‘Robarts, frig it!’ Hogan rasped, and relinquished his support of the other man to run towards the corpse.
The man with the wounded leg dropped hard into the mud, venting a string of obscenities.
‘Quit complainin’, Goddamnit!’ Hogan snarled back at him as he crouched beside the corpse and craned his head to look into the death mask of a face. ‘All you got is a scratch, Danvers! Ed got his brains blown out!’
‘So least he ain’t friggin’ hurtin’,’ Danvers countered through clenched teeth.
Edge swung his Winchester to cover Hogan and stepped out into the rain. For several paces the storm hid him from the men. When it eased, Hogan was erect again. His back was towards Edge as he trudged through the mud towards Danvers.
‘Gene’ ain’t gonna like this!’ Hogan growled.
‘Save that worry for later, feller,’ Edge said evenly. Hogan whirled. Danvers leaned to the side to see around him. ‘I don’t like it. And I’m here and now.’
Hogan’s Winchester was held in just one hand. He made a move to bring up the other one, but the rifle trained on his chest froze him. If Danvers had brought a rifle to the way station, he had discarded it when he was wounded. Both men, like the dead Robarts, were engulfed in long oilskin coats that made their holstered revolvers inaccessible. All three wore deputy’s badges pinned to their coats.
Hogan swallowed hard and released his rifle. It splashed into the mud. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded, raising his hands up level with his shoulders.
They were broad shoulders and he looked like he had a powerful physique beneath the coat. There was a hardness in his fifty-year-old face, most of it visible in his small, dark eyes. His top lip was decorated with a bushy grey moustache.
‘Name’s Edge.’
‘You’re with the Warrens?’ Danvers snarled. He was in his mid-twenties. Short and lean with a thin face that was perhaps so pale because of his pain.
‘I’m with me.’
‘Who did that to Robarts?’ Hogan demanded, waving one of his raised hands slightly to indicate the corpse. Robarts had died shortly before he was thirty. He had been almost classically good looking before death contorted his well-sculptured features.
‘Owed him for killing my horse, feller. Tried to give him a painful memory about it. Warren made it so he’ll never remember anything.’
‘What d’you want, mister?’ Danvers rasped.
‘Shuddup!’ Hogan snapped at him, not taking his hard eyes off Edge’s water-run face. ‘You oughta know I’m a duly deputized lawman of the town of Democracy and county of Carroll, Nebraska, mister! Same way Luke Danvers is. And Ed Robarts was. So best you put up that rifle and explain yourself.’
Edge tilted the Winchester slightly and squeezed the trigger. Hogan yelled and took a fast step backwards. Danvers, who had started to pull himself upright against the way station wall, cursed and dropped into the mud again. Hogan froze and seemed surprised that he felt no pain. There were two holes in the crown of his hat - front and rear. But the lanyard, pulled tight against the wind, had kept the hat in place.
Even though the light of the dying day was fading fast, Hogan saw the bright glitter of cold anger in the half-breed’s slitted eyes as the lever action of the Winchester was pumped.
‘Already explained myself, deputy,’ Edge said evenly. ‘I’m a man without a horse. On account of your buddy shot him.’
Hogan swallowed hard again. ‘Ed must have thought it was the Warrens’. We was here on official law business. Your loss’ll be made good if it’s proved you weren’t aidin’ and abettin’ the Warrens.’
Edge pursed his lips, then parted them slightly to show the white line of his teeth.
‘Best you do like you told me and shuddup, Arnie!’ Danvers warned. This guy ain’t impressed by our badges.’
‘But your good sense is getting to me,’ Edge muttered, and raked the rifle around to cover the injured man sitting against the base of the wall. ‘You want to make him see some?’
‘How?’
‘If he does like he’s told, the sheriff will only be mad about losing one deputy.’
Danvers sucked in a deep breath.
‘You want the horse, take it!’ Hogan growled.
‘Intend to. Didn’t lose my gear though. Like for it to be put on my new horse.’
Hogan made a sound of angry disgust deep in his throat.
‘Do it, Arnie!’ Danvers implored, staring fearfully at the muzzle of the aimed Winchester.
Edge flicked his gaze from one man to the other and back again.
‘And don’t try nothin’, Arnie!’ Danvers urged. ‘He’s got a gun under the coat, mister. Same as I got. You want us to ditch them?’
‘Want my gear on my new horse,’ Edge reiterated. ‘Just that.’
‘Arnie?’
Hogan hesitated for a long moment, then started towards the stable. ‘All right, mister. You win for now. But Carroll’s a big county and you’re gonna have to ride long and hard before you’re clear of Gene Stanton’s jurisdiction.’
‘Goddamnit, Hogan!’ Danvers growled. ‘It’s me your harassed threats are scarin’.’
But the older man had already advanced to the stable doorway to do Edge’s bidding. The wind gusted and he was hidden by the weather. Edge moved slightly, to put his back to the way station wall. While he kept the rifle trained on Danvers, he constantly moved his slitted eyes, dividing his attention between the hostage and the rain-lashed corral.
‘Arnie’s right, mister,’ the wounded man blurted out after a long, grim silence. ‘You ain’t bein’ wise, messin’ with lawmen in Carroll County. Especially after it looks like you helped the Warrens get away from us.’
During respites in the teeming rain, Edge glimpsed Arnie Hogan as the deputy brought the saddle and bedroll from the stable: then removed the gear from the tethered horse and replaced it with that taken off the dead gelding.
‘Had coffee with them, was all,’ Edge replied as Hogan led the piebald gelding through the mud of the corral.
Danvers spat between his legs. ‘Fat chance anyone’ll believe that!’
‘Ain’t important, anyways,’ Hogan growled, releasing the reins and moving to stand beside the injured man. ‘You admitted to puttin’ a bullet into a deputy in the lawful execution of his duty, mister.’
‘Yeah!’ Danvers exclaimed, the fear draining out of him as Edge swung up into his own saddle on a strange mount. ‘And now you’re stealin’ a horse. Both them are hangin’ crimes in this part of the country.’
‘Stanton the man I see to straighten things out?’ Edge asked, holding the Winchester one handed, aimed between the two men.
‘You’re goin’ to Democracy?’ Danvers gasped.
Hogan showed a harsh grin. ‘Don’t try to talk him outta it, Luke.’
Edge urged the piebald forward, to the corner of the way station. He kept his eyes and the rifle directed at the two lawmen. Hogan’s Winchester was far out of reach in the mud and neither of the deputies made a move to go for their covered handguns.
‘Do us a favor, mister!’ the older man called lightly. ‘Ask Gene Stanton not to hang you until me and Luke get back to town.’
Danvers laughed, then scowled as the shaking of his body triggered a fresh wave of pain in his injured leg. It soured his mood. ‘Hell, Arnie,’ he snarled. We’re kiddin’ ourselves. This guy ain’t fool enough to turn himself in on a hangin’ rap. He’ll be free and clear of the county by the time we flag down the Laramie stage and reach Democracy!’
‘Damn it, you’re right!’ Hogan retorted as Edge heeled his horse out of sight around the corner of the station.
Hogan powered away from the wall, raced through the mud and scooped up his Winchester.
Grimacing against the pain, Danvers forced himself erect against the wall and delved inside his coat to draw a Colt revolver.
The wind curled over the roof of the stable block and hurled lashing rain across the corral.
Dan
vers staggered along beside the wall, cursing his wounded leg at every step. Hogan whirled and raced forward, pumping the action of his muddy rifle.
The wind eased and the rain slackened.
Both lawmen came to a halt.
Edge had wheeled his horse and ridden him clear of the corner. His Winchester was out of the boot once more.
Its first report blasted a bullet into the centre of Hogan’s face. The deputy was flipped on to his back. Spurting blood from out of his bushy moustache rose as high as splashing mud.
It was Danvers who screamed, and got off a shot from his Colt. But the rifle in the half-breed’s hands had raked to the left and exploded a second shot as soon as the lever action was completed. Danvers’s bullet went high and wide. He was flat against the wall then, and starting a slide down into the mud. A large stain blossomed larger on his chest.
‘Why?’ he croaked, his legs splaying through the mire of the corral as his rump settled.
‘Figure you fellers were trying to kill me,’ Edge answered evenly, booting the Winchester.
‘You could have got free and clear.’ Death was taking its initial grip on the face of Danvers.
‘Intend to have my say in Democracy, feller. Just smoothing the way to being believed is all.’
Danvers’s eyes stayed open. A final breath flooded blood over his dropped lower lip. His head fell forward to rest his chin on his chest. He stayed sitting against the wall.
Edge wheeled the piebald as he muttered: ‘And death’s the great leveler.’
Chapter Three
Half a mile south of the derelict way station with its corpse-littered corral the trail forked. Blistering summers and harsh winters in the Nebraska high country had faded the lettering on the sign boards nailed to a leafless elm. But it was just readable. The trail which curved off to the west led to Laramie, across the state line in Wyoming Territory. Due south lay Democracy.
There were several other elms standing tall and erect in the fork of the trails. Those sheltered from the full force of the storm continued to support posters bearing the same names as those back at the way station. All were printed in a familiar red.
Edge, his eyes cracked against the rain which by turns slanted in from the west and south-west, kept the piebald headed for Democracy. He was fully aware of the truth which Luke Danvers had repeated in the final seconds of life. He could have allowed the two deputies to live, ridden in any other direction, and been free and clear before a pursuit could be organized.
But that was not the half-breed’s way. Despite the fact that he had killed countless men before Hogan and Danvers dropped into the mud in front of the blasting Winchester, he was wanted by the law for only one crime. As ex-Captain Josiah C. Hedges, he had killed a man named Elliot Thombs in the state of Kansas while he was tracking the murderers of Jamie.
The wanted flyers were still out on him for that and once, long ago, a lawman with good reason to hate Edge had almost made him pay for the ancient crime.
As always, the half-breed learned from experience. Trouble dogged him or lay in wait for him. For the most part, he could do nothing to avoid it - except where the law was concerned. Which was the reason he took the trail to Democracy.
With the coming of full night, the wind dropped and the rain eased off. The cloud-heavy sky remained hidden and visibility was extended only a few yards. But the lone rider deliberately heading for one brand of trouble to avoid a worse kind was able to see the trail more clearly now. By the same token, he knew that others would be able to spot him over a greater distance. So he moved his head constantly, peering in every direction. He saw trees and rocks and the fringes of waterlogged meadows. Here and there, election posters, still in place or in shreds on the ground.
A man with a more vivid imagination than Edge might have sensed menace in the rain-shrouded night. The red ink of the posters might have reminded him of the blood which had spurted from the bodies of the lawmen. And he might constantly have relived the first shot to hiss through the storm.
But the half-breed was too much of a realist. One of the skills he had learned at war was the ability to detect danger before it struck at him. Sometimes it was like a sixth sense, particularly when he was asleep. Mostly, though, it was manifested through a physical clue - as when he had first seen the way station.
For such a faculty to be of use, his mind had to be clear of conjured figments of imagination. So he heard the sounds of the rain and the progress of the gelding for what they were. And his eyes identified the natural formations of the landscape without reading into them anything which did not exist.
The clang of the bell did not startle him. The piebald gelding pricked his ears and would have moved into a faster step had Edge given him free rein.
‘Almost home, uh?’ the half-breed muttered.
The bell sounded its same note six times before Edge reached the town marker. And six more times to signify the time of midnight, as he read the sign: DEMOCRACY WELCOMES YOU -Population 750 - Elevation 2500 feet.
It was an early-to-bed town. The open trail became a broad street, flanked by frame buildings standing behind covered sidewalks. No lights showed anywhere until Edge had ridden between the buildings for about a hundred yards. At intervals, he passed over plank walkways, connecting one side of the street to the other, and under canvas signs urging the citizens to vote for Synder, Bailey, Meek, Grant, McQuigg and Swan.
At the centre of town, a cross street formed an intersection and a row of six windows gleamed with lamp light. The buildings stretching away on the north-south street and those on the one which ran east to west were as dark as those Edge had already seen.
He angled the piebald across the intersection towards the entrance of the lighted building on the south-west corner. It was brick built and two storeys high. The entrance was angled on the corner and a stylishly painted sign above the double closed doors proclaimed: PALACE HOTEL. The place had a frontage on two streets and all the lighted windows were on the first floor, facing the cross street.
Edge swung the horse lengthwise to the angled porch of the hotel so that he was able to dismount on to it, his booted feet finding solid timber instead of mud and the roof giving him shelter from the rain. As he unsaddled the piebald, the only sounds in town were the rain hitting flat roofs and gushing over the eaves to splash down walls.
The animal was still anxious to be given his head and, when Edge slapped him lightly on the rump, he backed away, turned and trotted into the rainy darkness of the main street’s north section.
The half-breed unbuttoned his long coat before he pushed open one of the two doors and carried his gear into the Palace Hotel.
‘Be lyin’ if I said good evenin’ to you, stranger.’
The man who spoke the greeting was tall and thin and grey-haired. He sat on a hard-seated, straight-backed chair in the centre of a large lobby. In front of him was an easel supporting a half-finished canvas in oils. The grey-haired man had a palette in one hand and a brush in the other. His subject was a young Negro in a lounging pose on a deeply upholstered sofa six feet in front of him.
‘You want a room, mister?’ the Negro asked with a broad grin of pleasure.
‘You just hold still a while longer, Conrad,’ the artist snapped, adding another brush stroke to the canvas.
There was a rush mat inside the entrance. Edge dripped water on to it as he glanced around. The lobby had a polished wooden floor, paneled walls and a high ceiling washed in white. Kerosene lamps burned on wall brackets. An ornately banistered stairway canted up one side. A carved desk ran along the rear. Open double doors across from the stairs gave on to a long saloon, brightly lit but empty. The place looked like the entrance to some big city hotel.
‘You gotta do somethin’ before you do anythin’ else in Democracy, stranger,’ the gray-haired man drawled, still concentrating on his painting.
He was a fine draftsman, the work he was engaged on being an exact copy of its subject. Several other oils in the
same style were hung on the walls of the lobby - portraits, full-length figures and landscapes. All of them were neat and tidy and totally lacking in life.
‘I already rode from the town marker to here,’ Edge answered, starting towards the desk. The water dripping from his clothes and gear made a louder sound hitting the polished wood.
The grey-haired man was neat and tidy and lacking in any animation beyond that required to work on the painting. He was about sixty, an inch over six feet tall and probably weighing no more than a hundred and twenty pounds. His hair was neatly trimmed and sheened by pomade. His hollow-cheeked, high-foreheaded face was clean shaven and talced. His green eyes looked dead and he hardly moved his thin lips when he spoke. He was dressed in a city suit, white shirt, bootlace tie and polished shoes. He had not got wet reaching the lobby of the Palace Hotel.
‘That’s because it’s late and you weren’t expected, stranger. Otherwise, you’d have had your guns taken from you at the town limits.’
‘This gent’s Gene Stanton, mister,’ the Negro supplied. ‘Sheriff of Democracy and the whole of Carroll County.’
Edge had reached the desk. He loaded his gear on to its highly polished top and turned to lean his back against it.
Stanton interrupted his work for long enough to hold open his suit jacket and display the five-pointed tin star pinned to his matching vest.
The half-breed nodded. ‘Wouldn’t have been you who took them, I guess?’
‘This gent’s got deputies workin’ for him, mister,’ the Negro answered. He was about twenty with a handsome face and solid, strong-looking build. He was dressed in sharply pressed pants, a vest, shirt and necktie. All the clothes seemed to be too tight and too short for his five feet nine height and bulky frame.
‘Ain’t the normal rule, stranger,’ Stanton explained, back working again. ‘But it’s election time. Feelin’s are runnin’ a little high. My view about keepin’ the law, prevention’s better than cure. You want to set your rifle and gunbelt down here on the floor by me, stranger? Then Conrad’ll check you in the hotel. Done enough paintin’ for one night, I reckon.’
EDGE: The Day Democracy Died Page 3
