Bloody Summer

by George G. Gilman

  “Take it!” the salesman said hurriedly. “Chestnut mare. McClellan cavalry saddle for him. Tell them I said you could. Name’s Mann.”

  “Not the one from Laramie?” Edge asked.

  “What?” He shook his head. “I’m from Cedar City, Utah.”

  “Different branch of the family, maybe,” Edge murmured as he went out of the room.

  The Gates of Heaven was in the clutch of a deathly quietness, as if the staff and guests were in the midst of a period of mourning for the dead whore. Edge heard the first sound when he entered the saloon and he, brought up the Winchester in a smooth reflex action. But it was just a drunk, sprawled out across two tables pushed together, shoring in a regular cadence.

  Edge climbed over one of the curved bar counters, gathered a bottle of whiskey from the shelf and went through a doorway into the kitchen. The windows were shuttered and it was dark in there. He lit a lamp. Carefully, making no noise, he unfastened a closet door and helped himself to coffee, two cans of beans and some meat loaf. A tin mug completed his supplies and he put everything into a cook’s apron and gathered the corners to form a bundle before he went out, by way of the kitchen door which gave on to September Street.

  The light level of the new day had risen since he awakened but the biting cold had not receded and the frost crunched under his boots as he crossed the broad intersection of Solar Circle. An oil lamp still burned inside the County Bank but the Pinkerton guards had finished their card game.

  They were sprawled out across the table in a sound sleep, hands curled around their rifles.

  The jailhouse with the sheriff’s Office beside it, Was next door to the bank. A face appeared at the barred window of the jail, almost as white as the frost on the streets and roofs,

  “Edge!”John Day called.

  The half-breed’s facial muscles tightened, pulling his features into the shape of an angry snarl. He quickened his pace, angling across to the jailhouse.

  “You want me to run an ad in the local paper, as well?” he rasped.

  Day’s homely face showed his confusion.

  “To let the whole town know I’m leaving,” Edge explained coldly.

  “Where’s Elizabeth?” Day asked, his tone lowered to a whisper.

  “With the preacher,” Edge told him.

  “I don’t trust that Pike man she was with last night,” Day said anxiously.

  “Figure him for a real sharp feller myself,” Edge said, turning away.

  “I charged you with her safety,” Day retorted, his tone rising.

  “Right now I need a dame like I need a loud-mouthed jailbird,” Edge shot back, spinning towards the window and bringing up the Winchester.

  The stock stabbed between the bars and took Day full on the jaw. He gave a low groan and reeled back across the cell. He thudded against the far wall and slid down to the stone floor.

  “Good, Day,” the half-breed murmured and moved back to his original course, heading down August towards the livery stables.

  Smoke curled up into the freezing air from the chimney on the building with the big double doors and there was a light on inside. Edge cracked open one of the doors without knocking and stepped into the warmth on the other side. He looked down the bore of a Spencer and curled back his lips in a grin.

  “Need a horse and saddle,” he said easily, holding the Winchester so that it was aimed at the dirt floor.

  The gangling old man with the gaunt face who charged such a high rate, was seated in a rocker facing a potbellied stove which glowed red hot. His greedy eyes were as steady as the aim of the repeater as he looked at Edge through the rising heat from the stove.

  “Just take care of ’em,” he replied. “Don’t sell ’em.”

  “Been offered them on loan,” Edge said, advancing further into the stable, welcoming the warmth that set up a tingle in his fingertips. “Drummer named Mann rode in last night. Won’t be needing his chestnut mare today.”

  There was now just the stove between them, but the stableman appeared unworried as he maintained the aim of the Spencer. “Got authorization from the feller?”

  “You got my word it’s the truth,” Edge replied

  “Ain’t good enough.”

  “Your misfortune,” Edge said and began to fall backwards. His feet came clear of the ground and were thrust forward. The heels of his boots thudded against the top of the stove in a double-footed drop-kick. The stove was uprooted on one side and as it tipped the chimney snapped free.

  As the old man yelled and rocked backwards, burning logs spewed from the top of the stove. Edge was back on his feet and in a crouch as the chair rocked forward again. The old man’s forehead smashed into the jagged tin of the severed chimney and opened up into a yawning gash. A curtain of pumping blood blinded his eyes as his bare feet plunged into the pile of spilled logs. He screamed, dropped the Spencer and leapt from the rocker. Then he sat down hard on the ground and used one hand to wipe blood from his eyes as the other beat at the shouldering cuffs of his levis.

  Horses snorted and stamped their hooves as they smelt smoke. Keeping the old man covered, Edge backed over to the stalls and found the one with the right kind of saddle hanging outside. As he made to go inside, he saw the stableman reaching for the Spencer.

  “You just don’t know when you’ve had enough,” he said with a sigh, getting to the man in three long strides.

  The man cowered away from him, blinking rapidly to try to keep the blood out of his eyes. Although he was tall, he was thin and Edge was able to lift him with ease. Back at the stall he used the Winchester to knock the saddle down and then hoisted the struggling man aloft. He looped the man’s belt over the hook and let go of him. The man was doubled over from the hook, dripping blood to the ground.

  “You just signed your own death warrant,” he flung at Edge as the half-breed moved into the stall and began to saddle the chestnut mare. “Frank ain’t gonna like this.”

  “Weren’t done for Frank’s enjoyment,” Edge told him, tightening the cinch. “You should have accepted a man’s word.” He attached the bridle and swung up on to the horse. “Tell me something,” he said as he moved the animal gently out of the stall.

  “You’re getting nothing more from me,” the old man snarled defiantly.

  Edge carefully reached up behind his neck and drew the razor. He had to lean down to brandish it in front of the man’s face. “See this?” A sharp intake of breath provided the answer. “I can cut you down or I can cut your throat”

  “What d’you want to know?”

  “River runs south of town.”

  “Old Creek.”

  “Any place around here it swings close to some other kind of wash?”

  “Not that I know of. It forks about twenty miles west of here, though.”

  “That better be the truth,” Edge said menacingly.

  “I ain’t in no position to lie,” the old man answered.

  “Now I guess that is the truth,” Edge allowed and slashed with the razor. The recently honed blade sliced cleanly through the leather belt and the old man dropped heavily to the ground. His jaw collided with Edge’s outstretched boot on the way down and he lay still.

  Sliding the razor back in its neck pouch, Edge steered the nervous mare around the still shouldering logs and used the Winchester to prod open one of the doors. Hitting the cold air was like running up against a tangible barrier. But the half-breed had the prospect of the reward money to keep him warm as he turned his mount towards the bridge over Old Creek.

  From the second floor front window of his room, Jonas Pike watched Edge riding away from him. From such a distance, it was impossible to identify the figure, but the small man knew who the rider was. For he had been aware of Edge leaving the hotel, had seen him in conversation with John Day at the jailhouse and watched him go into the livery.

  “There goes one early bird who’s after more than worms,” he said to himself as he turned from the window.

  CHAPTER NINE />
  THE Creek flowed by turns rapidly and sluggishly from a source in the far distant north west so that the going was alternately flat and graded against Edge. But the chestnut mare was a younger and stronger animal than both the horses he had used to reach the town and she seemed to derive some form of equine satisfaction from widening the distance between her and the smoky warmth of the livery.

  After a series of catty-cornered moves among a grotesque area of outcrops five miles from town, to ensure that he was not being followed, Edge allowed the mare to make her own pace, merely bringing her back on to the correct course whenever she took it into her head to wander away from the river bank.

  Although the morning became brighter with the pale yellow of winter sun and the frost melted away into broad patches of wetness, it did not become noticeably warmer. Edge ate breakfast as he rode, breaking up the meat loaf in his cold-stiffened fingers. When Summer was lost amid its surrounding hills, the clear light served only to emphasize the empty wasteland formed by the eroded terrain..But although it was really one vast plain, it was not flat like the prairies of his native Iowa. It rolled in hummocks and dips, forming an erratic arrangement of convolutions like an ocean fossilized at the height of a storm.

  The creek followed a line of least resistance through this Godforsaken stretch of country and since he stayed close to it, Edge was constantly in a long, meandering depression. He well knew that one band of Teton Dakotas had been gunning for whites and judged it a safe bet that there were more scalp-hunting parties in the area. So he avoided halting to boil coffee and even as he ate he kept a constant surveillance for Sioux sign.

  From time to time he uncorked the whiskey bottle, enjoying the warmth which the raw liquid spread through his chest and across his stomach.

  After two hours of easy riding, in which he covered a little more than ten miles, the creek narrowed suddenly and the water turned white as it was forced through a shallow gorge. Half a mile further on it disappeared underground. Edge halted his mount and took a long pull at the whiskey bottle as he contemplated the possibilities. Then he urged the mare up the incline of the nearest high ground and shaded his slit eyes with a hand as he surveyed the area ahead. He saw only another view of emptiness with not a single patch of brush or scrub to indicate the underground course of the water.

  All he could do was to accept the stableman’s directions at face value and continue to head westwards. He came down off the skyline and now had to take a firmer control on the reins since the mare had no clearly discernible course to follow.

  The creek stayed below ground for more than two miles and then reappeared as little more than a gentle stream trickling along a trench at the centre of a broad bed. A scattering of rotting tree branches and water-smoothed boulders together with other debris indicated the kind of flooding strength which the creek commanded when it gathered the melting snow of the northern Black Hills in the spring.

  The unwarm sun told of a time close to ten o’clock when Edge reached the point where the creek he had been following was joined by another curving in from the north. The wash was less than six feet across and only a few inches deep at the meeting point. Independently, the streams were mere trickles.

  The creeks joined at the foot of two shallow valleys and formed another, slightly deeper one. On the northern slopes, sheltered to some extent from the high, biting winds of winter, a little brush and some tough grass grew in oddly shaped patches. It was at the side of this area that Jonas Pike was crouched, blowing at the tiny flame which had caught amid a pile of uprooted brush. His horse, ground hobbled and still saddled, chomped discontentedly at a patch of grass.

  “What kept you, Edge?” Pike called without looking up from his chore.

  Edge, with not a flicker of surprise, wheeled his horse towards Pike’s camp and kept her down to a walk as he approached. The small man with the slight frame and strong eyes looked even more out of his element. On top of his eastern suit he had donned an ankle-length frock coat split up the back to the hips. It was an old coat, once black but now stained to many shades by long miles of travel. Most of his neatly-trimmed red hair was hidden by a derby tilted to a jaunty angle.

  As Edge reached him, the fire caught and he straightened up, turning to treat the half-breed to a friendly smile. The fact that he was looking into the muzzle of a Winchester did not cause his good humor to waver.

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  Edge held his steady, easy gaze for a few seconds, then lowered the rifle and spat. “If you’re making it, I’ll drink it,” he said as he slid out of the saddle. He tossed the bundle of supplies at the feet of the other man. “Use mine,” he invited as he led his horse across to the meager grazing.

  “Plenty of my own,” Pike answered.

  “Glad to know it,” Edge told him as he tethered the mare. “Take care of my needs the rest of the way.”

  The implied threat was ignored by Pike as he delved into his bedroll and drew out a coffee pot. “Only one way to go from here,” he said, heading down to the bank at the meeting point of the streams. “That’s back to Summer,” He Med the pot and came back up the gentle slope. “Whoever told you to come out here gave you a bum steer, mister,”

  He set the pot down at the centre of the glowing brush and squatted beside the fire, watching Edge quizzically as the half-breed unsaddled the mare.

  “I should have cut his throat,” Edge said, then clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Maybe I will.”

  “Dead men tell no tales,” Pike said with a shrug. “But he’s already told me.”

  Edge sat down on the opposite side of the fire and watched Pike pour coffee into the pot “How much did it cost you?” he asked.

  “I did him a favor and he did me one,” Pike answered.

  “Friends that stick together ought to get stuck together,” Edge murmured, fingering the smooth handle of his razor, concealed beneath his long hair.

  Pike dropped the amiable smile now, but his expression slid into neutral as he looked through the drifting smoke at Edge. “Canyon where the army wagons were hit is a good seventy miles from here,” he said. “What made you think you could pick up the trail at this fork?”

  “My business,” Edge answered.

  Pike nodded his acceptance of this, then stood up. Edge tightened his grip on the rifle, but held his easy pose as the small man crossed to his horse. “Heard you ran into Hyman just before he died,” Pike said as he hooked a mug from his bedroll.

  That Day woman and the stableman ought to start a choir,” Edge muttered.

  “She has a sweeter voice,” Pike said with a grin as he returned to his place.

  The aroma of boiling coffee was strong in the clear air.

  Pike picked the pot up with a gloved hand and poured steaming blackness into the mug Edge extended. Edge added a slug of whiskey to his own drink.

  “May I?” Pike asked, holding out his mug.

  Edge shrugged and poured him a shot. “Man in your position ought to have his final request granted,” he said.

  Pike took off his gloves and warmed his hands around the mug. “You’re determined you’re going to kill me?” he asked casually.

  Edge nodded and sipped the scalding coffee. “You need Haven’s reward too much, feller,” he answered. “Maybe as much as I figure I need it. Last time I got close to ten grand I lost out.* (*See: Edge - Ten Thousand Dollars American.) This time it ain’t going to be like that.”

  The Winchester had been resting across Edge’s folded legs. Now, as he sipped the coffee, he used his free hand to move the rifle so that it was aimed through the fire to where Pike was squatting. The small man was also drinking the coffee with one hand. The other was in a deep pocket of his long coat.

  “In cold blood?” Pike asked, showing no sign of apprehension.

  “I’m the lazy type,” Edge answered casually. “Take the easy way every time.”

  Pike shook his head. “I’ll go the easy way, Edge,” he corrected. “You h
it me anywhere vital with a bullet from that Winchester and I’m dead.” He sipped more coffee and smacked his lips. “Now what I’m holding in my left hand is a little old Remington point three-six. I’d have to hit you plumb in the middle of your heart to kill you right off. I’m just not that good with a handgun. Dying won’t come easy for you.”

  Pike moved his hand in the pocket, so that Edge could see he was not bluffing. A revolver was outlined by the material of the long coat. The two men eyed each other steadily through the rising smoke for several long moments. But then the brooding silence of the Badlands was pierced by a sound—the harsh, forced laughter of a woman. By tacit agreement, both men were able to look away, each sure that the other would not fire.

  The smaller man showed surprise as he recognized Elizabeth Day leading her horse down the slope towards the camp, her teeth gleaming in amusement, her red hair sheened by the bright, cold sunlight. Edge gave her a mere glance, then swung his hooded eyes back towards Pike and squeezed the Winchester’s trigger.

  Pike granted and fell to the side, jerking the Remington from his pocket. His expression became a mixture of shock and rage as the gun dropped from his numbed fingers and he looked down at the bloody furrow across the back of his hand. As Elizabeth shouted Edge’s name, Pike rolled, reaching out his good hand for the gun. Edge, still squatting in a relaxed posture, altered the aim of the rifle. A bullet sent the Remington spinning away from Pike’s outstretched fingers.

  “I’m pretty good with a rifle,” the half-breed said softly. “It can be slow for you.”

  “Stop it!” the woman shrieked, closing in on the men at a run. “You’ll kill each other.”

  “Quick on the uptake, ain’t she?” Edge asked Pike.

  Pike got slowly to his feet and used his good hand to doff his hat to the woman. “It has to be one of us, Miss Day,” he said lightly. “Your untimely arrival seems to have given the advantage to him.”

  “Don’t blame the dame,” Edge told him, easing himself upright, careful to keep the rifle aimed at Pike. “Your mistake.”