The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (5 page)

‘Luke, how’re you doing, old buddy?’ The man named Strange.

‘You okay, honey?’

‘We’ll have you outta here in a shake, Luke.’

As Shannon unfolded to his feet and keys rattled together on a ring, Edge abandoned the pretence of sleep. Against subdued sounds he rose from his cot as a short, wide shouldered man showed against the lamplight, stepped through the archway and pushed a key into the lock of the neighbouring cell.

‘Good to see you again, Luke.’

‘You too, Craig.’

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Craig became uneasily aware of the second occupant of the jailhouse. ‘Who’s this guy?’

‘His name’s Edge and he won’t bite,’ Shannon growled caustically and pushed open the door of his cell. He stepped through the doorway, pulled out the key, moved to the side to insert it into the identical lock on the door of Edge’s cell and rasped: ‘Be my guest, tinhorn.’

‘I have a choice, feller?’

‘Uh?’ Shannon held back from following Craig into the law office. Edge told him. ‘A bum rap of cardsharping I can live with. Wouldn’t want to be wanted for jail-braking.’

Shannon vented a snort of contempt. ‘Suit yourself.’

He went out into the office, where a dangerously self-confident Rain warned:

‘You’ll never get away with this. Wherever you run.’

‘Talks real tough for a guy with a gun in the back of his neck, don’t he, Luke?’

Strange challenged.

‘Somebody smart would act different,’ Shannon sneered. ‘But ain’t none of us in this room ever come across a lawman that was smart as a jackass, right?’

There were mumbled words of agreement and a giggle from the woman. Then a drawer was jerked open with a series of other noises that provided Edge with an image of the newly released prisoner retrieving his gunbelt from where it had been stowed and buckling it around his waist.

‘How far to the horses, Strange?’

The woman answered. ‘In an alley between the drugstore and the dry goods place right across the street, honey.’

‘What’s the time?’

‘A little after four, Craig snapped. ‘But what the hell does it matter what time it is, Luke?’

‘Yeah, Luke,’ the equally impatient Strange rasped. ‘We ought to just – ‘

30

‘People sleep deepest at this time of night,’ Shannon answered pensively. ‘Takes them longer to figure out what’s happening when they wake up scared outta their wits.’

‘Luke, we figured to sneak outta town the same way we snuck in,’ Strange pleaded.

‘Get as much distance behind us as we can before the hicks find out you’ve been sprung and start after us.’

‘That idea don’t take account of how I been cooped up in this lousy jail for near three weeks,’ Shannon countered in the same thoughtful tone as before. ‘So I need a little pickme-up. I ain’t killed nobody in a long time.’

The thumbing back of a hammer sounded again.

‘Oh, God!’ Raine blurted.

A moving foot creaked a floorboard. A gunshot cracked, the smoke acrid in the lamp lit darkness. And it was as if the displacement of air when the bullet exploded from the muzzle was powerful enough to reach into the jailhouse and rock Edge back on his heels where he stood at the cell door, hands fisted around two of the vertical bars. A chair tipped over and the slap of Raine’s body hitting the floor heralded a brief silence, ended when the woman gasped in pleasure at the cold blooded killing she had witnessed and murmured breathlessly:

‘Wow, Luke, you’re one hell of some kind of a man!’

‘Let’s move out!’ Shannon ordered and a laugh exploded from his throat. ‘Get some place where I can remind Chrissy just how much of a man I am.’

The front door of the office was wrenched open and crashed against the inner wall. And the woman who had been watching the night shrouded, empty street vented a shriek of joy before she plunged outside. All the men spilled out behind her Except for Deputy Phil Raine, who was surely dead.

And Edge, who muttered through pursed lips. ‘Figured when I quit barbering I was through with close shaves.’

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CHAPTER • 4

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THE THREE men’s harsh laughter was spiced with crude obscenities as they
lumbered after the giggling woman. Then followed moments of near silence before distant shouts rang out from both directions along the street. Quickly swamped by the thud of hooves and equine snorts of complaint from the mistreated horses. Closer to the unlocked cell where Edge lowered himself slowly on to the side of the cot, a man yelled:

‘Hey. McCall’s office door is wide open!’

‘Been a jailbreak, you reckon?’

‘I reckon.’

‘And maybe someone got shot!’

Horses were spurred to gallop and soon the shocked voices of the confused men reached into the jailhouse against a barrage of diminishing hoof beats from the west of town.

‘Yeah, I though I heard a shot! You hear it, too?’

‘Yeah, there was a gunshot, sure enough!’

As if to support their conviction a second report exploded. Some way off to the west. Then a fusillade of gunfire blasted briefly in the night. Before the town became fleetingly silent while out in the country fading hoof beats continued to thud on hard packed ground. Moments later, after the sound of galloping horses was finally silenced by intervening distance, Sheriff John McCall demanded to know:

‘Where’s Phil Raine? Has anyone seen Phil?’

The elder of the two men who were first on the scene replied: ‘No, siree, sheriff. Me and Joe got woke up by a shot. Then we heard the hollering and the horses taking off like they’d – ‘

‘It sounded to me like Shannon maybe killed your deputy,’ Edge interrupted. 32

‘Hey, there’s somebody still – ‘

McCall cut in on the younger man: ‘Edge, is that you?’

‘Right, feller. You hear what I said? I figure your deputy’s dead.’

Hurried footfalls pounded on the street for a few paces. Then the lawman entered the office while the other two men held back: tacitly commanded to do so by McCall or because they saw enough from the doorway to dissuade them from advancing further into the room that still reeked with the smoke of exploded black powder. The law office was suddenly more brightly lit as McCall turned up the wick of the kerosene lamp, some of the light it shed spilling through the archway into the jailhouse: flickering and changing the shapes of shadows as the sheriff moved the lamp off the desk and crouched to hold it closer to where Rain was slumped.

‘He’s dead, sure enough,’ McCall muttered in a tone that suggested he was speaking a thought aloud rather than offering information to others. There were exclamations of shock from the pair at the doorway. Then McCall sighed as he rose from the crouch and set the lamp back on the desktop. A chattering crowd began to gather out front of the building, some calling questions. Then the voices were hushed as McCall stepped on to the threshold and announced:

‘Phil’s been killed by a bullet in the head and Shannon’s been busted out of jail. No more to be said about it right now. If Jake Slocum’s here, he can come in and do what’s necessary. If he ain’t, be obliged if somebody will go tell him to get down here with a box.’

A man suggested: ‘Should I take a look at Phil before Jake, John?’

The lawman answered tautly: ‘Doc, my deputy was shot in the right eye. Bullet came out through the back of his neck. He’s not cold yet, but he sure ain’t breathing no more. Don’t reckon I ever seen a man less in need of medical attention and more wanting of an undertaker than Phil is. Thanks anyway.’

He waited a few moments, but the strained silence his stark description of violent death had brought to the group was not disturbed by anybody pushing forward. And he closed the door on the new, less strident babble of voices, crossed the office and moved through the archway.

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Edge was expressionless as he sat with both legs up on the cot, his back against the wall under the single jailhouse window. The pale moonlight filtered through the barred aperture partially illuminated the glower etched into the lawman’s craggy features, signalling the depth of the man’s controlled anger.

‘What happened?’ His slate grey eyes shifted their unblinking gaze from the wide open doorway of Shannon’s cell to the bunch of keys hanging in the lock of the one where Edge had chosen to remain a prisoner. ‘And I’m in no mood to listen to what’s obvious, mister.’

‘There were three of them. Feller called Strange and another Craig. And Shannon’s lady friend. A real bitch named Chrissy. One of the fellers came in first. Got the drop on your deputy while he was sleeping.’

‘No chance for Phil to put up a fight?’

‘It didn’t seem so. Strange and Craig wanted to leave as quietly as they came. But Shannon said he had a yen to kill Raine. And that’s what he did. Just for the hell of it.’

‘He’s that kind of murdering bastard! What about you?’

‘It seems to me that’s obvious. He let me alone.’

McCall grimaced, advanced on the cell door and briefly fingered the bunch of keys.

‘The door’s unlocked. Why didn’t you take your chance and go?’

‘I’m innocent of whatever you locked me up for, sheriff. Didn’t want to do anything that’s against the law. Which breaking out of jail is.’

‘You reach that decision before or after Shannon murdered Phil?’

‘Before, if it makes any difference.’

McCall suddenly looked drained: and strangely diminished in size, like the weight of worry pressed down heavily on his frame. He was hatless, wearing pants and boots but no shirt, so the upper half of red long-johns showed between the lapels of the open sheepskin coat draped cape fashion over his shoulders. Rather than buckle on a gun-belt in his haste to leave home he had thrust the gleaming revolver into the front of his pants. When the office door opened and admitted a higher volume of muffled talk from the street McCall was distracted from his intention either to withdraw the key from the cell door 34

lock or to turn it. Then the door to the street closed and as light footfalls sounded the lawman called:

‘Jake, that you?’

A sob burst explosively from the throat of a woman and then she exclaimed shrilly:

‘Phil! My darling Phil!’

McCall whirled into the office as the door from the street opened again and whatever he said to quietly console the distraught woman was lost to Edge against the background babble.

‘Jake’s on his way, John,’ a man reported as new sounds heralded the approach of a slow moving wagon drawn by a single horse.

The rig halted immediately outside and not just the undertaker entered. There were at least two men and two more women in the office now,

It was plain from the fraught exchanges that the tearful woman was Phil Raine’s widow, named Kitty. Who was persuaded to leave with her sympathetic neighbours when she had been assured by Slocum that her husband would not be laid to rest in the plain pine coffin the undertaker and a helper had carried into the office. A few minutes later, when the deputy’s body was removed, John McCall was alone again beyond the archway. The office door remained open and from the jailhouse section of the building Edge could hear as the group gathered outside the building began to disperse. Soon just a handful of men were left, their talk concerned with forming a posse to go in pursuit of Shannon and the others.

But there was no enthusiasm for the proposal. And nobody argued when McCall ordered everyone to go home: said he would be looking for men to form a posse at first light, when there would be a better chance to pick up sign to follow. When the street was hushed again, the footfalls of the departing men fading from earshot, McCall closed the door, set the overturned chair upright and re-entered the jailhouse. Remained just over the threshold of the archway to ask: ‘You get a good look at any of them that turned Shannon loose?’

‘Just Craig. It was only him came in here to unlock Shannon’s cell door.’

‘Can you describe him?’

35

‘Shortish. Broad across the shoulders. Had a mouthful of white teeth. And a narrow moustache.’

‘That it?’ McCall’s scowl deepened.

‘About as much as I can see of you, feller: way you’re standing against the lamplight. Only the moon on you and him from here.’

McCall glanced over his shoulder, then at the barred window. ‘Yeah, I guess so. You reckon you’d recognise him again?’

‘Could be.’

‘An eyewitness is always good to have at a trial.’ He advanced into the jailhouse, locked the door of Edge’s cell and withdrew the key.