California Killing (13 page)

The rifle bullet flung splinters in every direction as it burst through the table top. It found less resistance as it pierced the black veil. The woman emitted a blood-curdling wail and flipped over backwards into the outstretched arms of the amazed lawman.

"What the hell..?" Breen roared.

Edge had released his hold on the Winchester and as he hit the floor he was already clawing out the Walker-Colt, Two less strident reports sounded close together and the window in front of which Edge had been sitting was at once patterned by thousands of glittering cracks.

"Okay!" the hatchet-faced man yelled, flinging his arms high, smoke still rising from the charred holes in the bandage.

"I'm fine," Edge said. "Obliged for the thought." Then he shot the man, drilling the .44. shell into the center of his heart.

A woman began to scream and the sound reached a crescendo of shrillness before her companion cracked her across the cheek and rushed her out of the rear exit. Other customers made for the front door. More stayed where they were, watching Edge in awe as the half-breed picked himself up and dusted off his clothes.

"Seems like Hood was hedging his bet," the half-breed said to the startled Breen. "If Kilroy didn't blast me, these two got their chance."

He stooped over the dead man and began to unwind the bandage from the hand. When he pulled it free, a Remington Double Derringer clattered to the floor. Edge nodded to the startled Breen who was still supporting the dead woman. As he lowered her to the floor, the half-breed glanced at the body, but then the parasol captured his attention. He picked it up, his face impassive as he tested its weight.

"Kind of heavy," he said as he released the clip fastening. An awed gasp went up from the spectators as he pulled out a shotgun with a sawn-off barrel. He tossed the weapon onto the table and retrieved his Winchester.

"Hood's beginning to bother me, Sheriff," he told Breen softly. "When Dexter gets back to town, tell him I'd like to see him over at the Paramount."

Breen tried to swallow a lump in his throat. But he couldn't, and he spoke thickly around it. "How in tarnation did you spot them?"

"Women are different from men in more ways than three," Edge answered, going down into a crouch and jerking the veil off the face.

"Jesus!" Breen hissed as he looked into the dead face of the hold-up man named Jose, its youthful smoothness bathed in already congealing blood from the forehead wound. "A man dressed up like a woman."

"Not dressed up enough," Edge said as he straightened and went towards the door. "Wasn't covering his throat. Women don't have an Adam's Apple."

The young Chinese pushed between the spectators, anger replacing his usual good humor as he surveyed Edge. "Killings in my place no good for business," he accused.

Edge surveyed him impassively. "It's a tough life, China," he said. "A real drag."

Chapter Thirteen

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aura of peace and tranquility hung over the well-kept farmhouse in the pink twilight. It was a small, single-storey building but growing bigger. New timber showed where an extension has been built onto the original cabin. It nestled at a foot of a knoll at the side of the wide valley and groves of orange trees all around made gentle sighing sounds in the cool evening breeze. Blue wood-smoke rose from a chimney at the rear. At the front, seven horses were hitched to a parked flatbed-wagon and two more - the wagon team - grazed contentedly on the lush grass in one of the groves.

"Low down!"

Hood's voice was a coarse intrusion into the idyllic scene. But the twin cracks of two pistol shots and the high, thin scream which followed were even more obscene in their implication. The horses stamped restlessly and then, as the front door of the house burst open and a man staggered out, clawing with both hands at his scarlet stained middle, some of them reared against the restraint of their reins. But then, as the injured man collapsed into a doubled-up position on the ground and began to moan softly as he waited for death, the animals settled down again.

Inside the neat, spartanly comfortable parlor of the house, growing murkier by the moment as the last rays of the sun died, Dayton and a heavy jowled man with a ring in one ear holstered their smoking Colts and turned from the open doorway to look at the object of their companions' interest.

She was a woman of some forty years, heavy-breasted and thick of hips, with long, beautifully kept brown hair. But this framed a face which had never been handsome and was now twisted-into a grotesque mask by her anguish.

"Hey, Sam," a stockily built boy just out of his teens complained. "I seen better looking tail in a Mexican cathouse."

"Cheap?" Hood asked as his protruding eyes roved over the woman.

"Sure."

"You get what you pay for. This one's real cheap. Unwrap her, Burt."

The woman was backed up against a glass-fronted china cabinet and the seven men faced her in a half circle.

"Why you shoot my husband?" the woman asked, her voice heavily accented with a guttural European tone.

A thick-set man with prominent teeth set in a fixed grin stepped in front of her, drawing a knife. He inserted the blade into the neck of her dress, the back of his hand forcing up her chin.

"Ain't right he should see what we gonna do to you," Hood answered easily.

The woman suddenly pulled back her head and sank her teeth into Burt's hand. The man let out a roar which became a high scream of horror as he slashed downwards with the knife and saw a gobbet of his flesh dripping blood from her mouth. Burt reeled, raising his savaged hand to his own mouth, sucking it. The woman's dress fell away to bar her to the waist, exposing her pendulous, very white breasts.

Burt held out his hand, staring at the pumping blood. "The cow bit me!" he shrieked."

The woman spat out the fragment of flesh and it spattered to the floor between the feet of its former owner. He snapped up his arm to throw the knife at her, but Hood swung his Spencer in a vicious blow across the man's stomach. Burt doubled up, coughing and clutching his middle.

"Later maybe," the bald-headed man in the frockcoat said easily. "They ain't no fun when they're dead." He looked around at the men. "Who wants to be first at the well?"

None of the men made a forward move. Then the man with the earring shook his head. "Not me, Sam. She'll likely bite it off."

Hood returned his fish-eyed stare to the face of the woman, whose chin was still run with Burt's blood. She held his gaze without showing fear. For her despair at the suffering of her husband left no room for further emotion.

"Needs a little taming down, you reckon?" he asked softly.

"You bet, Sam," the hard-faced Dayton answered. "How long you reckon' she'd last with one low down?" Hood rested his rifle against a chair and began to unfasten the brass buttons on his frock coat.

"Looks real strong, Sam," Dayton said.

"Long enough, I reckon." Hood drew the Tranter with deliberate slowness, scowling when his victim failed to react with terror. He' fired from the hip and grinned as the woman screamed and straightened up against the cabinet a moment before she clutched at the scarlet-flowing hole which had appeared in the white mound of her belly. She dropped heavily to her knees. He holstered the .43 and nodded his satisfaction. "Reckon she ain't so gutsy no more."

The woman's body was engulfed in a burning agony and she saw the men through a red mist. She prayed it would thicken to bring unconsciousness, even death. But her tormentors had been right. The many years of hard, ceaseless toil to establish the farm had developed in her a strength which acted involuntarily to maintain her awareness.

So that even when the last man raised himself from her, she was able to recognize him as the one she had bitten. She saw him, as she had seen the others, use her tattered dress to wipe the blood of her wound from his belly. And she heard his voice.

"Anybody want seconds?"

"Reckon not, Burt," Hood answered for the men. "Saving themselves for the sisters at the Mission." He grimaced and sank into a chair. "Jesus, that didn't do my rheumatics a lot of good."

A thin crackle of laughter erupted from Dayton. "That ain't rheumatics, Sam," he yelled. "You suppose to get stiff down there."

There was one last agony, one more indignity for her ravaged body. Before leaving, Burt slashed her savagely across the breast, nearly severing it. Her scream was short and terrible.

As the blood still gushed from her, Hood sprang up and swung towards the door. Burt strode after him and three others followed. Dayton and the man with the earring held back. Dayton clawed out his Colt and sent a bullet smashing into each of the two oil lamps on the neat mantel. The kerosene splashed across the floor and the woman's writhing body rolled into the pool. The second man struck a match on his fingernail and tossed it across the room.

The merciful release of death came at last to the tortured woman as her naked body was enveloped in the searing flames. The two men dashed from the house and joined the other members of the gang as they mounted their horses. The sun had now completed its slide into the distant ocean and the rosy-hued light of its death pangs was imitated by the glow from the burning building. The woman's husband stared at the house with unseeing eyes from his rigidly fetal position in the dust.

"Why'd you do that to her, Burt?" the youngest gang member asked excitedly as the group moved around the flatbed wagon and headed into one of the orange groves.

Burt jerked out his hand to show the blood encrusted wound made by the woman's death. "Taste of her own medicine," he snarled. "Look what she done to me?"

Hood pointed to the injured hand. "Kinda tit for that!" he roared as he led the gang into a fast gallop.

Chapter Fourteen

EDGE stood at the window of room five in the Paramount Hotel and watched Elmer Dexter move slowly across the deserted, night-time street towards the Holly Playhouse. The tall rancher's stiff leg gave him trouble as he mounted the side walk in front of the theatre. When he had disappeared into the lobby, Edge turned away from the window and went to the door. Downstairs, the saloon was doing good business and through the overlay of tobacco smoke he could see Cooper serving drinks with his usual lack of haste as money moved back and forth across the gaming tables and the plump dancing' girls went through their bored routine for the entertainment of a handful of lusting old-timers. A bright flash of yellow light splashed in one comer of the saloon and Edge allowed the beginnings of a smile to turn up the comers of his mouth as he saw Justin Wood emerge from beneath his hooded camera and endeavor to calm the startled group of sitters.

Then his lean face hardened in its lines as he moved along the balcony, to halt outside a door. With his hand hovering over the butt of the holstered Walker-Colt, he raised a leg and smashed his heel against the handle of the door. The noise from the saloon masked the sound as the door crashed open: and Stricklyn's cry of alarm as he folded into a sitting position on the bed. His nondescript face shook free of drowsiness and showed his fear as he saw Edge move into the room and kick the door shut. The tall half-breed went to the dresser and turned up the lamp wick. Then he rested his rump against the dresser and made a rutting sound as he studied the man on the bed.

"Reckon you'd get fired if the home office found out about this," he said softly.

Stricklyn had been lying on the counterpane, fully dressed except for his jacket, which hung over the bedpost. The initial fright of such a sudden wakening had left him and he held the other man's gaze steadily.

"Thought the Pinkerton agency never went to sleep?"

Stricklyn swung his feet to the floor. "Who told you about me?"

"I shook up Dexter a little and he rattled the right words. You were the only guy around when Hood's inside man was setting up the meet. Had to be you who took the vigilantes out to the ranch. I wanted to know why."

Stricklyn nodded, fully, recovering his composure. "I'm on Government business, Edge. State authorities wired Washington for help in stamping out crime in southern California. The Pinkerton Agency was hired by Washington. I was sent out to open up a Los Angeles office."