It was a fifty-by-thirty room, deeper than it was wide, with a curving bar counter across the rear left corner. There were ten tables, each ringed by lour chairs placed so that there was an aisle between them and the wall by which to reach the bar. A stairway with a rope for a banister canted steeply up the rear wall from near the end of the bar. Daylight from the frosted front window and the doorway decreased to gloom before it reached the rear of the place.
A tall, bulkily built bartender stood behind the bar and a frail-looking woman sat on a high stool with a low back in the space between the bar's end and the start of the stairway.
"Be happy to sell you as many drinks as you want, stranger," the bartender said, anger expanding as the half-breed and the dog came toward him. Edge unbuttoning the sheepskin coat while the German shepherd growled softly in response to the aggression. "Just as soon as you get that dog outta here!"
"Need a drink to improve the way I feel, feller. Whether you're happy or not doesn't make any difference to me."
He was three-quarters of the way to the bar now and close enough to see that the big bartender was about thirty with clean-cut good looks and a shot of curly red hair. He had the pale complexion of a man who worked inside and took few his pleasures out in the open air.
Likewise, the woman had a wan look to her a pealing face framed by long, straight hair was redder than the man's. She had blue eyes that appeared disproportionately large, which surveyed the world with a cynicism that was sad somebody who was just past twenty years old.
He was dressed for this trade in a shirt pants and a leather bib apron. She for hers red dress cut low enough to display the upper slopes of her small breasts and with a slit in side so that one slender leg encased in fishnet was on show from ankle to mid-thigh.
"Hey, that's real funny, Leo," the woman said nasally and drew back her thin lips to show a false grin.
"What you see me doin' ain't laughin', Rita,” Leo muttered in a voice that rasped.
He reached under the bar top and brought out an old, single-shot Spencer carbine. He clicked back the hammer as he rested his elbows on the top of the bar and pressed his cheek to the stock of the gun. To aim at the still softly growling dog, who had immediately sat down when Edge halted at sight of the Spencer.
"Leo's right, lady," the half-breed said evenly, his coat fully unbuttoned now. "Laughing he ain't. But you wouldn't expect that of a man getting ready to die." He reached down to stroke the side of the dog's head and soothed, "Easy, feller."
"Uh?" she countered, and after squinting at the newcomer silhouetted against the light, she quickly shed her attitude of worldly cynicism and opened her mouth to say something as she slid off the stool. Suddenly frightened.
"I'll shoot him sure as—"
"Don't mess with this guy, Leo!" Rita cut in.
"You got just the one bullet in that carbine, feller," Edge said, and now his tone had hardened. Enough to cause Leo's eyes to shift from the quietly seated German shepherd to meet and be trapped by the half-breed's ice-cold gaze. "I got a six-gun here." He gently eased open the right side of his coat to display the Frontier Colt in the bolster. Let the coat fall back again before he went on: "You shoot this animal, you'll feel every one of the six slugs going into your hide. And you'll live a long time and feel a lot of pain afterwards."
Leo grimaced in derision, but sweat beads of tension stood out on his forehead and along his upper lip.
"He means it!" Rita urged.
"Rules is rules and I don't allow no animals in—”
“There are exceptions to every rule, feller."
"And we got the law in this town!" This said with greater confidence. "Killers don't get away with it in Lakeview!"
"Ain't that what I just said, feller? Since I happen to be in Lakeview right now."
"Damnit, it's only a mutt!"
"I like him a whole lot better than I like you. You want to put the carbine back where you got it and sell me a shot of rye whisky now?"
He restarted his slow walk to the bar as he spoke and the German shepherd was instantly at his heel. Moving out from under the threat of the Spencer, which was not really a threat, since the eyes of the man holding the gun continued to be held by the glittering gaze of Edge.
Outside, the incoming stage had been pulled to a stop at the depot and there was a great deal of shouting between the crew and passengers and the Lakeview citizens who had gone to meet it. Everybody sounded reasonably happy.
Leo was irritable as he straightened up, raising the Spencer and turning it. He clicked the hammer forward before he put the carbine back below the bar top. And growled as he took a bottle and a shot glass off a shelf along the wall behind him: "What if I get a crowd in here? I know dogs. Always in the way. Sprawled out under people's feet all the time. Where's he gonna park his flea bitten carcass?"
Leo kept nodding across the bar top as he spoke and poured the drink. Unable to see the dog who had sat down again, between the bar front and Edge's legs.
The half-breed glanced down at the animal, picked up his drink and took it at a swallow, set the glass on the bar top for a refill, and told the sour faced bartender, "Guess a dog as big as this one parks his ass wherever the hell he likes!"
The glass was just half refilled when Leo halted the pouring process to demand, "You got the money to pay for what you're havin', stranger?"
Edge pulled aside his coat again and Leo flinched back as Rita caught her breath. But the brown-skinned hand reached into a hip pocket to bring out a roll of bills. A five was peeled off and placed beside the half-filled glass and the roll returned to the pocket.
"Just my stock for sale, not the saloon, moneybags," Leo muttered resentfully as he now filled the glass. "You want any more or will I make change?"
"Change, feller," Edge told him and lifted the glass, but did not drink until he had accepted the change from the five and gone to sit at a table in the corner almost under the canting stairway. His back into the angle of the walls so that he was facing across the saloon. The German shepherd sat at his side and then lay down, head between it its front paws, when the half-breed rolled and lit a cigarette. The rye was taken in small amounts, like it was the best Kentucky sipping whisky.
All this while Leo stared sourly down the length of his saloon at the batwing doors, like he was willing more customers to come through them. And Rita shot a series of surreptitious glances trough the open steps of the stairs at the man at the corner table. Then, after asking for a beer she did not pay for and taking a long swallow, she found the courage to slide off her stool and move to lean seductively against the newel at the foot of the stairway. With a smile that was in imminent danger of cracking under the strain of her nervous eagerness, she said:
"Ain't just Leo's stock for sale in the Treasure House, handsome. And I reckon from what I saw you can afford to buy the very best kind of merchandise I got available."
Edge shifted his level gaze from the sheriff who was coming through the batwing doors, to the whore, who was expertly displaying her legs and breasts to the best immodest effect.
"Obliged, lady, but I guess I'll stay with what have."
Her smile began to transform into a frown she questioned, "Uh?"
"Don't they say that dog's a man's best friend?”
"You lost me, stranger." The frown had become a scowl.
Edge nodded. "I hope so, lady. Because right now I got no need of a pussy."
Chapter Seven
Leo leaned his head to direct a gust of sardonic laughter at the smoke-stained ceiling of the saloon and then yelled in a bad imitation of the whore's nasal tones: "Hey, that's real funny, Rita! What's a man with a dog want with a pussy!"
"Shut your rotten mouth, Leo!" she shrieked at him and whirled to hurl the glass at the wall. Where it smashed and sprayed beer, in no danger of harming the bartender, Edge, or the sheriff. Then she started up the stairway, and paused to snarl at the half-breed, "I heard that some of you hard as nails, toug
h-talkin' bastards ain't got what's needed in the sack!"
She clattered on up to the top of the stairs, where she wrenched open a door and slammed it violently closed behind her.
The lawman said wearily as he reached the bar, "Give me a beer, Leo." And as it was being drawn, he glanced up the stairway and added, "That girl ain't never gonna make it as a whore unless she learns to take no for an answer without flyin’ off the handle."
Leo scowled up the stairway as he asked, "On the tab, Mr. Herman?"
"On the tab, Leo," the sheriff agreed as he turned to bring his beer toward the table where Edge sat. And asked, "Okay to have that word now?"
The half-breed gestured for him to sit down opposite, which he did and took a sip at his beer before saying:
"Sheriff Herman, the law in Lakeview and Mirror Lake County."
"Edge. Just passing through your jurisdiction, sheriff."
His drink was finished now and he dropped his cigarette butt in the glass so that it sizzled out in the moisture there.
The lawman took another swig of beer. He was more than fifty and maybe closer to sixty. Less than five-feet-six-inches tall with a build and fleshy face that were silent witnesses to an easy and comfortable way of life. But there was something about the set of the lips beneath his bushy black moustache and in the brightness of his green eyes that suggested he would not be found wanting in a suddenly difficult and uncomfortable situation.
His gray duster was open now to show that his jacket, shirt, and pants were as Western in style as his hat. All his clothing gray in color, spotlessly clean but unfancy. Like his gunbelt with an Army Model .44 Remington in the tied-down holster.
"Ain't one for beatin' about the bush, Mr. Edge."
The half-breed nodded his approval of this.
"That there dog is the one Barney Galton used to bring to town on the few occasions he ever hoofed it around the lake?"
"It was Galton's dog, sheriff."
Herman leaned to the side to direct a doubtful look down at the quiet German shepherd, who seemed to be on the verge of sleep.
"Never did trust him much, the way he was always growlin' at folks."
"The dog, Sherriff?"
Herman abruptly emphasized the hard set of his mouth and brightened the harsh light in his eyes as he snapped, "Don't try to be funny at my expense, Edge!"
"This is costing you nothing but time, sheriff. Maybe too much for a man who claims he doesn't beat about—"
"Okay!" Herman cut in, a little chastened by the deserved rebuke. "Last night one of Old Man Gedton's sons and his wife reached town on a freight wagon. In too much of a hurry to wait for the stage that would've been a whole lot more comfortable. And in too much of a rush to wait until today to get around to the old man's claim across the lake. So they rented one of Ephraim Browning's rigs and took off in the dead of night. City folks from the East out in this kinda country — hell, shit!"
He paused briefly to drink some more beer and then immediately continued.
"Anyways, that Ralph and Janet Galton roll off into the night and then this mornin' you ride into town with Barney Galton's dog. But that ain't coincidence enough. When the stage reaches Lakeview just a few minutes ago, who's one of the passengers? Lee—Old Man Galton's other son—that's who. And he wants to know more or less just what them other Galtons did. Where's his pa's claim and where he can rent a horse to get to it."
"You don't say, Mr. Herman," Leo put in, intrigued.
"I do say!" the lawman snapped at the bartender, but then looked back at Edge to growl: "But I'm sayin' it to you, Mr. Edge. And I'd appreciate hearin' more than smart talk from you. Because Barney Galton's claim is on my patch of territory and if somethin' untoward is goin' on out there, I should know about it."
There was the click of the latch of a cautiously opened door on the landing at the top of the stairway. And a floorboard creaked in back of the bar counter when Leo moved as close to the occupied table as he could get without lifting the flap and coming through.
None of which was lost on the sheriff, who said with a scowl, "If this is goin' to be strictly law business, we can step across the street to my office, Mr. Edge."
"Nothing I'm ashamed to tell."
Herman leaned forward, like he was encouraging Edge to speak softly, and invited, "So tell it."
The half-breed did so, speaking at a normal conversational level that was heard by the bartender and the whore. And both of them admitted this with gasps when he made dispassionate mention of Barney Galton feeding his severed leg to the dog. He told of the events at the claim almost word for word in the same way he had related them to the Galtons. And added in equally laconic fashion the basic details of the trouble he had with the frightened Ralph and his bellicose wife.
From far to the west of Lakeview, a steam whistle shrilled to end the short silence that followed Edge's telling of what had happened since he reached the south shore of Mirror Lake.
"Lunch break out at lumber camps," the lawman said absently as he gazed into the middle distance and toyed with one side of his moustache as he contemplated what he had been told.
"Poor old bastard," Leo muttered. "What a lousy way to go."
"And everyone figured it was a timber wolf doin' all that howlin' at night last week," the whore contributed sadly from the head of the stairs.
Sheriff Herman brought his mind back to the here and now, made to finish his beer, but decided he could not manage it. He stood up and nodded to the half-breed: "Appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Edge. But you'll understand that I'll need to ride around to the claim to check out a few facts. And until I've done that, it'll be necessary for you to stay in town."
"The hotel the only place a stranger can bed down, sheriff?"
"Yeah. Though I don't know how Max and Polly Webster will feel about the dog."
"Guess I'll go find out."
The lawman went through the batwing doors and Edge had risen from the table and moved to the threshold of the saloon before the doors had stopped swinging, the German shepherd as close to him as always.
"Damnit, mister, how can you stand to have that creature with you all the time?" the whore asked with a grimace of revulsion as she came down the stairway. "Knowin' he's eaten human flesh!"
Edge hooked a hand over one of the doors to steady it and glanced back at the woman in the revealing dress as she reached the foot of the stairway and climbed on to the stool. And drawled: "Figure he'll be all right with me, Rita. But maybe you should be careful."
"Me—why me?" she demanded as she wrapped both her hands around the fresh glass of beer Leo had drawn for her.
"You're all done up like a dog's dinner."
Chapter Eight
The batwing doors flapped noisily behind Edge and the dog as Leo yelled, "Hey, that's really funny!"
The whore snarled against the bartender's gust of raucous laughter, "Shut your rotten mouth, Leo."
Edge unhitched the gelding from the rail out front of the saloon and led him by the reins toward the hotel, which was two blocks along on the same side of the street. Squeezed between the stage-line depot and Browning's Rentals, and called The Webster House.
The street was busier now, with the first of the men from the lumber camps to reach town, and with children, some escorted by their mothers, out from school for the lunch recess all eager to eat or drink. The team that had hauled the ancient Concord to Lakeview was being taken from the traces by a man who looked like the depot manager while the stage crew held on to and softly cursed at a quartet of fresh and skittish horses. Four passengers waited to board. A man with a sand-colored beard led a gray gelding from the premises of Ephraim Browning, mounted him with difficulty, and rode tentatively along the street to leave town by the east trail.
Almost everyone was too intent upon what occupied them to cast more than a passing glance at the stranger leading his horse and followed by a dog. Except for the bearded rider, who, when he fel
t secure astride his unfamiliar mount, shot a look over his shoulder. Deeply curious for stretched seconds until, over a constantly widening range, the slitted blue eyes of Edge locked with his round, dark ones—when he became suddenly nervous and snapped his head around to face the way he was going.
"Guess that's Lee Galton?" the half-breed asked of Herman as the sheriff appeared on the threshold of Ephraim Browning's premises as he drew level with the entrance.
"Right, Mr. Edge. Told him briefly what you told me. Asked him to light a signal fire on the point across the lake if he thinks the law's needed over there. Like I say, there's facts needed to be checked out. But no sense two men ridin' the same trail for the same reason."
Edge nodded and continued on to the hotel next door, where he hitched the gelding and stepped up on the stoop. The travel-weary team had been taken out of the traces by now and the fresh horses were being hitched to the stage across the mouth of the alley that separated the hotel from the depot. One of the skittish animals at the front snorted and reared high.
The younger of the two-man crew snarled, "Get that friggin' dog outta sight, Mex!"
The German shepherd growled and his back hair bristled in response to the tone of aggression in the voice of the man struggling to calm the horse.
Edge turned and came down off the stoop. Stroked the dog's ears and said, "Easy, feller." Then went around his hitched horse and across the mouth of the alley to where the team animal was becoming more agitated. The man trying to control him was cursing louder and more obscenely.
"John!" the older man yelled in a warning tone, moving up to try his hand at bringing the nervous horse under control.
John thought there was no more to the act than his partner coming to his aid in the matter of the hard-to-handle horse. Until he saw the look on the older man's face. But by then it was too late. And even as he swung his head around while still clinging to the long rein of the troublesome horse, a hand hooked over his coat collar at the nape of his neck. To drag him violently away from the team, so that he was forced to release his grip on the reins as he was hauled off his feet and jerked on to his back.
EDGE: The Killing Claim Page 6
