EDGE: Ashes And Dust (Edge series Book 19)

by George G. Gilman

  ‘What the—’ Seth started.

  ‘Woman reckons the stranger’s yeller,’ Vic whispered, holding on his glasses with fingertips against each sidepiece.

  For stretched seconds, the scrape of the spoon against the mug and the slopping of the coffee were the only sounds within the saloon. Outside, footfalls pounded against the hard-packed surface of the street.

  Then the men rode off. And Edge came down from the grandstand.’

  Barney Castle sprang to his feet. His chair crashed over on to its side.

  ‘Hold it!’ Schabar bellowed as his footfalls thudded on to the stoop and the batwings were flung aside by his meaty hands.

  ‘Dear God, no!’ Emma screamed.

  ‘Hey—’ Vic started.

  ‘Crazy fool!’ Seth yelled

  The kid reached under his coat and cocked the Tranter as the barrel cleared the lapel.

  All within a second, the actions and words a confused tableau of sights and sounds. And the half-breed waited for that second to be expended, his nonchalant exterior a pose behind which he was tensed for retaliation. His hands were flat on the table, except for his thumbs which were curled beneath the curved rim. His feet were flat on the floor. And that was how every pair of eyes saw him as they swung in his direction: the instant the Tranter was leveled at him and the kid’s knuckle whitened around the trigger.

  Then he powered his hands upwards, forced his feet hard against the floor, and threw himself sideways off the chair.

  ‘Hit the deck, lady!’

  Seth’s words were loud enough to be heard against the crack of the .32 bullet exploded from the Tranter’s muzzle. The slug tore into the top of the table as Edge tipped it forward. He hit the floor before his falling chair and his Colt was clear of the holster while he was still going down. He fired from the right hip as his left shoulder was jarred by the impact of the fall. Barney Castle took the bullet as he swung his gun and cocked it. The range was no more than twenty feet and the .44 slug did not run out of velocity until it buried itself in the far wall of the saloon. Tiny droplets of blood were flung down the smoke-soiled woodwork as it impacted. Larger splashes of bright crimson were exploded from the entry and exit wounds in the front and rear of Barney’s head. The trajectory was always upwards: from close to the floor, across the intervening gap, into the kid’s jaw, through his tongue, across the back of his throat, into his lower brain and finally out through the back of his skull. His dying sound was a ghastly gargle. Blood was the mouthwash, and it spurted from his gaping lips in a saliva-speckled torrent as he flipped over backwards and smashed down to the floor.

  Emma screamed, curtailed it, crossed herself, clasped her hands and mouthed a silent prayer.

  Vic took off his glasses and cleared the lenses of the steam of excitement. ‘Hey, feller, that’s the fastest draw and killin’ shot I ever did see!’

  Edge climbed to his feet, spun the Colt’s cylinder, ejected the spent cartridge and took a fresh one from his gun belt to reload. Then he holstered the gun, dusted off the sawdust from his pants and shirt, retrieved his fallen Winchester and took a seat at another table.

  ‘Hey, and so damn cool with it!’ the old-timer hissed as Schabar went to squat at the side of Barney.

  ‘Like my stew’s getting to be,’ Edge said evenly. ‘Mind passing it over here, feller?’

  ‘Take it to him, Vic!’ the lawman ordered as he rose from his examination of the body. ‘Then go dig another grave.’

  The old-timer hurried to bring the bowl of food and a spoon to Edge. ‘Hey, my opinion is that you ain’t yeller, mister. I—’

  ‘Dig the damn grave!’ Schabar roared.

  Vic grimaced to an extent where his glasses almost fell off as he scampered towards the batwings. There, he halted for a final comment. ‘Hey!’ he exclaimed defiantly. ‘It’s true he ain’t yeller. Let Barney draw and get the drop on him before he—’

  ‘Dig the damn grave!’ Schabar repeated, his tone lower but the hardness of his expression warning the shortsighted old-timer that he would take no more argument.

  Vic muttered a string of curses, but pushed out between the batwings and elbowed his way through the knot of people who had come on the run in response to the shots. These people nudged and jostled each other for a clear view into the saloon, but none stepped across the threshold. The night wind found entrance over their heads and between their legs. It swung the ceiling-hung kerosene lamps and eddied patches of the sawdust sprinkled on the floor.

  ‘You’re one lucky guy, Edge!’ the lawman announced, angling to the bar. It required only a nod to the bartender for Seth to reach for a bottle of whiskey. The other elderly tender, drawn from beyond the beaded archway by the shooting, set up the glass. The amber liquid made a lot of noise passing from the bottle into the glass.

  “Luck is for fellers who don’t have anything else going for them, Sheriff,’ the half-breed answered. His narrowed eyes met the lawman’s small ones. The gazes remained locked for a second, both colder than the wind from the north. Then Schabar gulped at his whiskey and Edge continued spooning up his stew.

  ‘I don’t mean about cuttin’ down Barney Castle, Edge. He asked for it - a hot-tempered kid tanglin’ with a cool number like you. You’re just lucky I happened to be around to see it happen.’

  ‘I wasn’t selling tickets, feller.’

  Schabar poured the rest of the liquor into his wide mouth, then slammed the glass back down on to the bar top. He covered it with a meaty hand when Seth stepped forward to offer a refill.

  ‘You got a mouth that’s as smart as the rest of you, Edge!’ he snapped. ‘But that don’t bother me. It does bother me that Barney’s dead, but you got the best eyewitness there is that it was a clear case of self-defense. So ain’t nothin’ I can do but fix up a decent funeral for him. That, and tell you to get out of Dream Creek first thing in the mornin’. On account that you got no place here, Edge.’

  The half-breed finished the stew. ‘Like a beer to wash down the food,’ he told the bartenders.

  ‘This is a nice, quiet town where folks go about their business and don’t cause no trouble for other folks,’ Schabar continued. ‘And a man like you got no place in that.’

  Seth drew the beer and banged the foaming glass on the bar-top, the gesture and his expression making it plain he had no intention of bringing it to the table. Edge rose, canted the Winchester to his shoulder and went to the bar. He smiled coldly at Seth, who backed off two paces.

  ‘You’re lucky, Sheriff,’ he said after swallowing some beer.

  ‘My feelin’ about luck is the same as yours, mister,’ the lawman barked, then glowered at the group in the doorway. ‘Two of you men take Barney over to Donovan’s place!’ he snapped. ‘Rest of you folks go home. Ain’t nothin’ else to see.’

  Emma Diamond looked up suddenly, her prayer finished. There was deep shock on her pale face as she watched two men advance into the saloon and gingerly pick up the inert form of the kid.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, and looked guiltily around her. When her green eyes located Edge, they found a brief resting place. And her spoken apology became tacit and even more heart-felt.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Schabar asked. His tiny eyes showed curiosity as he looked at Edge sipping the beer.

  ‘You haven’t got a problem, feller. Lamb chops are the only thing I like about sheep. And the hotel service is lousy. I got no reason at all to stay in town.’

  Seth grimaced and Schabar hitched up his pants around his bulging waistline as he vented a satisfied grunt.

  ‘That’s just fine,’ the lawman answered. ‘And, just for the record, I didn’t need to talk to you about what happened to Donovan out to the east. Miss Diamond supplied me with a full report.’

  ‘And received nothing in return!’ the woman said grimly, using her hands hooked over the edge of the table to push herself erect.

  Schabar’s mouth twitched as a sign that he was controlling a threat of rising anger.
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  ‘And you also made sure that nobody else here would help me!’ Emma added in the same tone.

  She swung around, the skirts of her gown swishing. Her footfalls crossing the floor and mounting the stairway were louder than the shuffling tread of the men carrying the corpse out of the saloon.

  Schabar stabbed a shaking hand towards the two men and their burden. ‘Him and Donovan, lady!’ he rasped. They’d both be alive if you hadn’t brought killin’ trouble to Dream Creek! And we don’t want no more of the same kind! He pushed his bulky form away from the bar to trail the corpse. Tomorrow mornin’, Edge!’ he snapped.

  ‘Wrong, Sheriff!’ the half-breed called.

  Schabar came to an abrupt halt and whirled, right hand dropping to drape over the butt of his holstered Remington. The redness of his face shaded towards purple.

  ‘No more, please,’ Emma gasped, coming to a halt halfway up to the gallery.

  ‘What the hell, mister?’ the lawman demanded, eyes boring into the back of Edge as the half-breed finished his beer.

  ‘How much I owe you, feller?’ Edge asked Seth. ‘The beers, the stew and the room?’

  ‘I asked you a question!’ Schabar roared.

  ‘Five dollars even if you’re outta the room before ten a.m.,’ Seth said dully.

  Edge drew a slender bankroll from his hip pocket and counted off four ones. He dropped the bills on the bar top. ‘Five minutes to get my gear out and you can rent the room again, feller,’ he said.

  ‘Oh!’ Emma exclaimed loudly, then turned and lifted her skirts to run up the rest of the stairs.

  The tension drained out of the two bartenders and the sheriff.

  ‘That’s even better than I’d hoped for,’ Schabar rasped.

  ‘Like to spread a little happiness,’ Edge answered as he turned from the bar and smiled coldly at the lawman, who was still handling his gun butt - without serious intent now. Then his hand dropped away fast as he met the half-breed’s narrowed eyes and saw they were completely devoid of the humor which turned up the corners of the thin mouth line.

  ‘You sure told him his fortune, Burt!’ Seth growled as Edge started up the stairway in the wake of Emma Diamond.

  Schabar spat into the sawdust ‘Save your praise for them that deserves it! He ain’t runnin’ on account of me. He don’t scare. And he don’t do nothin’ unless he’s got a good reason.’

  The lawman turned and pushed out through the batwings. There was no knot of bystanders to act as a windbreak now and an icy blast burst into the saloon. The sawdust was lifted and tumbled into minor drifts around table and chair legs. Except for the patches pasted to the floor by the drying blood of Barney Castle.

  ‘Ain’t no good reason for a man to go out ridin’ open country on a night like this one!’ Seth’s bartending partner growled.

  Seth scooped up the used glasses and plunged them into a bowl of scummy water beneath the bar top. ‘You care, Jim?’ he asked.

  Jim clawed the four bills off the bar and dropped them into the cash-drawer. ‘Guess I don’t at that, Seth. He paid what he owed and that’s an end to it.’

  Seth nodded and glanced up the stairway as Edge moved out of sight beyond the gallery rail. ‘Just be grateful money was all he owed us.’

  Upstairs, there were no lamps in the hallway leading off the gallery. But an overspill from the swaying lamps lighting the saloon took total blackness out of the dark. Emma’s gray dress and paler color of her face showed her position clearly in the doorway of her room.

  ‘Mr. Edge, I’d like to do business with you,’ she said nervously. ‘Will you act like a gentleman if I invite you into my room?’

  He halted outside his own door. ‘How much?’

  She swallowed hard. ‘Half what you wanted.’

  His teeth gleamed in the poor light. ‘Ain’t a complete woman worth five grand, ma’am,’ he said lightly.

  ‘You know what I’m talking about!’ Emma snapped, then lowered her voice. ‘I want you to—’

  ‘You’ve had enough of that kind of excitement for one day, ma’am,’ he told her as he swung open his door.

  ‘Well, I’ve never been so insulted in my life!’ she exclaimed.

  He stepped across the threshold of his room. ‘Must be because you don’t get out much,’ he answered, and kicked the door closed.

  Chapter Five

  ‘I HEARD you was leavin’, so I got him ready for you,’ the shiny-faced liveryman said as Edge entered the stables a few minutes later. He showed his teeth - as brown as his apron - in a broad grin that did not quite conceal his dislike for the half-breed.

  A pot-bellied stove was glowing bright red, keeping the cold of the night out of the fetid stables.

  ‘Whoever kept a secret in a small town?’ Edge asked as he checked the saddle cinch and tested the set of the bridle. He discovered the liveryman knew his job and gave him three dollars.

  ‘Weren’t never a secret were it?’ the man asked as Edge slid the Winchester into the boot.

  ‘But this town can keep them if it wants to,’ Emma Diamond said savagely as she slid in through the door, letting a wedge of cold air enter with her. She slammed the door and leaned her back against it. Strands of wind-blown hair fell from under her bonnet and she rubbed her gloved hands together. She was wearing a thick topcoat with the collar turned up. ‘I’ll meet your terms, Mr. Edge. Ten thousand. But you’ll have to return the money to me first I do not have your fee.’

  The liveryman was surprised by her sudden appearance, and confused by what she said. Edge accepted the deal with a curt nod. Then tightened his mouth line as the wind made a howling sound along a Dream Creek alley.

  ‘Been easier earned money if the job had come before the wind, ma’am.’

  ‘I think Mr. Florin can point us in the right direction, Mr. Edge,’ Emma said. There was hardness in her green eyes as she fixed the liveryman with a stare.

  ‘You Florin?’ Edge asked.

  The liveryman swallowed hard and nodded. ‘Sure, but I don’t know nothin’ more than any other folks in town.’

  ‘But you’re handier than they are,’ the half-breed pointed out, turning to face Florin.

  When he sweated, the liveryman smelled even more strongly of horse-manure. His eyes darted from Edge to Emma and back again. He stepped away, and came up against the front of a stall.

  ‘You asked around already?’ Edge said.

  Earlier,’ Emma replied, and she no longer sounded so confident. Florin, who was as tall as the half-breed and a great deal heavier with excess fat, was trembling a little. ‘I spoke to several people, but the elderly gentleman with the beard and the glasses was the only one who’d talk to me. He said to ask Mr. Florin about the man with the withered arm. But Mr. Florin said he knew nothing.’

  ‘I don’t know nothin’ - honest!’ the liveryman insisted, turning his pleading stare towards Emma. ‘Why should I know anythin’ more than any other folks?’

  ‘And what’s that?’ Edge asked.

  ‘What?’

  That other folks know?’

  ‘About the men?’

  ‘For a start.’ Edge leaned against a roof support post and took out the makings.

  ‘And an end!’ Florin countered, failing to draw more than a sympathetic frown from Emma. ‘Sheriff Schabar told us all not to say nothin’, mister. Said all it’d do would bring more killin’ trouble to Dream Creek.’

  Edge fired the cigarette and carefully pinched out the flame before dropping the used match to the straw-covered floor. ‘Which way did they go, feller?’

  ‘When they come back?’

  ‘Know the way they went when they went?’ He blew smoke into the sweat-sheened face of Florin.

  Florin licked his lips and grimaced at the salt taste. ‘South, mister. South. Down along the creek and across the river, I guess. Down into greaseball land.’

  ‘Mexico,’ Edge said, softly but with unconcealed meanness in the single word.

  ‘What I meant, mister
.’

  Edge made to bring the cigarette back up to his lips. Instead, he thrust his hand suddenly forward. The stall front kept Florin from drawing back any further. He tried to bring up both his hands to protect himself, but he was no match for the half-breed. The wind howled down the alley. Emma vented a strangled scream through the hands clamped to her mouth. Florin gave a gasp of pain as the glowing end of the cigarette seared for an instant in the hollow of his throat before the fire was extinguished on his sweat-run flesh.

  ‘Say what you mean!’ Edge rasped as he snatched his hand away and Florin clawed at his throat.

  Florin was speechless with pain and anger for a moment. Then, showing that he could command speed of his own when it was demanded, he shot his hands high over his head to fist them around the shaft of a pitchfork sticking out of the hayloft above the stalls.

  ‘You bastard!’ he shrieked, yanking downwards and dropping hard to his haunches.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Emma yelled.

  With the edge of the hayloft as a fulcrum, the pitchfork whipped downwards, its curved tines smashing towards the half-breed’s head. The gelding shied away and Edge flung himself to the side. The powerful momentum of the down-swinging pitchfork did not allow Florin to alter the direction of its flight. A groan of frustration ripped from his compressed lips as the tines crashed against the floor. Edge smacked into the hindquarters of the frightened horse and bounced off. His left foot came down hard on the tines of the pitchfork. He swung his right leg hard to the side and slammed it down an instant later. Florin screamed as his fisted hands were trapped between the shaft and the floor.

  He ripped them free, leaving the bloodstained skin of stripped knuckles on the floor. Then he tried to rise and run. Edge took his right foot off the pitchfork and slid his left along the curves of the tines. The shaft sprang off the floor and slammed into Florin’s crotch as the man attempted the first stride of his panicked escape. His scream was high and short, and became a groan as he went full length to the floor and then jack-knifed, clutching at his new injury.

  ‘No!’ Emma pleaded, flinging herself away from the door to run towards Edge.