EDGE: Montana Melodrama Read online

  Table of Contents

  Smooth Edge

  Credits

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  SMOOTH EDGE

  The Campbell gang are ruthless profes­sionals—looting, burning, stealing when­ever it's convenient, and staying out of reach of the law, slippery as eels. But the Campbells make a big mistake when they cross Edge's path, trying to double deal him before heading off to hide in the hills.

  But Edge will find them when no one else can. Here's one man not frightened to pull a gun on a band of vicious outlaws, espe­cially when there's a stash of cash at stake. . .

  For:

  N. D-H.

  who supplies the finished goods.

  Chapter One

  …that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all. And thus the native hue of resolution. Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. And enterprises of great pith and moment. With this reward, their currents turn awry. And lose the name of action.

  Hamilton Linn bellowed as he completed his bass-voice rendering of the soliloquy from Ham­let. For several seconds he stood at the front of the stage in a corner of the Lone Pine Saloon rigid with emotion, hands clasped to his chest and head bowed. His audience, the great majority of whom were spellbound by his histrionics, waited for him to continue—or for the more knowledge­able among their ranks to signal the fact that the costumed actor had finished saying his piece. Fi­nally a frail-looking woman of about sixty who was seated in the front row of the makeshift the­ater rose to her feet and began to applaud with frenzied excitement.

  Meanwhile, out in the chill, moonlit night, a line of six men rode their horses with muffled hooves along the northwest trail that turned into the end of one of the town's two streets. The men were dressed in dark topcoats and wide-brimmed hats that cast thick shadows over their faces. They rode without haste, the skirts of their long coats pulled aside to reveal their hands draped over the butts of holstered revolvers.

  In the saloon the actor raised his head and looked at the woman with a wistful expression, as if her noisy enthusiasm had roused him from a reverie that had carried his imagination far away from the confines of this crudely furnished saloon in the Montana lumber town of Ridgeville. Be­hind him the six other members of the Linn Play­ers sat in a row of chairs, awaiting their turn to perform and surveying the crowded saloon with varying degrees of anxiety. Soon they were beam­ing as expansively as Linn as other members of the audience rose to join the thin woman in giv­ing the actor a standing ovation.

  A group of men at the bar along the rear wall of the saloon turned from watching Linn to retrieve their glasses from the countertop. Several contributed to the noisy enthusiasm for the open­ing performance of the evening. They returned to their whiskey with a gleeful awareness of the en­vious glances directed at them by the men in the audience proper.

  Diagonally across the street from the noise-filled saloon, the riders reined their mounts to a halt outside the lighted window of the bank and swung out of their saddles. Each man removed the muffles from the hooves of his horse. Then one man gathered the reins of all the animals while the other five drew their revolvers and stepped up to the sidewalk in front of the bank. The door was closed but not locked. One of the gunmen swung it open and stepped across the threshold. As the light of a lamp briefly chased away the shadow of his hat brim one could see that he was wearing a personable smile—unlike the quartet who flanked him, two at either side. Their faces grim, they sur­veyed the trio of shocked employees, who were working late at the bank—two men and one woman . . . and a pile of bills they were divid­ing into smaller heaps.

  Whether they stood at the bar or were seated on the rows of chairs arranged in lengthening arcs before the platform the men inside the saloon on this unusual evening were mostly of one sort: big, muscular men with weather-beaten features and rough hands who worked in the lumber business. Yet this evening, clothes divided them into two groups—the ones at the bar in workshirts, pants, and boots: the ones sitting down in their Sunday best suits. As the audience started to sit down again a scattering of storekeepers and clerks could also be seen—less well built and paler-skinned men, who were not so obviously uncomfortable as the lumbermen in their suits, collars, and neckties. Some members of this group were unable to conceal the way they coveted the beer and whiskey in the glasses of the men at the bar, who were not accompanied by wives, sweethearts, or mothers dressed in their finest gowns.

  Up on the platform, Hamilton Linn enjoyed ev­ery moment of the ovation and made no notion to end it until even his most appreciative admirer began to flag. Then at last he held up both hands to request silence.

  "Good people of this fine town of Ridgeville," he boomed, "from the bottom of my heart I thank you. I and my company of players have appeared on the hallowed boards of some of the greatest theatrical stages of the country. But I cannot re­call an occasion when we were received with such warmth and regard. We feel very humble."

  He paused, as if expecting a response. When it did not come, he continued, a little reluctantly perhaps, since what he was saying meant he had to surrender the center stage. "And now, good ladies and gentlemen, as a further prelude . . . to the week of full-length dramas we intend to perform before you in the meeting hall, may I present Miss Elizabeth Miles, who will regale you, in her inimitable style, with the balcony speech from the Bard's Romeo and Juliet. Miss Miles."

  The two kerosene lamps that hung immediately above the front of the platform were shaded by a beam so that only a fringe of their light reached the row of seated performers at the rear. Thus, the actress could not be seen clearly until she rose and advanced out of the shadows. As she emerged into view, the smattering of polite ap­plause that had greeted her introduction abruptly swelled, whistles and raucous shouts supplement­ing the hand-clapping.

  The man who held the horses outside the bank wrenched his head around to stare across the street at the sudden burst of noise from the saloon. Then he returned his attention to the open doorway of the bank.

  "Anyone makes a sound, this’ll stop it," the smiling man said evenly, waving his Frontier Colt "And ain't one of you people’ll be around to see if you saved the money from us."

  "On account of you'll all be dead!" the young­est of the grim-faced gunmen snarled softly.

  "We ain't so stupid as we seem to be, kid," growled one of the late-night workers, who hap­pened to be wearing a lawman's badge on his vest. "We know what your boss means."

  "But do you men know what you're getting into?" asked the woman, a thin, middle-aged creature in spectacles.

  "Yes, ma'am," the smiling man answered as two others holstered their revolvers and took large sacks from their coat pockets. "We're gettin' into the rich life."

  Several women in the audience in the Lone Pine Saloon frowned at their menfolk. They knew that the men were applauding the actress for the wrong reason. Because Elizabeth Miles was a tall blond in her mid-twenties with an aristocratic beauty and a fine figure. In her striking green dress, which revealed the upper swells of her pow­dered breasts and tightly hugged and supported the lower halves, it was inevitable that every red-blooded man in the saloon—where culture was a word few knew the meaning of—should be more interested in the young woman's natural endow­ments than in the lines she
now started to deliver.

  Not least of her admirers was a stranger in town who was among those grouped at the bar.

  At a lean six feet three inches tall and weighing in the region of two hundred pounds, he might well have been taken for a logger at first glance, though he was not so employed. He had features that would by some be regarded as handsome and by others as ugly—piercing light blue eyes un­der hooded lids, a hawk-like nose, and a narrow mouth that had a somewhat cruel set to it. His skin, stretched taut across his brow and between his high cheekbones and firm jawline, was of a darker hue than any other man's in the saloon—and was inscribed with more and deeper lines than was usual for somebody not yet forty years of age.

  This face was framed by jet-black hair that was long enough to brush his shoulders and veil the nape of his neck. Though he had recently shaved, an arc of bristles as black as his hair curved away from his flared nostrils and down at either side of his mouth as if to emphasize the fact that a large proportion of Latin blood flowed in his veins.

  His garb was entirely of the American West, from the gray Stetson to the spurless riding boots. He wore a dark-hued shirt and no kerchief, so that a row of dull-colored beads could be seen at the base of his throat where the top button of his shirt was unfastened. Despite these beads, he did not seem to be the kind of man who favored orna­mentation for its own sake. And certainly the revolver, which jutted from the tied-down holster on the right side of his plain gunbelt, was a stan­dard Frontier Colt with no fancy scrollwork on the butt, cylinder, or barrel.

  The fact that he was the only man in the saloon wearing a gun set him apart from the others. His stance and the way he surveyed his surroundings through permanently narrowed lids were more subtle indications that he was not a part of the lumbermen, clerks, and storekeepers, all of whom were watching without listening to the beautiful young actress up on the brightly lit area of the platform.

  The stranger's name was Edge.

  Across the street from the saloon, a man emerged from the bank, gun still drawn. He gave the one holding the horses a thumbs-up sign that all was well inside. The lookout on the street could not control a giggle of relief.

  In the bank, the lawman muttered: "The Campbells oughta know better than to allow this."

  "Who the hell are the Campbells?" a gunman countered.

  "We came here for money, not friggin' conver­sation!" another rasped uneasily.

  Inside the saloon Edge watched the show, his face revealing nothing of what he thought of it. There were many men like Edge in the territory west of the Mississippi, south of Canada, and north of Mexico. Men who invariably stood out in a crowd because it was not in their natures to be as one with others. Drifting loners who rode wherever the trail led and were never totally at ease, even out under the big sky, but who were most suspicious of their surroundings when the trail brought them into a community where the local citizens viewed them as unwelcome in­truders who were not to be trusted. A threat, not by their deeds but simply by their presence, to their conventional and well-ordered lives.

  So it was that intruders like Edge had been taught by the experiences of many dangerous years to trust nothing and nobody. Taught to be on their guard against losing their lives—not sim­ply their life-styles. Indeed, to lose the latter might seem to them to be worse than dying.

  Elizabeth Miles completed her contribution to the evening's entertainment and accepted the ap­plause with smiling gratitude—aware though she was that the more raucous elements were express­ing their appreciation of her appearance rather than her performance. She was obviously accus­tomed to being employed by Hamilton Linn to in­ject the spice of sex into highbrow drama on those occasions when the attention of the audience was likely to wander.

  "Wow, that is some woman," growled a barrel-chested man at the bar as Linn rose and ad­vanced to the front of the stage. The actress backed to her seat with just the trace of a scowl at the costumed man for stealing the limelight too soon. "Be real happy to give her a part in the kinda long-runnin' play I got in mind."

  A short and skinny bartender with red hair vented a short laugh and retorted: "With a woman like that, Chapman, I reckon you wouldn't be able to perform more than one act before it was curtains for you! What do you say, stranger?"

  Edge pushed his empty glass across the counter-top and replied evenly: "Another beer is all, feller."

  "Sure thing."

  Chapman muttered, "Wish she was," and swal­lowed what was left of the liquor in his shot glass as the bartender began to draw Edge's beer and Hamilton Linn started to intone: "On behalf of Miss Miles, I thank ..."

  All the gunmen were out of the bank now and in the process of mounting their horses—four with guns still drawn while two toted bulky sacks. None of them spoke until the closed door of the bank was wrenched open and the lawman lunged over the threshold, a double-barrel shotgun thrust out in front of him.

  "Watch it, you guys!"

  "I'll teach the friggin' Campbells!"

  The lawman squeezed the two triggers of the shotgun as a man behind him shrieked, "It's not loaded, Bart!"

  Four of the men already astride their horses fired shots to cover those who were not yet mounted. And the lawman staggered and sprawl­ed across the sidewalk, bloodstains blossoming around two holes in his chest.

  The other two shots found a different target—the dread-filled face of the man who had appeared in the doorway to warn the lawman that the shotgun was empty. The impact of the bullets slammed his head against the doorframe, then his legs bent and he pitched forward, slumping over the corpse of the lawman.

  The bespectacled woman was screaming her terror and grief by then. The two emotions contorted her face as she stumbled out of the bank and made to crouch beside the stricken men. But she was forced upright and then sent sprawling backward across the threshold as four bullets drilled into her chest and head … to curtail her screaming.

  Guns were holstered as smoke drifted. The riders turned their horses and then kicked them into a headlong gallop back along the street. Ooz­ing blood stained clothing or trickled across the flesh of faces set in agonized death masks.

  In the saloon, the man on the platform de­manded, "What on earth was that?"

  Only the first word was clearly audible above the hoofbeats as the riders raced their mounts away from the area of the saloon. And only few heard the man complete the query through the din that erupted inside the Lone Pine. The din of raised voices, heavy footfalls hitting the floor, and chairs toppling over. The audience was lost to the Linn Players, as they hurried to witness the real-life drama that was being enacted out on the street.

  The bartender was in the thick of the mass ex­odus, leaving Edge's beer mug only half-filled un­der the tap. So Edge had to lean across the countertop to finish the chore for himself. He put some coins on the bar to pay for the drink and carried it through the almost empty saloon toward the batwing doors that were still flapping.

  "Sir?" Linn called from the platform where he stood with arms outstretched, to keep the two women and four men of his theatrical company from following the local citizens.

  "Yeah, feller?"

  "In some of the Kansas cattle towns we have played, it was quite common for the more youthful drovers to explode guns on the street as a means of releasing their exuberance?"

  "Didn't sound to me like everybody was having fun out there," Edge replied and pushed out through the door.

  Linn started to tell his company, "We should not concern ourselves in business which is none of . . ."

  The half-breed heard no more as he moved away from the front of the saloon to head for the bank.

  The two-street town of Ridgeville was situated on the Little Creek tributary of the Yellowstone River in the eastern foothills of the Beartooth Mountains, just north of the Wyoming line. The streets were laid out in the form of a cross on a flat area of land in a curve of the sixty-foot-wide creek. As a result, the northeast end of one street and the southeast of the
other were blocked by the fast-flowing water of the creek.

  The Lone Pine Saloon was on the northwest corner of the streets' intersection, and as Edge sipped his beer he saw it was to the northwest that the riders had galloped. Their forms were already lost in the timber that crowded close to town on that side. He also saw that their hurried departure had started diagonally across the street from the saloon, in front of the Timberline Bank and Trust Company, where the former audience in the Lone Pine had now gathered. A grim quiet reigned in the vicinity of the recent tragedy.

  As Edge reached the rear of the crowd one of the men who was not uncomfortable in a suit emerged from the lighted doorway of the bank and asked tensely, "What's the verdict, Doc?"

  A man in shirt-sleeves who had not been in the saloon rose from where he had been squatting on the sidewalk to reply: "All dead, Mr. Sheldon."

  "What did they get, Sheldon?" a gruff-voiced man demanded from the shocked crowd.

  "Company shipment is all gone and the safe is cleaned out."

  "Everything?" a woman called shrilly. "They've taken every last cent?"

  "Looks like, Mrs. Reese."

  "Then I'm ruined!"

  "You ain't the only one, lady!"

  "What'll we do?"

  "This is terrible, terrible!"

  "Will none of you people spare a thought for the Trasks and Mr. Bolt?"

  "Dammit, their troubles are over! How are we supposed to get by with just the loose change we got in our pockets?"

  The sallow-faced, sandy-haired man named Sheldon held up his hands to quiet the chorus of voices. Then he said: "I intend to leave for Casper right now. To bring money to replace that which has been stolen. And men to hunt down the thieves. So don't any of you people do anything foolish now. Like going after them yourselves."

  "It was the friggin' Campbells, I bet! Bart Bolt should've hung them when he had the chance!"

  Voices were raised to agree and disagree with this. And Sheldon shouted for attention again. Edge was on his way back to the saloon by then, having sipped his way through half the beer while he bleakly surveyed the bullet-riddled corpses of the town sheriff and the banker and his wife.