The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (4 page)

21

Edge took advantage of Kress’s uncertainty and dove for the man: his clawed right hand outstretched to grasp the wrist behind the tiny pistol, the other clenched into a fist that he swung forcefully at the double chinned jaw.

But before he could make contact, something hard and heavy crashed into the side of his head. And the meagre level of light in the squalid saloon was instantly brightened by brilliant flashes of silver, blue and gold.

He groaned and before a searing pain paralysed him physically and mentally ahead of empty, limbo-like darkness he had the wry thought:
So that’s the way of the game, you
gambling fool! It’s not the winning, it’s the being taken apart.
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CHAPTER • 3

_________________________________________________________________________

THE MAN spooked by people who talked to themselves said: ‘But you’re right,
tinhorn. You gotta be crazy out of your head. Cheating at cards for the kind of money can be made from the rubes in a jerkwater town like Dalton Springs.’

Edge opened his eyes again and peered into the same faintly lamp lit darkness as before. Realised the remark by the unseen, gravel voiced man surely meant he could not have spent very long recalling the events that had gotten him into his present uncomfortable predicament.

But long enough for the thudding in his head to subside to an ache concentrated high at the left side, which sharpened when his fingertips tentatively explored a lump above his ear.

Then, as his cracked open eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he saw he was in jail. That the kerosene lamp was not the only source of light to enter the cell which had just one stone wall: the other three formed by vertical iron bars. The glow of the still high half moon entered the building through a glassless barred window. Next he saw he was sprawled out on his back on an uncomfortably lumpy mattress upon a narrow cot. Then discovered when he sat up and swung his feet to the floor, that these slight movements did not trigger enough further pain to seriously hamper his thinking process.

He said: ‘Is that what those fellers in the Lucky Break are claiming I did? Cheated at cards?’

He rose cautiously to his feet and felt just a hint of giddiness as he saw to his left another cell identical to this one. It was empty, the door standing open. In a matching cell to the right was a heavily built man laying on his back on a cot, his face concealed beneath a battered hat.

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A narrow passageway ran across the front of the three cells and dead ended to the left at a wall as blank as that across from the cell doorways. To the right was an arch with a barred door that stood fully open. Beyond this was the un-flickering kerosene lamp, positioned out of Edge’s line of sight. But he could see in the diffused glow a table with some books piled on it, a rifle rack which held six Winchesters and part of a map tacked to the wall.

‘It’s what I heard,’ the man in the other cell said from under the Stetson balanced on his face.

In the room beyond the arch somebody began to snore, softly and rhythmically.

‘You may have heard right, feller. But whoever told you that got it all wrong.’ Edge went to the cell door, shook it to no avail then backed away and sat down on the side of the cot again.

Edge’s fellow prisoner laughed shortly. ‘I’ve been in a whole lot of jailhouses in my time, tinhorn. Never have come across a man in any one of them figured he deserved to be there.’

‘Is that John McCall I hear sleeping in the law office?’

‘Nah, his deputy. Kid named Phil Raine. McCall hauled you in here sure enough but it’s the deputy drew night guard duty.’

‘McCall say I cheated at poker?’

‘Not to me, tinhorn. Lawman ain’t never confided nothing to me. Except how they’ve always been so damn sure I’ll finish up with my neck in a noose. Sooner rather than later.’

Edge recalled the sheriff and bartender talking about a prisoner locked in the local jailhouse waiting to be taken someplace else to face a trial for murder. The other prisoner went on: ‘Heard McCall tell the deputy about you, How you and a dude named Kress got yourselves caught out cheating some local rubes in a rigged poker game.’

Edge’s snarl was louder than he intended: ‘That’s crap, feller!’

The sleeping man in the office came awake with a harsh snort. Then a sudden movement sent something heavy thudding to a hard floor. Which triggered a string of 24

muttered obscenities as angry footfalls clacked on the floorboards. A moment later he was silhouetted in the archway. A tall, slim man who was fully dressed apart from a hat. The sparse moonlight from the only window in the jailhouse glinted on his teeth bared in a grimace, the badge pinned to his jacket lapel and the revolver clutched in his right hand.

The man in the next cell raised his hat and turned his head to look toward Raine as he growled sardonically: ‘The tinhorn wake you outta your beauty sleep, deputy? That’s a real shame.’

Then he covered his face again and resumed his relaxed posture. Raine said in a tone that suggested he had to work at putting hardness into his manner: ‘So you’re awake, Edge?’

‘And ready to take nourishment, if there’s any food going, feller?’

‘You came in too late for supper. And breakfast ain’t until seven. Reckon you ought to go back to sleep. Take your mind off your belly being so empty.’

‘And I reckon, kid,’ the other prisoner rasped sourly, ‘that you ought to shove that six-shooter up your ass, pull the trigger and blow your stinking brains out.’

‘Think about it, Shannon,’ the deputy challenged. ‘If you’re so much smarter than me like you reckon you are, how come I’m on the outside of the bars and you’re on the wrong side?’

‘Told you already, Raine. It’s only temporary.’

The young deputy seemed suddenly to remember he still clutched the revolver drawn in response to the possible trouble that caused his premature waking. He thrust it back in the holster and made to swing out of the archway.

Edge asked: ‘You mind telling me what happened to Kress, feller?’

‘He ran out on you, that’s what.’

‘Are you saying that little dude with the dinky derringer got the drop on the big bartender toting a shotgun?’

‘You were there, mister. Not me.’

‘I was only there until I got slammed in the head. By the bartender, I figure?’

25

‘That’s Bart Bannerman,’ Raine said. ‘Protecting his property. Big Bart doesn’t run the ritziest saloon in the territory, but he won’t allow anyone to smash up his place without taking a hand to stop it. Consider yourself lucky he used that scattergun of his for a club instead of how it’s meant to be used. Way he tells it, if there hadn’t been a chance of bringing down Ephraim Rider with buckshot, Bart would most likely have blasted you with both barrels.’

‘What happened then? After he laid me out cold?’

‘Way the sheriff heard it, Kress had his derringer aimed at Ephraim by then. Said he’d kill him if Bart didn’t put down the shotgun and pick up the cash you’d tipped on the floor when you upset the table?’

‘Yeah, I did that,’ Edge responded to the implied query.

‘Right. Bart couldn’t do nothing more than what he was told. And he handed over the money to Kress, along with Ephraim’s watch.’

‘The old man had run out of ready cash to finish the game.’

‘Yeah, right. So then Kress marched Ephraim over to his livery. Had him harness up his horse and buggy. And it was only after the drummer high tailed out of town that Ephraim and Bart could raise the alarm.’

Shannon interjected from under his hat: ‘And then McCall tossed you into the hoosegow, tinhorn. Was a lot easier for him to do that than take off after your partner.’

‘Kress ain’t no partner of mine,’ Edge said sourly.

‘The sheriff and me have got our own ways of dealing with troublemakers in this town, mister!’ Raine growled as he swung around and went from sight into the office. His footfalls ended, a chair creaked and something heavy was set down on a hard surface: probably the revolver slid out from the holster and put on the desk behind which the deputy sat to resume his night guard duty.

Only now did Edge think to reach around to his hip pocket. And when his fingertips failed to find a bulge under the fabric his mind filled with a vivid image of the scene in the saloon an instant before Bannerman crashed the shotgun against the side of his head. Of the tilted table, everything on it scattered across the floor: glasses, cards and money, including his own. How much more than the almost fifty dollars in wages he had 26

earned as a teamster he couldn’t estimate. But he was sure he was ahead in the poker game at its violent end.

For long moments a bitterness stirred within him, until reason prevailed. If he had learned nothing else from experiencing more than this fair share or life’s highs and lows, it was that there was no point in being anything but a realist. He was broke and he was in jail: powerless to rectify his financial situation until he was out of this cell.

‘You know something, tinhorn?’ Shannon’s query ended a lengthy period of silence disturbed only by the soporific sounds of three men breathing.

‘What’s that, feller?’ Edge was flat on his back on the cot, awaiting sleep he thought would be hard to come by because of his hunger.

‘I don’t reckon that guy Kress was your partner.’

‘He wasn’t’

‘Goddamn hick town lawmen! The lazy sonsofbitches are just bound to take the easiest way with everything. Stands to reason: two cardsharps wouldn’t waste their time working a Hicksville town like Dalton Springs.’

‘Just one did.’

‘On the other hand, tinhorn I’ve heard it said in gambling circles that it takes one to know one, if you get my drift?

‘It’s said, feller. But it’s not so in this case. I’ve played a lot of cards in a lot of places. Kress was cheating for sure.’

‘But he’s a whole lot better at gunslinging than cardsharping, uh?’

‘He was good with the cards. I never figured how he worked the crooked deals.’

‘So how come you’re so sure they were crooked?

‘He dealt me four aces.’

‘What the hell does that – ‘

‘Whenever I get dealt a pat four of that kind, my sense of smell for a fixed game starts to work.’

‘It smells like a whole heap of superstitious crap to me, tinhorn.’

27

‘Others have said similar, feller.’

Shannon vented a low sound of disgust. ‘How much you lose to this guy Kress?’

‘Not a cent at cards. It was the local liveryman took a beating. Until the bartender laid me out and Kress stole everything from off the table. And out of my back pocket.’

‘You got your skull rattled, your stake stolen and ended up in the hoosegow on account of a local rube didn’t even know he was being taken?’ He snorted again. ‘Yeah, you sure are stupid out of your head!’

Edge muttered: ‘I said it first, feller.’

‘I don’t reckon I can be doing with a guy like you, tinhorn.’

Edge was about to tell Shannon that it didn’t matter what he thought because they would be jailhouse acquaintances for just this one night. After which Edge would surely be turned loose and asked to leave town. Before Shannon was escorted to whatever fate awaited him elsewhere.

But he decided he could not be bothered. The exchange had caused him to forget his hunger and with a diminished appetite had come a pressing need for sleep, his eyelids grown heavy as a sense of luxurious indolence suffused his body. Maybe he slept for awhile.

Then a door opened in the office beyond the archway, the click of the latch and the faint groan of an oiled hinge barely discernible. A booted foot against a board that did not creak was even duller.

Deputy Phil Raine continued to breathe regularly in untroubled sleep. While in the next cell, Shannon caught his breath and a small bone cracked as he moved on his cot. And Edge snapped open his eyes but did not otherwise move a muscle as he recognised the metallic sounds of a gun’s hammer cocked. A foot was set down more firmly. Then there was another intake of breath, sharper now. Not Shannon this time. A man said huskily: ‘Morning, deputy. It ain’t started out so good for you. How it goes from now on, you got a choice. But I guess you don’t want a slug in your skull, uh?’

‘I’m no hero.’ Raine sounded like he had to force the words out through teeth that were gritted, maybe to keep them from chattering with fear, 28

The man with the drop on the lawman said, a little more loudly: Okay, you can come on in now.’

Edge’s mind filled with indistinct images of what was happening in the law office as he heard two more pairs of footfalls and the rapid, excited breathing of the newcomers. The door closed softly and an exchange of whispered talk made his perception of events more sharply defined.

Raine, seated tensely in the chair behind the desk. His Colt on its top. Within reach, but unattainable as the first man to step into the building pressed the muzzle of a revolver against some part of the deputy’s head. While two more intruders cautiously entered the law office.

The talk was louder, but still pitched low.

‘Keys to the cells, deputy?’ The first newcomer.

‘On the hook over there.’ Raine’s teeth were still tightly clenched.

‘I see, Strange.’ A new voice.

‘You reckon I should watch the street?’ The third intruder was a woman.

‘Damnit, Strange! Didn’t you plan this thing before you started?’ Shannon’s voice was scornfully harsh as he sat up on the cot and swung his feet down to the floor. The others took their lead from this and abandoned furtive whispering and movement.