EDGE: Town On Trial Read online

  And all five men in the saloon heard the violent sound of the building’s rear door being slammed closed.

  ‘Shit, the wrong one,’ scar-face muttered.

  ‘So let’s play some cards, Reesen,’ Curly said, picking up the bottle in his free hand and taking it with his glass to a table. ‘All right to light another lamp, Edge?’

  The half-breed nodded arid Reesen put a match to a lamp-wick before sitting down without enthusiasm at the table with the other three. This as the two meat-canners from El Paso appeared in the doorway.

  ‘That right your help’s left?’ the shorter and fatter one asked anxiously.

  ‘How can a man’s right anythin’ be his left?’ Curly countered, and followed it with a gust of laughter as he dealt out four hands of cards.

  Shaft and the tallest of the quartet grinned. But Reesen scowled as he growled: ‘She wasn’t in no mood to put out anyway.’

  ‘Moses doesn’t work here anymore,’ Edge said and the two men on the stoop pushed inside and came to the bar, sending anxious sidelong glances toward the seated gunslingers who were starting a game of five card draw.

  ‘Moses left?’ Curly exclaimed. ‘Was he sick? Still, maybe he’ll get well soon. Long as he keeps takin’ the tablets.’

  Now Reesen joined the other two in the sycophantic response to Curly’s joke.

  ‘Couple of Bourbons,’ the taller, elder and almost-bald man from El Paso asked. ‘Don’t guess you have any ice?’

  Again Edge brought up glasses from below the bar, set them on the top and left the customers to open the bottle and pour out their own drinks.

  ‘Of course there’s no ice in a place like this, Jonas,’ the short, fat meat-canner said after it was obvious Edge did not intend to answer the enquiry.

  The half-breed felt ill-at-ease, a sensation he could not recall experiencing for a very long time. Not uneasy in the sense of being afraid. For that was a very familiar feeling, because he knew fear whenever danger threatened, had learned to harness and use such uneasiness so that it honed his reflexes when he moved to combat whatever menaced him.

  No, this was an entirely different brand of tension that sprang from the knowledge that he was out of place, standing here behind a bar in the squalid saloon of a small west Texas town, dispensing liquor to whoever happened to come through the batwings. And doing this simple chore badly aware that he would never improve because he had no wish to be better at it.

  Uneasy, too in the knowledge that he had known at the start this was how it would be this morning when Crystal Dickens had tossed the bill of sale on the table and announced it was made out in his name. But he had refused to admit that as a saloon keeper he was doomed to failure, was encouraged in this attitude by the fact that the situation was thrust upon him. He had not sought it for himself.

  And it had seemed like a chance to test if he was yet ready to forsake his drifting way of life and settle peacefully in one place. Not necessarily this place, which might serve only as a test.

  Which, he acknowledged as he rolled a cigarette, maybe it had. In which case he had failed. Irving was like no other town, but then all towns were different, yet the same to the extent that each had a pattern of life and living to which members of the community adhered. And, as the blonde had pointed out earlier, Edge had succeeded in alienating almost every member of this community. Simply by being himself which indicated that he was not ready to adapt his code of living to conform with the rules which enabled other people to live together.

  Perhaps he had been ready to consider this line of thinking earlier in the day while he was sitting out on the stoop before he was shot at or when he sat in the saloon and Crystal Dickens was up in her room asleep. But his subconscious had avoided it. Now, without the Negro or the woman to act as his surrogate in the supply of customers’ needs, the man named Edge was forced to face up to his failure as he lit the cigarette and his slitted eyes glinted with hatred in the flare of the match flame.

  ‘All I said was do you mind if we have refills, mister,’ the El Paso man called Jonas muttered nervously.

  The half-breed looked directly at both men and they backed off a step. Then became rooted to where they stood when Sheriff Wilde yelled,

  ‘Nobody move a muscle!’

  The lawman and two others had approached the front of the saloon silently and made no sound as they stepped up on the stoop. But their booted feet came down heavily and the batwings banged hard against the inside walls when they advanced on to the threshold.

  Jake Huber flanked Wilde on the left and the massively built Marlowe was on the right. All three men held Colt revolvers which they aimed at the quartet of card-players. The liveryman and the blacksmith wore deputies badges pinned to their vests. All three faces were sweat-sheened. Huber’s gun-hand shook.

  ‘What the hell, Sheriff?’ Curly asked as the meat-canners turned their heads like they had painfully stiff necks.

  Shaft and Reesen twisted from the waist to look toward the doorway: just as slowly but with less tension in their movements. Curly and his tallest partner merely had to look up from their cards to see the newcomers with the leveled guns.

  ‘Yeah, what the frig did we do?’ Shaft augmented.

  ‘Shut up, mouth,’ Curly said flatly. ‘Let’s all put up our hands.’

  ‘That’s the way,’ Wilde urged and now that he was not shouting the strain could be heard in his voice. ‘We’re here to stop trouble not start any. Like for you boys to spend the night and some of tomorrow with me over at the gaolhouse. Free room and board. And not a stain on your characters when I turn you loose.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Jonas gasped and dropped his empty glass.

  ‘Sorry about this, gents,’ Wilde apologized. ‘Disturbance’ll be over in a little while. Jerry, go get their guns.’

  ‘Sure thing, Wes,’ the blacksmith responded eagerly and advanced into the saloon.

  And Edge vented a low sigh which only he and the two men from El Paso heard. Then he spat the cigarette from his lips when he rasped at them, ‘Down!’ And drew his sixgun.

  Jerry Marlowe needed to go around a table to reach the four men with raised hands. And in so doing placed his massively-built frame momentarily in the line of fire from the guns of Wilde and Huber.

  Curly and the tall man unfolded to their feet, kicked over the table and started down on to their haunches as if every part of the move was spring-loaded. At the same time as Shaft and Reesen powered sideways off their chairs. The hands of all four men streaked downwards and revolvers were clawed from holsters.

  ‘Watch out!’ Wilde shrieked.

  This as the two men from El Paso hit the floor hard in response to the half-breed’s order. And Jerry Marlowe took two bullets in his chest, was knocked into a half-turn and cork-screwed downwards to flop across a chair that collapsed beneath his weight.

  Wilde, and an instant later, Huber, blasted shots across the falling form of the big blacksmith and Shaft screamed as he was hit in the shoulder, became silent when the second bullet drilled a hole through his forehead above his right eye.

  Edge’s gun exploded twice in unison with those of the lawman and liveryman. And Curly and the other gunslinger slumped to the side, blood pumping from bullet holes in their heads. Protected by the table from the guns of the crouching Wilde and Huber but exposed on the right flank to the half-breed’s Colt.

  ‘All right, all right!’ the scar-faced Reesen screamed, powering up and hurling his gun away. ‘That’s it!’

  Fear spread rapidly across his bristled features, displacing the vicious hatred which had contorted them since Curly had signaled the fight to start.

  ‘Easy, Jake,’ Wilde rasped as he and the liveryman came erect and he saw the degree of anger which gripped Huber and caused his gun hand to shake. ‘It’s over, old buddy.’

  ‘They killed Jerry, Wes,’ Huber groaned.

  ‘Take care of that myself,’ the big blacksmith forced out through the blood that bubbled in his throat. />
  ‘Help me!’ Reesen implored, his fear-filled eyes raking from Wilde, to Huber to Edge as he heard the small sounds which were made by Marlowe moving on the shattered chair.

  ‘He ain’t armed!’ Wilde yelled. And directed a tacit plea with his wide eyes toward Edge.

  Marlowe raised his head and his gun and squeezed the trigger. Firing under a table to send the bullet on an upward trajectory into the crotch of Reesen. Who screamed and stepped backwards, hit the overturned table and slid down it, clutched with both hands at the blood-soaked pants as his legs splayed across the floor.

  ‘She was a Mexican, feller,’ Edge said softly.

  And drew the uncomprehending stare of the scar-faced man as Wilde lunged forward to try to snatch the smoking gun from Marlowe’s rapidly weakening grasp.

  ‘You called the woman you left in San Antonio a Mex,’ the half-breed had time to add before the blacksmith managed to thumb back the hammer and squeeze the trigger again.

  Wilde was stooping over Marlowe then, free hand clawing toward a broad shoulder. But he was too late and he froze as the gun exploded. To gaze like everyone else at the blood which gouted from the wound opened up in Reesen’s throat. For a stretched second while the victim’s shocked nervous system held him rigid against the table top, before he became limp, his chin dropped to his chest and he toppled slowly to the side.

  Then the lawman wrenched his head round to gaze with smoldering hatred at the half-breed as he rasped, ‘You could’ve shot the gun outta Jerry’s hand, mister! Just because that guy used a word you don’t like you—’

  ‘Just thought I’d make the point while there was time, feller,’ Edge answered as he started to reload the Colt. ‘What happened while I was making it was between Marlowe and Reesen.’

  ‘The guy had surrendered and we had him covered!’ Wilde snarled. ‘It was cold-blooded murder, damnit!’

  ‘Makes it even-steven,’ the half-breed said as he holstered the gun and came out from behind the bar.

  ‘Sure does, mister,’ Marlowe croaked wetly as the El Paso men got shakily to their feet and parted hurriedly to allow Edge to move between them. Each word he spoke trickled more blood from the corners of his mouth. ‘Reckon it ain’t often a man gets the chance to kill the one that’s killed him. Thanks, mister.’

  ‘Don’t talk, Jerry,’ Huber urged. ‘I’ll go get Doc Brady.’

  He swung to go through the batwings, the scrape of his bootleather on the floor masking the thud of Marlowe’s head against his outstretched right arm.

  ‘He’s through talking, Jake,’ Wilde reported mournfully as he straightened up. ‘Forget Doug Brady. Fetch Stan Barlow.’

  ‘Dear God,’ the liveryman breathed, and sagged against the doorframe.

  ‘What is it, Jake?’ Sam Pepper called. ‘What’s the matter now?’

  ‘Jerry’s dead, Sam. Shot down by a bunch of hired guns Estelle Donnelly sent to town.’

  Huber staggered out through the batwings and the flapping of the doors counterpointed the ugly wet sounds of the liveryman as he vomited on the stoop. Then roars and shrieks of rage from the throats of a large crowd of townspeople filled the night air. And Wilde whirled and strode to the doorway.

  ‘Get on home, you people!’ he bellowed. ‘It’s all over! Ain’t nothin’ left to do but bury the dead!’ Then he lowered his voice to rasp, ‘Pull yourself together, Jake. We gotta get this mess cleared up and figure out how to handle things better next time.’

  ‘Robbing the dead is despicable, sir!’ Jonas growled, despite the efforts of the shorter and fleshier meat-canner to shush him.

  Wilde whirled away from the doorway and expressed greater contempt than ever for the half-breed who was coming up from a crouch.

  ‘They had a bottle of rye they didn’t pay for,’ Edge said evenly. And opened his right palm to display some coins he had collected from those scattered with playing cards and broken glass when the table was overturned. ‘The two-buck debt is paid now.’

  ‘Mister, you’re the meanest sonofabitch I ever did lay eyes on,’ the sheriff rasped.

  ‘Wes, he likely kept us from endin’ up the same as Jerry,’ Huber muttered through the kerchief he was using to wipe the vomit off his lips and jaws.

  ‘I sent you to bring Barlow!’ the lawman snarled at him.

  ‘Stan was in the crowd outside. He’s gone for his wagon.’ Huber subdued the rising anger and nodded curtly to Edge. ‘Thanks for the help, mister. It was real stupid of Jerry to be so careless. The woman warned us those San Antone people looked like professional guns.’

  ‘Jonas!’

  ‘Freemont!’

  The women’s shrill voices cut through the tense silence which followed Huber’s remarks.

  ‘It’s all right!’ the taller El Paso man yelled. ‘We’re all right, Mildred. Can we leave, sheriff?’

  The exchange jerked Wilde out of deep and bitter pensiveness. And he looked confused for a few moments until he made sense of the query which had registered in his subconscious. Then,

  ‘Sure. Sure, go ahead, gents. I’m sorry you had to be witnesses to the killin’s. It ain’t usual in this town.’

  The meat-canners bobbed their heads and scuttled out, could be heard reassuring their wives that they had survived the gunfight without anything more serious than shaken nerves.

  ‘Guess you can confirm what Miss Dickens said, mister?’ Wilde asked Edge. ‘Estelle Donnelly hired those men?’

  ‘Right, feller.’

  ‘Four ain’t enough,’ the lawman said to Huber. ‘We got to be ready for others, Jake.’

  A wagon and horse could be heard turning the corner and coming along White Creek Road as the liveryman snatched the deputy badge off his coat and held it toward Wilde.

  ‘You have to be ready, Wes,’ he said dully. ‘Because you’re the sheriff and it’s your job. And Joe Love better be ready because this trouble is between him and Estelle Donnelly.’

  ‘But Jake—’

  ‘I’ve had enough, Wes,’ Huber cut in and waved a hand over the sprawl of bodies around the overturned table and smashed chair. And the star flew out of his trembling fingers. ‘When me and Jerry said we’d give you a hand, we didn’t expect nothin’ like this. And I ain’t gonna risk endin’ up like poor old Jerry. Not on account of trouble that ain’t none of my concern.’

  He turned and pushed out through the batwings, as the wagon rolled to a halt and the town’s mortician dropped to the stoop.

  ‘It would seem sir,’ Barlow said as he entered the saloon and surveyed the carnage, ‘that you chose a particularly inappropriate new name for this establishment.’

  ‘How’s that, feller?’ Edge asked as he went back behind the bar counter.

  ‘Why, The Lucky Break, of course. It would seem that misfortune has attended you since you first set foot on the premises.’

  ‘Same as last night, feller.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You don’t have to haul my carcass down to your funeral parlor,’ the half-breed explained.

  Barlow frowned, then sighed. ‘Well, I suppose that after what has happened, you are entitled to consider yourself lucky to be alive, sir.’

  ‘I work at staying alive. And the harder I work at it, the luckier I seem to get.’

  A half-dozen men came into the saloon and were uncomfortably hesitant until Barlow told them to bring blankets from the wagon and wrap the dead in them before taking the bodies outside.

  During the exchange with the mortician and while the corpses were being removed, Sheriff Wilde remained detached from his surroundings, deep in anxious thought.

  ‘I’ll have the personal effects sent across to your office, Wes,’ Barlow said at length. ‘Bill the county for burial expenses?’

  ‘Sure, Stan,’ Wilde acknowledged absently. Then, when he and Edge were alone, ‘Jake was right, mister. I have to thank you. Way things were, you kept him and me from being out on that wagon with Jerry Marlowe. Hasn’t none of this mess been of your m
akin’ and you sure as hell didn’t have to side with us when the shootin’ started.’

  ‘No sweat,’ the half-breed said.

  Wilde nodded, tight-lipped, and went out of the saloon, his footfalls on the stoop masked by the sounds of the wagon swinging in a tight turn away from the front of The Lucky Break.

  ‘Why did you help him, Edge?’ Crystal Dickens asked from the doorway in back of the bar counter.

  He finished rolling the cigarette and lit it before he answered: ‘I owed him.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Buying a drink in here when Moses was tending bar.’

  ‘That was worth risking your life and killing for?’

  ‘It’s what I do best, lady.’

  She came along behind the bar, went past him and out to the other side. Where she began to straighten up the wreckage where five men had died.

  ‘What the sheriff said about none of this being your making was true, wasn’t it?’ she muttered at length. ‘He couldn’t say that to me. Because it’s all my fault. If I hadn’t been in here last night, Warford wouldn’t have had cause to shoot Rusty Donnelly. And it was money I gave her that allowed Mrs. Donnelly to hire the gunmen. And me having your name put on the bill of sale meant that you—’

  She broke off as the elderly Mrs. Mortimer came into the saloon. Then continued, ‘Meant that you got involved. And if I hadn’t gone to tell the sheriff about those men, Mr. Marlowe would still be alive.’

  There was a crack in her voice and in the lamplight her eyes were glazed with threatened tears.

  ‘Now, now, my dear,’ the old lady said tenderly. ‘Life deals us the cards and we play them as we think best at the time.’ She lightened her tone. ‘What a day it has turned out to be. I feel in need of a nightcap before I retire.’

  ‘Here you are, ma’am,’ Edge said, bringing the three-quarters-full bottle of Bourbon up from under the counter. ‘Figure Pepper will let you have a glass and some water. Pay for what you’ve had when you come in tomorrow. I’m closing up now.’

  ‘I’m sure you are wise,’ Mrs. Mortimer said as she fisted a bony hand around the neck of the bottle. ‘You’ve had a hard day by all accounts. Good night.’