Edge: A Town Called Hate (Edge series Book 13)

by George G. Gilman

  It would have been as easy as swinging the Winchester and squeezing the trigger to kill Corners. But he was not fooled by the easy attitudes of the hired guns who stood calmly beside their boss. Not one casually swinging gun hand was more than six inches from the butt of a Colt jutting from a tied-down holster. With the big man dead, there would be no five grand reward. But spite can be a force as powerful as greed. Which was a consideration Edge may have taken into account when Corners was a sitting target on the wagon. That and the fact that he could expect no help from the citizens of Hate. The street was deserted except for the five men and the trapped woman. And although only one deputy was left with the men at the mill, there was no sound or sign of a revolt from that direction.

  “Back off over the bridge with the Trasker guns,” the half-breed responded to Corners’ query.

  “What about Dorrie?” the big man demanded.

  “Reckon she’ll be happy to stay,” Edge told him, flicking his eyes away from the men to the woman, and back again. The rifle continued to draw a bead on her terrified face. “Seeing as how she got knocked off her feet by the man there.”

  Corners seemed about to hurl a challenge up at Edge, but abruptly he thought better of it. He whirled and strode angrily back towards the bridge, barking an order to the deputy aboard the wagon.

  “Uncle Luke!” Dorrie wailed plaintively. The deputy jumped down from the seat and began to tug on the bridles of the two horses to back them across the bridge.

  “Be seein’ you feller,” the spokesmen for the quartet of bounty hunters called. “Next time without a gun in your hand.”

  He led the men in the wake of Corners. As the wagon was backed clear of the bridge, allowing Corners and the gunslingers to cross, Edge hooked a leg over the jagged glass of the smashed window and found a foothold on a narrow ledge that ran along the façade of the hotel. He flattened his body against the wall at the side of the window, hooked out his other leg, then jumped. Dust billowed from beneath his thudding feet. He landed in a bent-knee crouch and jerked erect immediately, snapping the rifle back to the aim at the trapped woman. From the hip now.

  “Why didn’t you break a leg!” Dorrie groaned.

  Edge’s lips curled back to show the cold grin. “I seen you twice in two days, Miss Dorrie,” he drawled. “Man’s just gotta have some good luck to balance the bad.”

  “Bastard!” she rasped as Edge crossed the street towards her and two splashes sounded from the river.

  The half-breed halted close to the woman and looked across the bridge as he lowered the rifle to rest the muzzle on the nape of Dorrie’s neck. The two gunslingers who had brought their beers out of the saloon had ditched the empty glasses into the river. Now, as Corners spoke rapidly to the men at his heels, they moved as a tight knit group through the open gates. Once on the lumber mill property, the gunslingers snatched out their Colts. The deputy leveled his Winchester and Corners swung up the double-barreled shotgun. Every weapon was aimed at the group of twenty-five lumber men who had been standing in sweating silence between the two parked wagons since the first rifle shot had cracked out. The second deputy emerged from the mill and moved quickly across to align himself with his partner. His Winchester was as menacing as the other guns as it was trained upon the lumber men. The steam engine thudded home its piston twice more and died with a hiss of escaping vapor. One of the dogs barked and sniffed at the tension taut air: decided it was too hot to investigate further and sunk its head back into the dust to sleep. Flies droned and the water wheel churned.

  “Let Dorrie loose or we gun down these men!” Corners yelled, looking back over his shoulder, through the wire mesh fencing, over the river and along the street.

  The big man was at least three hundred feet away, but his words rang out clearly. Distinct enough for Edge to catch the note of triumph in his tone. The woman with the gun in her neck was also able to inject a hint of scornful victory into her voice.

  “Looks like Lady Luck ran out on you again, you lousy skunk!” she hissed through lips forced down hard against the step.

  “You hear me, drifter?” Corners yelled.

  Edge spat, the globule of moisture hitting the cement close to the woman’s head. ‘Loud and clear!” he called back.

  “So do it!”

  “Loud and clear, but you ain’t making no sense!” the half-breed responded.

  “Twenty-five men, drifter.”

  He was still looking back over his shoulder, evil joy registered on his rugged features.

  “One woman!” Edge called pointedly.

  Corners’ happiness evaporated like the final threads of steam sucked into nothingness by the fierce sun. From thinking of himself on the brink of victory, Corners suddenly faced defeat. His complexion seemed abruptly more dark in comparison with his silver hair. The attitudes of the men arrayed helplessly before the guns did not alter. They appeared as docile animals, molded to accept the wishes of their masters. Yet each one had a revolver in his holster.

  “You must figure a deal of some kind!” Corners snarled.

  “You for her!” the half-breed called.

  The big man shook with a spasm of fury, and it was deep-seated enough to again curtail his ability to speak.

  “No deal there, feller!” the talkative gunslinger inserted into the pause. “Blast the dame and no sweat. But you cream Corners - why, me or one of my buddies is out five grand. Make us mad. Mad enough to gun down these men just for the hell of it.”

  Edge sighed. “They ain’t men and being dead’s probably preferable to living in Hate.” He turned to look down at the back of the woman’s head against which the rifle muzzle rested. “When you get to hell keep the welcome warm for Uncle Luke,” he rasped.

  “No!”

  The single word had the impact of a rifle shot in the instant of silence that followed the half-breed’s low-keyed words. It came from much closer than the far side of the river. And trembled against the hot, bright air with much greater menace than any threat Corners or the gunslinger had voiced. Edge had his back turned to the open doorway of the saloon. A tiny bead of sweat erupted from a pore beneath the soft leather of the razor pouch and coursed down the ridged skin covering his spine. It left a cold trail on his flesh and he knew a gun was trained upon him. The Winchester stayed pressing into the back of Dorrie’s neck beneath the brim of her crushed hat. Edge turned his head slowly to look over his shoulder.

  Cyrus McNally did not look frail anymore. There was the strength of determined intent in his emaciated face, with resolution shining from his sunken eyes. He held the half-breed’s own Colt in a two-handed grip, thrust out in front of him to the full-length of his arms. The hands were rock steady and the curled trigger finger showed a white knuckle.

  “You want something, feller?” Edge asked, his tone as ice cold as the glinting-eyed gaze he fixed upon McNally.

  But the old man was not provoked into fear. The lost opportunities of a lifetime seemed to have built up inside his slight physique: become concentrated into a powerful force that numbed his nerve into non-existence. For him it was all or nothing.

  “Twenty-five lives is too high a price to pay,” McNally replied.

  The men across the river were too far away to hear the exchange of conversation after the first word had exploded from McNally’s bloodless lips. They waited in the blazing heat, like motionless replicas cast in stone: stone that sweated.

  “I agree!”

  Edge swung his head to look over the other shoulder. The pink-faced preacher was framed in the doorway of his tiny church. Movement, not sound, drew the half-breed’s attention to other citizens of Hate. They emerged from the houses and stores. Ten men - the stooped old one wearing a pad of white dressing on his head wound - many more women and a clutch of children. They formed into a three-deep line and advanced slowly down the street, dragging their feet in the dust: like a sloppy military unit. They said nothing, but their expressions told all.

  “Reckon I have to bow to t
he wishes of the silent majority,” Edge said evenly, and stepped to the side, taking the rifle muzzle away from the woman’s neck. It left an angry red ring on the white flesh just below the hairline.

  He sloped the Winchester casually across his shoulder and swung around easily to lean his back against the courthouse wall. The Colt in the double-handed grip moved fractionally to keep him covered. Fear had drained Dorrie of her final reserve of strength and her struggles were pathetically inadequate as the weight of the dead man bore down upon her.

  “Help me?” she pleaded, craning her neck around to look up at Edge.

  “Your problem’s outta my hands now,” the half-breed replied quietly. “Up to somebody else to get you out from under.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “MCNALLY?”

  “Yes, Mr. Corners!” the bartender shouted back.

  “You got the drop on the drifter?”

  “Yes, Mr. Corners!”

  A Colt revolver across a range of a street’s width was not an accurate weapon. Particularly if the target was on the move. But the half-breed remained casually leaning against the white-painted frame frontage of the courthouse, unwilling to put McNally’s disadvantage to the test.

  “Then let Dorrie go or we’ll kill these men!” Corners yelled.

  “I’d thank you to wait awhile,” McNally replied, sunken eyes and Colt still trained upon Edge.

  “Uncle Luke!” Dorrie called, but her voice was as weakened by tension as her physical strength.

  Corners gave no indication that he had heard the simple plea. “For what?” he roared.

  “Situation ain’t changed, Mr. Corners. We still both got somethin’ the other wants.”

  “So we have to trust each other!” the big man with the

  shotgun countered. “Soon as my niece steps on to the

  bridge, I’ll turn the men loose.”

  Some of the hardness drained away from McNally’s face. Something akin to anguish replaced it as he forced his mind to examine the offer.

  “No deal!” one of the men among the bystanders rapped out, and stepped from the group. The other nine followed him. As they moved across the line of fire between McNally and Edge, the half-breed had the perfect opportunity to take command of the situation again.

  Instead, he rested the Winchester against the wall beside him and dug into his shirt pocket for the makings. As he started to roll the cigarette, five of the men drew rifles from the boots hung on the saddles of the gunslingers’ horses, which were still hitched to the rail in front of the hotel. The sixth rifle was up on the courthouse roof. Two men crossed the street towards Edge, ignoring him as he struck a match and lit his cigarette. Hope shone in the woman’s eyes as one of the men stooped over her. But he simply jerked the revolver out of the dead man’s holster. His companion went into the courthouse on the trail of the discarded rifle. “Thanks for nothing!” the woman hissed.

  The man with the revolver showed her a hateful sneer. “Nothin’s all you’ll ever get from me, bitch!” he rasped, and spat into her upturned face.

  She groaned.

  “What’s happening?” Corners roared. “McNally? I’ll kill them for sure!”

  The three lumber men still without stolen guns eyed the Colt in the old man’s hands. Then realization hit them and they went into the hotel on the run.

  “McNally told you to wait, Corners!”

  The harsh words were yelled by the man who was stripped to the waist. He stood in the centre of the street with his rifle, like those of the other men, aimed from the hip across the river.

  “You’ll all...,” Corners began, then bit back the threat. “Call it, Laine. But be damn careful.”

  Laine ignored him.

  “We got your two brothers and your old man in front of these guns.”

  Laine’s handsome face did not alter its expression of cool calm as he turned towards Edge. “Can we trust you not to interfere, mister?” he asked.

  There was a scraping noise from the roof of the courthouse as the man found the rifle and crouched down. A man appeared at the broken window of Edge’s room in the hotel. He had one of Colman’s fancy revolvers. Two other men appeared at two other windows. One had the mate of the marshal’s gun: the other cocked the dead gunslinger’s Remington.

  “Answer me a question,” Edge asked through a cloud of cigarette smoke.

  “Yeah?” Laine responded.

  ‘‘They toy guns in your holsters?”

  “Good as. Corners lets us keep ’em. But ain’t no place in town to buy shells.”

  It explained the seemingly moronic docility of the lumber men arrayed before the mill. This, and the long years of hopeless obedience to the big man and his hired hands.

  “Ain’t one to spoil a good play,” Edge said.

  Laine considered this for a series of long moments, staring hard into the impassive face of the half-breed. He spoke to McNally while still looking into the glittering slits of light blue that gave nothing away.

  “Relax, Cyrus. You did your bit.”

  The old man held his straight arm pose for a moment more, then lowered the gun. His body sagged against the doorframe and he was once more weak, defenseless and older than his years.

  “We owe you, mister,” Laine told Edge. “Whatever happens, we owe you. But...”

  He let the opening word of the threat hang in the air.

  “Laine!” Corners roared.

  “I get the message,” Edge replied softly, then leaned slightly to the side to look along the row of men at McNally. He raised his voice. “You did it once, feller,” he called.

  “What?” The voice was as empty of force as the thin body.

  “Pointed a gun at me,” the half-breed warned.

  “Be with you in a couple of minutes!” Laine yelled to the impatient Corners. Then he turned to look back at the women. “Get your kids inside. Rest of you ladies help his bitch of a niece.” He pointed the rifle into the space between the hotel and the bank. “And move her down the alley.”

  The mothers seemed disappointed that they had to withdraw from the centre of the drama as they shepherded their unwilling children back into the houses. Dorrie caught her breath and held it in terror as the remainder of the women advanced upon her. They were smiling and the expressions looked out-of-place on their careworn faces.

  “You men get down here!” Laine yelled to those at the hotel windows. He swung around to look up at the court house roof. “Larry, you let me know anything bad that happens over the river.”

  “Sure will,” the man on the roof replied happily.

  “No!” Dorrie moaned.

  Two women - middle-aged and overweight, looking tougher than some of the lumber men - moved ahead of the group and stooped down at each side of the helpless Dorrie.

  “Ain’t gonna hurt you, dear,” one of them placated.

  “Not much, anyway,” the second augmented.

  Their big hands fixed like vices under Dorrie’s armpits and jerked at her. She screamed softly as she was dragged out from under the dead weight and stood on her feet. Had the two women not supported her, her legs would have collapsed.

  Laine was speaking in low tones to the other women, and their smiles brightened as they listened. They crowded around Dorrie and her captors and moved as a close-knit group across the street and into the alley where the gallows stood. Laine spoke with the other lumber men and they followed the women.

  “What are you doing with her?” Corners roared, his rage brushing hysteria to put a high-pitched shrieking note in his words.

  “You’ll see!” Laine snarled.

  Edge dropped his cigarette and trod on it. He picked up the Winchester slowly, but not furtively, and canted it across his shoulder. His pace was casual and his expression disinterested as he moved over to the hotel entrance where McNally still sagged against the doorframe.

  “I had to do it, Mr. Edge,” the old man groaned, running a damp bandana around his throat to wipe away the sweat. “Ho
ld that gun on you, I mean.”

  The half-breed nodded impassively and plucked the Colt from the loose-fingered hand. “Anyone can get to do it once,” he allowed, and brushed past the old man to enter the saloon.

  As always, the stale heat inside was as uncomfortable as the blazing sunlight outside. But the shade offered a pretense of coolness enjoyed by the mind if not the body. He went across to the bar, scooping up his gun belt from a table as he went by. He had it on, with the Colt back in the holster by the time he reached the gap in the counter and went through. McNally had taken the price of the breakfast from the pile of loose change. Edge separated another ten cents and drew himself a beer.

  “Tell me something, mister?” McNally asked from the doorway.

  Edge sipped the tepid beer.

  “Would you really have shot Dorrie Corners? Got all those men killed?”

  Edge finished the beer at a swallow, drew another and slid a further ten cents out of the pile of loose change as he headed back for the gap in the counter.

  “Something neither of us will ever know now,” he replied as he strolled towards the doorway.

  “Laine, my patience is about run out!” Corners challenged. His tone altered abruptly. “What the hell?”

  As Edge reached the doorway, he was in time to see eight men hauling on two lengths of rope, the strain of the weight they were pulling erupting great beads of sweat from every pore on each of their faces. Then, into view from out of the alley, came the platform with the grotesque gallows growing on top. Dorrie Corners - stark naked except for a bandana gag over her mouth and ropes lashing her ankles together and hands behind her back - stood with her head in the noose. The two stoutly-built women flanked her, pressing a revolver into the soft flesh beneath each of her ears.

  “Laine, I’ll...”

  Once more a glimmer of the rational fought through the turmoil of the big man’s rage and he realized the hollowness of the threat he had been about to hurl.

  “Women’s idea to strip her!” Laine shouted, loud but flat.

  “Ain’t just to shame her,” one of the female captors explained. “She always been a brazen hussy. It’s so you won’t take too long making up your mind, Mr. Corners.”