The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (28 page)

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First Edge and then Bannerman, leading the pack horse, followed and when they were on the bottom land, parallel with the derelict railroad track, McCall expanded on what Bannerman had said.

‘Built by the richest man in Garfield City, when everybody thereabouts was hitting paydirt in a big way, Edge. When it seemed like there was no end to the supply of high grade ore to be dug out of the ground.’

Bannerman said: ‘But the lode ran out before the fools could get the track built further than ten miles from town.

‘Money can make men do crazy things,’ McCall growled ruefully and sighed deeply.

‘Same as not having enough of it can,’ Bannerman said in a matching tone. Edge lit the cigarette that he had rolled while they rode down the valley side and murmured: ‘Like the love of a woman gone bad, if Pete Grundy’s anything to go by.’

McCall glowered at Edge as he countered suspiciously: ‘It’s fortunate you used the old timer instead of me as an example, mister!’

Edge shrugged, flicked away the dead match and said evenly: ‘I guess I can be a real mean minded player when the game’s not going my way, feller. But I don’t feel inclined to be mean in any kind of way after I got two hundred and fifty bucks from one particular Kitty.’

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CHAPTER • 21

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BANNERMAN SHOT an anxious glance at McCall, but the lawman remained icily
calm in response to Edge’s joke about the Widow Raine: did no more than tighten his mouth line and rasp the back of a hand over the bristles on his jaw before he growled:

‘If you want to look at this trouble as some kind of game of chance, mister, let me tell you I still plan on winning the particular Kitty we’re talking about. And I’d appreciate it if nobody spoke disrespectful about her?’

He shifted the glittering gaze of his slate grey eyes from Edge to Bannerman and back again, tacitly demanding some form of acknowledgement. The towering, broadly built saloonkeeper swallowed hard and offered guiltily: ‘If you figure I’ve said anything out of order about Mrs Raine, John, I sure didn’t intend to.’

Edge added sardonically: ‘The lady owes me money and stole a horse from me, feller. Outside of that I got nothing against her.’

He paused for just long enough so that McCall could show a first sign of anger: and when he didn’t he changed the subject. ‘So – there’s still a town of some kind where this railroad starts?’

The lawman quelled the final remnants of an impulse to temper and replied: ‘It seems there’s water enough in the hills beyond the canyon for a half dozen dirt farmers to scratch livings. And paydirt enough for a handful of grubbers to stay interested.’

‘And a saloon where the lawless element can get whatever kind of twisted pleasure they want, as long as they have the dollars to pay,’ Bannerman added.

‘Any law there?’ Edge asked.

Bannerman was quick to respond before McCall could answer: like a man with some kind of vested interest in the subject raised. ‘A sheriff named Strickland.’

McCall explained the other man’s attitude. ‘Roy Strickland has another job. He runs the saloon.’

‘Does he know you fellers?’

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‘Maybe he could know me by name, but we’ve never run into each other.’ McCall moved a hand from the rein to his shirt front. ‘But seeing how he wears a county lawman’s star himself, he knows what this means.’

He unpinned his badge and dropped it into the pocket it had been fastened to. ‘Keep them handy, though. If Shannon’s in town, I want it to be official when we arrest him and his sidekicks.’

Edge and Bannerman unfastened their deputies badges and pocketed them. Then moved up at either side of McCall without talking as they rode out of the broad valley and into the close confines of the canyon.

Even an unskilled tracker could have read the clear sign on the shadowed surface between the rock walls through which the rusted rails ran on element bleached ties: seen that there had been a great deal of coming and going by riders. But exactly when the hoof prints and wagon wheel tracks had been made it was not possible to tell, because it had been several weeks since a wind of any strength had blown through the canyon to disturb the jumble of old and new sign in the dust on the hard packed ground.

The afternoon had almost run its heated course when they came within first sight of Garfield City. And then the town became gradually visible in ever-expanding proportions as they neared the south western end of the canyon that broadened out more dramatically than at the eastern end.

The community was comprised of a single street that climbed up a gentle incline, with a scattering of crop fields and claims spread haphazardly across the slopes on either side.

At the lower end of the street was the railroad depot, the single story structure as dilapidated as the track. At the top, standing out against the darkening western skyline on the hill crest, facing down the street, was the largest building in town.

‘Strickland’s place. You think, John?’ Bannerman suggested after they halted beside the depot.

‘I reckon so, Bart.’ McCall’s gaze was fixed upon the two story, open balconied building perched upon the hill top something over a half mile away. ‘That’s just got to be the notorious Town House Hotel.’

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The lawman spoke the name like each word had a foul taste, forcing out his opinion through gritted teeth while Edge completed his survey of the community: and tacitly agreed that if men with ill-gotten gains came to Garfield City to indulge in the available pleasure to be had there, then the large stone and timber place perched at the top end of the street was surely where they did so.

All the mostly clapboard buildings that flanked the street running up the hill had an empty, neglected look to them: some in a state of disrepair that matched that of the railroad depot.

On each of the claims and farmsteads spread over the slopes to either side was a badly constructed shack, none big enough to have more than a couple of rooms. Smoke rose from the chimneys of some of these hovels, likewise the hotel, for supper time was approaching. But in the surrounding silence of evening any sounds of domestic activity within the town were abruptly masked by an eruption of muted-bydistance noise from the Town House. A player piano badly in need of tuning started up. Then a guitar was strummed with some degree of expertise. And a woman broke into melodious song: until she was shouted down by a chorus of protesting voices, both male and female.

‘Sounds like there’s a high old time about to be had in Strickland’s place,’ Bannerman growled as lamplight spilled from a half dozen windows along the front of the hotel: none of them in the upper story behind the balcony.

McCall grimaced. ‘Let’s hope they get so stupid drunk in there they don’t spot us until we’re ready to jump them.’

‘If Shannon and his bunch are in that place,’ Bannerman reminded uncertainly.

‘Damn it, I know that, Bart!’ McCall snapped testily.

Widely scattered subdued patches of yellow light from lamps or candles showed in the darkness at shack windows across the slopes on both sides of the street as McCall urged his mount forward.

Bannerman and Edge, now leading the pack animal, did likewise as within the saloon the same woman as before began to sing again, accompanied by the discordant player piano and the skilled guitarist.

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This time the raucous voices that greeted the music rang with approval, contributing to a barrage of conflicting sounds that was loud enough to cover the muted clop of slow moving hooves, except to the ears of the riders.

Then McCall caught his breath.

And Edge vented a low whistle.

Bannerman divided an uneasy glance between the two men and saw they both peered fixedly into the corral out back of the livery stable. Where a half dozen horses were enclosed by worse for wear fencing: contentedly chomping on hay from a feed box as they eyed indifferently four more of their own kind moving along the street.

‘You two guys know something I don’t?’ Bannerman’s tone was as apprehensive as the expression on his fleshy, sweat shiny face.

Edge pointed toward the corral. ‘That bay gelding with the white hind leg?’

‘I see him.’

‘While you were locked in the jailhouse with the two Mexican government men I rode him out of Dalton Springs with Kitty Raine up behind. Got as far as the old Tremaine place with her and that horse.’

‘So that likely means Mrs Raine is . . ?’

‘Seems so,’ McCall rasped between gritted teeth, his eyes ablaze with the fires of mounting fury. And his tone thickened as he growled: ‘Strickland could maybe have gotten himself some fresh meat for that pleasure palace of his, the no good – ‘

It was obviously a string of curses that snarled from the constricted throat of the distraught man as he dragged out his badge, pinned it on his shirt front and lost the battle to keep a grip on his emotions. Spurred his mount into a gallop, thudding hoof beats masking the obscenities.

‘John!’

Even as the name exploded from his gaping mouth, Bannerman wrenched his head around, the look in his watery blue eyed stare changing from horror to helpless pleading when his strangled vocal chords refused to vent the words he needed to say. 184

Edge sighed and shook his head while his face remained impassive as he said: ‘My feelings for the Raine woman are about the opposite of his, feller.’

He jerked on his reins to steer his horse off the street and ducked his head to enter the door-less entrance of the derelict livery, the pack animal behind him. He was out of the saddle, sliding to the dirt floor and pulling the Winchester out of the boot as Bannerman followed him inside.

‘I don’t think we ought to – ‘ Bannerman started then had to give his entire attention to calming the spooked horse under him as the animal snorted and reared within the confines of the stable.

This equine panic was caused by a fusillade of gunshots that rang out from the top of the street and brought to an abrupt end the thud of hooves of McCall’s galloping mount. Edge lunged for the doorway and pulled up short on the threshold. Leaned out far enough to see to the top of the street.

Bannerman lumbered up beside him and Edge thrust out a hand to fasten a tight grip on the fleshy upper arm of the big man, stopped him from moving out of the doorway into the open.

‘What I think is that we shouldn’t go off half cocked like McCall did, feller.’

From where he had been forced to halt and now remained rooted to the spot without protest, Bannerman could clearly see the scene out front of the Town House. Where John McCall and his horse lay sprawled on the ground a hundred and fifty feet short of the brightly lit façade of the hotel. As a group of men and women emerged from the double doorway and spilled down the steps of the porch beneath the balcony. The women all elaborately attired in revealing, tight fitting, garishly coloured dresses. The less ornately garbed men with levelled rifles, black powder smoke leaking from the muzzles.

McCall’s horse remained totally inert. But as the two men in the livery stable doorway watched from afar and the people from out of the hotel drew tentatively close to him, the Dalton Springs sheriff showed the first signs of life. Then some others. In the space of a few seconds he sat up but needed to support himself with hands splayed on the ground at either side.

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‘John’s alive!’ Bannerman gasped.

Edge murmured wryly as he dug out the makings: ‘So are we, feller. And I figure our chances of staying that way are better than his. Which means we did the right thing, wouldn’t you say?’

Bannerman nodded but looked unconvinced when he replied dully: ‘Yeah, I guess so.’

Then they saw events at the top of the street take a more ominous turn. When a man strode away from the group and gestured for the rest to stay back. Separated from the others he was instantly recognisable as the heavily built Luke Shannon, even though Edge and Bannerman saw him as just a silhouetted figured against the hotel’s brightly lighted windows.

He halted in front of the rigidly helpless, still seated McCall, booted feet in the vee of the lawman’s splayed legs and pressed the muzzle of his rifle against his forehead then bellowed:

‘Listen up! I’m gonna count to three! And before I’m through, you people that rode in with this crazy sonofabitch had better show yourselves! Hands high! Or McCall gets to meet his maker!’ He threw back his head and bellowed even more loudly: ‘One . . ! Two . .

! Three!

Shannon stretched the count out to take at least ten seconds. Bannerman released his pent up breath in a strangled gasp. Made to jerk free of the tighter grip Edge fastened on his arm. Then sagged and seemed on the point of passing out while tension stretched time as the silence lengthened in the wake of the ultimatum’s failure to produce a response.

Before Shannon threw back his head and vented a roar of raucous laughter that sent a jolt of shock through Bannerman: much as a gunshot surely would have done. Shannon taunted McCall: ‘So, this time you couldn’t get any of them stupid hicks to ride along with you, lawman?’

Then what was said in front of the hotel did not carry down the street, because Shannon moderated his tone to speak less forcefully to those in the immediate vicinity as he removed the threat of summary execution from McCall and sloped the rifle carelessly to his shoulder.

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