Edge: Apache Death

"Sure, but it's a little early to get somebody to scrub your back." Again the laugh. She had black hair, probably too dark to be natural, framing a face that had once been beautiful, but showing too many lines and wrinkles in the unflattering sunlight.

"I've got long arms," he told her; "Just room and bath."

"Then I'd better open-the door for you, mister. I saw how you got into the livery. Bad advertising if a man has to break down the door to get in my place."

"You're Miss Ritchie?"

"The one and only. Be right down."

It took longer than that, of course, but Edge waited patiently, sitting in the rocker and smoking a cigarette as he watched and listened to further evidence of Rainbow coming to life. For most of the time his expression was impassive, but he did allow a grin to curl up the corners 'of his mouth as he saw the sheriff emerge from the livery stable and head for his office, carrying a cloth bundle which he was careful to keep away from him.

When the door was finally opened, it was by the Pot of Gold's owner, fully dressed in a low-cut, full-length gown of green trimmed with white. She had made up her face, too, hiding the aging lines. Edge hauled himself out of the chair.

"This town sure takes a long time getting itself up in the morning," he said as he followed the woman into an elaborately furnished and decorated saloon. There was a bar down the length of one wall and the rest of the floor area was taken up with tables and chairs. At the far end was a-raised platform with curtains drawn back to show a stage setting of a metropolitan street that looked foreign. The walls were wood-paneled, hung with studies of voluptuous nudes, and red velvet drapes. Two enormous crystal chandeliers swung from the ceiling on which was a highly colored mural of more nudes. Edge thought the place looked what it was, but that it also looked clean.

"That's because Rainbow takes a long time getting to bed," Miss Ritchie answered, swaying between the tables, leading him toward the foot of a staircase which went up at one side of the stage. Then she glanced back over her shoulder with a leering smile. "To bed to sleep, that is."

She led him up the stairs at the top of which was a desk with a landing beyond. She sat down in a chair behind the desk and opened the register, swinging it around. "Two and a half dollars a day without meals," she said as she delved into a drawer of the desk and came out with pen and ink. "No private arrangements with the girls. All business goes through me and I set the charge."

"Room and bath," Edge said, scrawling his one word name in the register.

Miss Ritchie shrugged. "Suit yourself. Sheriff Beale give you a bad time over at the livery?"

"He started to try," Edge replied, falling in behind her again as she took a key from the desk and began walking along the hallway. "But then he got an attack of stomach cramps."

She stopped in front of a doorway and turned to face him, her eyebrows arched in surprise. "You slugged Beale?"

"Should that bother me?"

"He ain't much, but he's rich. Keep out of dark alleys, Mr. Edge. Life is cheap in Rainbow and Beale gets enough graft to have a hundred men killed every week."

"Obliged," Edge said, turned the key and pushed open the door. The room was neat and clean, cheerful with sunlight from the window overlooking the street, which shone on a bed, polished board floor with two rugs on it, a bureau, tallboy and wardrobe. A door gave on to a tiny bathroom with a fixed tub and piped water. The water was hot. Edge wasted no time, pumping the tub three quarters full with steaming water, then stripping off his boots, socks, pants, shirt and grubby red underwear. He grunted as scalding water engulfed his powerfully lean, olive-brown body and he sat unmoving for more than a minute, simply enjoying the feel of the water. But he was tired; had not realized just how tired until the relaxing balm of the water threatened to lull him into sleep. So he soaped himself vigorously, then watched the water turn black with the dust and sweat of four days' riding. Then he shaved, using soap and the razor from his pouch and thirty minutes after getting into the tub, pulled himself out feeling more relaxed than he could ever remember. He dried himself and then padded, naked, into the bedroom. He looked at the bed and sighed in anticipation, but took time to return to the bathroom and get his gunbelt and the Spencer, recalling Miss Ritchie's warning about Sheriff Beale's hired gunmen. He placed the belt on the bureau top, Colt butt toward the bed and lay the Spencer on the floor. Then he checked that the door was locked, the window securely fastened, and finally stretched out full length on the bed, on top of the covers.