Killing Time In Eternity - Edge Series 4 (35 page)

after I’d had Lee show you the door. Which is why I took the knife with me. Poor, dear Arthur.’

‘Then Gus Brady,’ Edge said and suddenly felt weary himself. ‘I didn’t connect you with that until I heard you come out of the hotel and figured you’d been in town for some time last night. Maybe all night – to be sure you were on hand for when the train reached Eternity?’

‘All night, Mister-not-so-smart-Edge!’ she sneered. ‘And Brady knew I was there because his wife works at the hotel and made up my room for me. He came to see me and told me it was you he found sneaking around out where we kept the horses and had our meetings about the escape plan.’

Her contempt deepened. ‘He told me that Shaver had panicked and run off. And demanded the money he had been promised for fetching and carrying to help me free Jed. The stupid creature! I told him I’d already paid off Shaver with all the money due to him and it was up to him to pay his hired help. And I said that Shaver had told me he would leave the men’s share at the yard behind his house from where they all worked. And the cretin believed me!’

‘So you followed him.’

‘No I didn’t! He didn’t have a horse so had to walk across the back lots and fields. I rode along the trail!’ She seemed to get childish pleasure from making the correction.

‘And got there just in time to spill his blood before he could spill his guts?’

Brady was dismissed in an instant from Olivia Colbert’s thoughts and then her deep hatred was directed squarely at the man who faced her on the street. ‘The way I see it, then your charmed life continued!’ she snarled.

Edge said: ‘You tried hard enough to end it, the way you emptied the rifle into the shack.’

‘One day you’ll get what you deserve, mister!’ she threatened vehemently. ‘A man like you!’

‘I’ve been close to that happening a lot more times than in this town, lady,’ he said reflectively.

‘I sure hope that when it comes it’s long and painful!’

‘That’s the kind of death you deserve, Olivia,’ Sue Ellen Spencer called harshly as she emerged on to the porch of the false fronted theatre, gripping a familiar looking Winchester across her middle in a tight, double handed grip.

Olivia Colbert half turned from the waist to challenge: ‘What do you know about what I deserve, woman?’

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‘For God sake, among those you killed was your own brother!’ Sue Ellen sounded like she felt sick to her stomach.

‘Not for God’s – for my son’s sake!’ she contradicted forcefully and dropped her gaze toward the corpse sprawled in the mud.

‘For a thief and a cold blooded killer, a thorough through and through evil, rotten – ‘

‘He was my son, you dried up old spinster!’ Olivia Colbert cut in shrilly. ‘At least that no-good cowhand made me into a woman and I gave birth to a child. A son I felt duty bound to . . . ‘

Edge had a vivid recollection of her when she had falsely claimed to have no maternal instincts because she had never been a mother. Then this memory was displaced by an image of her brother admitting:
our people sometimes overstep the mark in the
execution of their duties.

It was hoof beats pounding against the plank bridge at the top end of Main Street that had caused Olivia Colbert to fall silent. And she, Sue Ellen and Edge all swung their heads to look toward the curve beyond which there had been total silence for a long time before this. There were just two horses galloping down the street, the riders making no attempt to be furtive and they did not rein down their mounts to a canter and then a walk until they rode into sight around the bend. It was Clay Warner and Lee Baldwin who closed to within twenty yards of where Edge and the two women stood near the corpse of the young convict for whose short lived freedom so many men had died. There they halted but remained in their saddles, Warner looking supremely confident while Baldwin failed to conceal his unease.

Edge said evenly: ‘The other kill-crazy sonsofbitches have got what they want. I guess you fellers have a good reason for coming back?’

Baldwin scowled and snarled: ‘I’m owed Colbert money, mister.’

He glanced toward the open doorway of the hotel and Edge looked in the same direction. Saw a black leather bag, not unlike the kind favoured by doctors, that lay on its side on the threshold: where Olivia Colbert had dropped it in her frantic haste to reach the body of her son.

Warner cautiously dismounted: an experienced gunfighter taking care not to provoke an adversary into suspecting he moved too fast with deadly purpose. Baldwin remained nervously tense in his saddle while the man on the ground close by said:

‘I’m owed some cash, too, Edge. But I figure that can wait until you and me have settled our score?’

‘What score is that, feller?’ Edge asked.

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Warner grimaced. ‘After we’d made it a couple of miles outta town and no posse came after us . . . Me and Lee figured that meant we could ride back into this lousy town and collect the money we’re owed without the help of Deeks and his bunch. Them cons have been cooped up in jail for too long to have any damn principles.’

‘They got free, which is all they wanted!’ Baldwin rasped. ‘And we got no need of them! When there’s nobody in this town to give a damn!’

He looked pointedly to left and right, then over each shoulder along the empty, silent street and the flanking buildings which continued to drip with water, smell dank and look desolate under another November grey Kansas sky. There were no longer any sounds of shuffling footfalls.

‘It seems like you could have made a good call, feller,’ Edge said as Baldwin’s confidence grew while he remained firmly fixed in the saddle and Warner slightly altered his stance so that he faced Edge squarely.

‘It’s two against one!’ Sue Ellen blurted and looked about her then down at the rifle she gripped so tightly her knuckles were whitened.

Warner took two more paces and shook his head, his green eyed gaze concentrated on Edge. He appeared to be totally relaxed but inside was certainly tense as he readied himself to kill or be killed as he countered: ‘Lee is just a muscleman hired by Olivia. He ain’t no fast gun, Edge. If you happen to get lucky and beat me, reckon you’ll have plenty of time left to kill him before he even thinks about going for the draw.’

Baldwin attempted a wan smile as he moved both hands out to his sides, the right one far removed from the fancy Colt in his holster. He said to Sue Ellen: ‘But if you even think about using that rifle against me, Miss Spencer . . . Well, don’t!’

Olivia Colbert looked more ugly than she had ever been with the degree of hatred that was pasted on to her naturally beautiful features as she hissed: ‘Kill Edge and her both and I’ll double what I promised the two of you for freeing my son!’

‘Edge?’ Sue Ellen pleaded and remained close to him while the other woman began to back away.

The tall, thin, nondescript looking gunfighter showed an easy smile and invited: ‘It’s up to you, Edge. What’s that old saying . . ? Oh yeah, age before beauty.’ He laughed and Sue Ellen vented a choked sound while she seemed rooted to the spot as she stared fixedly at Edge’s impassive profile.

Then Edge went for his Colt. Drew it and was convinced in his own mind that the single shot exploded from the muzzle of his revolver was the first to blast into the flesh of Clay Warner. An instant before a hail of others tore into the falling body. And that of Lee 189

Baldwin, with enough force to lift him out of his saddle and slam him to the ground at the same moment as Warner’s corpse splashed into the mud.

‘Sonofabitch!’ Edge growled as he realised this barrage of gunfire explained the strange shuffling sounds he had heard while Olivia Colbert was confessing to arranging for and carrying out so many cold blooded killings. This as he looked up from the two fresh corpses and allowed his narrow, glinting eyed gaze to wander. And saw twenty – or maybe as many as thirty - men and a few women, aligned along each side of the street. All of them morosely silent: most of them with a rifle, a revolver or a shotgun that leaked black powder smoke from the muzzle into the chill morning air.

He recognised the elderly John Dickens, Joel Gannon the undertaker and Buck Segal from the Second Chance. Then Dan Paine the liveryman. Next Brad Frost who ran the local newspaper. Even the usually meek and mild Roy Sims carried a smoking pistol. Just Mary Whittier, Annie Hicks and Beth Flynt all of them with tear run cheeks were familiar to him among the handful of women.

‘Hell of a thing,’ Edge said as he pushed the Colt back in the holster.

‘What happened?’ Sue Ellen asked.

The bald headed, grey moustached John Dickens stepped out from the ragged line on the right and said hoarsely: ‘None of us were ever killers, Miss Spencer. Until killers came here and made like they could do whatever they liked and just ride away scot-free. Kill the marshal. And poor old Travis Hicks and Doc Childs. And a fine old man who survived all the hell of the Civil War just to be – ‘ His voice failed him under the weight of his emotion.

‘We’re grateful to you, Mr Edge,’ Beth Flynt said, wiping her salt wet cheeks with the back of her free hand, her big blue eyes fixed for stretched seconds on the corpse of Clay Warner as she advanced along the street. She halted, perhaps to re-assure herself the bullet riddled man she had shared her bed with last night was truly dead. Then switched her attention between Edge and Sue Ellen as she said rhetorically, in the tone of somebody making an excuse: ‘I sure have lousy luck with men, don’t I? One of them a cold blooded killer and the other a boy with a perverted mind I didn’t even know gave me a second thought?’

Sue Ellen moved to comfort her, but she continued on down the street toward the depot where her brother lay dead.

The diminutive, grey haired, red eyed Annie Hicks dropped a rifle into the mud and ran awkwardly to catch up. Edge watched until his attention was captured by the powerfully built, blue eyed and bronze complexioned Buck Segal who stepped down off the porch of his saloon, his shotgun canted to a shoulder.

190

‘We’re all grateful to you, Mr Edge,’ he announced. ‘For not allowing the likes of them to come to this town and do whatever they liked without making a stand against them.’

‘That’s right,’ the tall and burly Joel Gannon added. ‘Real grateful to you for that. It needed someone like you to make us see we had to do something . . . sometime, before it was too late.’

‘No sweat,’ Edge said.

Sue Ellen moved up beside him and gave him the rifle. He checked it was the Winchester Billy Childs had once owned and was now his: along with the dead kid’s gelding and some serviceable gear. She pushed a hand through the crook of his arm and as he sloped the repeater to his other shoulder she said: ‘I really could’ve used it the proper way if necessary, you know?’

‘Did you have something to do with stirring up these people, Sue Ellen?’ he asked. She smiled fleetingly. ‘I may have mentioned to one or two that you might need a hand. After I didn’t find you hiding under the stage and certainly had no intention of skulking in there myself. I guess the word was spread. Though for a time it didn’t look like you were going to get any help.’

‘I guess it won’t be over until she’s taken care of?’ Edge said. ‘And the prisoners are back in jail?’

They both looked to where Olivia Colbert was surrounded by contemptuous townspeople, the woman in the mud-spattered high priced clothing silently submissive to the inevitable.

‘But in my opinion that’s not our concern,’ she said. ‘The same with Troy Shaver and Lester Hardin?’

Edge nodded. ‘I guess Hardin is just one other feller I’ll have to be on the look out for in dark alleys. But I figure I can leave Victoria Shaver to take care of her husband if ever she catches up with him.’

They traded grins and then Sue Ellen began to shepherd him around the curve of the street. In the direction of his store, which also happened to be the way to her house.

‘I guess we’ll never know if the hapless Ethan Shelby came to town because of the train or if he really was an ex-detective when he arrived here?’ Sue Ellen said.

‘Life is full of loose ends,’ Edge replied, ‘People live and people die. Nobody’s ever been able to give a good reason for that.’

She smiled sadly as she said: ‘But, as we say in the theatre, I think it’s time to bring down the curtain on this particular drama?’

191

Edge’s broadened his grin as he replied: ‘As a feller who ain’t cut out for it but finds himself in the tailoring trade, all I can say is, suits me.’