The Living, the Dying, and the Dead
Page 1
The Most Violent Westerns in Print
The Living, the Dying and the Dead
George G. Gilman
COLD EDGE
More than five minutes passed before Edge spoke.
“Not much in this world I give a damn about. My own life. The job I’m being paid to do. The memory of my wife. That’s why what happened back there happened. And we didn’t steal the wagon and team. Lockwood’s got three new horses, all of them better than these two. And the hundred bucks the Japanese put up for the ambush will more than pay for a new wagon.”
There was no response to this and when he glanced over his shoulder again he saw that the old man was sleeping—a dying man wedged against the side of the crate containing the casket in which lay the dead body of his wife. The living man up on the seat faced forward again and began to study the surrounding plains country, looking for any danger lurking within range of the slow wagon. Edge had to occupy his mind with something—to keep out of his thoughts an insistent demand to consider who aboard the flatbed was the most fortunate. The living, the dying or the dead?
WARNING
This story is not for the faint-hearted reader.
#1 THE LONER
#2 TEN GRAND
#3 APACHE DEATH
#4 KILLER’S BREED
#5 BLOOD ON SILVER
#6 REDRIVER
#7 CALIFORNIA HIT
#8 HELL’S SEVEN
#9 BLOODY SUMMER
#10 BLACK VENGEANCE
#11 SIOUX UPRISING
#12 DEATH’S BOUNTY
#13 THE HATED
#14 TIGER’S GOLD
#15 PARADISE LOSES
#16 THE FINAL SHOT
#17 VENGEANCE VALLEY
#18 TEN TOMBSTONES
#19 ASHES AND DUST
#20 SULLIVAN’S LAW
#21 RHAPSODY IN RED
#22 SLAUGHTER ROAD
#23 ECHOES OF WAR
#24 SLAUGHTERDAY
#25 VIOLENCE TRAIL
#26 SAVAGE DAWN
#27 DEATH DRIVE
#28 EVE OF EVIL
#29 THE LIVING, THE DYING AND THE DEAD
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Best-Selling Series!
Most Violent Westerns in Print
The Living,The Dying and The Dead
George G. Gilman
PINNACLE BOOKS • LOS ANGELES
First published in Great Britain by New English Library Ltd. 1978
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
EDGE #29:
THE LIVING, THE DYING AND THE DEAD
Copyright © 1978 by George G. Gilman
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Pinnacle Books edition, published by special arrangement with New English Library Ltd.
First printing, February 1979
ISBN: 0-523-40502-2
Cover illustration by Bruce Minney
Printed in the United States of America
PINNACLE BOOKS, INC.
2029 Century Park East Los Angeles, California 90067
THE LIVING, THE DYING AND THE DEAD
Chapter One
THE SKY above Denver had been clear for three weeks but the city and surrounding country still showed evidence of the blizzard which had swept down the Rockies from Montana in the north to the Colorado border with New Mexico Territory in the south. A partial thaw had melted most of die snow where it had simply settled and lain dormant in sheltered areas. Rut where the wind had swirled and drifted the flakes it was still piled high and was crusted by the frost which ended the thaw, seemed set to maintain its grip on the eastern slopes of the Continental Divide until spring came.
One part of the city completely free from snow, although overlaid like everywhere else by a sun-sparkling carpet of frost crystals, was the Union Pacific railroad depot. Rut only one train had moved out and none had rolled into the depot since the blizzard hit central Colorado. And although it was close to noon there was very little activity around the lines of stalled cars, the locomotives with cold fireboxes and the buildings which flanked the rails.
A brakeman was checking the couplings on a line of freight cars loaded with iron girders. An engineer was polishing the brass levers in the cabin of his locomotive. A group of heavily coated men stamped their feet and blew into their cupped hands as they peered out along the twin tracks that stretched eastward from the depot. Three colorfully dressed Orientals emerged from the dispatchers office and moved along a line of boxcars. The man called Edge dropped a half-smoked cigarette and heeled it to shreds into the frosty ground. An old man spat his disgust at this waste of good tobacco.
“Hey, misterl You told me I could have all the butts you were through with!” The old-timers'frown cut deeper lines into his face and his voice was high with whining disappointment.
The much taller and younger Edge glanced at his complaining companion and nodded absently. Then, as he returned his attention to the Orientals he unfastened the top two buttons of his black leather coat and reached inside. He drew the makings from his shirt pocket and handed them to the abruptly surprised older man.
“Here”
“What?”
“Roll yourself a smoke, feller.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Just the one. Never break my word. Might consider another man’s arm if he stole from me.”
The dirty, unshaven and rancid-smelling oldster looked briefly up at the profile of his benefactor and realized that what he had just heard was no idle threat. He thought momentarily of giving back the tobacco and papers. But he needed a cigarette more than ever now.
“I’ll be inside, mister. Too damn cold out here.”
“I won’t miss you until I need another smoke, feller.”
They were standing in front of the open doorway of a small shack on the south side of the depot. It was warm inside, the heat generated by a small stove in a comer. A long table ran down the center of the shack, flanked by eighteen chairs. Edge, who continued to watch the Orientals moving along the train of boxcars, and the old man who sat down on the chair nearest the stove were all that was left of the eighteen-man snow-clearance crew which had been hired by the day to help the regular depot employees. They had been laid off a week ago and were at the depot today because the word was that it was hoped to clear the eastbound track, and both intended to leave Denver on the first available train. They had chosen to wait in the familiar surroundings of the shed rather than the main depot building because a great many other people were anxious to leave the city and neither man liked crowds.
“Here you are, mister. Thanks.”
The tobacco poke was thrust into Edge’s unexpectant right hand.
“Obliged,” he said, replacing it in his shirt pocket and rebuttoning his coat without shifting his gaze from the trio of Japanese as they halted beside a car about midway between the locomotive and caboose. “You know them guys?”
“Seen them a couple of times.”
“Fancy dressers, ain’t they?”
With a cigarette to smoke the old man was content again to stand outside in the bright, cold sunlight beside the preoccupied Edge.
On the two previous occasions Edge had seen the men they had been astride powerful stallions, saddled Westem-style.
“Friends of yours, mister?”
“Helped me out of a tight spot once.”
There had been nothing furtive about the way the men approached the train and located a particular boxcar. But in cracking open the door and climbing aboard they were cautiously watchful, confident of their right to be where they were but prepared to deal with objectors. Only Edge and the old-timer were in a position to see what they were doing and for stretched seconds Oriental and Occidental eyes locked. Three pairs of almond-shaped eyes set in the yellow-tinged skin of faces which had been weathered by some fifty years of living—faces decorated with thin, drooping, waxed moustaches. One pair of gray, squinting eyes that had seen more than seventy years of life. Looking out of a pale, loose-skinned face, grimed by many days of dirt and stubbled with a week’s bristles. And one pair of the lightest blue, slitted narrower than those of the Japanese.
These were the eyes of Edge, their coloration inherited from his Scandinavian mother. At odds with most other features of his face which were drawn from the bloodline of his Mexican father. It was a leanly sculptured face, basically handsome but with an indefinable set—no matter what expression the man wore— which caused many who looked at him to regard it as ugly. The skin, drawn taut between high cheekbones and firm, slightly thrusting jaw, was stained dark by heritage and exposure to the elements. And was scored by more and deeper lines than were merited by the mere passing of close to forty years. The nose was hawk-like and the mouth was comprised of wide, thin lips traced along the top and down at each side by a moustache that emphasized the half-breed’s Mexican origins. Also very Mexican was the jet-blackness of his thick-growing hair, which he wore long enough to brush his shoulders.
It was a face in which many of the lines cutting away from the eyes and mouth told of past suffering. While the cold glint in the hooded eyes and the set of the mouth warned of the cruel streak which the man had developed as a result of his experiences. A face which seldom smiled, unless with bitter humor, and which could strike icy fear into the heart of anyone who had offended the man called Edge.
His frame was built on the same lean lines as his face for although he weighed in the region of two hundred pounds, the dark-toned flesh was firmly moulded to the bones.
He was clothed in a low-crowned gray Stetson, a black leather jacket over a gray shirt, black pants and black, spurless riding boots. Around his waist was a worse-for-wear gunbelt with a tied-down holster on the right His jacket was rucked up on that side, to allow him access to the Remington revolver which jutted from the holster. A straight razor, which was as deadly a weapon as the gun, was concealed in a leather pouch which hung down tmder his shirt from the nape of his neck, held in place by a beaded leather thong worn beneath his gray kerchief.
He inclined his head slightly and briefly, as a sign of recognition rather than friendliness, when one of the Japanese did a double-take toward him and gestured for the other two to do the same. This was the only clue that the recognition was mutual before the door of the boxcar was slid almost closed.
“Hey, them guys don’t look like they need to ride freight trains,” the old-timer growled.
“You work for the railroad anymore, feller?”
“You know I don’t”
“So it’s none of your business.”
The filthy, unshaven face showed a pained expression. “Just maldn talk is all, mister. Anyways, you been eye-ballin’ them as much as I have.”
“That’s none of your business either.”
“Pardon me for friggin’ livin’l” the old man snarled, and drew a final iota of satisfaction from the last shreds of tobacco before he abandoned the tiny butt to the frosty ground.
“Granted,” Edge answered, his cold blue eyes shifting in their slitted lids to locate a wagon as it rolled into the depot between a pair of gates.
“You ain’t the easiest guy in the world to get along with, are you?”
The half-breed pursed his lips and sighed softly. "We shoveled some snow together, feller. That doesn’t have to make us bosom buddies, does it?”
“You don’t want me around, is that it?”
“You any use to me?”
The old man expressed injured pride, then scorn and, finally, pity. Edge saw none of these facial changes for he continued to watch the slow moving wagon as it was steered over a series of timber-track crossings and then along the side of the line of boxcars. It was an enclosed market-wagon pulled by two black horses and driven by a hard-eyed young man in his early twenties. There was tension in the way he sat the wagon seat and suspicion in the way he tried to keep watch on every part of the depot at once.
“If you live to be as old as me, maybe you’ll learn it don’t do a guy no harm to have friends, mister!”
The pity was gone by the time Edge glanced again at the old-timer, to be replaced by disappointment.
“You seemed like a right guy to me. My mistake.” “Yeah, feller,” the half-breed said to the stoopshouldered back of the old man as he started away from the shack toward the group of railroad men waiting at the start of the eastbound trade. “You’re right. I’m wrong.”
Then Edge moved away from the doorway and began to step over rails and ties, on a catty-cornered course toward the boxcar in which the Japanese were concealed. He knew, without being able to see than, that the Orientals were watching his advance. Perhaps as intently as the hard-eyed young man driving the enclosed wagon. The half-breed halted, one track away from the almost-closed door of the boxcar, and waited for the wagon to roll past him and come to a stop, its rear level with one side of the door.
“We don’t need no help,” the driver growled, remaining in his seat as he leaned to the side and looked back. “And all the paperwork’s been done if that’s what bothers you.”
“Who’s we, feller?” Edge asked evenly.
The wagon had a tailgate with double doors above. The latch was raised from the inside and the doors folded open gently, pushed by the hands of a man slightly older than the driver. He was dressed in the same city style as the man up front—gray derby, dark blue suit and white shirt with a black bow tie at the collar. In one of his hands he held a double-barreled shotgun. The sound of the driver climbing down off the wagon caught Edge’s attention and he saw that the younger man was now carrying a similar gun. When the half-breed shifted his eyes back to the man in the rear of the vehicle, he saw that this one now held his gun in both hands. Neither weapon was aimed at Edge. But two pairs of dark eyes in pale faces warned that the situation could quickly alter. “Him and me,” the man in the rear answered.
Edge nodded stoically. “The fellers in the boxcar out-number you, but I figure those shotguns even the odds.”
The driver had reached the back of the wagon. So that both were in a position to snap their heads around and swing their guns, to aim at die door of the boxcar as it was rolled open.
“We wish not to kill nor to die.”
“Just to have back what is ours.”
“You are innocents who have been duped.”
The trio of Japanese stood in a line in the open doorway of the car. Their round, sallow-complexioned faces were expressionless and their arms were akimbo, hands far away from the hilts of the swords and butts of the Colts.
“Hold it, Lukel” the man in the rear of the wagon snapped.
“I am, Brad. But damnit, I almost let them have both barrels.”
The centrally placed Japanese in the line shifted h
is attention to Edge who continued to stand with surface casualness on the far side of the sun-glinting rails. “Unless you have hidden motive, we are all indebted to you, sir. We did not think the casket would be so heavily guarded. Your warning has saved lives.”
“It’s a trick!” Luke snarled. “Cover the tall guy, Brad!”
Edge drew the Remington in a shockingly fast series of movements, all of them linked smoothly together. His right hand reached for the butt and slid the gun from the holster. The hammer was cocked before the barrel was clear of the leather. And the muzzle was trained on Brad’s narrow back before the young man had swung his head.
There was still a veneer of the casual about the half-breed’s stance. But his gaze was as rock-steady and as threatening as the revolver in his brownskinned fist The blue slivers of his slitted eyes seemed impossibly cold, perhaps inhuman. And the total lack of emotion in them acted to freeze Brad where he stood, with just his head turned to look back over his left shoulder. The man opened his mouth to speak, but Edge’s voice sounded first
‘Tm not in the business of saving lives,” he said evenly, and saw Luke chance a fast, anxious glance at him before returning his attention to the unmoving, implacable Japanese. “But words cost me nothing. Anyone points a gun at me better squeeze the trigger right off. Or I’ll kill him, sooner or later.”
The warning given, he pushed the Remington back into the holster. As smoothly as he had drawn it, but much more slowly.
Brad kept his mouth open for long enough to draw in a deep breath. The fresh, bitingly cold air in his lungs did little to dispel the fear which had gripped him when he found his eyes locked with those of Edge.
“Just what is your business here?” Luke asked tensely, guessing from the sounds behind him and Brad’s reactions that the revolver was back in the holster.
“It’s finished now,” the half-breed answered. “A favor s been returned. Never like to feel beholden to people.”
Two of the Japanese were as puzzled as Luke and Brad. But the one in the center, who had the scar tissue of an old knife wound along his right jaw line, gave a curt nod of understanding.
“We saved your life far to the north of here. You consider you have saved ours, sir.”