The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (14 page)

‘I’m ready.’ Kitty Raine spoke in a tense whisper as she merged from the doorway and started along the cement walk toward the front yard gate. She wore a grey Stetson and a long, dark coloured coat that enveloped her from throat to midway down her riding boots.

Her eagerness suddenly altered to apprehension when she saw his grimly intrigued expression. Then she looked in the same direction he did and rasped:

‘Those crazy bastards are going to get themselves killed! We ought to ride out of here damn quick!’

‘You knew this was going to – ‘

He curtailed the accusing question as the door of the law office crashed open at the same moment the lamp in the building was suddenly turned high. The line of men came to a halt.

‘Seems like the hicks are fixing to throw a scare into us, Luke!’ Chrissy sneered as she and Shannon stepped out into the wedge of bright light.

‘Is she right about that?’ Shannon demanded.

‘We know we can’t scare the likes of you,’ one of the townsmen admitted tautly.

‘Who are they?’ Edge asked the angry widow.

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‘Pretty damn soon a bunch of dead men.’

‘I asked who they are, lady.’ He matched her truculence.

‘I don’t know! I can’t see from this far off. And I wasn’t at the meeting, so I don’t know who volunteered.’

‘Listen, Shannon, all we want to do is talk!’

Edge thought he recognised the shrilly quivering voice of Billy Williams, the town druggist.

‘With sixguns in your hands?’ Shannon challenged.

‘They’re not aimed at you and the lady.’

Edge was again uncertain. But this sounded like Cyril Casey, the bank president.

‘Hey, help me up.’

Edge looked down as Kitty Raine moved to stand alongside the skittish gelding, her upturned face showing a pleading expression.

‘What’s that, lady?’

‘I want out of here, Edge! I never thought they’d do it. Now they have, but they’re doing it all wrong. I don’t want to stay here and see the dumb bastards get slaughtered!’

There were further exchanges along the street without need of raised voices after the quartet of local men came within a dozen feet of the law office doorway.

‘I don’t recall our deal including anything about me taking you along?’

‘I just told you why. I never thought they’d go through with it. But now that bunch have found the guts to stand up to – ‘

‘Okay, reach! Both of you, hands real high!’

The imperious authority of the yelled command drew the attention of Edge and Kitty Raine away from each other and they jerked their heads around in time to see two men step out from the alley beside the law office: halt ten feet behind Shannon and the woman. Just for part of a second after the threatened couple wrenched their heads around to peer at the newcomers, Edge imagined Shannon directed a contemptuous glower along the 90

street. It was impossible to be sure over the distance, but he sensed the look in the man’s eyes accused him of being a part of the ambush.

The second of the newcomers snarled: ‘Marty told you to reach! You better do it, or else!’

Their weapons had been levelled from the start and now the other four townsmen brought revolvers to the aim.

Edge muttered a thought aloud: ‘Reckon words won’t cut any ice with that pair, fellers.’

Kitty Raine backed off a pace and said with breathless excitement: ‘Hey, I think maybe those numbskulls have pulled it off.’

‘Climb aboard and think again.’ Edge reached down a hand. She hesitated a moment, did a double take at his frowning face and fastened a double handed grip on him: one around his forearm and the other at his wrist. He pulled her smoothly up behind him as his conviction that something was about to go violently wrong strengthened.

And he instinctively knew that Shannon and Chrissy were not going to do as ordered. Guessed they were primed to launch into the classic escape from a crossfire attack. The kind of get out that was only possible when the trap was set by men who placed a high value on human life – to capture others who cared nothing about the wellbeing of others. Maybe Shannon hissed a terse command from the side of his unmoving lips. Or gave a tacit signal. Otherwise, the woman acted as she had been trained to in a situation of deadly danger she had experienced before.

Whichever, Chrissy turned slowly all the way around to face the two men at the alley mouth. While Shannon gave his full attention to the other four townsmen. And because of the way neither of them moved with any haste it looked as if they were about to comply meekly with the command to surrender.

But they were not.

‘Oh, God help them!’ Kitty Raine grasped.

Edge asked through gritted teeth: ‘Does the Almighty owe this town a miracle?

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CHAPTER • 11

_________________________________________________________________________

SHANNON AND Chrissy began to raise their arms slowly in a manner that signalled
resignation to the inevitable. But then abruptly plunged into fast, well rehearsed action. Faced fully the levelled revolvers, dropped their hands, drew their sixguns and fired as they pitched themselves to the ground.

Again as they hit the street. Then as they powered into double rolls in opposite directions.

The shot, blood spurting townsmen crumpled, their minds still held in the grip of shock at the sudden speed of events. And knew that to retaliate risked shooting down their fellow citizens.

Then some town guns did crack out: by design or by the accidental jerking of trigger fingers as the men fell, staggered or were spun around by the impact of bullets from close range.

It was over in frenetic seconds, while Kitty Raine’s cries rose to strident screams as she fastened a powerful grip on Edge’s upper arms. And he thudded in his heels and slapped the reins to command the horse to an instant gallop. Perhaps there were screams from other watching women. Shouts from men. Piercing the night in the wake of the fusillade of gunfire as the galloping hooves of the gelding faded into the distant west.

But in the ears of Edge and Kitty Raine who clung to him as if she sought desperately to become physically a part of him there were just the sounds of the racing horse and their own harsh breathing.

Edge maintained the breakneck pace for perhaps two miles. Then slowed the doubly burdened gelding to a walk, reined him to a standstill and said:

‘You can let go now, lady.’

She withdrew the side of her face from where it had been pressed into the crook of his neck, then released her grip on his arms.

‘What?’

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It was clear she was not aware of his precise words: had simply heard him say something as she realised the surrounding silence of the open country meant they were safe for the moment: emerged from the world of private terror into which her mind had retreated since the eruption of violence back in town.

‘Intend to walk the horse for awhile, lady. Give him a chance to get his wind back. We may need him to make fast time again later.’

‘Yes.’ She shuddered, gulped and added: ‘I understand that. Of course.’

After she dropped awkwardly to the ground she was unsteady on her feet for a few moments, but had brought herself under control by the time Edge dismounted. He checked over the gelding for injuries and found him sound, then scanned the brightly moonlit country in the same direction as she did. Soon felt the final cramps of tension ease out of him as he methodically rolled and lit a cigarette. Dalton Springs was out of sight beyond intervening high ground and nothing moved on the long stretch of trail that snaked into the hills.

Kitty Raine said ruefully: ‘And to think I accused them of being no account cowards!

But I really did think nothing but hot air could come out of that meeting they held.’

‘Let’s get moving, lady.’

As he started to lead the easy breathing horse by the rein she took a few moments to untangle her remorseful thoughts. Then needed to run for several awkward paces to catch up, as if she feared he was going to abandon her.

‘Why?’

‘Because I’ve got a high paying job to do.’

She shook her head, irritated. ‘I mean why did those men do it, do you think?’

‘Like you said, they were stupid numbskulls.’

‘But . . ?’ She eyed him forlornly.

‘They couldn’t help acting that way,’ he said, the cigarette angled from the side of his mouth. ‘Because they’d never had a chance to find out how not to in that kind or circumstance. To be hoped those left will learn from what they saw happen tonight.’

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‘What’s to learn?’ She was irked by his dispassionate attitude. ‘That it’s better to let the likes of Luke Shannon get away with whatever they want to do? Instead of trying to stop them?’

‘That’s one way to handle it.’ Then, before she could voice the scornful response forming behind her hard set face he added: ‘Or you stop them: dead.’

She snapped: ‘I told you that’s exactly what I wanted done about Shannon!’

‘Right. But you wanted me to do it. For money.’

‘You killed that card sharp for money!’

‘It was my money before Kress stole it from me.’

‘It seems to me that what Shannon and the others are doing to the people back in Dalton Springs is far worse than stealing money. He’s terrifying them.’

‘Whatever, lady.’

He shrugged and saw something that confirmed a suspicion he had held since soon after he ordered the dismount. They were no longer on the trail that led from Dalton Spring to the Drayton farm. But they were on a clearly defined track on to which they had strayed while the gelding galloped at breakneck speed.

He told her: ‘To get rid of the Shannon bunch, your fellow citizens will have to shoot first and talk about it afterwards. The other way around doesn’t work. Like you saw back there.’

She scowled. ‘Some people – most people, I’d guess – couldn’t bring themselves to kill anybody in cold blood. Even the likes of Luke Shannon! To my mind it would make them just as bad as the – ‘

‘Yeah, I know,’ Edge cut in as they drew closer to the derelict house that had warned him he was in unfamiliar terrain instead of on the trail he had walked to Fred Drayton’s farm this morning. ‘And that’s the reason there are a heap of new corpses in town tonight

– because Shannon knows it, too. Knows that for most people the step between aiming a gun at somebody and squeezing the trigger is a one hell of a big one.’

He tossed the cigarette butt away and gestured toward the adobe and timber building off the trail to the right. ‘Looks like a good place to bed down for the night you figure?’

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The small house stood beside a former stream that had obviously dried up a long time ago. Sign showed that before this happened, when the arroyo ran with a plentiful supply of good water, people had lived in the shack amid an area cleared of scrub and rock.

‘The old Tremaine place.’ She said dully. ‘Some older people claim it’s haunted.’

‘But you aren’t scared of ghosts?’

She eyed him balefully. ‘Not as much as of some real live people.’

They veered off the trail toward the shack that was big enough to have two or maybe three rooms. The roof was sound, but there was no glass in either of the two windows that flanked the door-less entrance.

‘John and Mary Tremaine and then their little baby boy lived here for a few years. Then the creek ran dry and their crops withered from lack of water. Tremaine shot his wife and himself. Ages ago.’

‘And the child?’

‘No trace was ever found of it. The story goes they left him alive, knowing the stage would be by soon. But when it did show up, there were just the bodies of John and Mary. People figured some Apaches came by ahead of the stage and took him.’

They reached the front of the shack and Edge began to unsaddle the gelding. The woman stood nearby, hugging herself like she was cold.

‘It’s not the ghosts of John and Mary Tremaine who are supposed to haunt the place,’

she said dully after she had watched Edge remove the saddle and accoutrements and he began to hobble the forelegs of the horse. ‘They say a baby can be heard wailing in the dead of night sometimes. There are all kinds of horrible tales about what the Indians did to the little baby boy.’

Edge carried the gear into the shack, which was as lacking in home comforts as the outside had augured. Bare walls, dirt floor and no furniture. The only sign of relatively recent human habitation was a heap of ashes where a fire had been lit in the hearth by another traveller making use of the scant shelter offered by the Tremaine place. A long time ago.

‘You want to take the first watch?’ he asked of the woman who was reluctant to cross the threshold. ‘Look and listen for as long as you can without falling asleep? Then wake 95

me. Wake me anyway even if it’s just a woman’s intuition makes you suspect somebody’s coming?’

She nodded and continued to peer apprehensively at him as he started to unfurl his bedroll.

He told her: ‘You’re looking the wrong way, lady. If the Shannon bunch or McCall and the posse or anyone else show up, they’ll most likely be on the trail, don’t you think?’

She scowled and made a sound of disgust at his sarcasm. Then swung around to put her slender back to him. And after a few moments she defended sullenly: ‘We couldn’t help what happened.’

‘What’s that, lady?’

‘Being drawn to each other. John and me. Falling in love the way we did.’

‘It’s none of my business,’