EDGE: Town On Trial Read online

  ‘Is the man mad?’ one of the women on the hotel stoop exclaimed.

  ‘I think he’s having a fit,’ another countered.

  The stage rolled by amid whirling dust and he glimpsed Estelle Donnelly’s face at a window. In profile, the veil removed, set in an expression of grim determination. Then the Concord was gone by, swinging into the turn to rumble and rattle over the bridge. And Edge was on his feet, in the saloon doorway and poised to hurl himself against the batwings if he saw the tell-tale puff of muzzle-smoke to signal another shot.

  ‘Making too free with his stock-in-trade looks like,’ one of Pepper’s newly arrived male guests said haughtily. ‘Falling down drunk.’

  The whole group went into the lobby of the Irving House. This as, up on the crest of the distant hill, the sharpshooter with the high-velocity rifle fitted with a telescopic sight stood up from the brush, turned and ran down the far slope of the rise. And Moses came around the corner, lean body clothed in a grey suit, balancing a loosely packed sack on his shoulder with his head craned to the side so that his black derby would not be dislodged.

  ‘Well, mister,’ he announced happily. ‘Folks don’t object to takin’ your money. All we gotta do now is wait and see if they’ll come here and spend what they got with you.’

  Edge ignored him to take a closer look at the bullet imbedded in the wall, at a point where his head would have been in the way had he not hurled himself out of the chair.

  ‘Somethin’ botherin’ you, mister?’ the Negro asked, his joy abruptly ended.

  ‘Something, feller. But better to have something on my mind than a bullet in my brain.’ He turned and gestured with a hand to the country beyond the stream.

  ‘How far over there is the boundary line of the Howling Coyote range?’

  ‘Creek is it.’

  ‘Just the Love hands out there then?’

  ‘Except on the trail. That’s a public right of way.’ Moses stopped alongside Edge and whistled. ‘Hey, ain’t that a bullet hole, mister?’

  ‘No sweat,’ Edge said evenly. ‘At least I know who to sue for the damage.’

  The Negro swallowed hard. ‘Guess I’ll go tend to your animal’s needs, mister,’ he said, and scuttled hurriedly into the saloon.

  The half-breed followed at a more leisurely pace, after a final survey of the Howling Coyote’s western section, on which nothing was moving except the grazing cattle to the north and the stage along the trail. He moved behind the bar, one hand fisting around the bottle and the other the glass. But did not pour himself a drink before the hands on the clock fixed to the rear wall came together to mark midday.

  This as whispering voices and footfalls sounded out on the street. But he had time to sit at the table where his gear rested before the batwings opened and Crystal Dickens entered: trailed by a bunch of men, most of whom Edge recognized from his visit to Lone Star Street earlier.

  ‘I moved out of the hotel, Mr. Edge,’ the blonde woman said. ‘Like to stay here if I may?’

  ‘Sure. Nice of you to bring your friends.’

  ‘These gentlemen aren’t with me,’ she answered, an expression of anxiety taking a firmer hold on her features as she came further into the saloon and the eight men paused just inside the threshold.

  They shuffled their feet nervously and waited for one of their number to speak. Edge sipped his drink and muttered, ‘From the looks of them, they ain’t with me either.’ Then he raised his voice to yell, ‘Moses!’

  The negro came on the run, and pulled up short in the doorway behind the bar counter. Asked, ‘Yes, mister?’

  ‘The lady doesn’t touch hard liquor, but she wants a room. These fellers all live around here, so I figure they came in for a drink.’

  There was the fresh-faced young preacher, who had taken off his surplice. The slightly-built Stan Barlow who still wore his mourning clothes. The dull-looking Jake Huber. The town blacksmith who was taller by three inches than Edge and broader of shoulder and hips. Two merchants who had not taken off their soiled white aprons. And two men who looked like farmers come to town for supplies.

  The blacksmith spat pointedly at the floor, but it was the preacher who spoke.

  ‘We come in friendship, Mr. Edge,’ he said.

  The half-breed took another sip of the whiskey and elevated his glass as he responded: ‘I’ll drink to that, Reverend. You’re all welcome to join me. Long as you pay your own way.’

  Anger simmered up behind some of the nervous frowns. The preacher stilled the sounds of it with a gesture of both his hands. Then cleared his throat.

  ‘From what I have heard about you, you are not a stupid man, sir,’ he said. ‘You are quite aware that we did not come here to drink. Our purpose is two-fold.’

  ‘I’d like a beer, Moses,’ Crystal Dickens asked.

  And surprise extending to shock showed on some faces as the men watched the Negro fill the order.

  The preacher talked over this. ‘That very thing is an example of what we have come here to ask you to stop, sir. You and the young lady are both strangers to this part of the country. And strangers from the north. Irving is our town and we ask that visitors here abide by the rules which exist here. Unless the Negro is replaced by a white man, that headstrong young lady will be your only customer.’

  ‘And since this is the only saloon in town, Edge, it likely won’t just stop at people not comin’ in,’ Jake Huber growled and made to push out through the bat-wings.

  ‘Where you goin’?’ Barlow asked, voice quavering and brow sweating.

  ‘I told you guys!’ the liveryman snapped. ‘He’s been told all I wanted him to know. I ain’t with you on the rest of it.’

  Huber went out. But not far. Everyone heard him drop heavily into the bow-back chair on the stoop.

  The preacher cleared his throat again. ‘There was a shooting in here last evening, Mr. Edge. A fine and honest citizen of this town was senselessly killed by a young man who had doubtlessly taken more liquor than was good for him. Tomorrow the culprit will be tried in a court of law. Before a circuit judge and a jury of twelve more fine and honest citizens of Irving.’

  ‘Get to the point, Mr. Drabble!’ one of the scowling storekeepers insisted.

  ‘Yes, quite so. There were six witnesses, we understand. Three sympathetic to young Warford who will swear the boy fired in self-defense. Mrs. Donnelly, who is out of town right now but who intends to return for the trial, will undoubtedly be hostile to the accused. As will this young lady who was the cause of the trouble.’

  ‘I’ll tell what I saw,’ Crystal said resolutely.

  The preacher ignored her to conclude to Edge, ‘You, sir, are the only eye-witness totally unprejudiced.’

  ‘Moses there is proof of that, feller,’ the half-breed pointed out wryly.

  ‘Shit, there ain’t no talkin’ to him!’ the towering blacksmith snarled.

  Then caught his breath, as others gasped. All of them, along with the Negro and the woman taken by surprise at the moves Edge made. Rising, whirling, crouching, drawing his Colt and fanning the hammer. The bullets cracked along the saloon on an upward trajectory, the sounds of the rapid firing counterpointed by the tinkle of broken glass and the clatter of falling shards of metal. Then came a stretched second of silence, followed by a crash as the bullet-riddled clock dropped off the wall to the floor.

  The half-breed’s lean features were impassive as he turned slowly around in the drifting gunsmoke and said evenly to the group of men in the doorway: Time’s the enemy of all of us. Figure I stopped that clock with the first shot.’

  Heavy footfalls beat on the stoop as Crystal added, a little breathlessly: ‘That crazy kid fired six at Mr. Donnelly.’

  ‘What’s all this damn shootin’?’ Sheriff Wilde demanded angrily as he barged between the batwings and through the group of men.

  ‘No sweat, feller,’ Edge answered as he dropped back into the chair and began to eject the empty shellcases on to the table top. ‘Just killing s
ome time.’

  Chapter Seven

  TRAGEDY and its aftermath are not subjects for black humor, sir!’ the Reverend Drabble intoned. ‘We have done what we set out to do by coming here. I urge you to take heed of what has been said.’

  He swung round and went out. And the others followed: after either glowering at Edge or directing a pleading look at him.

  ‘Mister,’ the sheriff said with a weary sigh. ‘When I heard that shootin’ I sure as hell thought it was the trouble I was expectin’.’

  The half-breed finished reloading his Colt and pushed it into the holster. ‘Was necessary, feller,’ he said, and looked beyond the lawman to where one of Sam Pepper’s female guests showed her inquisitive face above the batwings. ‘Yes, ma’am?’

  ‘I normally take a drink at noon, young man. I’m given to understand that this is the only establishment in town where I can obtain one. But is it safe?’

  ‘Right now we have the protection of the law, lady,’ Edge answered.

  ‘Trouble is they got a black man tendin’ bar,’ Jake Huber said from the chair on the stoop.

  The woman, who was the one who had been travelling alone on the stage, pushed in through the batwings: and revealed the reason for her grimace. ‘The entire household staff of my home in San Francisco is Negroid. I’d like a shot glass of Bourbon with some water on the side, if you please.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Moses responded with enthusiasm.

  She was tall and thin and expensively dressed in an elegant blue gown. She had washed her loose-skinned face and brushed her sparse grey hair since entering the Irving House. There was something regal in the way she walked to a table and sat down, disdainfully surveying the poor quality of her surroundings.

  ‘Why was it necessary, Edge?’ Wilde asked after tipping his hat to the elderly newcomer. ‘Drabble and that bunch were only here to give you some friendly advice.’

  ‘Excellent service in the circumstances,’ the old lady complimented when Moses delivered her order, taking a shot glass of whiskey and a tumbler of water off a wooden tray and setting them down in front of her.

  ‘One time I was butler in a fine house in North Carolina, ma’am,’ he answered. ‘Before the war that was.’

  ‘So buttle me a rye, Moses,’ Wilde growled as he went to stand at the bar beside Crystal Dickens.

  ‘You’ve changed your damn tune, Wes!’ the disgruntled Huber called from outside.

  ‘So go tell the whole town about it, Jake,’ the lawman countered. ‘Right now my thirst is more powerful than my principles. Well, Edge?’

  ‘Listened to their advice, sheriff. Didn’t like it, but listened to it. Fact that my hired help stayed behind the bar made it plain to them how much I didn’t like that part of their advice. Decided to blast the clock off the wall as another demonstration. Could’ve emptied my gun at one of them. But that would’ve made me as guilty of murder as the Warford kid. Figure that made it plain I don’t intend to back up the self-defense plea.’

  ‘I’m with you there, mister,’ Huber contributed from outside.

  ‘If you want to stay with me and the rest of the living, feller, best you don’t sit in that chair much longer.’

  ‘Uh?’ The chair creaked and his feet scuffed the stoop boarding, as Wilde swung away from the bar to eye the half-breed quizzically. Then, ‘Hell, Wes!’ Huber exclaimed. ‘There’s a bullet dug into the timber out here.’

  ‘The preacher and his buddies wasted their time,’ the half-breed said to the lawman. ‘I’d already got the message. And to my mind, bullets speak louder than words.’

  ‘Goodness gracious, and I thought you were drunk,’ the old lady said as Wilde strode out of the saloon to look at the bullet imbedded in the front wall.

  ‘You see who it was?’ he called.

  ‘Feller on a hill mile inside the Howling Coyote range.’

  ‘Hal Crowley, it had to be,’ Huber rasped.

  ‘Shut your stupid mouth, Jake!’ Wilde snarled, and looked grimly in over the batwing doors. To where Edge sat with a quiet smile showing along his mouthline. ‘So you heard, mister?’

  ‘Just unwanted advice I’m deaf to, sheriff.’

  ‘Crowley’s Joe Love’s foreman. Has himself a Sharps rifle with a telescope sight. Rifle shootin’ champion of west Texas. I’ll go talk to him. If there’s any proof, they’ll be two cases heard in the court house tomorrow. Anything bad happens to him, there’ll still be two cases heard. You understand, mister?’

  ‘Do your job and no sweat, feller.’

  Resentment contorted Wilde’s neatly moustached features. But he swung away from the saloon doorway and strode angrily away without voicing it.

  ‘Goodness gracious,’ the old lady murmured after emptying her whiskey glass and chasing the liquor with water. ‘I was given to understand that Irving was a quiet, trouble-free little town.’

  ‘So it was, lady,’ Huber said from out on the stoop. ‘Until someone had the guts to stand up against Joe Love. Damn shame it had to be a guy pig-headed about other things.’

  He moved off in the wake of Wilde, but more slowly. And the old lady placed a dollar on the table as she stood up.

  ‘Keep the change, boy,’ she said as she moved regally toward the door. ‘All being well, I shall be back to take my sundown drink this evening.’

  ‘Boy’s all right, mister,’ Moses said hurriedly while the batwings were flapping in the wake of the old lady’s exit. ‘It’s my skin and I don’t mind boy.’

  ‘Here, tip this away,’ Crystal told the Negro, pushing the untouched beer toward him. ‘I really don’t drink. Was just making a point.’

  ‘Obliged,’ Edge told her.

  ‘I detest bigotry.’

  ‘Can you cook, feller?’

  ‘Sure can, mister.’

  ‘So go to it,’ the half-breed instructed. Then, when the Negro had gone out back, said to the woman: ‘There’s just the one double room. Last door on the right at the top of the stairs.’

  She gasped her shock, then became grim-faced. ‘I consider I have paid the family debt, Edge. I asked for a room. And I need no other services, thank you.’

  ‘Suit yourself, lady.’

  She gripped her carpetbag, went around behind the counter and through the doorway leading to the back. Her footfalls rapped angrily on the stairs, then were masked by hoofbeats on the street as Sheriff Wilde cantered his horse by. The slamming of a door, not that of the double room sounded as the lawman demanded a gallop from his mount as he crossed the plank bridge.

  Edge rolled and lit a cigarette, listening to the sounds from the kitchen and those of the fast-running stream. After awhile the aroma of cooking food infiltrated into the saloon. This as a group of men came along White Creek Road and entered The Lucky Break. A dozen of them, talking and laughing. Farmers and merchants and clerks. A few of them Edge recognized from his morning trip to the livery. None of them had been with the preacher’s delegation.

  ‘Howdy, mister.’

  ‘A man sure gets a dry throat on a day like this.’

  ‘Damn shame about Rusty, but nice someone took over so fast without the place gettin’ closed at all.’

  While some spoke cheerfully to the half-breed, others nodded and smiled in greeting as they all moved across to the bar.

  Edge said nothing until he had hefted his gear off the floor and carried it behind the counter. Then yelled through the doorway, ‘Moses, we got some thirsty customers!’

  ‘And you’ve got a hungry roomer,’ Crystal said as she reached the foot of the stairs. ‘He’s fixing lunch.’ She brushed past Edge to get behind the bar and asked with a smile, ‘What can I get for you gentlemen?’

  ‘Beers. Just beers. And they’ll taste real fine after bein’ drawn by a pretty little lady like you.’

  Edge, as impassive as he had been since the group entered, moved along the hallway toward the kitchen while the other men chorused their agreement with what had been said. He saw that the slices of ham frying
in the pan were starting to burn. And he turned them over, because the Negro was not there to do it. Then he slid the Winchester from the boot before he went to the rear door and raked his eyes over the littered back lot and the equally deserted areas out back of the buildings on the south side of Lone Star Street. Hooded eyes narrowed against the glare of the afternoon sun, the slivers of blue which showed between the lids glinting like strips of highly polished metal wire.

  Then he turned, moved back across the aromatic kitchen and along the passage: into the saloon which was filled with laughter and loud talk and tobacco smoke. The Winchester was canted to his shoulder, but it was as much the coldness of his stare as the slamming down of the rifle barrel on the bartop that curtailed the noise and caused the men to wrench the cigars and cigarettes from their lips.

  Several of them held their glasses but there were five on the counter top. And these were sent skidding, toppling, rolling and then shattering to the floor amid their spraying contents as the half-breed swept the Winchester barrel into them.

  Crystal vented a choked scream and leapt back, dropping the glass she was in process of filling. This as all but one of the customers lunged away from the front of the bar. The exception was the unfortunate young clerk with ink-stained hands who happened to be standing at the point where Edge released the rifle. Which continued to skitter along the counter under its own momentum then dropped down behind it.

  And before it clattered to the floor, the clerk was a trembling prisoner of the half-breed. His coat lapels bunched in Edge’s fisted left hand while the right came clear of the hair at the back of the half-breed’s head and revealed the straight razor. And finished its forward thrust with the honed blade a fraction of an inch away from the clerk’s instinctively closed left eye.