EDGE: The Killing Claim

by George G. Gilman

  "Ma'am," Edge put in.

  And drew both their attentions back to him after they had glowered at each other.

  “What?" the woman snapped.

  “What you think of your husband is of even less interest to me that what you think of me. Now do you want to listen to what I started to tell you? Or do you want to spend a lot of time fretting that you didn't?"

  Janet snorted in the kind of tone that suggested it was as close as she ever came to voicing an obscenity.

  Ralph Galton, his nervousness reduced in direct proportion to how irritation with his wife expanded, said: "We left the buggy at the foot of hill when we saw your fire smoke, Mr. Edge. Janet will not do as you ask, I'll be glad to pay attention to you while we go down to the shore."

  He stooped, retrieved his hat, and jammed it his head with a determined gesture.

  "Spit it out, claim jumper!" the fat woman commanded.

  Tersely, the half-breed related the relevant events since his arrival in the area of Barney Galton's claim. The man remained attentive and woman skeptical, except when he mentioned the dog being fed a human leg—which spread grimaces of revulsion across the faces of both. When he was through, the son of the dead miner said:

  "I appreciate you doing what my father asked, Mr. Edge."

  "I'll want to see the old skinflint dug up to make sure he died that way before I’ll believe—"

  "You can't miss the grave, ma'am," Edge interrupted evenly and heeled the horse forward, that they had to step to either side of the trail to him pass.

  The dog instantly followed the gelding. Ralph continued to harbor anger for his wife’s resolute determination to keep doubting the half-reed's story. While she seemed to be searching her mind for other bases of suspicion. Did not find one until horse, rider, and dog had gone by.

  Then: "And you expect me to believe you're ready to just ride on out of here? After all those hours of grubbing in the mine and coming up empty handed? Not in a million years, mister, either you found what brought Ralph and me all the way from Buffalo and you're taking off with it. Or you plan to come on back and take it off Ralph and me when—"

  "Woman, he was already leaving before we showed up!"

  "So all right, he's got it already. And if we let him ride away from here this whole damn trip out to the lousy West has been wasted, Ralph!"

  "Well, I believe him! If it wasn't true what he said, why didn't he just shoot us down when he had that rifle covering us?"

  "Because it's like I said! Him and his mutt are both the same! Make a lot of threatening sounds, and that's as far as it goes!"

  "Yet you're saying he killed my father and—"

  "So maybe that part of what he says is true, Ralph! But if you was told there was a fortune on the claim and worked your fingers to the bone to get at it, would you give up and be on your way just because somebody else showed up and . . ."

  Edge had been riding steadily down the curv­ing slope of the trail toward the lake, unable to avoid overhearing the shouted exchange between the husband and wife. But gradually their voices dropped and this, in combination with the thickness of the band of trees intervening, acted to muffle and eventually totally mask the words.

  The half-breed had rolled a cigarette as he rode down the slope and when the only sound he heard were those made by himself, the horse and the dog, he lit it, as if in celebration of being this far away from the squabbling couple. Then he glanced down at the big German shepherd strolling alongside the rear of the horse and said: "Much obliged, feller. Know I'd have killed them if needs be, but what about you?"

  The dog glanced up at him with noncomprehension.

  "Know how to call you off and what to say to you to attack me. How do I get you to do more than snarl at other people?'

  The animal continued to pay concentrated attention to the man astride the horse, ears pricked and eyes appealing for a command that could be understood by a canine mind.

  "Kill—get him—go, boy—take him?" Edge tried and drew no response. Then he shrugged and faced front as he growled: "Hell, what does it matter? Soon as we reach Lakeview I'll get you fixed up with some nice family and go back to taking care of myself."

  The dog whined softly, and when Edge looked down at him again it was to see him with his head drooping, ears laid back flat, and eyes filled with accusing disapproval.

  "For a dumb animal," the half-breed count accused, "you sure do have a lot to say for yourself. When it suits you."

  The dog made no further sound and when a few moments later, Edge glanced at him again, he was strolling with his tail swaying, his head held high, ears erect, and eyes bright, and with his jaws open a little, like he was grinning. Edge faced front and rasped "Sonofabitch!" then showed a broad grin of his own that even injected some warmth into the blueness of his eyes as he added, "Ain't that the accursed truth, feller?”

  Chapter Six

  Man, horse, and dog had come down this slope often during the past five days, to drink and for the half-breed to bring fresh water from the lake back to the cabin in the clearing. This cold brightly sunlit morning the German shepherd gave a low growl of nervous suspicion at the unfamiliar sight of a buggy with a black mare in the traces that was parked at the point where the trail started to rise from the lakeshore.

  The rig was a canopy-topped country wagon that had seen better days. But not on the long trails from Buffalo to Mirror Lake. For on the rear was a large trunk decorated with a number transportation company tags, which showed Galtons had sailed aboard a clipper from Boston to San Francisco, then ridden the train to Salt Wells, Wyoming. From there the trunk had been shipped up to Lakeview by the Great Northern Freight Company.

  Edge saw the tags as he rode around the stalled rig, the dog quiet again in the wake of the easy walking horse. And, as he continued along the trail that took him in the wrong direction for a mile to get around the arm of water curving south, he felt a mild stab of resentment toward Ralph and Janet Galton. Who had made such an arduous trip to bring to an end one of the most contented periods of his life he could ever recall.

  No, he corrected himself in his free-ranging mind. Not bringing his time at the claim to an end as such, rather, being responsible for him leav­ing after so short a time. For eventually he would have left the place of his own volition, when the grueling labor of shifting debris from the caved-in mine ceased as a challenge and became a bore, or forced back into the outside world by the need to raise eating money after his stake was gone before he got to the reward of which the dy­ing old man had spoken.

  "But never mind, uh feller," he said to the dog as they rounded the end of the narrow stretch of water and started north. "All good things have to come to an end. And I guess it's better they do be­fore they turn bad."

  The big German shepherd gave a short and noncommittal bark. And the half-breed mut­tered:

  "Shit, I really have to stop talking to you like I figure you know what I'm saying!"

  Another, more determined bark, seemed to take the man mildly to task. So Edge countered:

  "And you got to quit making like you do know what I'm saying."

  Then the man and dog took to concentrating entirely on watching the surrounding country as the trail turned away from the shore of the lake and rose up another timbered slope. At the top it ceased to be an exclusive route to and from the claim of the late Barney Galton, for it intersected with a broader, much more heavily used trail that angled up from the southeast.

  At the start of the way to the claim, an ancient and leaning sign proclaimed, in lettering seared with branding irons into the timber crossmember, PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO STRANGERS ALLOWED.

  Edge steered his mount into a left turn to follow the wider trail toward Lakeview, allowing the gelding to select the precise course between the wheel ruts of heavily laden wagons and across the countless hoofprints of other horses—the impressions left in the mud after heavy rain and baked by later sun.

  There was little to see save for trees and
brush to either side, the pocked trail below, and the smooth, blue sky above, with just an occasion glimpse of a small section of Mirror Lake to the left. But already on this bright, cool morning the innocently beautiful treescape had unleashed the threat of death and thus was the half-breed's habitual watchfulness from behind an attitude of outward ease, just a little more wary than usual! Sufficiently so for the German shepherd to sense the man's inner tension and to maintain a more intense surveillance over his surroundings than was normal for the animal.

  But the peace of the forest remained undisturbed beyond the sounds of its rightful inhabitants going about their daily business of survival and those made by the intruders on the trail as they drew closer to the lakeside town that rider and mount should have reached almost a week previously.

  The trail that connected Lakeview with the out­side world stayed above the level of the water and in the timber until it curved westward, when it dipped suddenly and emerged from the trees to run directly alongside the shingle beach for the rest of the way into town.

  The timber-built town, which owed its exis­tence to timber, comprised the waterfront streets and another which paralleled it three blocks north, and four side streets connecting the main, broader ones.

  At the town marker, which claimed Lakeview was two thousand feet above sea level and had a population of one thousand souls, the trail forked, the more heavily traveled section angling to become the main inland street while the other branch led on to the thoroughfare that followed the shore.

  Edge went this way as he struck a match on the Winchester stock to light a freshly rolled ciga­rette. He was able to see around the curving, half-mile length of the street that it was primarily residential in character. Single-, two-, and, occa­sionally, three-story houses were aligned behind Picket fences on the north side. Each with front-window views across the street, the piers with the tied-up rowboats and the lake to the timber-clad heights beyond.

  At the end of the street to the east was a steepled church. Midway along a meeting hall. A schoolhouse was at the western end. All the structures frame built with steeply pitched roofs. All were well maintained and scrupulously clean—the fence-enclosed yards of the houses as well tended as the cemetery beside the church.

  There was nobody on the street at this mid-morning hour. But here and there a woman was at work on a flower bed or engaged in an out window-cleaning chore. And to those who look at him, he tipped his hat find drew responses either a smile or a cheerful greeting.

  None of the waterfront houses bore a sign suggest it accepted boarders, and so Edge turned his mount up the final cross street, which was different from the others he had ridden by. Residential again, but flanked by smaller, less well cared for houses. All of just single story and built directly on to the street without benefit of front yards. And with no fences to mark a property line across the ample space between them.

  An old man with a blanket over his shoulder and another wrapped around his legs sat in the open doorway of an east-facing shack, getting little warmth from the morning sun as he smoked a pipe and drank something from a tin mug. He showed more frowning interest in the German shepherd than in Edge, until he nodded and too the pipe from between his discolored teeth. And said as the half-breed rode level with him, "I say that there dog is the one that crazy old coot Barney Galton had one time."

  "You'd be right to say it, feller," Edge confirmed.

  The old man took a mouthful of whatever was in the mug, turned his head to the side, and spat it out. Then said, "Fortune my ass, the crazy old coot!"

  "Don't use bad language, Pa," a woman com­plained in a long-suffering tone from inside the house. "And what's the use me gettin' you medi­cine from the doc if you keep on spittin' it into the

  street?"

  "It tastes like what I go to the privy to get rid of, Lydia." He took another mouthful and spat this out more forcefully. Added in a louder voice, "Reckon it's what the doc goes to his privy to get rid of."

  "You'll die, you don't let me look after you, Pa!"

  "I'll die anyway, Lydia!"

  Just as had happened on the fringe of the claim on the far side of Mirror Lake, Edge rode out of earshot of the exchange between the concerned Lydia and her sour-tempered father. Heard as a final comment, spoken in a tone of curiosity:

  "Wonder how that feller got the dog away from that crazy-as-a-coot Barney Galton? Fortune, my ass!"

  Then the half-breed reined in his horse at the point where the side street joined Lakeview's commercial thoroughfare, which was more in keeping with the cross streets than the town's lake frontage.

  Inevitably, the buildings were of timber, unpainted or painted a long time ago and never refurbished. A mixture of single - and two-story buildings, with sidewalks or individual stoops out front of most of them. Weathered signs along awnings or hung from brackets named the businesses engaged in behind each neglected facade.

  Stores supplying essentials and luxuries, bank and a newspaper. A saloon and a livery stable. A doctor's office and one used by an attorney. A sheriff's office and a stage-line depot. A horse and wagon hire outfit. A clock repairer and a gunsmith. A blacksmith and a barber. A dentist and a hotel.

  None of the commercial premises were very big and they were squeezed close together in number of varying styles—as if new businesses were introduced to Lakeview over a lengthy period and nobody wanted to set up shop outside the original eastern and western limits of the street.

  From the western extremity of the street, a final block along from where Edge sat his gelding to take stock of the town, a trail headed out into the timber. And snaked toward an area he had seen from a distance as he approached the far side of town—and which had told him the reason for Lakeview being here. Out there, behind the high ground that fringed the lake, was a massive an ugly scar on the Montana landscape. A vast are of rolling hills that had been stripped of its timber and showed up as an obscene, dark-hued patch of now barren land encircled by the lush green foliage of the coniferous Douglas firs which were yet to be felled.

  At the center of the timber-ravaged area was sawmill that belched smoke from four stacks. A plant that was, even from a distance of two miles very much a part of the town in at least one way—in that it had previously been small at the start and was added to as the lumber business boomed.

  "Hey, mister, ain't that Old Man Galton's dog you got there?" a boy of about sixteen asked as he crossed from one corner of the side street to the other with a heavy-looking sack on a shoulder. He took a wide sweep out into the center of the main street, apparently afraid to get close to the German shepherd, who sat quietly on his haunches at his accustomed position beside the left hind leg of the gelding.

  "Guess there ain't many like him around here, kid?" the half-breed replied as he dropped the cigarette butt to the street.

  "Don't reckon there's another one like him in the whole damn territory," the boy answered. "Didn't the old-timer tell you to always keep him on a leash?"

  Edge shook his head and heeled the horse for­ward and into a right turn along the center of the commercial street, which was quiet compared to the activity around the distant sawmill and a felling area to the west of it.

  The boy with the sack was startled by the abrupt way in which the dog moved to follow the gelding. And he leaped up on to the sidewalk to lunge in through the doorway of a meat market.

  There were women shoppers and a few men Past work age idling their time on the sidewalks. And without exception they looked at the stran­ger in town—as often as not did a double take to assure themselves that they really were seeing the obviously familiar German shepherd accompanying the horseman. But none of these people commented on the dog.

  It was not yet within thirty minutes of noon although Edge made it a rule never to drink hard liquor until after midday, he reined the gelding to halt out front of the Treasure House Saloon and swung down from the saddle to hitch him to the rail. Then sat on the sidewalk with his booted feet on the street an
d appeared to be indifferent to everything except the dog who sat beside him—stroked his head from time to time but more often gazed into the middle distance at whatever images his mind chose to conjure.

  But, as always, he was aware of what was happening around him, conscious of people passing by on the opposite sidewalk and moving in back of him on this one. And he sensed the various feelings they had about him, which ranged from intrigued curiosity to something close to resentment.

  Then, when the clock above the stoop of clock repairer's showed the time at just five minutes to noon and he was about to rise from his seat-on the sidewalk, he knew he was about to be approached for an explanation. And so he stayed where he was, ready to answer any reasonable questions the short, pudgy, duster-coated lawman might care to put to him.

  But then, from way down at the eastern end of the street, a man yelled, "Stage's comin' in!" and the sheriff altered his direction, quickening his pace along a less acute diagonal to bring him the front of the Northern Stage Line depot.

  A lot of other people converged just as eagerly the same spot. And above the noise of the ac­tivity, the sheriff tossed over his fleshy shoulder, "Have a word later, stranger!" Just as had happened with every other Lakeview citizen so far, the lawman paid more atten­tion to the quietly alert dog than to Edge, who now rose from the sidewalk nodding an acknowl­edgment that he had heard the request.

  The German shepherd rose, too, and was close on the heels of the half-breed in crossing the side­walk and pushing through the slatted batwing doors. The doors flapped closed behind the man and the animal and a voice snarled in a tone of shocked anger:

  "What the hell's the idea, comin' in here with that mutt?"

  "So I can have a drink," Edge answered evenly as the clattering sounds of the approaching stage carried into the saloon.