Ten Grand

by George G. Gilman

  Edge ignored the looks and the people. They owed him nothing and he felt not a flicker of interest in them. They had used each other for as long as it suited all parties and now that was over.

  “Edge!”

  He recognized the voice and knew he was passing Honey’s Restaurant, glanced over to the door showing no sign of halting his steady pace. Gail, the paleness of her complexion and residue of horror in her eyes not detracting from her beauty, beckoned to him from the doorway.

  “Edge!” she said again, on a rising pitch when she saw he was ignoring her. “You’re walking into a trap.”

  This brought him up abruptly. He took a final look ahead down the street, narrowed eyes searching for danger, then stared at the girl.

  “You part of it?”

  “There’s two territorial marshals in your office,” she said.

  Edge looked round again, obliquely at the front of the sheriff’s office. He saw no movement there and crossed quickly to step up on to the sidewalk, brush into the restaurant as Gail stood back. The tables were empty, set for breakfast on a day when nobody had felt like eating.

  “Lunchtime will be slow as well,” Edge said, looking towards the door to the kitchen. “Where’s your boss?”

  “Honey’s fixing the funeral arrangements. They killed three people, Edge.”

  She closed the door, looked with concern at the man’s facial injury.

  “Tell me about the lawmen,” he demanded.

  “You’re hurt.” She approached him. “Come into the kitchen. I’ll clean it before it becomes infected.”

  Edge’s aim came up and he hit her back-handed across the cheek. “The lawmen!” he demanded harshly as Gail’s eyes filled with the tears of pain and she raised a delicate hand to her face. But in the next moment those same eyes spat hate at him. The kind of hate that is just over the dividing line from love.

  “You can’t hurt me,” she threw at him. “You can beat me to a pulp and you’ll still be the only man I’ll ever love. And I’m not going to help you get clear of Peaceville only to have you die with a body full of gangrene.” The fire died in his eyes and her voice softened. “Now, get into the kitchen, you big oaf.”

  Edge’s hands clenched into hard-knuckled fists and his cold eyes bore into those of the girl. Then he suddenly spun and went between the tables, knocking over chairs as he cut a direct route through to the kitchen door. Gail followed him, a tiny smile playing at the corners of her mouth, which she wiped away as he sat down at a table and his eyes found her again. She had learned just how far she could push this man of iron in whose make-up a pinprick of regard for her provided the only vulnerable spot.

  A pot of water was already near the boil on the large, wood-fired stove and she poured some into an iron basin, and got a length of clean cloth from a drawer.

  “They rode in an hour ago,” she said as she pressed the hot, soaking cloth against Edge’s wound, angry at herself for feeling a stab of satisfaction when he winced. “They’ve got a wanted poster on somebody called Josiah Hedges. Captain Josiah C. Hedges. Picture looks like you a lot younger. Hedges … Edge. A man you killed called you Captain. Close enough?”

  “Not so younger,” Edge allowed. “Close enough. It wasn’t murder.”

  “The authorities don’t rate it very highly,” Gail said, pouring the reddened water away, getting some fresh and beginning to clean, up where the blood had matted into his beard. “They’ve put a bounty on you. Only a hundred dollars.”

  Edge turned on his grin of ice. “Even I wouldn’t kill me to raise just that much. How’d you know all this?”

  “I thought you might be back,” she answered evenly, with a toss of her long hair. “Didn’t want anyone to steal your belongings. I went to the office to get them. The marshals came while I was there. Asked me what had happened, I told them and then they showed me the wanted poster, wanted to know if I had seen the man called Hedges.”

  “Obliged,” Edge said, getting to his feet as she finished cleaning his face. “Where’s my gear?”

  “Out back,” she said, nodding to the door. “There’s a horse out there, as well. It’s mine. Fed, watered, saddled and ready to go.” She licked her lips and reached out a hand to touch his shoulder as he turned. “Edge?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m not going to ask to come with you. But if you ask me it won’t take long to saddle Honey’s horse.”

  “Where I’m going, women ain’t nothing but something to screw,” he said harshly, saw her wince. His voice softened and he leaned forward, brushed his lips gentle across her mouth. “You’re a good screw, Gail, but you got other qualities.”

  Tears welled into her eyes again, and her hand found his, pressed some crumpled bills into the palm.

  “Twelve dollars,” she whispered. “It’s all I have.”

  “I’ll repay it through the mail,” he told her and strode to the door.

  “You won’t be coming back?”

  He looked at her with hooded eyes. “What for?”

  “I … I guess nothing.”

  “Nothing ain’t worth coming back for,” he said and went out.

  The door slammed and she heard the sound of him mounting. The horse whinnied and then hoofs thudded into a gallop. Gail sat down on the still warm chair and threw her head onto the table, gave herself up to sobs that sent tremors through her entire body.

  Honey and the two hard-faced marshals found her like that.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  EDGE had no idea how far it was to the Mexican-Arizona territory border. He just knew it was south and that was the way he rode, keeping the high, hot sun ahead of him when the trail petered out. It was desolate country, arid and irregularly featured by high outcrops of rock, dry stream beds and grotesquely shaped cactus plants. It seemed upon first impression to be a dead place, for even the giant prickly growths and infrequent patches of sharp-edged grass seemed to be formed of rock, so still were they in the unmoving air. But Edge and his horse were not the only living things that moved in the area of vast waste through which they passed.

  When Edge was well clear of town and slowed the horse to conserve her energy he had time to look about him. He saw a diamond-back rattler almost as big as the one he killed that morning, coiled in the shade of a rock, a beautifully patterned copperhead on the move, and a bizarrely decorated gila monster which darted across his path, causing his horse to rear up.

  But he soothed her into docility again and she fell back into her even gait, obediently responding to a tug on the reins that headed her towards a small canyon that split asunder the high solid face of a stretch of plateau country that stretched across the horizon. As he neared the canyon mouth, Edge saw that a wide slash of disturbed dust curved in from the west. As further evidence of the passage of a great many horses, dried dung sprinkled the ground. Edge could see how the riders had been heading directly into the sheer face of the towering cliffs, had made a broad, wheeling turn to go into the canyon which provided the only route south for many miles on either side.

  “I figure my money came this way,” Edge muttered and the horse picked up her ears. The rider leaned forward and ruffled the short, tough hair between them. Then, when he heeled her into a gallop, she seemed to be as anxious as the man to reach the shade afforded by the canyon. It was mid-afternoon now and the sun, as hot as ever, was slanting its light and heat from the west, so that the western wall of the canyon threw a giant shadow. But not for any great distance, for although the canyon was narrow at its opening, it broadened almost at once, the boulder littered ground on each side sloping away fast like the sides of a shallow bowl. Ahead was an expanse of desert country as desolate as the plain Edge had just crossed, but featured with many more outcrops and sparsely vegetated hills.

  Edge stayed in the shade for as long as he could see the tracks made by the Mexicans’ horses. But they were on the far side of the canyon, the Mexicans having taken advantage of the shadow of the eastern wall thrown out by morning sunl
ight. And soon he was forced out into the harsh glare again in order to keep on the trail of his quarry.

  His horse died beneath him while still on all fours, the sound she made as she collapsed, throwing him clear, merely the whoosh of air venting from crushed lungs. The rifle crack that had sent a bullet piercing into her brain echoed between the canyon walls with such stark clarity that the sound stung Edge’s ears. He lay absolutely still where he had fallen, shielded on one side by the bulk of the dead horse, exposed on the other where there was just an expanse of open terrain scattered with small rocks.

  It was from this side that the two men approached and Edge did not have to move in his bogus unconsciousness to watch them, for he had landed on his belly, head art the side and facing that way. He watched them with eyes cracked open the merest extent, seeing them through the dark curtain of his lashes. The sharp-shooter had been good or lucky. It had been a long-range, downwards shot from two hundred yards away, a hundred feet above the canyon floor. He saw them appear from each side of a huge boulder, stand for a moment looking down at him, then start forward. Even winded as he was, his head still ringing with the sound of the shot and the thud of his body on to the hard ground, Edge knew he could gun them both down in less than two seconds—if the Henry repeater was in his hands. But the rifle was still in its boot on the dead horse and Edge had no way of reaching it without revealing his awareness. He had to assume that the sharp-shooter was good, not merely lucky and if that was so he would be able to loose off any number of accurate shots before Edge had even rolled over to look for the Henry. So Edge merely moved his right hand—on the blind side from the men—and discovered the only weapon within reach was a jagged, fist-sized piece of rock. His fingers closed over it.

  “Must of knocked himself out in the fall, Luke,” one of the men said excitedly.

  “Damn rifle pulls to the right,” his partner replied with low anger. “Way the Government is so close-handed, sometimes the horse is worth more than the outlaw.”

  “He’s facing this way, Luke,” the other said, refusing to have his enthusiasm quelled by Luke’s chagrin. “Recognize him? Wonder how much he’s worth?”

  Luke was tall and thin to the point of emaciation. He had hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes; a chin that came to a point. He was dressed all in black, from high-crowned hat to boots, and walked with a casual looseness. His partner was shorter, fat by comparison, with a round, moonlike face decorated with a moustache longer on one side than the other. He was all in black, too. Both carried rifles, wore revolvers in holsters on the right hip, tied at the thigh. Edge didn’t recognize them as any of the many bounty hunters who worked out of Peaceville.

  “Whoever it is, Chuck,” Luke said, raising his rifle, “makes no difference whether he’s dead or alive. Dead is easier for us.”

  “Hey, no,” Chuck said with concern, reaching out a hand to slap down the rifle barrel. “We don’t even know if he’s an outlaw. I told you not to shoot till he was close enough to take a look at.”

  Luke sneered. “Only two kind of lone riders in this part of the territory,” he said. “Outlaws and bounty hunters. If he’s one he’s worth money, and it’s easier money if he’s dead. If he’s the other he ain’t no use to us living and dead he can’t cause no trouble.”

  Their voices got easier to hear as they got closer and Edge liked what they were saying less and less with every step they took.

  “Hey,” Chuck exclaimed with glee when the pair were no more than five yards away, feet kicking up dust that threatened to erupt a sneeze from Edge. “The guy’s got one of them Henry repeating rifles. Confederates used to say the Union army could load on Sundays and keep firing all week with them.”

  The man let his own, single shot weapon fall to the ground and rushed forward, sprang over the prone figure of Edge as if he presented no more danger than a solid rock. With Chuck out of his range of vision, Edge concentrated on Luke, who was the more dangerous of the two. He heard the Henry being slid from its boot, the breech mechanism worked.

  “Terrific,” Chuck said, like a kid who got what he wanted for Christmas.

  “Yeah,” Luke replied dully, but his eyes shone with an interest that belied his tone. Edge saw he carried an old and battered Spencer. He licked his lips as if he could taste the joy his partner was experiencing. He glanced down once at Edge, then stepped over him. “Don’t recognize him,” he said shortly. “Let me see that gun.”

  “It’s mine,” Chuck said with petulance, then yelled in surprise.

  Edge sprang into movement just as the tall man stepped over him, forcing himself up from the ground with all the power in his arms so that his hard skull smashed into Luke’s crotch. As Luke’s cry of pain followed Chuck’s yell, Edge continued the fast rise to his feet. The tall man grew taller, his legs straddling Edge’s shoulder, then went crashing sideways as Edge turned, his outstretched hands clawing for Chuck to break his fall as his rifle dropped to the ground. But Chuck wasn’t there. He went over backwards, stumbling against the dead horse as Edge released the jagged rock, sent it with a crunch of breaking bone into the little man’s nose.

  Luke hit solid earth with a great force that knocked the wind out of him, but he was tougher than he looked and he bounced to his feet, turning as he came up, facing Edge.

  “Hundred dollars is all,” Edge said as Luke went for his Colt, never made it. Even without a backswing, Edge’s leg shot forward with incredible speed and force, the toe of his boot finding the exact spot where his head had landed moments before. Both Luke’s hands streaked to his nether region as his knees buckled and his face took on if mask of pain. “Figure I’m worth more,” Edge droned softly, hand snaking to his back, flashing out with the knife. Luke had sunk to his knees now, his mouth working to fight out words, failing. Edge held the knife low, pointing towards the injured man. Luke, eyes wide with horror, unable to tear his hands away from the source of his agony, rocked once and fell forward, his own weight carrying him on to the knife’s needle point. It penetrated to great depth, just below his Adam’s apple. “Hey, don’t get cut up about it,” Edge said as he withdrew the knife and pushed the dead body sideways, turned to find Chuck.

  The little man was just getting to his feet, staring in pained surprise at the blood on his palm as he pulled his hand away from his mashed nose. His other hand was gripping the Henry by its barrel, which was the wrong place. He realized this when Edge spoke to him and he found himself looking into the muzzle of the Remington. They faced each other across the dead body of the horse.

  “Chuck.”

  “You was awake all the time?”

  “Yeah, Chuck. That’s my rifle you’ve got.”

  “You killed Luke?”

  “Luke killed my horse.”

  Sweat mingled with blood. The moon face implored mercy. His voice trembled.

  “You a bounty hunter?”

  “No.”

  “Outlaw?”

  “Hundred dollars worth. My girl gave me that horse.”

  He shot Chuck in the hand holding the Henry. The rifle clattered to the ground as Chuck screamed, his other hand going to nurse the injury. Edge shot that, too. Twice, blowing off two fingers and drilling a neat hole through the palm.

  “Oh, God!” Chuck pleaded, and fell to his knees.

  “Don’t know how my girl felt about the horse, but I kind of liked it,” Edge said and emptied the revolver in a series of closely grouped shots where Chuck had once had a heart. The little man went backwards in a great deal of blood. “Be happy on that great bounty hunt in the sky,” Edge said wryly, and spat into the dust.

  “You’re empty, mister. This ain’t.”

  Edge froze as the woman’s voice spat out the words from behind him. Close, but not close enough to make a grab.

  “You been counting,” he said chidingly.

  “And I didn’t need my fingers,” she answered. “Drop the gun and turn around to look at me, mister. I wanna see what I’ve caught myself that’s worth a
hundred dollars.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  SHE wasn’t pretty. Examining her through his narrowed eyes, grinding his teeth in an expression of anger at allowing the woman to get the drop on him, Edge thought she was downright ugly. She was tall, with a haggard, dirt-streaked face from which large, red-rimmed dark eyes looked at him with greedy interest. Her mouth was a mere thin line, pale pink against her sun-darkened skin and her long hair, the color of dirty straw, hung limp and matted over her shoulders. Her dress was nothing more than a shapeless piece of gray rag that fell from the neck to ankles offering no hint at the form it covered. Only where it hugged the length of her long arms to be fastened at the wrists did it show her bone leanness. And the filthy hands below, curled around the gun she pointed at Edge, were just-skin-covered bones. She looked tired and weak, but her gun more than compensated for this at the distance she stood from Edge. It was one of the old Roland White Harmonica Rifles: a percussion repeater with a vertical sliding magazine. A sporting gun, but as effective against a man as an animal. And the woman held it like one not reluctant to use it. She stood beside a boulder behind which she had been concealed, lower down the slope from the point where Luke and Chuck had made their attack. Edge guessed she had moved down during the fight.

  “Like what you see?” he asked.

  Her deep-set eyes fastened upon his face for several moments, then began to travel down, halted with a flicker of surprise at his chest before continuing down to his feet. Then back to his chest.

  “Why’d you say you had a hundred on your head?” she asked.

  Edge glanced down, saw the star still pinned to his shirt front. He grinned, jerked a thumb at the bodies of Luke and Chuck.

  “Didn’t want them to think they died trying for zero,” he answered. “Friends of yours?”

  “I rode with them,” she said shortly.

  “Which one you sleep with?”

  She wasn’t insulted. “They took turns.”