — who preached hellfire and damnation to this town without pity.
On Monday, the man called Edge rode into Prospect. Before he could wash the acrid trail dust from his throat, the trigger-happy town was on his back.
This is the forty-sixth in a series of the most brutal Western stories in print. Edge is a new kind of hero, and there is no one to compare with him. Read his first forty-five adventures...if you’re strong enough to take another EDGE!
42265
250
70992 00
ISBN 0-S23-422b5-E
Table of Contents
Chapter Four
Chapter Nine
Chapter Fourteen
The Godforsaken Page 14
