EDGE: The Final Shot (Edge series Book 16) Page 4

  Edge had taken out the telegraph and unfolded it. He read it: EDGE SILVER LODE HOTEL VIRGINIA CITY NEVADA IF YOU WANT TO FIND OUT SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR WIFE COME TO MONKSVILLE CALIFORNIA NANCY.

  The half-breed’s eyes narrowed still further as he replaced the telegraph in the envelope, the envelope in the billfold and the billfold in his hip pocket. ‘Reckon I can,’ he said to end the long pause. ‘Same as I can hitch a new team and drive this rig into town. In which case I’ll have my money back.’

  Anger flared across the time-lined face. ‘Ain’t no one but me drives this stage, mister!’ he retorted.

  ‘So do it, feller,’ the half-breed urged softly. ‘Fresh horses are out back. Fed and watered.’

  The driver seemed poised to continue the argument, but the guard tugged at his arm.

  ‘Come on, Mort,’ the younger man urged. ‘Don’t mess with him. We’ll get the story in Monksville.’

  Mort hesitated, then allowing himself to be drawn away from the stage door. He went around to the stable yard while the guard unhitched the old team. The drummers stared hard at the unchanging view across Death Valley, as if they were fascinated by it. The old lady watched Edge with more genuine interest.

  ‘There’s a dead horse back along the trail, young man,’ she said at length, as the team were taken from the traces and led to the rear of the way station.

  ‘I know, ma’am,’ the half-breed replied.

  She made a sound of annoyance with her tongue against her dentures. ‘There is no call to be so close-mouthed, young man,’ she challenged.

  Edge pursed his lips, then parted them in a smile that did not reach his eyes. ‘Tell you something, ma’am.’

  ‘What?’ She leaned forward, her interest heightening.

  The drummers were suddenly bored with the view beyond the windows.

  ‘If you don’t stop flapping yours, I’ll have to close it for you.’

  The drummer seated immediately across the aisle from Edge leapt to his feet, flabby face spread with the scarlet of high anger. ‘That’s no way to speak to a lady!’ he challenged.

  The half-breed shot out a foot and the saddle canted fast. The stock of the Winchester slammed into the drummer’s crotch. The man grunted with pain, reached down to its source, and bent forward. Edge streaked a hand to the back of his neck, delving beneath the hair. The hand came away fisted around wooden grip of the razor. His other hand swept forward, knocking off the drummer’s derby and grabbing a bunch of the greasy brown hair beneath. Still seated himself, he jerked the man’s head down further and brought across the razor. He rested the blade under the fear-flared nostrils of the drummer.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ the other drummer groaned, pressing himself hard into the corner.

  ‘Ladies got manners,’ Edge rasped, and pressed the razor just enough to erupt three tiny trickles of blood from the sides and centre of the man’s nostrils. ‘My Ma and Pa always taught me manners was keeping your nose out of other folks’ business. How d’you feel about that, feller?’

  The drummer swallowed hard. ‘Sure, mister. Sure thing.’

  Edge removed the razor and slid it back into the neck pouch. Then he put the heel of his hand against the drummer’s forehead, relaxed his grip on the hair and shoved. The drummer thudded painfully back into his seat.

  ‘Oh dear, I was just interested, that’s all,’ the old lady croaked, her throat arid.

  The stage rocked as the new team was hitched up to the traces.

  ‘Curiosity’s killed more than mangy cats, ma’am,’ the half-breed told her, wriggling into a more comfortable position on the hard-padded seat. He tipped his hat forward over his eyes. But one hand rested close to the butt of his holstered Colt. ‘It’s wasted a few old bitches, too.’

  The driver came to the side of the stage to close the door. He saw the injured drummer holding his crotch with one hand while the other pressed a handkerchief to his bloodied nose. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded gruffly.

  He eyed the lady, who was flushed from the insult, the rigidly erect drummer sitting opposite her and the totally relaxed half-breed.

  ‘A minor altercation on the subject of manners,’ the uninjured salesman blurted out in a cultured accent.

  ‘No problem,’ Edge muttered from under the brim of his tilted hat. He stabbed a finger at the man seated opposite him. ‘Until he brought sex into it. Let’s move it, Mort.’

  The driver hesitated, then decided that it would be safer not to get involved. He slammed the door, climbed up on to the high seat and took the reins. The guard remained at the way station and the driver shouted a promise to send out a relief from Monksville on the night stage. Then he flicked the reins and yelled at the team.

  Although in an attitude of sleep, Edge remained fully awake as the stage creaked and juddered along the well-used trail striking south through the mountains. For a while, he thought about Beth: the way he had met her, the way he had married her, the brutally short life they had together, the way she had died. He didn’t know much about her, but he had always considered he knew enough. Then the telegraph had reached him and proved he was wrong. He didn’t know anyone named Nancy and had never heard of Monksville yet here he was, on the final stretch of the long journey to Monksville where Nancy would be.

  What could she tell him about a dead woman that would make any difference to him? Nothing. For Edge was what he was to an extent that he could not be changed. Except by death. Then he would be dead and it wouldn’t matter. But while he lived . . . Beth had begun to change him, with his willing consent. Then her death - and the harsh manner of it - had forced him back deeper than ever into the mould out of which she had tried to rescue him. His grief had been long and harrowing and when he was drained of this, he was also bereft of every other finer human feeling.

  He had thought, at first, that he was merely repeating an earlier experience: becoming hard and bitter and vicious just as he did when he returned from the war to discover the dead and mutilated body of his brother. But this had proved not to be so. For, many violent years after he finished grieving for Jamie and the future he might have had, Beth had entered his life and rekindled the warmth of human emotions latent beneath the hard exterior shell.

  Then he lost Beth, more tragically even than the way in which Jamie died. And, since that ghastly day when he found her maggot-infested, decomposing body, Edge had known that nobody and nothing could rescue him from what he had become. Except death.

  ‘Monksville up ahead, folks!’ the driver yelled from atop the rocking Concord. ‘Be there in five minutes. Like always, right on the nose.’

  Edge pulled up straighter in his seat and tipped his hat back squarely on to his head. He grinned when he saw the injured drummer put exploratory fingers against the congealed blood at his nostrils. ‘Unfortunate choice of words,’ he drawled, flexing his shoulder, arm and finger joints.

  The drummer refused to meet the half-breed’s gaze and made an excuse of snapping open his valise and peering inside. The old lady sniffed and the other salesman attempted a nervous smile. Edge looked out of the window and saw that the sun was three quarters of the way down its descending arc. Still harshly yellow and blazing a hot, dry heat that hung in a shimmering white haze around the foreshortened horizon on all sides. They were a lot lower now, racing fast through the red, brown and yellow hills at the southern tip of the Funeral Mountain range. No vegetation on either side of the trail, except for the cactus plants and the scattered patches of mesquite brush. But, as the trail curved to the east to skirt a broad, primeval crater scooped in the water-starved ground, the half-breed counted three trees growing amid the cluster of buildings that formed Monksville. The bell of a public clock began to toll mournfully. Mort spurted the team and the clatter of its hurtling progress was amplified between the facades of buildings facing each other across the street. Skidding wheels showered dust and galloping hooves kicked up pebbles. Then the stage had rounded a corner and Mort fought it to a rocking halt at one side
of a square. The final, fifth, note of the striking clock diminished into the heat-hazed distance beyond the town.

  ‘Dead on time again!’ the driver yelled.

  ‘And plain lucky all your passengers ain’t dead, the way you drive!’ a man growled angrily.

  ‘My driving ain’t never harmed nobody!’ Mort retorted, swinging around in his seat to begin unstrapping the baggage from the rack.

  ‘That is a matter of opinion, sir!’ the old lady said airily as the Monksville agent for the stage line helped her down on to the sidewalk. She massaged her rump.

  Both drummers remained firmly in their seats, as if afraid they would raise the half-breed’s anger again if they tried to take precedence over him. Gear held easily in both arms, Edge stood on the step on the opposite side from the sidewalk and surveyed the town.

  The three trees he had seen from the trail were all in the central square. Live oaks providing shade for the wooden benches set beneath them. The square was the business area of Monksville, fringed by the stage line depot, law office, courthouse, four stores, a saloon, church and livery stable. A street entered the square on the north and the south side and each was flanked with small, neat houses in patches of small, neat gardens. Only desert plants grew in the gardens. The legal and commercial buildings were all constructed of red brick and rough stone. The houses were frame. Everything looked clean and new, except for a large proportion of the citizens. Strolling ladies with parasols and men lounging on the benches under the shady trees had a neat and well-scrubbed appearance, but old: a lot of them senile.

  Few showed more than idle curiosity in the stage and its passengers.

  ‘You’re the one they call Edge?’

  The half-breed turned on the step and peered over the roof of the stage. The speaker was one of the few people on the square who did not have a time-lined skin and age-stooped body. She was standing in the doorway of the stage depot, a tall, slender redhead with an excitingly curved figure outlined by a tight-fitting white blouse: high-necked and nipped in at the waist by the belt of a flared black skirt. Her hair was held in a bun at the back of her head. Her face should have been pretty, but there was a certain hardness in her green eyes and the way her mouth line was formed. She was about twenty-five.

  Edge stepped down from the stage and ambled around the back and up on to the sidewalk. He knew he had the kind of harshly-formed features that either attracted or revolted women. The green eyes appraised him with cold interest.

  ‘Only woman in Monksville who’d ask that would be named Nancy,’ he said.

  The minor stir caused by the arrival of the stage was over. The old lady had been met by another of similar age and was being escorted towards the street on the south side of the square. The driver had gone into the depot to learn the story of Dan Hochman’s killing. One of the drummers - he who had provoked Edge’s anger - was heading for the saloon. The other salesman entered the pharmacy, which was the largest store in town. Edge and the woman were alone on the stretch of sidewalk outside the depot.

  She nodded. ‘Nancy Harman, Edge.’

  She was twenty years younger than the sheriff and the family resemblance was faded.

  ‘Related to the man with the badge?’

  ‘She’s my sister!’

  The lawman snarled the answer from behind Edge. The half-breed did not turn his body. Just his head, and saw the solidly-built Harman standing outside the doorway of his office. His attitude was tense and he was aiming a Winchester from the hip. The boards of the sidewalk creaked as the woman backed away. Edge turned his head again, ignoring her and raking his eyes to the corner of the stage depot. Two more Winchesters were aimed at him from there, tightly-held by two men he recognized from the posse which had trailed Andrews to the way station. He didn’t know their names, but the familiar set of their features caused his hooded eyes to glint with the menace of ice-cold anger. Nancy Harman backed into the corner of the stage depot doorway, out of the danger of crossfire. The chests of the two men facing Edge rose and fell and evening sunlight glittered on the deputy’s badges now pinned to their shirt fronts.

  ‘You heard the warning I gave you back at the way station,’ Edge said evenly.

  The parked stage blocked his view of a large part of the square. But he heard the shuffle of hurrying feet as the strollers and loungers withdrew to a safe distance.

  One of the deputies licked his lips and the other gulped. Nancy peered fearfully out of the depot doorway. In the deeper shadow behind her the agent was looking shocked. Mort was showing excited interest.

  ‘You’re a wanted man, Edge!’ the lawman snarled. ‘Give yourself up peaceful.’

  ‘Wanted for what?’

  ‘Murder.’

  The half-breed’s narrowed eyes flicked constantly between the two deputies. He was sweating from the heat, but they were sweating a great deal more. He parted his thin lips in a tight smile. ‘Which one, sheriff?’

  ‘Elliot Thomas.’

  ‘In Kansas, a long time ago. Old hat and out of your jurisdiction, feller.’

  ‘Not of the man who’s comin’ to get you.’

  ‘If he moves fast, I may still be here,’ Edge said evenly.

  Then he lunged for the depot doorway. It was a risk, but a calculated one. For he had decided Harman was the kind of man who would hesitate a vital fraction of a second before shooting another in the back. The deputies were tied up in knots by tension and if they opened fire, it would be in panic. Either Harman or he could be unlucky enough to be hit by a wild shot. Maybe neither.

  Nancy screamed with alarm and staggered backwards, crashing into Mort and the agent. Edge had to take two diagonal strides across the sidewalk to gain the cover of the doorway. He didn’t go for his gun, using both hands to hold his gear high in front of his head and torso. His prediction about the reaction of the lawmen proved to be right.

  All three were frozen for an instant by the unexpected lunge from a man who had appeared to be standing so casually. Then Harman threw the stock of his rifle up to his shoulder. The two deputies fired simultaneously from the hip. One of the bullets struck the horn of the half-breed’s saddle and ricocheted through the doorway ahead of him. Its trajectory changed from level flight into a decline. Nancy Harman had sat down hard between Mort and the agent, and kept from sprawling out full-length by grabbing at the legs of the startled men. The act killed her. The bullet, no longer rifling, turned end-over-end and smashed a great hole through her top lip. A man screamed - not in the depot.

  Nancy went on to her back now, a great stream of blood gushing from her mouth. The major wound was in the roof of her mouth and only some of the blood escaped. Most of it drained down her throat and swamped her lungs. That in her mutilated mouth became frothy with bubbles of escaping air.

  ‘Women!’ Edge growled as he dropped his gear and drew the Winchester from the saddle boot, working the lever action. ‘Just can’t stop running off at the mouth.’

  He lunged forward again, crashing between the two stage company men and leaping the body of the woman at which they were staring. There was a counter with a flap open and he raced through and up a stairway at the rear of the room. At the top was a square landing with doors leading off. He used the heel of a boot to smash open one and sprinted across a spartanly-furnished bedroom. The window was open and he paused for a moment, narrowed eyes raking the square. It was deserted. But he could see the pale blobs of watchers’ faces behind windows. There had been no more shooting. But the deputies were moving how.

  ‘Bill Harman’s dead!’ a woman shrieked. ‘The sheriff’s been shot!’

  Edge listened to the slow footfalls of the deputies on the sidewalk beneath the canopy outside the window. He lifted his right foot to rest it across the windowsill. Then he poised himself.

  ‘Come outta there, Edge!’ one of the lawmen yelled.

  There was a tense pause. Then Mort ended it with a hoarse whisper.

  ‘He’s gone for the roof, Eddy!’

&nb
sp; Hunching his shoulders to make the gap, Edge launched himself through the window. He powered into a turn in mid-air as he cleared the canopy, and bent his knees as he landed sure-footed on the roof of the parked stage. One of the deputies was crouched by the window of the depot while the other was starting towards the doorway. They were not aware of the half-breed until his boots thudded against the wooden roof. Then they started to whirl, snapping their rifles around. Edge took the one at the window first, blasting a shell into the side of his head. The force of the impact was enough to drive his blood-spewing body crashing through the window. The Winchester swung as the action was pumped. The second deputy was drilled through the chest, a half inch above where his badge was pinned. His rifle exploded as he was flung back against the wall. The bullet splintered wood chips from the driver’s seat of the stage and whined high into the air.

  Edge did a complete turn, raking the Winchester at the same pace his slitted eyes surveyed his surroundings. The square was as deserted as before. But now three bodies oozed blood to stain the sidewalk; the two men Edge had killed and the sheriff. Harman was curled up in a heap outside the doorway of his office. He had taken the wild shot low down on the right side of his chest. From the vast amount of blood he had lost, through the chest and mouth, it had taken a few seconds for the punctured lung to kill him.

  ‘Anyone else got business with me?’ he yelled.

  ‘I sure enough ain’t,’ Mort rasped from the shaded interior of the stage depot.

  Edge gripped the roof-rack rail and vaulted down to the sidewalk. He looked levelly in through the open doorway. ‘You already talked out of turn once, Mort,’ he warned. ‘Best you keep your mouth closed in future, uh?’

  Mort nodded emphatically, pressing his lips tightly together. Edge canted the rifle across his shoulder, reached in through the doorway and hefted his gear one-handed. As he turned, a priest emerged from the hardware store on the far side of the law office. He hurried to where Harman lay and squatted beside the corpse. He crossed himself, his fleshy face solemn.