The Godforsaken Page 4

  “Not trouble, Avery?” the wife of the cook asked anxiously as she moved onto the threshold behind him and peered out over his shoulder.

  The man who climbed stiffly down from the buggy which he had rolled to a halt out front of the Best in the West, stretched his aching limbs, flexed his set muscles and kneaded his weary eyes with his fists, did not to any degree look like he was bringing to Prospect the kind of trouble which Edge was suspected of harboring. But the woman, who had automatically glanced at the half-breed sitting easily in the rocker to seek the cause of her husband’s concern, showed a frown that was a match for the one on his fleshy face after she shifted her gaze toward the second stranger to come to town today.

  “Golly, a preacher,” she muttered.

  He seemed to be an old man, the best part of six feet tall with a stoop-shouldered frame that came close to being emaciated—he probably did not weigh as much as a hundred and thirty pounds. His face was as angular as his body had to be beneath the black frock coat, black shirt with grubby white cleric’s collar and pants with the cuffs pushed into boots laced with string—every item of his garb at least two sizes too large for him. He was seen to be almost totally bald before he reached into the buggy to bring out and don a gray Stetson with a black band that was as old and ill-used as the rest of his clothing, but fitted him better. While his face was as yet unshadowed by the broad brim of the hat, it could be seen that he had deep-set eyes of a light color beneath prominent brows. His sharp nose was also prominent and he had a slack, perhaps toothless, mouth above a jutting chin. He either had an unkempt salt-and-pepper embryo beard or had neglected to shave for several days.

  The roofed and backed but sideless four-wheeled buggy he stood beside as he buttoned his coat and surveyed the street with a strange brand of melancholic resentment looked to be as dilapidated as he. And the pair of sway-backed gray geldings in the traces were in no better condition.

  “Prospect people have an aversion to parsons?’1 Edge asked as the newcomer shuffled wearily around the front of his team and stepped up onto the sidewalk like a man with cramp in one leg, then stood in the light from the batwinged entrance of the saloon. For a second or so he seemed reluctant to enter the place, but then he took a black-bound book from a pocket of his frock coat and pulled his hunched shoulders almost erect before he pushed through the doors and strode inside.

  “We have us the finest Presbyterian church in northwest Texas and maybe the finest minister of the faith in the whole of the state of preach in it, sir,” the fat man countered in a hurt and defensive tone. “Even if as the organist down at the church I’m biased, I don’t reckon there’s many who know of such things who’d take issue with me on either count.”

  “Townspeople are God-fearin’ and church-goin’ for the most part,” his wife augmented. “Includin’ some of them that work at the Best in the West.

  But Frank Crowell ain’t that kind, mister. Nice enough man for the owner of such a place, but he has a strange and powerful hate for anythin’ and everythin’ that smacks of religion.”

  She raised her voice to complete what she was saying, to ensure Edge could hear her words above the abrupt increase of sound from the brightly lit building across the street, the clamor comprised mostly of voices raised in the tone of both anger and derision. Then this swell subsided and just a single voice was shouting against the unmelodious music of the discordant player piano and the almost tuneful, by comparison, clicking and whirring of the wheel of fortune, roulette wheel and dice birdcages, the voice of a man, his words indistinct to the listeners on the stoop of the restaurant until the mechanical devices with which he was competing were one by one silenced.

  . . and I say to you, friends, my brothers and my sisters, that there is still time to repent and to be granted the forgiveness of the Lord Jesus Christ! To pave the way to living in one of the many mansions of His and our father, Almighty God! Time to abandon the whoring and the wagering on games of chance! The lewd and lecherous ways encouraged by strong drink for which such dens of iniquity as this were created by the disciples of Satan! I surely ask little enough of you here and now? Just a few meager seconds of your time and your attention! So that I may read a text from the Good Book—that you may think upon it at a quieter period! And perhaps feel moved to attend your local church here in Prospect! The spire of which served to give me a bearing by which I was able to steer a course for—”

  “Preacher!” another man thundered, and the single word, vented like it was an obscenity, dripped with ominous menace.

  “That’s Frank,” Avery whispered.

  “Oh, golly,” his wife murmured.

  “My brother, come down and join us in a reading—”

  “Turn around and get your ass outta my place, preacher,” Frank Crowell cut in, speaking not so loudly now. But strangely there seemed to be more force behind the words: the mere sound of them painting an image of the dark scowl of depthless, enraged hatred that surely had to be on the face of the saloon owner. “Because if you don’t do that, I’ll do it for you. With the toe of my shoe up your asshole so hard you’ll hit the center of the street on your head.”

  “Friend, brother . . . there can be redemption even for such a disciple of Satan as you who is the—”

  “Start the pianola, dammit. Get those wheels turnin’ and the cards dealt. There’s a drink on the house for everyone here. And I ain’t talkin’ brews. Best sippin’ whiskey for you guys. Champagne for the girls. And I’ll waive the house cut on every tumble that’s taken tonight. Celebrate the first preacher’s ass I’ve gotten to kick since I don’t recall when. Go to it!”

  There was utter silence while Crowell made the announcement. But mounting excitement could be sensed in the saloon as his tone got louder and the angry menace gave way to exuberance—which was matched and quickly surpassed by the tumult of cheering and handclapping and laughing and yelling that exploded in response to his generosity.

  “Oh, dear,” Avery said.

  “Good night, sir,” his wife said, then hurried to add: “I hope if you remain in town for any length of time you will patronize the Aurora again. Come, Avery.”

  “Yes, Ruth.”

  They backed off the threshold and closed the door of the darkened restaurant; turned a key and shot a bolt at the top and the bottom. But Edge did not hear their footfalls retreating among the white-covered, chair-ringed tables and guessed they were watching through the net-curtained window on the other side of the doorway as the preacher backed out between the batwings of the Best in the West. The tall, thin old man emerged with much the same brand of reluctance as he had entered only a few seconds earlier. But it was doubtless fear rather than an effort of will that held him rigidly erect. Then, as a much younger man showed on the threshold of the saloon, hands hooked over the tops of the batwings to stop their flapping, the preacher fell.

  His gaze seemed to be locked with that of the tall, lean, handsome Crowell while whatever emotion held him in a powerful grip apparently detached him from everything else. For he failed to realize he had backed across the width of the sidewalk, until he sought to lower a booted foot behind him onto solid support. But his foot went down lower than he expected and he was unbalanced before he located the street surface just a few inches beneath the lip of the sidewalk. And he fell back against the flank of one of his horses with a shrill cry of alarm. The blow and the howl spooked the horse, which snorted and lunged forward. And the second gelding responded in like manner to the panic of the first: the two of them able to drag the buggy with the brake-locked wheels behind them.

  After the dust of the pumping hooves and the slithering wheelrims had settled, none of the witnesses would have been surprised to see the old man badly injured. But the preacher had not been trampled by flying hooves nor run over by the locked wheels. He was able to rise unsteadily to his feet, still clutching his Bible in both trembling hands. It was not possible for him to appear any thinner, but he certainly looked shorter as he stood on the
street, staring fixedly again—but needing to tilt his head and peer up—at the man with iron-gray hair who made no move to push out through the batwing doors.

  There was not just Edge and Frank Crowell, Avery and Ruth to watch what was happening now. For the preacher’s cry and the sounds of the buggy’s frantic lurch into motion had drawn the curious to windows and some doorways along both sides of the midtown stretch of Prospect’s main street. Now, more than a hundred yards clear of the area where the panic was caused, and almost winded by the effort of dragging the dead weight of the buggy after a long and hot day out on the trail, the geldings had come to a breathless, head-hanging halt. And there was just the body of sound from behind Crowell to disturb the peace of the town again, and provide a counterpoint of geniality to his embittered enmity as he warned:

  “Best you don’t just stay clear of my place, preacher! Best you get back aboard that rattletrap and haul your ass right outta this town! On account of the next time I get this close to you, I’ll maybe be able to ignore the stink of you and forget what a broken-down old sonofabitch you are! And if I do that, preacher, it won’t be the toe of my shoe you’ll get up your asshole! Get my drift?”

  Now it did seem as if he was about to step outside of the saloon—sideways. But he did not do this: he merely swung into a half turn and pushed open the batwings wide enough to display the gleaming revolver in the high-gloss, cutaway leather holster on his right hip. Then he showed a white-toothed grin that was perhaps even colder than the coldest of which Edge was capable; before he released his grip on the tops of the doors and swung all the way around to move away from the threshold—raucously yelling that it sounded to him like his customers were not really enjoying themselves. This provoked a higher volume of noise, which the preacher turned his back on to walk disconsolately and perhaps painfully down the street in the wake of his buggy and runaway team. His expression hidden in the shadow of his hat brim, the bright glow of the half-moon kept off his skeletal features after he was beyond the reach of the light from the saloon. Nobody watched him from the Best in the West anymore. Edge heard Avery and Ruth withdraw to their living quarters at the rear of the restaurant, and sensed that most other Prospect citizens who had been attracted to witness potential violence were now back at whatever had occupied them previously.

  The half-breed dug the makings from a pocket of his shirt and took his time in rolling a cigarette, the decision made: the soft bed and clean sheets in the quietness of his room at the boarding house was more appealing than a drink—even the best sipping whiskey—in the saloon that sounded like it was no different from a hundred others he had spent time in.

  He was still tipping tobacco from his poke into the paper when the batwings across the street flapped and he looked up in time to see Frank Crowell emerge from the Best in the West. He had donned a light-gray jacket to match his pants and vest, and also a cream-colored Stetson with an ornate tooled-leather band. The half-breed noticed that the handsome man’s black shoes gleamed almost as brightly as his silver-plated, ivory-handled .44 Remington Frontier revolver—the cutaway holster was slung low enough so that the side of the jacket did not drape the gun.

  The man stood for a second or so, peering into infinity with an expression that suggested he was not relishing what he saw there. Then he turned and moved along the sidewalk, his heels rapping hollowly on the boarding. He was out from under the roofed section of the sidewalk along the front of his saloon and starting to pass the fagade of the single-story stage line depot next door when one of the unlit upstairs windows of his place was noisily opened. And a woman demanded in a whining, slightly slurred voice:

  “That you, Frankie?”

  Crowell halted and turned from the waist to look up at where a good-looking, no-longer-young, blonde-haired woman thrust her head and thinly nightgowned shoulders out of the window. “Sure, Marsha. Just gonna take a walk. Breathe some fresh air and get rid of the stink of that preacher from my nostrils.”

  “You hurry back, you hear, honey.”

  “You bet. And you better not be so overdressed when I get back, uh?”

  She laughed throatily before she closed the window, probably too drunk to discern that the lightness in Crowell’s tone had a forced quality. Then the dudishly dressed man continued on his southward course along the west side of the street. While on the stoop of the Aurora Restaurant, Edge completed his unhurried making of the cigarette, lit it with a match struck on the butt of his holstered Colt and then rose out of the rocker. He blew out some smoke on the second half of a part yawn and stepped down from the stoop, to start along the street in the same direction as the old preacher and Crowell.

  By then the men were no longer in sight and all that he could see moving on the brightly moonlit and deeply moonshadowed stretch of street were the weary horses, the animals beginning to become restive at being left in the traces for so long where they had halted after their bolt. The buggy was stalled out front of a dry-goods store, across the street from the law office. Like most of the other buildings that flanked the street south of the saloon— and along the streets that ran off to the east and to the west—these two showed no lights. Even rooms in private houses, and in Mrs. Doyle’s boardinghouse, which were lit by lamp or candle, had the drapes tightly drawn at their windows so that little illumination was wasted through cracks into the night. And it was as peacefully quiet as it was dark on this south side of town, the half-breed’s slow-moving footfalls providing the only sounds in the surrounding silence: until he crossed the mouth of a narrow alley between a candy store and a barber-ing parlor opposite the Prospect Grade School, when a voice pleaded in the inky blackness, some twenty or thirty feet from where Edge came to a halt:

  “But, please, I cannot—”

  “Shut your mouth, you crazy old sonofabitch!”

  The half-breed recognised Frank Crowell as the second man to speak, only then realised the other man in the darkness was the preacher, his voice sounding entirely different when it was not raised to sermonize.

  “But there is nothing I can do to harm you—” “Frig you, shut up!” the saloon owner snarled. And then there was a series of fast, muted sounds that Edge was unable to identify. And Crowell instructed: “On your way, stranger! This ain’t none of your business!”

  “Thank God!” the preacher blurted, obviously becoming aware of the half-breed’s presence for the first time. “I’m an old man in desperate need of help! Won’t you—”

  “Damn you!” Crowell roared. And this was followed by a more concise series of sounds, metallic and instantly recognizable to Edge. The thumbing back of a revolver hammer. So what he had heard earlier was the drawing of the fancy Remington from the cutaway holster. Now footfalls hit the hard-packed surface of the alley at a run.

  “Don’t fire at me, Crowell!” the half-breed snarled, the part-smoked cigarette ejected from his lips by the force of the words as he took a backward step.

  The crack of a gunshot, amplified by the confines of the flanking brick walls, rang out in unison with the final word. A cry of alarm—a match for the one the preacher had vented when he fell against the horse outside the saloon—followed the end of the running footfalls. The bullet ricocheted amid a spray of red fragments and dust off the comer of the candy store perhaps three inches into the alley from where Edge stood, right hand draped over the butt of his still holstered Colt. Something bulkier than a foot thudded to the ground a little further into the alley. Crowell cursed and recocked his gun.

  Edge rasped harshly: “I warned you,” and drew and cocked his Colt as part of the same fluid action. The swing away from the front of the store, out of the cover of its wall to become a dark silhouette against the moon-bright, white-painted clapboard of the school house across the street at his back, was an extension of the same move.

  He could see nothing in the pitch black of the alley’s depths. He had neither the time nor the inclination to care if the old preacher had the sense to stay down on the ground where he pitch
ed before Crowell fired. He instinctively adopted a sideways-on, slightly crouched stance as he placed his feet firmly and streaked his left hand toward his right: which was fisted around the gun butt close to his belt buckle. His right forefinger squeezed the trigger to explode the first shot. And part of a second later the heel of his left hand began to fan the hammer. The six chambers of the Colt were emptied in less than half that number of seconds, while the barrel was raked to the left then to the right. If Frank Crowell got off a second shot, Edge was unaware of the sound of the report or the effect of a bullet thudding into whatever was in its path. What he did hear, as with an economy of motion he tilted his gun and half cocked it to turn the cylinder so that the empty shellcases dropped from the chambers, was a man dragging his feet and breathing laboriously. And whispering voices could be heard nearby, others raised in the distance.

  “You sonofabitch, life was good, it was real ...”

  Frank Crowell had staggered to the point where the moon’s light and its shadow fringed each other. He rasped the accusation at Edge through teeth clenched in a grimace of misery and pain while tears of lost hope coursed across his tanned cheeks from his no-longer-bright eyes. His light-gray suit jacket was holed and crimson-stained in three places—one at the belly and two at the chest'. He was still holding his fancy gun in a slack grip low at his side, lacking the strength to raise it. He started to bring up his free hand, seeking the support of the alley wall. But then he died, his eyes staring fixedly at his killer’s hands engaged in the chore of reloading the Colt. He dropped his own gun, folded double and started to twist to the side as he collapsed to the ground. Footfalls hit the same stretch of ground again, but moving along the alley away from Edge as he stooped to retrieve his cigarette. He heard the hurrying old preacher sobbing with fear or relief or maybe pain as he retreated through the shadows.