The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (30 page)

‘Damn you, Luke! Don’t you be so mean and rough on a girl!’ Chrissy Walters whined. Then vented a quivering peal of laughter. As false as many sounds of good cheer that had issued from the building tonight.

Edge guessed she was regretting her impulsive criticism of the actions of a man she knew had a short fuse.

‘Hell, honey!’ Shannon’s voice was heavily slurred by liquor. ‘You know you gotta take the rough with the smooth from me. How else you gonna know the times when I’m being sweet and nice to you?’

There was a burst of laughter: instantly ended when a hand cracked on flesh. Chrissy howled with pain and started to protest: ‘Damn you, Luke, you didn’t have to

– ‘

Shannon snarled: ‘Just a reminder of the kind of mean, bad ass bastard I can be, honey! You oughta know by now I can’t abide a nagging woman, ain’t that right?’

Edge and Bannerman had reached the foot of the staircase. Held back from stating up as the violence within the hotel was followed by another tense silence clamped firmly over the building.

Which served to heighten the tension outside and introduced into the moonlit night the kind of stillness in which the slightest sound would ring out like a gunshot to anyone making it.

Heavy footfalls marked a man’s staggering course across the room beyond the open doorway. And a woman who was not Chrissy yelled excitedly:

‘That’s the way, Gus! Let’s get this party going again, damnit!’

The player piano began to grind out a familiar off-key tune. Then a man and a woman started to sing an even more unmelodious duet about a home far away across the sea.

Edge suppressed an impulse to take the staircase two treads at a time: get as near to his objective as possible while the discordant music continued. But speed meant louder 194

sounds and there was a risk of tripping and sprawling: he, rifle and timber clattering together.

He reached the top without accident, Bannerman close behind him. And their luck continued to hold – the door on the outside landing was not fastened by anything more secure than a rusted latch.

It barely squeaked when it was lifted and hinges creaked just a little, but the sounds were totally covered when Shannon bellowed:

‘Cut out that lousy racket! I’m trying to do some serious thinking here, goddamnit!

The singing was curtailed immediately but the player piano continued for a few more seconds as Edge and Bannerman moved silently into the building and the big saloonkeeper closed the door at their backs.

They were on a broad, unlit, threadbare carpeted balcony with a row of numbered closed doors to the rooms at the front of the building on the right. The almost as dark rear area of the saloon section of the hotel was fifteen feet below them beyond a wrought iron balustrade to the left.

The end of the brass studded and copper topped bar counter could be seen in the semi-darkness immediately beneath where they stood and a staircase with a rickety looking banister slanted down the opposite wall from front to rear. In the gold-rich heyday of the hotel, bright light for the rear area would have been provided by the once ornate crystal chandelier suspended above a one time polished dance floor with a slightly raised entertainment stage behind it. But few of the glass candle holders were still intact and the brass supports were tarnished to dark green and black. What light reached into this area tonight came from a few widely scattered kerosene lamps in the front section of the saloon, where the handful of patrons were gathered: in full but not very clear view of the two intruders who watched covertly from above. Reflected in an enormous mirror that was fixed at a slight angle to the top half of the rear wall above the stage: placed there to make the long ago shows look more spectacular than they were and maybe to create an illusion that the room was a lot larger than it was. But the degenerating passage of time, neglect by the more recent owners of the Town House and mistreatment by patrons over the years had left the glass cracked, 195

mottled and dulled so that the mirror no longer reflected sharp images and true perspectives.

But it served the purpose of Edge and Bannerman as they took care not to be reflected themselves while they registered the geography of the saloon and its furnishings and the positions of the unsuspecting people down there.

Counted no more than the five dishevelled and unshaven men and three evening gowned and painted up women who had emerged from the hotel after John McCall’s horse was brought down in a hail of gunfire.

One of the men – most probably Strickland – stood at a midway point behind the bar counter and the other four were seated at two tables.

Luke Shannon shared with Chrissy one on which stood two empty bottles and two full shot glasses, the pair apparently withdrawn into a closed world of sullen alcoholic stupor or morbid contemplation.

Craig, Strange and another man were indifferently engaged in a low voiced poker game at a nearby glass, card and money littered table, watched with disinterest by a raven haired woman.

The third woman was seated at the player piano, moving her hands dramatically along the keyboard as she pretended to play the unresponsive instrument, her yellow haired head flung back as she silently mouthed the words of a ballad. She was the least attractive of the three, perhaps because she was so obviously drunker than the others.

There was no sign of John McCall or Kitty Raine.

Then one of the six doors on the right of the balcony was jerked open. A dozen feet from where Edge and Bannerman became frozen to the floor. And the new widow from Dalton Springs stepped over the threshold, yawned and scratched in her disarrayed auburn hair.

Bannerman cleared his throat and tried to capture the attention of the newly awakened woman without alerting the people in the saloon below: hissed her name in an earnest whisper between clenched teeth.

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Edge shifted his glinting eyed gaze from the suddenly stunned by shock Kitty Raine to the reflected scene below. Grunted when he saw what began to happen after the redhead’s mouth snapped open and gave vent to an ear splitting scream. He grimaced and growled softly: ‘Lady, you surely do sound like the pain you’ve come to be.’

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CHAPTER • 23

_________________________________________________________________________

MEN CURSED and women shrieked. Chairs crashed and the table at which the
three men played poker was up-ended: scattered money, cards, a bottle and glasses across the floor.

Revolvers were clawed from holsters and heads were wrenched around toward the mirror. But the angrily startled men held their ground and their fire: sought to glimpse something of what had caused the woman to scream up on the balcony. Then they saw the reflection of Kitty Raine as she appeared suddenly at the balustrade after she lunged off the threshold of the room and started to yell:

‘There are two of – ‘

Edge powered into a full length dive across the gap to reach her. And swung his rifle hard just before he hit the floor and suppressed a groan of pain: cracked the barrel viciously against the small of her back.

A scream of agony cut off her warning as she twisted around, reaching with both clawed hands for the source of the pain. Failed to see what was about to happen to her as Edge sprang up into a crouch, an arm around the backs of her legs. Raised her up, on to, then tipped her over the top of the balustrade

Bannerman yelled: ‘You can’t!’

Edge said: ‘I just did.’

Kitty Raine’s scream changed key as she plummeted off the balcony. Was silenced when she hit the floor with a sickening thud.

The drunken woman at the player piano accidentally hit the lever to start the instrument which once more began to jangle the discordant melody of a maudlin song about a distant home on a foreign shore.

At the same time a burst of gunfire exploded and the big mirror on the back wall shattered into a myriad shards that showered on to the stage: at least one of the men aware of its dangerous reflective power, while others blasted their weapons at the ceiling that was the underside of the balcony.

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But the muzzle velocity of the handguns was not sufficient for the bullets to penetrate the solid timbers.

As an acrid taint rose with the black vapour of drifting gunsmoke, Edge had a disturbing through he dismissed as soon as it came to him. Momentarily considered the danger that other doors along the balcony would burst open and newly awakened occupants more dangerous than the unarmed redhead would rush out, guns blazing. Then he swung open the nearest door himself. Signalled for Bannerman to follow him and quickly crossed to the un-curtained window on the other side of the unoccupied, spartanly furnished room.

Flung it open and climbed smoothly over the sill. Reached the balustrade above the street with a single stride and made to swing up and across it. But then he paused to look back at Bannerman leaning through the open window, the saloonkeeper grimacing with fear as he realised what the lighter, maybe more agile man intended to do.

Edge rasped through clenched teeth: ‘You’re right, feller. You ain’t built for this part of the play so best you stay up here. Pray my old bones stay whole and keep the opposition busy for me, uh?’

Bannerman swallowed hard and nodded as Edge began to lower himself cautiously with a one handed grip while he clutched the rifle in the other one. Dropped down off the balcony: loose limbed so that the jolt when he hit the hard packed dirt of the street did no serious damage. Just pained his legs from ankles to knees, already suffering from when he hit the balcony floor moments ago, as he eased up off his haunches. He was aware of an eerily unnatural silence from within the saloon as he peered at the doorway and the flanking windows spilling patches of light across the porch beneath the balcony.

Felt sweat beads ooze from every pore as he braced himself to dive and roll should a hail of bullets blast out from the too quiet building.

Then Bannerman began to yell what sounded like crazy gibberish: before his voice and many others raised in terrified response - were lost behind a barrage of gunfire. From just one revolver.

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Edge took advantage of the uproar. Lunged up on to the Town House porch and burst through the doorway, his rifle levelled from the hip. Took in the saloon at a glance: its layout already familiar but seeing it for the first time from this viewpoint.

And he spotted everybody except for one man.

Kitty Raine was still sprawled in a quivering heap on the shard littered floor in front of the stage. While the rest were crouched behind overturned furniture, sheltering from the hail of gunfire Bannerman blasted down at them from the head of the stairway.

‘Watch out, there’s another one!’

Kitty Raine shrieked the warning as she scrambled to her feet, her face no longer beautiful while she expressed a feature distorting mixture of pain, hatred and fear as she stabbed one trembling hand toward Edge at the doorway and clutched at the small of her back with the other.

Edge dismissed an impulse to snarl at the men to throw down their guns. Saw there was no purpose in wasting even a split-second as all of them swung their hate filled gazes from the head of the stairs as Bannerman’s revolver ratted empty: peered toward and brought their sixguns to bear on him in the doorway.

Which made it a clear case of kill or be killed. And he began to fire the Winchester. Squeezed the trigger, pumped the action, swung the barrel . . . Squeezed the trigger, pumped the action, swung the barrel . . .

By turns bobbed and weaved like a prize-fighter as the ejected shell cases spun through the smoke layered air around him and rattled to the floor - then was momentarily rock steady at each instant he squeezed the trigger: blasted a bullet from the repeater to end a life.

Four men and one woman: the horror etched into their faces showing they could not comprehend what was happening to them. And this incredulity shaped their death masks. Luke Shannon. Chrissy Walters. The unknown man. Craig. Strange. Each killed by a single bullet aimed and fired with deadly accuracy allied with speed. The dying bodies jerking and sent crumpling into spread eagled, blood oozing inertia by a man who had carried a quiet gun for so long.

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There was some return of fire and the occasional bullet came dangerously close to him. A few snagged at his jacket. And he even felt the rush of displaced air as one came near enough to almost crease the flesh of his face.