EDGE: The Day Democracy Died Read online

  ‘Gene Stanton told us who they were, mister,’ Bailey replied grimly. ‘Men he’d come up against when he was a peace officer over in Kansas just after the war.’

  ‘Same as the new bunch?’

  ‘Right. And you’re proof we need that type, mister. And it figures that Dan Warren is out roundin’ up more of the same.’ His tone altered from close to a snarl to one of near sadness. ‘It wasn’t how we planned it to be. Just wanted to win the people’s votes with the good sense of what we stand for. But Dan Warren made trouble.’

  He wiped the final trace of lather from Edge’s face and the half-breed shook his head when Bailey picked up a carton of talc. He asked for his moustache to be trimmed back to a mere trace of one, along his top lip and drooping down at each side of his mouth.

  ‘Heard Hogan and the others were here before Warren made trouble, feller.’

  A nod. ‘Yeah, they were. On account we didn’t think Warren’d sit still while we was confiscatin’ the Big-B spread. But Hogan and Nugent and ’em others - Gene could keep ‘em in line easy. Gene’s warned us he ain’t so sure about the Kerwins and their bunch.’

  The shave was finished and Bailey removed the cloth from Edge’s shoulders. The half-breed had seen the barber’s price list tacked to a wall and he delved into a pants pocket and brought out fifteen cents as he stood up from the chair.

  ‘Nice shave,’ he said as he handed over the money.

  ‘I’m known to be good at my job, mister,’ the rat-faced Bailey responded. ‘And it’s come to be that givin’ advice is as much a part of a barber’s job as shavin’ and cuttin’ hair. Guess I’ve made it plain enough - my advice to you?’

  ‘Obliged,’ Edge said as the beat of many hooves were heard, far out to the north of Democracy. ‘But I always finish what I start out to do. Means I’ll only leave town if I have to.’

  Bailey cocked his head to listen to the sound of the approaching horsemen. He sighed. ‘Too late, mister. You’ll have to stay, seems like. Permanent. Six feet under out back of the church.’

  Edge pulled open the door and the bell jangled. ‘Don’t figure to dig in more than my heels, feller,’ he replied softly as he stepped out on to the sidewalk.

  As he crossed the intersection towards the angled entrance of the hotel, the riders entered Democracy, reining their horses to a canter and then a walk as they passed the town marker. There were about twenty of them, travel-stained and weary-looking from the long ride. As the dust of their gallop settled, Edge stepped up on to the hotel porch and turned to look along the north section of Main Street and drew his first impression of the newcomers.

  All were dressed in long, warm coats against the chill of the morning air, the collars turned up and their hat brims pulled down. They wore gunbelts on top of their coats. They rode in an untidy group with no leader immediately apparent. Faces which were momentarily turned towards the sun, emerging from the shadows of hat brims, were darkly stubbled and dirt streaked.

  Over the length of the street, few details were visible. But, even had he not known who they were, Edge thought he would have sensed the aura of menace emanating from the group: a certain knowledge that these men were looking for trouble and anxious to find it. A feeling based not so much on their number and physical appearance, but more on their combined attitude of quietly tense watchfulness as they surveyed their surroundings.

  ‘It takes one to know one,’ the half-breed muttered softly to himself, steadying the Winchester against his shoulder with his free hand as he pumped the action.

  ‘Whole lot more than one of them, Mr. Edge,’ Conrad Power growled as he stepped out of the lobby and on to the porch. He was holding the shotgun across his belly in two hands. There was fear on his black face as he halted alongside Edge and raked his dark eyes over the town streets. ‘And it seems the folks ain’t happy to see any of them.’

  Main and the cross street had been emptying of townspeople as Edge left the barber shop for the hotel, the pace of the exodus from the open into cover quickening as the riders came closer. There were only the aged and infirm in sight now, awkward in their hurry to get off the streets. Horses stood docile at hitching rails and half-laden wagons’ remained parked outside the stores. Doors banged closed all over town.

  ‘Guess it’s been that way since this thing started?’ Edge asked evenly as a lone man appeared on the street in the path of the newcomers. It was the tall, thin figure of Sheriff Stanton, wiping a brush on a rag as he walked loose-limbed from the law office.

  ‘They’re ordinary people,’ Power replied miserably. ‘Grab whatever’s goin’ but run for cover when the crap starts to fly.’

  The riders had reined their mounts to halt ten yards short of where Stanton stood. Nobody moved for stretched seconds and in the bright sunlight the scene could have been a subdued version of one of the lawman’s paintings. Then three of the newcomers dismounted and approached the sheriff.

  A light breeze stirred through the town and the banners strung across the streets swayed and flapped. The breeze ended as abruptly as it had begun and the town clock on the front of the court house began to chime the hour of nine. Even when these intrusions of noise into cold silence had ended, the exchange of words between Gene Stanton and the Kerwin brothers could not be heard by Edge and Power.

  ‘Somethin’ you should know, Mr. Edge,’ the Negro said as Stanton turned and went back to his office.

  ‘What’s that, feller?’

  ‘I ain’t no hero.’

  The Kerwins remained where they were and their men stayed in the saddle behind them. All the men had seen as much of the town as they wanted for now and concentrated their attention on the two figures standing in front of the hotel entrance.

  ‘So?’ Edge asked.

  ‘Don’t know if it was a hint or not. But I followed your example, Mr. Edge. Got my horse saddled and ready to go.’

  Stanton re-emerged on the street. He had got rid of the brush and rag and was carrying a cardboard carton and a burlap sack.

  ‘Be badges in the box, Mr. Edge,’ Power supplied, licking his lips and swallowing hard. ‘Silas McQuigg was up most of the night makin’ them. Money in the sack, I guess. Lot more pay than most lawmen ever get, I reckon.’

  The tall, grey-haired sheriff confirmed the Negro’s suspicions. He moved from the Kerwin brothers to the mounted men, delving into the box and the sack to distribute glinting five-pointed stars and stacks of bills.

  Something we both know for sure, Conrad,’ Edge growled as Stanton finished the chore and made a request that caused all the newcomers to raise their right hands.

  ‘We’re out-numbered, Mr. Edge.’

  The massed voices of the Kerwin gang, repeating the oath which Stanton recited, reached the hotel porch as a sour-toned mumbling.

  The men dropped their hands and, at a signal from the tallest of the Kerwin brothers, the mounted members of the gang swung from their saddles. Stanton, his suit jacket unbuttoned and held back to display the ivory butt plates of his holstered Beaumont-Adams, turned slowly and started to walk along Main Street. His twenty newly-appointed deputies trailed him, every one of them with a hand close to the jutting butt of a holstered revolver.

  ‘Surrender peaceably, you men!’ the elderly sheriff yelled. ‘And you’ll get a legal trial! But we’ll shoot you if we have to.’

  ‘You got somethin’ in mind, Mr. Edge?’ the Negro rasped in a frightened whisper.

  ‘Staying alive and free is all.’

  ‘Won’t do that fightin’ this bunch on your own. And if you’re waitin’ for a miracle to happen, it sure don’t look like God’s on our side.’

  A gunshot exploded, the sound ringing out from the roof of the stage line depot on the north-west corner of the intersection.

  ‘Bastard!’ one of the Kerwin gang snarled as everyone halted, eyes raking from the bullet hole in the hard-packed street a yard in front of the sheriff to the roofline of the depot.

  Edge’s eyes went to the same elev
ated spot. ‘Seems like somebody up there likes us,’ he muttered wryly.

  ‘Enough!’ the man on the roof yelled, from the cover of the sign proclaiming the name of the stage line. ‘No more killing!’

  ‘Tillson!’ the Negro rasped. ‘He must have held out on givin’ up his rifle.’

  Revolvers came clear of holsters and every muzzle was tracked around to aim at the sign. Edge’s face remained in its impassive set, giving no hint that the shot had been unexpected as his narrowed eyes swiveled in their sockets.

  ‘What I said to them goes for you, schoolteacher!’ Stanton snarled, after rasping an order to the Kerwins. ‘This is law business!’

  Except for the large group of men on the north section of Main, the streets of Democracy continued to be empty. And, again, the half-breed concealed his feelings behind the unflinching flesh of his freshly-shaved face.

  ‘I want assurances that...’ Tillson began.

  ‘Go take the nigger and the drifter!’ Stanton roared. The schoolteacher won’t...’

  The tallest Kerwin held up a hand with the four fingers extended, thumb folded across the palm, and pushed it forward. He and his brothers started to walk and four of their men moved in their wake.

  The barrel of a rifle appeared at the side of the sign atop the stage depot and a shot curtailed the sheriff’s boast. Then another and another. More hard-packed dirt was exploded into dust as bullet holes pocked the street, this time ahead of the advancing deputies.

  ‘Frig this!’ the brother who was the obvious leader of the gang snarled, whirling, dropping into a crouch and blasting a shot towards the sign.

  The rest of the men were only a moment late in imitating his actions: the fusillade of shots exploding a shower of wood splinters from the sign behind which Tillson was crouched. The noise masked whatever the enraged Stanton was bellowing as he pointed towards the abruptly deserted porch of the hotel.

  Beyond the open doorway, Edge was shoving an only slightly reluctant Conrad Power across the lobby and into the saloon.

  ‘But it ain’t right,’ the Negro complained, moving of his own free will now as he led the way behind the bar and through the archway into the rear. ‘Tillson ain’t got a chance.’

  ‘Gave us one, though,’ the half-breed answered through clenched teeth as they emerged out into the yard and ran across it to the stable. ‘Maybe you prayed just enough, feller.’

  The Kerwin gang had been fanning their revolvers, pouring lead up at the roof of the stage depot. Abruptly, the firing ended.

  ‘All right!’ Tillson cried shrilly. ‘All right! I surrender!’

  ‘Go get the nigger and Edge!’ Stanton countered.

  Running feet hit the street as the new deputies raced on to the intersection and across it.

  The half-breed and Power were already astride their horses and in the yard. The deputies began to shout in a mixture of anger and glee and these additional sounds of their advance masked the beat of hooves as the two fugitives galloped their horses across the back lots of the buildings on the west side of Main Street.

  Edge was in the lead now, and Power trailed him, sticking close as the half-breed veered his mount to the west. Gunshots sounded behind them. But they were the low-powered cracks of revolvers and the bullets ploughed harmlessly into the dirt, far short of the moving targets.

  Then the shooting ended. Both men eased their horses from the Hat-out gallop and glanced back over their shoulders. The Kerwin gang grouped out back of the Palace Hotel stable no longer looked dangerous over such a distance through settling dust. On foot and armed only with short-range weapons, they looked despondent and defeated. Beyond them, standing out starkly against the skyline on the roof of the stage depot, the slightly-built, stoop-shouldered figure of Tillson eased erect, his arms held high above his head.

  ‘A very damn small miracle,’ Power said breathlessly. ‘For all the prayin’ I did.’

  Another man appeared on the distant rooftop, thrusting forward a handgun towards the schoolteacher. As he approached his prisoner, Gene Stanton was content not to add any more gun smoke to that which was already drifting across Democracy.

  ‘Maybe it was just a sign, feller,’ the half-breed answered evenly.

  ‘What of?’ the hotel man growled, and spat forcefully at the ground. ‘That when we’re given the chance, we can be as yellow as everyone else in Democracy?’

  There was no pursuit and the two slowed their horses still more, to an easy canter.

  ‘You ain’t yellow, feller,’ the half-breed said at length.

  ‘Not on the outside, mister. I’m a nigger, like Stanton is always tellin’ me. Which is maybe why Snyder and his bunch are bound to take over Democracy. ’Cause I’m on the other side and God ain’t never shown no sign he likes the Negroes he created.’

  ‘Unless that was it, in your case, Conrad.’

  The Negro spat again. ‘They say He works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform, mister. But this way beats me - letting that crazy schoolteacher get caught by the gent while I take it on the run like a bat outta hell.’

  ‘You’re alive and free, feller.’

  A shake of the handsome head. ‘That was what you wanted for yourself, mister. And I already told you I ain’t owed it by you. So you can ride on to wherever you were headed when you come by, mister. I aim to go back to town.’

  ‘Me, too, feller. But later.’

  The Negro shrugged. ‘Sure, later. But soon, mister. You beat me, though. What’s in it for you?’

  ‘Just me.’ The half-breed grinned. ‘And nothing to do with proving I’m not yellow.’

  ‘Never thought you was.’

  ‘And neither are you, Conrad.’

  Now Power grinned. ‘Maybe if they think we are, though, it gives us the edge.’ He laughed out loud. ‘You get it?’

  ‘Sure, feller,’ Edge replied. Then, as the Negro looked back again at the town in the distance: ‘Later, like you said. Democracy ain’t ready for it yet.’

  ‘It?’ He was puzzled.

  Edge grinned briefly again. ‘Black Power.’

  Chapter Eight

  Edge and Conrad Power rode far to the west and then, when the intervening terrain hid them from the town, they swung northwards. It was after midday when the half-breed altered course again, to head east. The whole time, they were on what had once been the Warrens’ Big-B spread. The families who had gone into hock to the town bank to buy pieces of the range were toiling hard in the chili sunlight.

  Those whose newly-purchased sections of land were close to Democracy would have seen the Kerwin gang riding into town and many would have heard the explosion of gunfire that had disturbed the morning. But the reactions of these people to the two horsemen were the same as those by the men and women working too far out in open country to be aware of what had happened. A pointed indifference. They continued to erect fences and build shacks, to plough the pastureland for planting and to dig irrigation ditches: to look anywhere but at the black man and the half-breed riding by.

  ‘Snyder’s got them in the palm of his friggin’ sticky hand!’ Power snarled to end a long silence. ‘And ain’t no use tryin’ to tell the lunkheads that the fat man’ll clench his fist and start squeezin’ soon as their sweat starts to earn money!’

  ‘It was tried?’ Edge asked. ‘Telling them? I never did see any posters that weren’t for Snyder’s men.’

  Power had done a great deal of spitting along the way. But he still had plenty of saliva left. Another globule of moisture marked their route. ‘There was posters, mister. All over. But they got torn down soon as they went up. Them first deputies the gent brought in did the tearin’ down. Didn’t make no difference, though. They’d’ve busted up any meetin’s the Lovejoy crowd got goin’, I guess. But never was one. Nobody ever showed up. On account of Snyder had already sold his bill of goods to the townspeople.’

  Another long silence was broken by Edge.

  ‘Stanton was always with the Snyder camp, feller?
’

  The Negro looked about to spit again, but held back the wet and sighed with a shake of his head. ‘The gent was never with no one, mister. Came into town trackin’ the last of a bunch of bank robbers. Trailed them all the way from Indian Territory, pickin’ them off one by one. Got his last man in a showdown on Main Street. Went away with him, then came back. We didn’t have no sheriff and old man Warren reckoned it would be a good idea if we did have. In the event of any more outlaws tried to hole up in Democracy. So the gent was appointed to the office.’

  ‘Kept himself to himself and didn’t do much else ’cept paint pictures. Until old man Warren cashed in and Frank Snyder started to stir the crap. Then his mean streak come out and he brought in the hired guns to back him.’

  Another shake of the head, this time with a grimace on the black face. ‘Ain’t no doubt he was a good lawman once. But the idea of easy money from other people’s sweat got to him. Same reason Snyder ain’t just a fat storekeeper no more. Nor McQuigg just a fine blacksmith. Nor none of the rest what they used to be. What we doin’ here?’

  They had been riding east on the trail from Laramie for several miles, then reached the fork and could see the derelict way station ahead of them. In the bright sunlight of afternoon the broken down building looked even more forlorn than it had during the rainstorm of last night. The half-breed felt no sense of being watched as he rode closer, his hooded eyes spotting the bullet holes and other signs of the early morning Sioux attack.

  ‘The Warrens went to buy help,’ he replied. ‘Last time they were seen was here.’

  ‘They sure did make it a long way on foot,’ Power said, with mixed sadness and admiration as he followed Edge’s example and slid from the saddle. ‘But it’ll be a cold trail to follow, mister.’

  They led their horses across the front of the way station and around the side to the corral at the rear. The frost and sun hardened mud still carried the impressions from which the bodies of Hogan, Danvers and Robarts had been lifted.