EDGE: The Day Democracy Died

by George G. Gilman

  Another volley of fire arrows hissed through the smoke. Two of the street-hung banners were set alight. The canvas burned fiercely and the supporting ropes snapped. The banners whooshed down towards the fronts of buildings and the flames roared more violently as they fed on timber.

  Men, women and children rushed out on to the street from burning buildings and raced through the smoke. Arrows and bullets hissed and cracked towards them to pierce and tear their flesh.

  ‘What can I do, Edge?’ Power screamed, his eyes glistening with tears as he stared in horror at slumped, blood-run corpses piled on the street.

  ‘Fight them on their own level,’ the half-breed answered, sliding over the lip of the roof, then leaping down off the sidewalk porch. ‘Before they light a fire under you.’

  Bullets cracked either side of him. He fired into the acrid smoke, pumped the rifle’s action and fired again. Then he whirled, as the Negro leapt off the roof and hit the ground beside him. Power was unbalanced as he landed and went over heavily on to his side.

  A brave came racing out through the batswing doors of the saloon, a tomahawk raised to throw. His target was the cursing black man. Edge squeezed the rifle trigger. The Indian took the bullet in the throat and was slammed back through the doors.

  ‘One score settled, Conrad,’ the half-breed yelled, leaping up on to the sidewalk and flattening himself against the wall.

  Smoke wafted out through the doors and two more braves charged from the saloon with it. Both had rifles.

  Edge shot the first one through the side of the head. Power was on his feet then, in a half crouch. One barrel of the shotgun belched spraying death. The front of the brave’s torso was suddenly a moving mass of bright crimson, his rib-cage gleaming white through the blood.

  ‘I ain’t the only feller around here to get something off his chest,’ Edge muttered as the Indian fell back through the smoke.

  ‘They’re puttin’ the whole town to the torch!’ a man shrieked from the stage line depot.

  ‘My place!’ Power groaned, and there were more tears in his eyes as he gazed at the smoke billowing from the saloon and the flickering flames at the windows. The bastards have got to my place!’

  The Sioux had infiltrated deep into Democracy. Buildings on the north stretch of Main Street and both lengths of the cross street were blazing. The defenders were in panicked retreat.

  ‘There they go!’ Frank Snyder bellowed across the crackling flames and crack of gunfire. ‘It’s them that caused it!’

  The fat man came running out of the meeting hall, the tiny Derringer in his hand. His arm was stretched out in front of him and a tiny spurt of flame showed momentarily at the upper muzzle.

  Dan and Laura Warren were at the head of a group of fleeing people. They were all running fast. Not chasing the Warrens: the only thought in their minds to escape from the relentless pursuit of the war-whooping Sioux.

  The bullet hit Laura in the leg and she was pitched out of her run. She hit the ground with a scream. Her husband stooped at her side. In what was literally blind panic, the terrified crowd behind the couple did not waver from their course. They charged into the Warrens, stumbling, picking themselves up and staggering on again.

  They raced on to the south section of Main Street, which was the only area still clear of smoke, flames and crumpled corpses.

  A flying boot had hit Dan Warren in the face. He was sprawled in unmoving unconsciousness and Laura, one leg useless, was trying to shake him back to awareness.

  ‘You sonofabitch!’ Power screamed, swinging his shotgun, his face a black mask of intense hatred.

  ‘You ain’t got enough gun, feller,’ Edge warned.

  The Negro’s finger was tight on the trigger.

  Then a fire arrow streaked across the intersection. Snyder had half turned to race away from the menace of the shotgun. The arrow thudded into his hip and his expensive suit jacket burst into flames as he screamed.

  ‘Help me!’ he pleaded. He turned again, and lunged towards Edge and Power. The flames engulfed his entire upper body and set fire to his hair.

  ‘Moves fast for such a fat man, don’t he?’ the Negro snarled.

  ‘He’s travelling light,’ Edge answered.

  Power squeezed the trigger. Snyder’s head exploded in a gruesome mess of blood and bone fragments.

  ‘He just lost some more ugly fat,’ Power growled, breaking open the gun and ejecting the empty cartridges as the almost headless corpse dropped to the ground and the gushing blood extinguished the flames.

  ‘Help me!’ Laura Warren pleaded.

  She was half upright, dragging her injured leg and the unresponsive form of her husband. Anguish showed through the hair plastered to her soot-streaked face.

  Power had forgotten the plight of the Warrens while he relished the agony and death of Frank Snyder. Abruptly, as the woman shrieked her plea and he pushed two fresh shells into the shotgun, he started forward.

  But Edge reached out and fastened a strong grip on the Negro’s upper arm. Then jerked him back.

  ‘She needs help!’ Power snarled.

  ‘She’s got more than this town can handle right now,’ the half-breed drawled. ‘Go help the people, feller.’

  He released his hold on the black man, relinquishing responsibility for him. And lunged forward across the intersection. He ran down an alleyway with burning walls on either side, and then through the smoke that drifted across the back lots of the buildings on the west side of north Main Street. Twice, braves loomed up through the smoke. Twice the Winchester’s recoil jarred his arms and the Indians were flung over backwards.

  Then he shot a white man. Out back of the bank, behind the advance of the Sioux. It was Cass Kerwin, who was holding three Indian ponies by their rope bridles. He went for his gun when he saw the tall, lean half-breed racing towards him. But was on his back with blood gushing from his mouth before he could half draw the Colt from the holster.

  Edge threw himself down among the legs of the ponies as Nate and Tim Kerwin sprinted out of the burning bank. The brothers saw him and the dead Cass. But their hands were tight on bags of money.

  ‘A share, Edge!’ Nate roared.

  ‘Ain’t in the market,’ the half-breed growled, and shot the eldest Kerwin in the heart.

  Tim hurled away his burdens, whirled and ran. Into a searing wall of flames which had blocked the doorway.

  As the man screamed and became a crumpling cinder of burnt flesh, Edge powered erect. The ponies scattered. The half-breed lunged forward, holding his breath against the smoke and heat. He scooped up all four sacks of money and back-tracked towards the intersection.

  There had been a lull in the gunfire at the centre of town while Edge followed up his hunch about the missing Kerwins. He didn’t trust the stillness that was disturbed only by the roaring of flames and crash of falling timbers. Using the smoke for cover, he swung wide of the intersection. He had been gone more than five minutes, but it was as if he had never left.

  Laura Warren was still trying desperately to revive her unconscious husband in the centre of the meeting of the streets. Conrad Power was still on the sidewalk in front of his hotel.

  ‘I think they’ve gone, mister,’ he said without conviction as Edge appeared beside him.

  ‘They scared of winning?’ the half-breed growled.

  The Negro swallowed hard. ‘What’s that you got?’

  ‘Guess you could say it was almost hot money.’ He joined Power in staring hard at the smoke which curtained three of the exits from the intersection. ‘The Kerwins hit the bank.’

  ‘The chopped chicken livers of this lousy place don’t deserve that kinda help, mister,’ the Negro snarled, and spat. ‘I ain’t gonna do nothin’ to—’

  Bullets thudded into the brickwork of the hotel wall. Edge and Power threw themselves to the sidewalk. Laura Warren pressed herself harder against the unresponsive form of her husband.

  There was smoke everywhere now. It veiled the sky and t
ook the brightness from the sun. It hid most of the leaping flames which caused it.

  But it did not conceal the advancing Sioux braves. They emerged from it like brightly painted wraiths, rifles at the ready. From the north section of Main Street and from both stretches of the cross street. Two dozen, or maybe thirty. Just as they had made the first slow advance on the town, so they kept their pace measured now. They were no longer venting war cries. But there was triumph clear to see on every daubed face. They were certain they had won. They had lost more than half their number, but it had been worth it. At the centre of the line advancing from Main Street, Blue Moon was already dreaming of other towns that would soon be destroyed.

  ‘The windows, Conrad,’ Edge growled.

  ‘Yeah.’

  The braves held their fire, certain the two men on the sidewalk had died from the first volley. Laura Warren looked up and desperately around her. Then fell across Dan and sobbed. The Indians ignored the couple.

  ‘Now!’ Edge snapped.

  He and Power sprang up, then lunged. Bullets smashed towards them. Both men crashed through the windows of the saloon. Their shoulders took the brunt of the impact against the glass. Their entire bodies were jarred as they hit the floor inside. There were a dozen separate fires in the saloon.

  Edge zigzagged between the leaping flames, holding his breath, and came to a halt in the lobby of the hotel. Power was level with him the whole way. Both men took hold of a door each and slammed it against the fires raging in the saloon.

  A new barrage of gunfire exploded outside.

  Voices were raised. But it was the whites who were giving full vent to war cries as the shots cracked.

  The half-breed and the Negro exchanged glances, and sprinted across the lobby to peer out from either side of the open doorway. Across the platform with the body of Mai Tillson slumped on it, they saw a group of Democracy citizens had raced out into the open to face the Indians. From the south side of the intersection, with no one man in command, they traded bullets with the braves on the other three sides.

  At the centre, under the murderous cross-fire, Laura pressed her sobbing body across the unmoving form of her husband.

  ‘Maybe they’re deservin’ now, mister,’ Power yelled.

  ‘One way or the other, looks like this is where it finishes, feller,’ Edge drawled in reply, and stepped into the doorway.

  He fired from the hip, squeezing the trigger and pumping the lever action with cool, fast deliberation. The attackers of Democracy and its defenders fell. Dead or wounded. The wounded, if they were able, continued to loose bullets. Blue Moon was one of those who dropped to the ground and did not move again.

  This lousy shotgun!’ Power growled angrily, moving out to stand beside Edge.

  Both were protected by their own particular destiny from the flying death that came so close but never hit them.

  The half-breed’s rifle rattled empty. Before the final ejected shell flew out and bounced on the platform, it was over. The last of the braves went down. And he died with a curse venting from his gaping mouth.

  All gunfire ceased.

  Laura sobbed, then a harsh laugh was forced from her full lips as she heard Dan groan.

  Edge shifted his gaze from the couple to the front of the stage line depot. His mare was on her side, an arrow protruding from an eye. But the gelding had survived. And the animal became still and quite as a respite of relative peace descended over the burning town.

  ‘You want to sell me your horse, feller?’ Edge asked the Negro.

  ‘He’s yours. For free,’ Power offered absently.

  ‘It’s a good horse,’ Edge countered. ‘Nothing worthwhile is for nothing. I’ll buy him.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘Usually do.’

  The citizens of, the town, who had re-grouped in time to defeat the Sioux, started across the intersection. Their women and children trailed them. Amos Meek was there. So was McQuigg. Maggie Woodward. Edge moved along the sidewalk to retrieve the sacks of bank money. He wondered idly if all the politicians except Snyder had survived while the less influential citizens of Democracy made their stand. The Warrens looked at them, unable to find words to say. The people ignored the couple. But there was no ill-will yet. Towards the Warrens, the politicians or the Indians. Towards the dead or the survivors. The shock was too deep.

  Edge returned to the hotel doorway and, one by one, tossed the bulging sacks out on to the intersection, arching them over the platform.

  ‘What’s the idea?’ a man demanded.

  ‘Money from the bank,’ Power supplied. ‘The Kerwins tried to steal it. Edge here stopped them.’

  ‘You think we care about money now?’ a middle-aged woman cried, throwing her arms out to either side. ‘With the dead on the streets and the town burnin’?’

  ‘Capital should be high on the list if you figure to re-build Democracy,’ the half-breed said softly.

  Only Power heard him. The people moved slowly off the intersection and down the smoke filled streets in search of their loved ones and perhaps to see if they could salvage anything from the destroyed town.

  Then, as the meeting of the streets was clear of everyone except the dead and Dan and Laura Warren, two gunshots cracked out.

  The man was hit first, a perfect shot through the heart. Then the woman. Another heart shot. The two reports were so close together they almost sounded like one. And Laura had no time to scream her grief at her husband’s death before she started to fall beside him.

  Nobody re-emerged from the smoke to see the reason for the shots. Perhaps they all knew and did not care.

  Power groaned, then sighed. ‘Guess it’s fittin’, Mr. Edge,’ he said sadly. ‘It was them give the Sioux the chance to hit us.’

  ‘Happy you see it that way, Conrad,’ Gene Stanton said as he started down the stairway into the lobby hung with so many of his pictures,

  Both the Negro and the half-breed had turned their backs on the intersection after seeing the Warrens die. For the shots had been aimed at the couple from the second floor of the hotel.

  The lawman still had his ivory handled Beaumont-Adams in his fist as he descended the stairs. The gun was aimed at Edge.

  ‘Figure you’re all right, Conrad,’ the sheriff went on, his eyes as dead as they had ever been, his voice just loud enough to be heard above the crackling of the fires behind the closed doors of the saloon. ‘You didn’t like us, but you fought clean until this stranger showed up. Way I used to fight before I decided I wanted more money than a lawman ever makes. But I’m still a good lawman. All I can be after the rest is all gone.’

  ‘Makes you feel full up inside, don’t it, Edge?’ Power said.

  ‘Leaves me empty,’ the half-breed answered, moving his rifle almost imperceptibly.

  Stanton had reached the foot of the stairway. At every tread down, he had adjusted his aim to keep the revolver pointing at the half-breed. He halted now.

  ‘I was wrong, stranger. Wrong to throw in with Snyder and his crowd. Same as you were wrong to side with the Warrens. But mistakes get made. All the time. You made the biggest in lettin’ a rusty old man get the drop on you.’

  The lips curled back to show the false dentures in a grin of evil triumph. The trigger finger was white-knuckled behind the guard.

  ‘Stinkin’ white trash!’ Power snarled.

  The dead eyes came to life with the fire of rage and switched their attention from one man to the other.

  Edge released his hold on the empty Winchester. His palms stayed open and the Negro threw him the shotgun before the rifle hit the floor.

  Both men in the doorway threw themselves to the floor. The revolver spat a bullet. It cracked across the dropping forms and smashed into the unfeeling face of the dead schoolteacher on the platform.

  Both hammers of the shotgun were ready cocked. Edge’s finger squeezed both triggers. Both barrels belched fire and shot. The gun was on its side. Sheriff Gene Stanton was peppered with fle
sh-tearing grains from belly to head. Skin, tissue and tiny pieces of bone were ripped off of him and hurled in a crimson and white spray across the wall at the foot of the stairs. His mutilated body was flung against the wall, bounced off and dropped to the floor.

  ‘Obliged, Conrad,’ Edge said as he and the Negro got to their feet. He picked up the Winchester and handed the shotgun back to its owner.

  ‘It sure was my pleasure,’ Power said, grinning. ‘So nothin’ owed, uh?’

  ‘Except for the horse.’

  ‘I’d really like you to take him for free, Mr. Edge. Somebody oughta get somethin’ outta what happened here today. On top of good sense.’

  The half-breed had already peeled fifty dollars off the bankroll taken from his hip pocket.

  ‘Somebody did, I figure,’ Edge answered, gesturing with the Winchester.

  ‘Stanton?’ Power said, bewildered. ‘What did that gent get except dead?’

  ‘He was an artist, Conrad. He finally did what all of them want to.’

  The Negro saw that the rifle was pointing not to the bloodied corpse of the lawman. Instead, at a panoramic view of Democracy as it once had been, painted by the man who now lay dead beneath where it hung on the wall.

  Power shook his head, uncomprehending. But he continued to peer at the painting, the vivid colors of which now seemed almost dull in contrast to the bright crimson of blood and pieces of pulpy tissue which had been sprayed across the canvas by the dying man. Then he sighed and looked at Edge. He saw that there was a sardonic smile on the lean, bristled face: glinting in the narrowed eyes and turning up the corners of the thin mouth line. ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘He did, feller. Got something of himself into a picture.’

  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