"Seven," the half-breed murmured, put the bills in the pot and as part of the same movement swung his hand to the side, palm uppermost and fingers splayed, "Kid?" he asked without shifting his now impassive eyes away from the beaded, scowling face of Travis.
The envelope was placed in his hand and he folded his fingers over it and dropped it onto the diminished heap of bills in front of him. Travis pulled a cigar from j a shirt pocket and clamped his teeth to it. He didn't light it. Now all attention was devoted to the card game and the only sounds in the cantina were of Travis's labored breathing and the shuffling footfalls of McCord as the youngster returned to the bar counter.
"Ante up or call, feller," Edge said softly, aware now that the big man's money was all on the table beneath his hands gripping the cards. A thousand dollars, give or take a few, which meant Travis had no alternatives to consider. Although Edge had only a few dollars in front of him, there was no way Travis could be certain this was the extent of his bankroll. So to raise the ante would force him to fold should the half-breed be able to cover and raise.
"Frig it!" Travis snarled, and bit through the cigar so that it fell, unlit, to the floor. "Call."
He pushed seven hundred dollars into the pot to make it worth $3,800. Then he joined everyone else except Edge himself in staring intently at the fan of facedown cards in front of the half-breed.
Edge looked at Travis, smelling the sweat of fear from the man's armpits and crotch as, with one hand, he scratched his right shoulder and used the other to move his five cards into a neat pile.
Then, "Ain't the best poker hand I ever had, feller," he murmured. "Lots can beat it."
He flipped the pile over and spread the cards. A five of diamonds showed first. Then the king of the same suit.
Travis sucked in some fetid air and began to alter his scowl into a grin." A lousy flush is—" he began, then froze.
The five of hearts came into view. Then the five of spades and of clubs.
"Four of a kind, feller," Edge said. "Reckon you got yourself a full house, Travis," Blackburn rasped into the tense silence that followed the half-breed's words.
"Sure enough has to be that," Wogan added. "Only hand that beats a flush but don't top four of a kind."
Travis vented the air which was not released when his rising hopes were dashed. He opened his fingers so that his cards dropped to the table, two queens face up and the other cards hidden. Only then did he move his small eyes up from the winning hand to stare into the lace of the winning man.
'You drew just one, mister," he said slowly and distinctly, as he hooked his fingers over the rim of the table. "Real lucky sonofabitch, ain't you?"
"Man makes his own luck lots of times, feller," Ed replied evenly. "Especially in a poker game."
Travis swung his head to glance toward McCord who swallowed hard, licked his lips and took another swig of beer to empty his glass. When the small, hard eyes of the big man returned to examine Edge's face again, they saw that the half-breed's right hand was still busy scratching his shoulder.
"Even easier to get lucky with some outside help, ain't it? Open your letter, mister."
"Hey, I ain't nothin—" McCord began.
"Shut your mouth, punk!" Travis snarled.
"Beer, Gomez," Blackburn ordered.
"And another here," Wogan added.
Their tones were easy but, on the periphery of his vision, Edge could detect a trace of tension in their expressions and a rigidness in the way they sat on their chairs. He guessed they were open-minded about what was happening and were ready to lunge away from the danger area if there was a risk of getting hurt from trouble which did not concern them. But Travis had triggered a spark of suspicion in the backs of their minds. Edge was certainly the biggest winner and if he had cheated, then it was as much their business as Travis's.
"You're a bad loser, feller," the half-breed said as the Mexican bartender uncapped two bottles and passed them over the counter to Blackburn and Wogan. He shifted his hand and used the nail of a forefinger to scratch his throat just above the dull-colored beads strung on a leather thong around his neck. "Best you shut up your mouth or talk about something else. Either way, it'll just be money you're out."
Travis spat a stream of saliva from the corner of his mouth as Blackburn gave Gomez a dollar bill and said, "I'll buy."
"Need to know there's a letter in there, damnit!" the| scar-faced man snarled.
He was left-handed. So it was his right which came up from the rim of the table and shot to the side, fingers clawed to snatch for the envelope in front of Edge, as the other one moved out of sight at the same speed.
Blackburn and Wogan had been careful to take the bottles in their left hands so that their rights were free to swing down and drape the jutting butts of their hollered Colts.
Edge's left hand had closed over the right wrist of Travis by then, holding it hard to the table over the letter among the money. His right was concealed for part of a second by the long hair at the nape of his neck. When it came into sight again it was fisted around the wooden handle of a straight razor. "Gee!" McCord gasped.
Travis grunted as his attempt to rise was foiled by the strength with which the half-breed held his wrist trapped to the table. His chair tipped over backwards and his Remington came clear of the holster. But not before the long right arm of Edge had swung out across the table and started to arc back.
The Remington was above the table top, cocked but not leveled at the intended target.
Blackburn remained tensely in his chair. But Wogan went sideways out of his, lunging from the line of fire to come up hard against the front of the bar counter.
The honed blade of the razor sliced into the thin covering of flesh on the bone to the side of Travis's left eye. Both his eyes were closed in an involuntary blink as the half-breed's fist threatened them.
Off the bone, the blade dug deeper through the lid and into the ball. Travis screamed and half turned to put his back to Edge, but he could not jerk his wrist free. His gun exploded and the bills in the center of the table twitched and fluttered under the impact and in the slipstream of the bullet which cracked through them before thudding into the wall.
The blade cut a shallower furrow across the bridge of the nose, then sank deep again into the right eye.
"Madre de Dios!" Gomez gasped as he saw the curtain of blood flood down over the fleshy cheeks of the big man.
The gun slipped from Travis's hand as Edge released his other wrist. The razor came clear of the flesh and the big man staggered away, raising both hands to h face and dragging his fingers through the warm stickiness of spilled blood. He screamed again, crashed into his overturned chair and pitched to the floor.
Edge used a dollar bill with a hole in it from the pot to wipe the blood from the blade before he replaced the razor in the leather pouch held at the nape of his neck by the beaded thong.
"You blinded me, you bastard!" Travis shrieked as he rolled onto his back, blood oozing through cracks in his fingers held to his face.
Blackburn and Wogan were as impassive as the half-breed and like him ignored the man on the floor to look down at the unopened letter.
Neither the gunshot nor the screams and desperate shouts of Travis had drawn an audience to the front of the Oro Blanco Cantina. For people who lived in town like Paraiso were quick to learn that curiosity did not kill only cats.
"If you draw and aim those guns, use them," Edge said to the skinny Wogan and the good-looking Blackburn who continued to hold their right hands draped over holstered Colt butts. "Always try to warn people how I feel about having a gun pointed at me."
Neither man moved nor spoke for a stretched second. Then Blackburn raised the bottle to his lips and sucked beer from the neck as Edge picked up the envelope and used a forefinger to tear it open.
"Them guys told me there was a letter inside, mister," McCord said huskily.
"Somebody help me," Travis pleaded.
"Nob
ody's got eyes for you," Blackburn answered gazing like Wogan, McCord, Gomez and Edge at the twice-folded piece of paper which came out of the envelope.
On the paper was a short, unpunctuated, badly spelled message which took the half-breed only a few seconds to read. He scanned it without expression, against a background of low moans of misery from Travis. Then he turned the letter upside down and placed it on the table so that the seated Blackburn and Wogan, standing beside him, could read it.
"The fellers that gave you the letter told you to bring t to Paraiso, kid?" the half-breed asked.
"Sure, mister. In a hick village down near Mesa del Huracan close to the Sonora-Chihuahua line. Give me he twenty-five bucks and said they'd heard you was stayin' here. If you wasn't, I was to forget it. Unless I wanted to take the trouble to find you and get my hundred bucks."
"Obliged, kid," Edge said, reaching out with both hands to draw in the letter and all the money in the pot except for two fifty-dollar bills.
"You got yourself hurt for no good reason, Travis, you crazy bastard!" Blackburn growled. "The letter's on the level and I figure the game always was, too."
Edge put the letter back in the envelope and the envelope into a shirt pocket. Then he stacked the money, rolled it and pushed it into a hip pocket.
Travis continued to groan as the flow of blood from his sliced eyeballs ceased. McCord looked eager to pick up his money and leave, but seemed nervously reluctant to approach the table yet. Gomez watched with disappointment as Blackburn and Wogan took their cue from Edge and put away their money.
"I never seen nothin' like that before," Blackburn said with admiration in his eyes and voice as Edge got to his feet.
"Me neither, that's for sure," Wogan added, shaking his head slowly. "For a man to carry a razor as a weapon like that. And use it the way you do. It's amazin’. "
"Sure is. And as cold as ice too." This from Blackburn as Edge dug the makings from the second pocket in his shirt and began to roll a cigarette. "You're an amazin’ man, Edge, or Hedges, or whatever the hell your name is."
"Shit on that, you sonsofbitches!" Travis snared and screamed as he pulled his hands away from his face and the blood, congealing fast in the heat, tore at edges of his wound. "The bastard blinded me!"
"Explains why you can't see things from our point view!" Blackburn snapped, and cackled with laughter.
"Hedges or Edge," the half-breed growled as he moved toward the door which gave onto the cantina’s back rooms. "I'm just an ordinary kind of feller. Object to being accused of something I didn't do, is all."
"Frig you, what about me!" Travis shrieked.
Edge kicked the door fully open. "You, feller? You're outta sight."
The Drummer
This interlude in the life of Josiah C. Hedges took place before the War Between the States started; i.e. in terms of the Edge series of books it fits into chronological order ahead of the first-war-flashback title Killer's Breed.
IT was early evening with the light failing and the heat of the August day almost exhausted. The two Hedges boys walked back across the fallow field after fixing the western boundary fence.
Josiah was the elder of the two by twelve years. A tall, lean, strong-looking twenty-three-year-old with clear blue eyes and long black hair, Josiah had to keep his stride unnaturally short in order that his kid brother could stay alongside him.
Had Jamie been able-bodied, there would have been no trouble in matching the pace of his elder brother for he was tall for his age—only three inches shorter than the six-foot-three frame of Josiah. But Jamie was lame in the right leg and, although he could walk without a stick, it was necessary for him to use both hands to lift and swing forward his crippled limb at each step.
He was a sandy-haired, fresh-faced, good-looking youngster, his skin freckled rather than tanned by the summer sun of central Iowa.
"We done good today, didn't we, Joe?" Jamie said as they neared the small frame house with the bigger storage barn beside it, the buildings enclosed by a neat white picket fence.
Beyond the fence to the south was a corral containing six grazing horses. Further south, and to the north and west of the house and barn were fields of ripening wheat. Eastwards, beyond the live oak which grew the front yard of the house, the prairie extended into seeming infinity with only a wagon-wide trail to mar it otherwise virgin appearance.
"Did good, Jamie," the elder brother corrected as he peered out through the gathering dusk along the trail; where he thought he had seen something moving. "Or did well would be better."
The youngster grimaced. "A little slip like that don't . . . doesn't mean I have to do more than the hour with the books tonight, does it?"
A dog barked, then came scampering around from the front yard. A small black-and-white mongrel named Patch who did a skidding turn and forced himself between the two brothers for the final few yards to the house.
"Just the usual hour, I guess," Josiah allowed. "But that's even if the company decides to stay."
"Company, Joe?" Jamie looked in the same direction as his brother and spotted the covered wagon that was lumbering in on the trail, still more than a mile distant. He grinned broadly. "Hey, be nice to see some folks, won't it?" He stooped to ruffle the fur between the dog's ears. "Company's coming, Patch."
"Stoke the fire and put some coffee on," Josiah instructed, not sharing the enthusiasm of Jamie and the tail-wagging dog. "Then get washed up."
"Sure, Joe."
While the younger Hedges went into the single-storey house which, moments later, shafted the light of a kerosene lamp through the open doorway and two flanking windows, Josiah crossed the yard to enter the barn where he stored the two hammers, pliers, bag of nails and what was left of the coil of wire after the boundary-fence repairs.
The frown which had settled on his face when he first saw the approaching wagon was still firmly fixed in place when he emerged from the barn. And he directed constant suspicious glances out along the trail as he went toward the house.
He was by nature a cautious young man, never willing to accept anything or anyone at face value. It was a trait of character inherited, like the ice blueness of his eyes, from a Swedish mother. Whereas Jamie, who showed not a single physical clue that there was Latin blood in his veins, was as easy-going and trusting as their Mexican father.
"They close enough yet to recognize?" the excited Jamie asked as he came out of the coffee-smelling kitchen, his face clean and toweling his hands dry.
"Nobody from town has reason to visit us," Josiah answered pensively as he moved into the kitchen to wash up and did no more than glance surreptitiously at the Starr rifle which was lodged on brackets above the fireplace in the spartanly furnished parlor.
"Me and Patch'll go out and be ready to welcome them, Joe."
"You'll stay in the house!" the elder brother ordered from the kitchen. Then took the harshness from his tone. "Set the table, uh? I don't know for how many yet."
As he washed the dirt and sweat from his face, Josiah realized he needed a shave. But there was no time. No time, either, for Jamie and he to change out of their denim dungarees and work-stained boots and check shirts.
When he came out of the kitchen, he could hear the slow clop of hooves and turning wheels on the trail which stretched eight miles from town and dead-ended at the Hedges farmstead. Jamie was standing in the doorway, Patch sitting beside him.
''Strangers, Joe," the boy reported. "Man and a lady. Citified. Selling something, I bet you."
Jamie did not turn around, so was unaware that his brother went to the sideboard, eased open a drawer and took out one of a pair of Colt Little Dragoon revolvers. A gun small enough to slide into a pocket of his dungarees.
"Evenin' to you, son," a man with a raucous voice called as the wagon came to a halt. "Your pa about?"
Josiah showed himself at the doorway, right hand in his pocket and fisted around the butt of the gun.
"Oh, there you are, sir," the
newcomer said as h began to climb down from the wagon seat.
He could see the Hedges boys only in silhouette against the kerosene lamp light, for the moon had not yet made much impression on the gloom of dusk. This light shone brightly on the white-painted fence and reached far enough beyond for the unsmiling elder brother to receive a general impression of the wagon driver and the passenger he was helping down to the ground outside the gate.
The man was in his fifties, about two inches under six-foot tall and heavily built, with excess flesh rather than muscular development. He had a round, dark-toned face and wore eyeglasses, the lenses of which sparkled in the fringes of light from the house. His garb was city-style—a pale-colored suit, a vest with a watch chain across the front, a black string tie and derby hat. And his shoes were black and white.
"We're brothers," Josiah corrected as the man ushered the woman toward the gate, ahead of where the two team horses stood quietly in their traces.
"Ah, the Hedges," the man answered with a vigorous nodding of his head as he reached the gate. "May we?"
"Come on in. Coffee pot's on the stove."
"Many thanks, young sir. I'm Jordan Krantz and this here is my daughter. Dawn. We are most pleased to make your acquaintance. Josiah and James, is it not? Unless we were misinformed in your local town."
Dawn was a girl rather than a woman. As tall as her father, but much thinner, with the merest suggestions of feminine curves at her hips and breasts, even though the plain white dress she wore fitted snugly from high neckline to narrow waist. She was seventeen or eighteen at the most, with black hair cut short and dark eyes that were somehow too large for her small, pale face.
As the newcomers came closer to the light source,
Josiah saw that Jordan Krantz's face was colored red and blue, similar to that of many of the barflies who frequented the town saloon. Dawn's complexion was marred by red and black spots on her chin and to each side of her nose.
"You got told right, sir," Jamie said. "But I like to be called Jamie."
EDGE: A Ride In The Sun (Edge series Book 34) Page 2
