The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (6 page)

Edge said: ‘Talking of trials, when’s mine?’

‘Circuit judge’ll be through Dalton Springs two weeks from next Monday. If he’s on schedule.’

‘I have to stay in here until then?’

‘You were arrested on a couple of misdemeanours, Edge. If you can post twenty dollars bail, I’ll let you out. But we searched you when we brought you in. Which is standard procedure for prisoners. And you don’t have any money we could find.’

‘Kress stole it all: you know that, feller.’

‘I heard you gambling men always carry an emergency stake?’

‘Maybe professional gamblers do. I don’t play cards or any other kind of game for a living.’

McCall went out into the office and said against the chinking of the bunch of keys as he hung it back where it belonged: ‘If you don’t have the money to post bail, maybe you could sell something? Seemed to me, though, the only thing of any value you got is that Frontier Colt with the walnut butt we found in your carpetbag. Or maybe that bone handled razor in there is worth something? Don’t know if you’d find a buyer for either of those items around Dalton Springs, I gotta say.’

‘Neither of them is for sale.’

36

‘Okay. All I can promise is that you oughta be out of jail right after the trial. Judge’ll most likely fine you with the option to serve time if you don’t have the money to pay what’s due. Sentence won’t be any longer – maybe not so long – as you’ll have been kicking your heels in here come the day of the trial.’

‘And if I’m found innocent?’

‘On cardsharping, to which you’ll probably plead not guilty, maybe that’s what the verdict will be. But it’s an open and shut case you disturbed the peace by breaking up Bart Bannermn’s saloon.’

Edge won a brief inner struggle to keep from snarling a curse in response to McCall’s even toned summation of his situation. Heard the lawman go toward the desk, where he remained standing to add:

‘Course, if you can get somebody stand bail for you, be the same as putting it up yourself. Be free to leave, so long as you stay around town until the court convenes. Two weeks from Monday.’

‘You don’t need reminding I’m a stranger in town,’ Edge growled sourly.

‘Yeah, life can be rough on a man sometimes, can’t it?’ He doused the kerosene lamp and moved to the door. ‘Sleep tight, Mr Edge. Reckon I can guarantee you won’t be disturbed again until morning. When I’ll see to it you get breakfast before I raise the posse to go get Shannon back.’

‘Guess I’ll have to be thankful for small mercies.’

McCall rattled open the door. ‘After Shannon offered to turn you loose instead of shooting you down just for the hell of it, you got bigger than that to be thankful for. He’s the meanest minded sonofabitch I’ve ever had locked up in my jailhouse.’

The door slammed shut behind the lawman and Edge rasped: ‘If I wasn’t through with gambling, feller, I’d be willing to place a sure thing bet against you on that.’

37

CHAPTER • 5

_________________________________________________________________________

EDGE WAS freed from the Dalton Springs jailhouse at dawn the next morning, a
Saturday. Sheriff John McCall turned the key in the lock and swung open the cell door without a word, his demeanour even more disgruntled than it had been in the early hours after the violent death of Deputy Phil Raine and the escape of Luke Shannon. Outside, men and horses could be heard converging unhurriedly on the law office as Edge asked: ‘What’s happened?’

‘Bail’s been posted.’ The grim faced lawman led the way through the archway into the office, where he withdrew a hand from inside his sheepskin coat to display some crumpled bills. ‘Twenty bucks, like I said. It’ll be held here in the safe. And returned when you show up in circuit court.’

‘Who posted it?’

‘Ephraim Rider.’

Edge raked his impassive gaze over the entire office for the first time after being denied sight of all but a small section of it while he listened to so much happening in those areas he could not see.

The desk, with a ladder-back chair behind it, where the hapless deputy had been senselessly murdered, was beside the wall at the jailhouse side. There was another, less comfortable chair in front of the desk. A bare topped table, a hat-stand and a large iron safe were against the opposite wall.

There was just the lamp, an inkstand and a blotter on the desk top. Dried blood stained the blotter and there was more of the same on the floorboards nearby.

‘You know why the liveryman put up the money?’ Edge asked as McCall hunkered down in front of the safe and used a key from a pants pocket to open it. He placed the money inside and took out Edge’s worse for wear carpetbag. ‘Seems Ephraim and Bart Bannerman figure they could have been wrong about you and that Kress guy working the crooked poker game as partners. The way Kress ran out on your. Here.’

38

Edge had crossed to the only window in the office, which was curtained across the lower half. Looking out over the brass rail from which the shabby white and blue strip of dimity was hung he could see the town was starting to come awake in the grey light of the chill dawn ahead of sunrise. He turned to take the bag the lawman handed him. McCall went to the rifle rack as he said: ‘Is there a reason you don’t wear your gun belt, Edge?’

‘I do when there’s need.’

‘Most men around here don’t ever draw their handguns for anything except hammering in nails.’

Edge had returned to watching the scene beyond the window: now leaned closer to the dusty glass to widen the angle of the townscape spread before him. Saw smoke had started to rise from chimneys.

McCall unfastened the bar across the front of the rifle rack. ‘And you used the razor when you were barbering up in Tucson, I guess?’

‘Right.’

‘Strange way to keep it – in a sheath hung on that string of Indian beads?’

Edge’s tone was neutral in response to the lawman’s inquisitiveness. ‘Sometimes it’s been useful to have it rigged that way. Did what happened to me play on Rider’s mind?’

‘What?’ McCall was taking Winchesters down from the rack and resting them across the nearby table.

‘The liveryman couldn’t sleep because of his guilty conscience about the way I was locked in your jail? Or is he always up and about this early?’

McCall’s improving mood soured again. ‘You surely heard me tell the men last night that I planned to raise a posse at first light to go after Shannon and his bunch? And Ephraim was one of the first to volunteer. He was getting the horses ready when I came down the street. Called me over to his livery and said he wanted to be deputised and then gave me the twenty bucks bail money.’

There was a wide drawer set into the side of the table and McCall opened it to take out two cartons of shells as he said: ‘You don’t seem exactly overjoyed at the prospect of freedom?’

39

Edge shrugged, went to the door and opened it as McCall began to load a repeater rifle. ‘I’ll thank Rider for what he did, sheriff. Though I wish he’d waited until after breakfast before he put up the money to spring me.’

‘Yeah, you missed out on getting fed for free by the county. Damn shame – Bart Bannerman provides grub for the jailhouse and he cooks a whole lot better than he brews that lousy beer of his.’

Edge raised a hand to explore the lump on his head where the saloonkeeper’s shotgun struck him, then put on his hat as he growled: ‘I got the feeling him and me have the makings of a deal.’

McCall said: ‘Ephraim did tell me that Bart’s real sorry for laying you out how he did. Yeah, a way for him to make amends would be for him to stand you breakfast on the house, I guess.’

Edge stepped out into the fast brightening morning and raked a narrow eyed gaze over the seven men who had answered McCall’s request for volunteers to mount a posse. Rider and three others who had been in the Lucky Break last night nodded to acknowledge him while the other three peered at him quizzically. Each man held a horse by the rein or bridle.

Edge extended a hand toward the liveryman. ‘I’m obliged to you, feller.’

They shook and the old timer shuffled with embarrassment. ‘Hell, ain’t nothing to be thanked for, mister. John tell you how me and Bart figure we got it wrong about you and that Kress guy?’

‘He told me.’

‘Reckon it’s a sure thing bet I’ll get my money back After you show up for the judge in circuit court, ain’t that right?’

‘No sweat,’ Edge said and started across the street toward the closed saloon. Behind him a grim faced McCall appeared in the law office doorway and the men moved away from their horses to gather into a tight group before the sheriff, their right hands raised, to be sworn in as deputies.

40

Apart from the members of the posse, the only other sign that people were awake in Dalton Springs continued to be grey smoke curling up into the morning air from a number of chimneys: including that of the Lucky Break.

The only sounds were of the oath to uphold the law recited in a dull monotone by McCall, repeated apprehensively by the men, and Edge’s footfalls on the street then the boarding of the saloon’s porch: before he hammered a fist on one of the two full length doors that were firmly closed in front of the batwings.

‘All right, all right!’ Bannerman yelled irritably after a few moments of the incessant banging.

Un-greased bolts were shot and Edge stepped back as the tall doors folded open. A dangerous light glinted in Bannerman’s watery blue eyes and the rigidity of his stance made the big man look immovably rooted to the threshold of his premises. His tone was harsh when he offered the admission and issued the challenge:

‘Ain’t no denying that I cracked you over the head and laid you out which I shouldn’t have done! But just what do you plan to do about it? With John McCall and that bunch of new sworn-in deputies right across the street there?’

Edge did not turn his head to look in the direction Bannerman jerked an arm. Answered in an untroubled tone that was a match for his expression: ‘I hear revenge is sweet, feller. But to me right now it wouldn’t taste nearly so good as a couple of eggs over easy with a slice or two of ham and some beans. And a cup of strong coffee to wash it all down? And maybe a hunk of bread on the side.’

He added this last as he caught the scent in the warming and brightening air of sunrise of the tantalising aroma of baking bread from somewhere down the street. And as the tension drained out of Bannerman’s bulky frame and heavily bristled face the saloonkeeper looked like an ungainly tame bear anxious to do whatever was asked of him.

‘You heard I cook good, Mr Edge?’ He backed off the threshold and dragged open one of the batwings.

‘McCall spoke highly of your cooking, feller. He also said he figured you might like to make amends with a free breakfast?’

‘Okay, why not.’ Bannerman nodded eagerly. ‘Yeah. I’d like to do that for you.’

41

The empty-bellied Edge and the man keen to rectify that situation paused in the doorway of the saloon as the group across the street – each of them now armed with a booted Winchester as well as his holstered revolver – swung astride their mounts and set them moving. Wheeled the horses to go toward the corner of the side street that led to the open trail to the west.

Then, as Edge made to turn away and follow Bannerman inside he glimpsed something from the corner of his eye that caused him to hold back out on the porch. His attention captured by a woman framed at the open upper story window of a house opposite the end of the street along which the posse was riding, spurring their horses from an easy walk to a trot.

She appeared over the distance from which Edge saw her to be a young and petty redhead. She was waving, which was not unusual. What was odd was how she was tenderly smiling: in that special way a woman reserves for a man of whom she is deeply fond. Which did not seem in keeping with the present circumstances as she bade farewell to a loved one setting out to do a dangerous job.

Then, to compound the strangeness of her actions, the redhead lowered her arm, pressed the fingertips to her mouth and tipped the hand forward, pursed her lips to blow a kiss toward one of the departing riders.

‘Something wrong?’ Bannerman asked over his meaty shoulder as he moved between the tables stacked with chairs, heading toward the open end of the bar counter. Edge pushed between the batwings and followed the massively built saloonkeeper as he asked: ‘Who’s the good looking redhead lives in the house with the green picket fence down the street?’