Name On The Bullet - Edge Series 6 (27 page)

‘If you can make that story stick, I figure I’ll be happy to live with it.’

‘I’m glad you know what I mean: that there’s no sense in both of us hanging.’

Steele unhitched his horse and headed for the doorway. Edge followed and they held back for a few moments to peer out at the tranquil moonlit scene where nothing and nobody moved. And silence reigned until a man commanded: ‘Hold it right there!’

As they snapped their heads around to look to the side Edge reached for his holstered Colt while Steele, too far in front of his horse to go for the rifle in the boot, vented a soft curse.

‘Move that hand away from your pistol or you’ll both get a barrel each!’

The scowling, flabbily built, blond haired John Smith had appeared from around the corner of the building, tightly gripping a double barrel shotgun with the same brand of unshakeable confidence that was heard in his firm toned voice.

Edge did as the storekeeper ordered as he reminded Steele: ‘Remember, dumb luck has no part to play, feller.’

Smith did not turn his head as he issued another command: ‘Show yourself, woman!

So these guys can see that I ain’t outnumbered.’

The scrawny, plain faced, greasy haired Loretta appeared alongside the shotgun-toting man who was perhaps two and a half times her weight. Both were attired much the same as when Edge last saw them: but it looked as if they had needed to dress in a frenetic hurry tonight. Loretta clasped a six-gun unsteadily in both hands thrust out in front of her and had trouble keeping it levelled in the general direction of the two men in the sawmill doorway. Both sets of knuckles of her clenched fists gleamed white with the tightness of her grip.

‘Smith runs the local grocery store,’ Edge told Steele evenly. ‘And Loretta does most things around the saloon except whoring. Feller, lady, this here is Adam Stele. An off and on partner of mine.’

Smith’s laugh was short and hollow. ‘That’s just like me and Loretta are, mister. It was her who saw you two duck in here. And the good little girl came to tell me. On account of I ain’t never treated her like the dirt so many others around here have. So she figured that of all the guys in town, she’d like it best to have me collect the bounty money on you two killers.’

Steele kept his tone pitched as evenly as that of Edge as he answered: ‘Under the circumstances, you won’t take it amiss if I don’t say that it’s nice to meet you folks?’

‘Quit that fancy line of talk, mister!’ Smith snarled. ‘And just do like I tell you, the both of you! Or I’ll blast you into Kingdom Come for sure. Dead or alive is what the bounty is gonna be paid for.’

‘John, let’s get this over and done with!’ Loretta urged anxiously. ‘I don’t trust the way they’re both so damn icy calm: not scared at all, it seems like!’

‘Sure, honey.’ Smith licked his thick lips quickly and the rapid back and forth darting of his tongue clearly signalled he was nervous behind his cool façade. But it was only a momentary lapse and the twin barrel shotgun stayed levelled from his hip in a rock steady grip while he issued cold toned orders to the two men and the woman. Edge, Steele and Loretta complied in silence and without undue haste. Edge unbuckled his gun-belt and let it drop to the ground: then he and Steele led the horses out of the sawmill entrance. Loretta picked up the belt with the holstered revolver, then slid the rifle from Steele’s saddle boot and the Winchester from Edge’s boot. Next claimed the matching Colt Hartford from his bedroll. She was clearly overly weighed down with this many weapons clutched clumsily in her arms, but expressed relief to be in possession of them.

‘Okay, right!’ Smith said with deep satisfaction and a suggestion of barely controlled triumph in his tone. ‘Now leave go the reins and head on over to the jail. The horses won’t come to no harm whether they follow you or they wander around out here. Not that you two guys need to worry about the animals anymore. Now you’ve both been captured there won’t be any chance of you getting away. And the law will take care of your every need until such time as it runs its course and you get strung you up for what you did.’

‘John, I’d like you to quit the talk and get moving,’ Loretta growled impatiently. ‘All this iron I’m carrying feels like it weighs a ton.’

‘She’s right, John,’ Steele urged. ‘Let’s go. From the way I saw Edge getting so well fed while he was in the town lock-up I’m kind of anxious to enjoy that kind of hospitality myself. Been a long time since I last had a square meal.’

‘So start moving the both of you and maybe I’ll have Loretta rustle you up a late supper.’

The woman made a noncommittal sound as Edge and Steele did as they were ordered and she and Smith moved off ten feet behind them. After a few moments, the horses started in the same direction.

‘That’s fine.’ Smith sounded deeply relieved.

‘Do you mind if we make a short detour on the way to the jailhouse, feller?’ Edge asked.

‘A detour to where and for what?’

‘Don’t trust him, John,’ Loretta warned.

‘There’s not one chance in ten thousand of me doing that,’ Smith assured. ‘Bear that in mind, mister.’

‘No sweat. It’s just that I’m out of tobacco and it’d be nice if we could stop by your store for me to pick some up.’

‘The hell with that! If you’ve got the price, maybe I’ll have Loretta bring some to you when you’re safely locked up in Slim’s jailhouse. While I stand real close watch on you until the sheriff gets back from that wild goose chase him and the rest are on. I reckon you can do without tobacco for awhile.’

Steele advised flatly: ‘It’s about time you quit using that stuff anyway.’

‘Okay,’ Edge allowed with a shrug. ‘Anything that keeps this feller from cutting loose with that shotgun. Much as I’d like one, I ain’t dying for a smoke.’

CHAPTER • 16

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STEELE SAID evenly: ‘I read somewhere how it’s believed in certain quarters that
the tobacco habit is a real unhealthy one. And likely to kill people who over-indulge in it.’

Edge matched the Virginian’s tone. ‘I heard that same thing a long time ago. But the kind of life I’ve led, I always figured it would be something a whole lot more dangerous than smoking that would be the death of me.’

They did not have that special kind of rapport that is sometimes developed between two men who are constantly in each other’s company – the talent for somehow knowing what the other is thinking like that which is supposed to exist between couples who have been married for many years. But in the short time since the shotgun-toting storekeeper had got the drop on them they had exchanged several glances that tacitly questioned what the other had in mind to do. And each had given barely perceptible shrugs to communicate he had nothing planned there and then. So the fact that Steele had opened this irrelevant exchange and adopted an easy tone Edge had picked up on and returned in kind was not an elaborate signal to put into effect a violent plan to spring them out of the spot they were in. On each of the three earlier occasions when they were in close company for any length of time they had been in much the same degree of danger as now. When each was able to indulge in his innate instinct for self-preservation: and because they were still both alive and in one piece was proof they had been able to react fast enough to the violent surprise sprung on him. Now Edge looked longer and harder at Steele: seeking a subtle clue to what the Virginian had in mind. But the man’s unshaven, dirt ingrained countenance revealed nothing of what he was thinking. And it seemed that he took the trouble to keep peering fixedly forward: as if to ensure his impassive profile was all that Edge could see of his face. Then when they drew level with the L-shaped clapboard building that was Smith’s store, Steele abruptly halted and reached lazily down to scratch at the side of his right leg.

‘I told you two killers to head for the jailhouse and that’s what I damn well mean for you to do!’ Smith snarled.

‘I’ve got an itch is all,’ Steele lied evenly, directed a sideways glance at Edge and saw him raise a hand to use the nail of the forefinger to scratch at the side of his neck.

‘Hell, I figure that old sawmill must be running alive with some kind of biting bugs,’

Edge said and traded a humourless smile with Steele as each secretly acknowledged to the other that at the right time he was ready to use the hidden weapon he carried. But the brief shake of Edge’s head warned Steele that here was not the right place.

‘John,’ Loretta muttered huskily as the four of them trailed by the two saddled horses started away from the front of the store, passing a bakery on the left across from the laundry that still smelled of steam even though it had been closed for several hours.

‘What?’ There was certainly a high degree of irritability and perhaps as much nervous impatience in the single syllable.

‘Like I said before, they’re too damn calm and not scared at all. And I don’t trust them I tell you, John!’

Smith ignored the feminine intuition that had triggered Loretta’s apprehension and growled: ‘Damnit, quit acting like a spooked woman! In a couple of minutes we’ll have them safe and sound under lock and key.’ He chortled happily. ‘And the pleasure I’ll get from being in line for the bounty money will be doubled or more by knowing how that loud mouth George Guthrie will have lost out again. The dumb bastard!’

During the exchange, Edge and Steele again traded sidelong glances. And out of sight of the gloating Smith and the fearful Loretta signalled to each other with slight movements of their heads: tacitly agreed that the jailhouse was where they would make their bid to escape. Then the final expressions they traded showed resigned acceptance of whatever fate had in store for them when they made what could be their final play.

When the two prisoners were some twenty feet from the closed door of the darkened law office, Smith commanded: ‘Okay, hold it right there, you guys! Loretta, you go on inside, dump them guns in a corner and open up the cell. Light the lamp if you need to. And you two better have it crystal clear in your minds that I got this double barrel weapon levelled right between you. A barrel each is what you’ll get if I even think either one of you is gonna try anything sneaky.’

Steele, then Edge, turned his head. And saw the cautious storekeeper had stayed some ten feet back from them: far out of reach of the razor in Edge’s neck pouch, if not entirely safe from the finely balanced throwing knife in Steele’s boot sheath.

‘I reckon he means what he says,’ the Virginian drawled.

‘You better believe it,’ Smith warned. ‘Go ahead woman and do like I told you to, damnit. Then keep them covered from there while I herd them inside.’

There seemed little difference in the degree of nervousness both captors felt as Smith stood in splayed feet rigidity with the levelled shotgun and Loretta moved tentatively forward carrying the awkward to hold armfuls of heavy weapons. She made sure she did not look toward the two prisoners whose expressions remained impassive as they fixed their gazes on the flabbily built, rapidly blinking man who constantly licked his quivering lips. Soon the bleak gazes goaded him into snarling:

‘Face the damn front! Before I get as spooked as Loretta is, damnit! Spooked enough to blast the both of you into hell right where you stand!’

‘Okay,’ Edge allowed flatly.

‘Whatever you say,’ Steele said in the same easy tone and the two of them turned to look toward the doorway of the law office as Loretta moved tentatively to within six feet of it. Which was about the same distance from where the two prisoners stood as Edge rasped softly:

‘Now!’

‘Or never!’ Steele murmured. And a moment later lunged forward as he yelled: ‘You fire and you’ll kill your woman, Smith!’

Loretta’s scream of terror shattered the momentary silence in the immediate wake of Steele’s warning. While Edge continued to let the Virginian make the running: until he powered forward. The scream ended when Steele crashed forcefully into Loretta. To send her hard against the door so that it burst open under their combined weights and the heavy load she carried. Edge lunged across the threshold after them and veered sharply to one side as the Virginian and the woman sprawled to the floor on the other. He came up abruptly against the desk as the door slammed against the wall and crashed back into the frame: failed to stay shut because the latch was smashed.

‘You crazy bastards!’ Smith roared. ‘If you harm Loretta, I’ll . . . ‘

For stretched seconds the only sounds within the law office after the enraged storekeeper failed to complete the threat was a series of gasps and some groans of pain as the woman and the two men responded to the effects of the sudden violence. Then Edge dropped into a crouch and scrabbled with both hands across the floor until he found his gun belt, drew the Colt from the holster and straightened up. Steele unfolded fast to his feet and hauled the woman up with him: gripping her around her narrow middle as he forced her to stand in front of him then thrust his human shield on to the threshold of the open doorway. The sight of Loretta in the grip of the Virginian checked Smith’s intention to launch into a further tirade as he kept the shotgun levelled steadily at the doorway. Then he jerked it and the direction of his wide-eyed gaze toward the nearby window. This as Edge used the muzzle of the Colt to smash the glass with a single blow before he thrust the revolver through the jagged hole.